The yawning chasm between academic achievement of Black and white D.C. students has widened since school year 2015-16, from a 54.5% deficit in reading and math standardized test scores to 60%. On this year’s citywide standardized tests, 73.5% of white students met expectations in math, but only 11.8% of Black peers did. In reading, the results were 81.7% versus a mere 23.5%.

Public education in the District is provided by both D.C. Public Schools, the traditional system, and independently run charter schools that educate nearly half of the District’s public school students. D.C.’s 29-year-old public charter school legislation and 15 years of mayoral control of the school district are widely credited with higher test scores, graduation rates and college-acceptance rates in both sectors. However, both sectors operate schools that are failing the most disadvantaged students.

One solution is offered in a recent comprehensive national of charter and traditional public schools by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes. CREDO’s research matched five years of performance data for 1,853,000 charter students in 32 states, including the District, with a demographically identical “virtual twin” in the comparable system school.

The researchers found that, “Charter schools produce superior student gains despite enrolling a more challenging student population than their adjacent [traditional public school]. They move Black and Hispanic students and students in poverty ahead in their learning faster than if they enrolled in their local [district school].”

In D.C., the study found that, based on their academic proficiency, students attending one of the District’s public charter school networks — those with three or more campuses — received the equivalent of 50 more instructional days of math and 12 more of reading than peers in district schools. Children educated at the District’s four largest and longest-operating networks — Center City, DC Prep, Friendship and KIPP DC — did better still, averaging 83 more days of academic growth in math and 21 in reading compared with district enrollees. Together, these well-established networks educate almost one-third of DC charter school students. 

By contrast, kids learning in stand-alone charters — those with one or two campuses — performed only marginally better than district-enrolled students, adding six days of reading annually but losing six in math.  

Providing students with the equivalent of more instructional days is essential to narrowing the expanding achievement gap. Stanford found “nationally, Black students in charter management organizations received 41 more days reading in learning and 47 more in math compared to traditional public schools.” In D.C., 88% of charter school students are Black or Latino.

Charter networks in other states and cities did even better than those in the District. New York City charter network students recorded 114- and 62-day gains in math and reading, respectively, compared with students in NYC public schools. New York City’s Success Academy, serving over 20,000 students at 57 charter schools, added the equivalent of an astounding 107 extra days in reading and 260 in math.

The CREDO research makes clear that the scale and size of large charter networks provides many advantages over stand-alone schools: building a brand to better attract philanthropic funds, students and top teachers; attracting, training and sustaining strong leaders; and more effectively researching and replicating best practices.

This is particularly important because, according to a released in November by Bellwether, “from FY22 to FY 2025, DCPS received $7,713 more per student, per year than charter schools.” That means that many charters, particularly stand-alones, struggle to match school-system teacher salaries and benefits. 

To better serve the most vulnerable students, D.C. education decision makers must find the political will to enable more underperforming and underenrolled charter and district schools to remodel or partner to improve or shutter. Vacant and underutilized school system buildings should be made available to higher-performing charter networks.  

The city’s charter board should continue to encourage high-performing stand-alone charters to replicate and successful charter networks to grow. And it should attract proven out-of-town providers to bring their educational programs to the District.

America’s public schools can be the great equalizers the nation’s most underserved students urgently need — if policymakers follow the evidence to build on what works.

Roughly a year after most students in the District returned to full in-person instruction, the picture is quite different. The latest exam results show fewer D.C. students on track for . Less than 15% of D.C. fourth graders from low-income households reached proficiency in reading on , and the gap between them and their peers nationwide nearly doubled compared with 2019.

The results highlight significant gaps between where D.C. students are today and the District’s goal of ensuring every child is prepared to achieve economic success, power and autonomy in their lives. In particular, the results confirm the need to remain focused on those students who are furthest from opportunity. D.C. leaders must urgently provide the resources, learning supports and enrichment opportunities that all students need to succeed, feel valued and pursue their personal aspirations.

Fortunately, there are some early indications of academic and social recovery in D.C.. EmpowerK12’s latest found that student growth in key grades and subjects had returned to pre-pandemic levels by spring 2022. Student well-being also significantly improved. But students furthest from opportunity experienced that growth more slowly. Those designated as at-risk in the District’s school funding formula, based largely on poverty, are an average of 15 to 18 instructional months behind, while students who are not classified as at-risk are about four to five months behind pre-pandemic national averages.

Those students who are “at-risk” for academic failure, as well as those with disabilities, and English learners, are disproportionately children of color who face pervasive, systemic racism. As the District works to recover from the short-term impacts of the pandemic, leaders must also look honestly at how, even before COVID, public schools in the nation’s capital came up short for too many students. Only by considering both the short-term, pandemic-related harms and the pre-existing policies that kept students from success can the District make progress on longstanding opportunity gaps. 

To that end, Education Forward DC, the organization I lead, recently launched an ongoing dialogue — our Better Than Before series. Since June, over 300 students, parents, educators, school leaders, policymakers and advocates have come together at three convenings for discussions led by education leaders, data experts and students themselves. A fourth and final gathering is planned for the end of April. Through these conversations, members of the District’s policy and advocacy communities are collaboratively working to understand the pandemic’s impacts on student success and how the District can build a school system that serves its students even better than it did before COVID-19.

During these discussions, we have heard directly from students and school leaders about the complex challenges they face. Students raised concerns about safety in their neighborhoods and in their schools, increased workloads, longer commutes, and teachers and peers experiencing emotional and behavioral challenges. School leaders pointed to the need to better support students’ non-academic needs, such as making them feel loved and supported in school, and addressing food and housing insecurity. In both cases, these factors were highlighted as major barriers to academic growth and social well-being. Future events in the series will include the release of a new snapshot of data examining students’ well-being after returning to in-person learning.

Taking on these numerous and complex challenges will require a clear understanding of where students are, in real time. In support of that, Education Forward DC partnered with EmpowerK12 to launch the . In addition to assessment data, the dashboard provides an at-a-glance look at key metrics to better understand how students are doing — including growth percentiles, chronic absenteeism and graduation rates. The dashboard also provides insights into the health of the District’s education system, including enrollment figures, per-student investment, and teacher and leader retention trends. The D.C. Education Recovery dashboard provides parents, educators and leaders with an accessible and comprehensible data set, regularly updated, to create a shared understanding of where D.C. as a city must collectively focus its resources, efforts, and energy across what will likely be an extended period of recovery.

It’s encouraging to see some metrics already improving. Since returning to school, students are learning again. However, there has been a troubling increase in , with 48% of students missing 10% or more days of school. Those considered at risk of academic failure have seen a 16-point increase in chronic absenteeism from before the pandemic. 

To address these persistent challenges, there is not a one-size fits all solution. The diverse needs of students require a wide range of solutions, expanded high-quality options so all students can find the best educational fit for their unique needs and accountability for the entire system when those needs are not met. 

Funding, too, is a crucial starting point. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed budget for next year keeps D.C. on a path of growing local investments in education. With leaner budget times likely ahead, D.C.’s leaders must maintain their commitment to making education a priority to increase equitable funding for all District students.

Before the pandemic, the District saw how the combination of strong investments, high-quality options and accountability can be powerful forces in raising student achievement and outcomes. Now, D.C., must demonstrate that it can deliver on the promise of a truly equitable and just recovery for all students.

It’s 9:05 a.m. at Hendley Elementary School in southeast Washington, D.C. when Isabel Chae meets her first tutee of the day. The American University student pulls the first grader, who she describes as “so bubbly, so bright,” out of his classroom and the youngster asks to get a drink of water. 

He sprints backward down the hallway to the fountain. “Please walk,” Chae calls from behind, unfazed by the boy’s surplus energy.

“I’m like, ‘OK, great. You seem like you’re in a frame of mind where you just want to be extra engaged with the lesson.’ ” 

The college sophomore then appoints the student “Mr. Page-Turner” and makes sure to pause regularly during her read-aloud to let him decode words. During the writing portion of their lesson, she challenges him to print each word in a different color.

She’s honed these strategies over two semesters and a summer of work as a participant in American University’s program, a partnership between the college and DC Public Schools that seeks to boost below-grade-level readers. The 59 tutees who currently work with her and her peers progress about 25% faster in reading than the national average, according to pre- and post-tests administered by the university.

It’s a model experts say has the potential to help millions of K-12 students recoup learning lost during COVID. Researchers point to tutoring, either one-on-one or in small groups, as among the methods for academic recovery. But school leaders looking to roll out such programs have often been by educator shortages and pandemic fatigue.

Recruiting university students who, like Chae, are considering careers in education could “unlock” a huge new pool of human capital for the efforts, said Kevin Huffman, CEO of , a nonprofit organization working to scale tutoring nationwide.

“There are more than half a million people at any given time who are studying to become a teacher in this country and very few of them tutor,” he said. At the same time, “you’ve got districts that need people and it just feels like a match that needs to be made.”

A win-win

Accelerate has distributed $10 million in grants to 31 tutoring initiatives across the country this school year, including $750,000 to a nonprofit working to bring teacher candidates into high-needs schools as tutors. American University’s Future Teacher Tutors initiative is one of the 22 programs in the group’s network, which altogether account for 900 tutors serving approximately 2,500 students across 13 states.

The model is simultaneously a way to “meet the very real needs of students and families [and] an opportunity to strengthen the way we prepare future teachers,” said Patrick Steck, policy advisor at Deans for Impact.

David Murray, program manager for the tutoring initiative at American, agrees that bringing pre-service teachers into local classrooms has yielded a “synergy” that has “been super beneficial, both for the tutors and the students.” 

Normally, students in the school’s college of education would not gain classroom experience until their junior or senior year. But after a recent change, a course typically taken by underclassmen now requires tutoring as a service learning requirement. The majority of students in the Future Teacher Tutors program, which employed 21 undergrads this fall, come from that course, said Ocheze Joseph, director of education undergraduate programs.

“We decided that at American we wanted to … begin to engage our students in hands-on experiences working with students as early as their freshman and sophomore years,” the administrator explained. “The earlier that they are working with children, getting acclimated to the classroom environment, the stronger their confidence grows.”

To Chae, the idea of working as a lead teacher fresh out of college without the in-depth experiences she’s gained as a tutor seems “terrifying.” Now, having spent so much time working with students, she has realistic expectations. It will still be “somewhat terrifying,” she said, “but I know what I’m in for.”

All tutors earn over $20 per hour for their work and the program gives a stipend for transportation via Uber or Lyft, helping undergrads access K-12 campuses that are on the opposite side of the city. American University foots the bill thanks to literacy grants it received from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education via the agency’s partnership and from the Benedict Silverman Foundation, who also provides the used by the tutors.

Most tutors work about four hours per week, but Chae works as many as 12, spending all day at Hendley Elementary on Tuesdays and Fridays. All told, the college sophomore feels she’s “paid very well” and is “given a lot of support.” She and her peers engage in regular training sessions to hone their tutoring skills and meet weekly with a program coordinator. 

Scale and sustainability

Still, the program at American University only reaches a tiny fraction of the D.C. students in need of tutoring, a difficulty that’s plagued similar initiatives in other districts and states as well.

Youth nationwide saw historic backslides in reading and math during the pandemic, with some of the most severe losses for students living in poverty. Researchers say academic recovery efforts have not yet matched the scale of missed learning.

“The puzzle is how you take [tutoring interventions] to a large scale,” Huffman said.

He thinks that’s where Deans for Impact can step in, figuring out how to replicate initiatives like the one at American. The 22 tutoring initiatives already in the organization’s network exist within a universe of roughly 2,100 educator preparation programs nationwide. It’s the “most obvious, glaring hole in the human capital pipeline for tutors,” said the Accelerate CEO.

“People who already want to become teachers, they should all be tutoring students as part of that work. … It would reach millions of kids,” he said.

It’s a vision that Steck, at Deans for Impact, sees as especially urgent on the heels of the pandemic, but also necessary for the long term. Though many districts are now funding learning recovery efforts with federal stimulus dollars, his organization is seeking to lift up financially sustainable models that can operate even after relief funds dry up in 2024.

A central question is: “How do we make high-quality tutoring something that doesn’t just exist in the context of COVID relief efforts … but something that is a standard part of how we support students and communities?” he said.

At Hendley Elementary, Chae sees the benefits in real time for her six tutees.

One of the first graders she works with began the year not knowing all the letters of the alphabet. She would tune out of her literacy lessons because she was frustrated. Now, the girl “lights up” when it’s time for tutoring and persists even when she has difficulty sounding out the words — a trait Chae knows can spell gains far into the future.

“She will sit there and plug away at it. … And I’m like, ‘You’re super close.’ And she consistently gives that little extra bit of effort just to get the word, which is fantastic to see.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to Deans for Impact, Accelerate and The 74. The Overdeck Family Foundation provides financial support to Accelerate and The 74. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and the Joyce Foundation provide financial support to Deans for Impact and The 74.