While we primarily write about the District’s challenges at Capital Commonsense, we want to be sure to highlight where the city is on the right track. One such area is our schools, which have improved significantly over the two decades I have lived in the District. Last week, I wrote a column for City Cast and contributor Jordan Weissmann wrote an article for Vox highlighting that progress and we wanted to share them with you.
Vox: How one city made gains on school integration without trying
Washington, DC’s experience shows that progress is hard — but not impossible.
During the 2000s and 2010s, [Washington D.C.’s] public schools underwent a dramatic set of reforms that helped improve teaching and student achievement. At the same time, the number of white students leapt up, and the share of schools that had been almost uniformly Black or Hispanic plummeted by about 20 percentage points, the largest drop among the country’s 50 biggest cities.
Recently, I called Kaya Henderson, DC’s former top schools official, to ask about that era of progress, and whether she thought the policies she implemented had helped encourage integration. If not, what had? Her answer surprised me a bit: It simply wasn’t a question she had ever really pondered.
For me, integration was never the point,” Henderson said. “Giving our citizens of the district, no matter where they come from or what they look like, a high-quality school system, that was the point.”
City Cast: JLG’s Dangerous Schools Proposal
D.C.’s school system has been on an upward trajectory for the last three mayoral administrations. While challenges remain, in contrast with other large urban school districts, D.C. schools have rebounded post-pandemic. Students have made significant gains in both math and reading for four straight years, with proficiency up 8 points in reading and 10 points in math post-COVID.
Most importantly for those who would dismiss the gains in our school system over the last two decades as merely a byproduct of gentrification and more white and high-income families attending public schools, the correlation between the socioeconomic status of a school and its test scores is the lowest it has ever been. This means our schools are making real progress in teaching low-income students of color to read, write and do math on grade level.