OSSE is required by the federal government to make school improvement designations on a regular basis using our statewide accountability system, which we run every fall. We use school performance metrics with different weights to calculate overall school accountability scores for elementary, middle, high, and alternative schools.
In October 2024, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced that it was updating its alternative accountability system to ensure that the unique populations and missions of the District’s alternative schools are recognized and supported. OSSE is federally required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to measure the performance of all public schools in the District of Columbia – regardless of the school’s sector and students served.
Call it reductive, but the fundamental to understanding educational assessment might just lie with a simple question.
It has plagued philosophers from Plato and Spinoza to Russell. It spurred psychologists, such as Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, to develop new instruments. It has even haunted Ms. Whitney Houston herself.
That question: How do I know?
The DC School Report Card provides detailed information about each school and local education agency (LEA) in the District; you can read more about the DC School Report Card in one of two previous blog posts (here and here). Each school page has a School Profile section that contains information about “School Programs,” which offer information about course offerings, programs, and extracurricular and enrichment activities at the school.
In the first part of this blog, we explored which students were mobile—experienced mid-year school changes in the 2024–25 school year—and the patterns for students who transferred mid-year. In this second part of the blog, we explore patterns in attendance by type of student mobility. We generally find lower attendance for students with mobility.
In the Division of Data, Assessment and Research (DAR), we were curious about what trends there may be in mid-year mobility and how student attendance may change before and after a mid-year transfer. In this two-part blog, we will explore those questions using data from the 2024–25 school year. In part 1, we show that student mobility varied based on many factors including student demographics, grade, and school type.
One of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s (OSSE’s) most public-facing federal responsibilities is calculating and reporting the school accountability scores required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). We have written about it before on this blog but in short, OSSE needs to use reliable and comparable metrics to differentiate performance between schools while also accounting for demographics of student populations.
In spring 2025, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) partnered with local schools to give the DC Survey About Your School (DC SAYS) to students in public schools across the District for the first time. It asks students how they feel about their school environment. A positive school climate—one that is safe, welcoming, and supportive—can help students learn and feel ready for the future.
Does principal turnover predict teacher turnover in DC schools? Research from other states shows that teacher retention often dips following a principal departure, particularly in schools serving a high percentage of economically disadvantaged students (Bartanen, Grissom, & Rogers, 2019; DeMatthews, Knight, & Shin, 2021). OSSE reports on teacher and principal retention annually but has not previously analyzed the relationship between the two in DC schools. Let’s dive in!
Specialized coursework provides students opportunities to receive advanced or technical education in specific academic subject and/or industry areas. Whether it be Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), Career and Technical Education (CTE), or Dual Enrollment (DE), each DC public and public charter high school offers at least one type of specialized coursework.
