D.C. Public Schools students’ reading scores improved slightly on a recent round of nationwide assessments, keeping the District out of last place among the nation’s urban districts.
District fourth-graders ranked 10th among 18 urban districts, while eighth-graders landed at 16th, ahead of only Detroit and Fresno, Calif., on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — also called the Nation’s Report Card.
“While we still have a long way to go, we are encouraged by the strides we’ve made,” said schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who appeared Thursday with Mayor Adrian Fenty and a gaggle of fourth-graders at a Southeast elementary school to announce the results.
“We still have a few more years to go,” she said, but would not comment on whether she would stay on with a new administration should Fenty lose the upcoming mayoral election.
Charter schools outperformed D.C. Public Schools among all eighth-graders, and among black and low-income students in fourth grade, said Barnaby Towns, a spokesman for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools.
Towns attributed DCPS’ better scores overall at the fourth-grade level to the fact that more middle-class families keep students in the traditional public schools through elementary school, before moving to private schools in later grades.
Baltimore City schools were also included in the analysis, ranking 12 at both grade levels. Neither DCPS nor Baltimore schools saw gains enough to put them on par with the national average.
D.C. school officials focused on the improvement, pointing out that DCPS is the only large urban district in the nation that saw gains between 2007 and 2009 at both grade levels — not only on the reading portion of the test, but also on the math portion. Math results were released in December.
Rhee said the District’s progress put the schools on a “completely different trajectory” compared with progress made before her tenure.
But American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten took a slight dig at her success — seen by many supporters to be single-handed. Weingarten said the “wisest decision” Rhee made was “keeping the previous chancellor’s curriculum model.”
