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.

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.

This blog post is the first in a series of 4 to be released over the next couple weeks focused on ways DC schools can reboot strong throughout this year and beyond by utilizing the strength of strategic collaboration and intentional data collection to power the continuous improvement of District students’ educational engagement no matter the hybrid learning context.