The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) has been tasked by our State Board of Education (SBOE) to add school climate survey data to the DC School Report Card. To do this, OSSE spent three years developing, procuring, piloting, and iterating the surveys of students, staff and families before launching the DC Survey About Your School (DC SAYS) in the spring of 2025. For the project overall, we are delighted that we had such a strong administration, owing most of the credit to the schools that prioritized this new workstream during a busy year. High response rates yield better data. We shared the data back with local educatio agencies (LEAs) on June 6. In December 2025, OSSE will publish the results at the topic level for the District overall as well as for LEAs and schools.

We want to share who took the survey and what you can expect from the public displays.

Student Survey

OSSE designed a survey with ten topics for students in grades 3-12. Eight of the topics have national benchmarks thanks to our vendor, Panorama Education, who administers these surveys to states and school districts across the country. Two of the topics are a single question that OSSE developed; one asks about feelings of safety traveling to and from school and one asks about the importance of daily attendance. In order to take the survey, students used a personal access code on a laptop or tablet. The median time it took for students in grades 3-5 to complete the survey was 11.1 minutes; the median time for students in grades 6-12 was 7.3 minutes.

Overall, 76% of survey-eligible students took the survey, or 48,764 students in total.

Staff Survey

OSSE designed a staff survey with seven topics. Staff members with an email address on file at OSSE received an email with a confidential link to the survey. Staff members who did not receive an email could take the exact same survey anonymously. They could take the survey on any internet-connected device. The median time for staff to complete the survey was 8.6 minutes.

Overall, 49% of staff members completed the survey, or 10,028 staff in total.

Family Survey

The family survey was uncharted waters for OSSE, which has limited direct access to families as a state education agency (SEA). While OSSE translated the survey into seven languages, developed a central website that made access easier (DCSAYS.dc.gov), produced brochures in eight languages with QR codes, and promoted through its social channels, the success of the family survey in large part is due to the great work of the schools and LEAs who shared the link to the survey in their communications channels (e.g., school newsletters, WhatsApp, Remind, ClassDojo). The family survey was completely anonymous. OSSE advised families to answer the survey once per school their children attend, focusing on the experience of their oldest child at the school.

Overall, 14,590 families answered the survey. The median response time was 4.5 minutes. Wards 4, 5, 7 and 8 had the most responses with Ward 7 emerging as the overall champion. In the table below, you can see how survey responses compare to the percentage of non-adult students enrolled by ward.

For the demographics, 52% of respondents identified as Black or African American, 23% identified as White, 12% identified as Hispanic/Latino, 6% identified as Two or More Races/Ethnicities and 3% as Asian. These demographics, when compared to student enrollment, indicate an oversampling of white families and an under sampling of Hispanic/Latino families. One question on the survey was which grade the respondent’s child was in; we noted a drop in family participation for students in the high school grades. OSSE will look into ways to improve outreach in the future.

For a first-year effort, however, OSSE is thrilled that so many families were able to participate. We look forward to learning from the data, sharing it with the public and improving every year. Thank you to all of the students, staff and family members who took the survey and the LEA- and school-level staff that worked so hard to promote and administer the surveys in their school communities.

Learn More

All of the surveys, FAQs and resources for LEAs are available on our DC SAYS Resources website.