While the District has experienced ongoing gentrification, we find one key contributing factor to the decline in the total number of students designated as at-risk is the minimum wage increase. This (rather lengthy) post examines the relationship between District population shifts, minimum wage hikes, the number of students who are designated as at-risk, and the likely undercount of students living in households that can benefit from the additional academic and social-emotional resources that the “at-risk weight” was designed to equitably fund.

This morning, a coalition of local education support and advocacy organizations formally launches a new campaign to ensure the 2021-22 school year is our Strongest Year Yet. This blog post is a summary of why EmpowerK12 believes in the coalition’s mission and how an equity-centric, continuous improvement-oriented approach can help us exceed ambitious goals we must set for a quick recovery.

Among the broad-based academic support recommendations in the research is maximizing the amount of instructional time. Just how important is “maximizing instruction time” when it comes to academic outcomes, and what are ways to obtain more time? We analyze both in this blog post.

Obligatory warning: This blog post is written for the eduData wonk audience. We examine in-depth the relationship between demographic factors and STAR scores. The post is super heavy on statistics and data science.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on student academic growth since abruptly ending in-person school in March, negative impacts on student well-being has been assumed, but less well understood.

This fall, EmpowerK12, in partnership with seven DC charter school networks and local school-based mental health experts, set out to learn how DC students feel about and experience life and school. This blog post summarizes key findings from the fall survey and shares promising practices implemented at participating schools as a result of the data.

In this blog post, we examine the following key questions related to the academic achievement and improvement of DC's at-risk students: How has the correlation between school level proficiency and percent of at-risk students tested changed over time? Is the pace of at-risk proficiency gains improving and when will DC at-risk students close the achievement gap with their national higher income peers? What school level operational and instructional policy decisions are helping to improve at-risk outcomes?

Over the last two decades, the District's demographic makeup has shifted in small and large ways, becoming more affluent with black/African American residents comprising a smaller share of the total population. Given the correlation between achievement and affluence, how much of the District's overall proficiency gains might be attributable to population changes and how much to overall student improvement?

This past December, OSSE released the new common DC School Report Card with STAR scores and ratings for every school and subgroup within the school. Then, in February, parents finalized their school preferences for the SY2019-20 school year. We analyzed the newly released MySchoolDC waitlist data for next year, comparing it to historical data as well as other school factors included on the new report card, to find out whether the new rating system impacted school choice on a broad level. 

Maybe a better place to start is by asking: Is teacher retention an issue we should care about? In our city's quest to ensure a high-quality teacher in every classroom, we should be concerned about teacher retention.