As discussed in the previous Data Discovery post about summative school scores, OSSE has federal responsibilities as the state education agency for DC to make school support designations using our own built-in-DC school accountability system. The designations have technical-sounding names, so this post aims to describe them in common terms.

School-Level Designations

We make two designations based on overall school performance so that OSSE can offer these schools more support.

(1) Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools, Low Performing (CSI)

The lowest-performing schools that need the most support come from the DC public and public charter schools that get Title I, Part A funding. Title I schools serve high percentages of children from low-income families; the 5 percent with the lowest summative score are designated for comprehensive support.

To find the schools in the bottom 5 percent, we calculate the summative scores for every public school in DC and identify the “cut point” for schools with the lowest scores. Schools below that cut point will get this support. (We have a post about how we calculate summative scores available here.)

We identify schools for this support every three years. We will make these designations again after the 2023-24 school year.

Schools exit CSI when they improve overall, not just because their summative score goes up or other school scores go down. Schools have to (1) get their score above the first “cut point” number; (2) get a new score above the new “cut point”; and (3) increase the rate of students meeting or exceeding expectations on statewide English language arts (ELA) and math assessments(now called DC CAPE, which you can read about here) or alternate assessments.

(2) Comprehensive Support and Improvement Schools, Low Graduation Rate (CSI-Grad)

The next designation supports high schools that need help with their graduation rates. Every high school where less than 67 percent of students graduate receives this kind of support.

Like the support above, we identify these schools every three years, so OSSE will make new designations after the 2023-24 school year.

Once graduation rates rise above 67 percent for 4-year or 5-year graduation rates, the school will exit the designation.

Student Group-Level Designations

It is also important to support schools based on specific student needs. Three designations focus on student groups and the designations build on one another. This helps student groups with lower performance scores get the attention and supports they need to be successful. A school may be serving some student groups well enough to earn a school accountability score above the cut score, but if other student groups are struggling, we identify the school for student-group-level supports. Schools can receive multiple designations.

Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI)
Schools that have a “consistently underperforming” student group, which means that a student group is performing below the summative score of the schools in the bottom 5 percent for two years, receive TSI support. We will make TSI designations after the 2023-24 school year using information from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.

Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI)
This is a step up from TSI. TSI schools that have a student score below the bottom 5% of schools for three years receive an ATSI designation. We will make ATSI designations after the 2024-25 school year and annually after that. The annual designation is the main difference between ATSI and TSI.

Comprehensive Support and Improvement – Student Group (CSI-SG)
Schools that have a student group(s) identified as ATSI that do not exit that status after three years receive a CSI-SG designation. The timeline for these is a little confusing because we did not get the same information from schools during the pandemic. We did not calculate accountability scores in the 2019-20 or 2020-21 school years and then used a simpler version of our accountability system for the 2022-23 school year.

Learn More

Of course, the next step after making these designations is supporting the schools. OSSE has a strategy to support designated schools, which you can read about on our Investments in Schools page. If you want to know more, our ESSA plan has all of the details about school support designations starting on page 30.