“Our Beginning

EmpowerK12 forms as a nonprofit to provide additional data systems support for public charter schools in DC. Our initial work mainly focused on creating custom databases, generating interactive reports on academic growth and achievement, and helping with data compliance tasks. Our work evolved since incorporation. Read on!”

“Finding Bold Schools

In 2016, we believed the prevailing narrative and use of school data did not accurately identify schools with outstanding results for our most vulnerable students. Utilizing a sophisticated multivariate approach, we honored our first eleven DC Bold Performance schools, which are schools posting PARCC achievement rates well above expectations (10 percentage points higher than similar schools) based on their student population. Bold Performance schools are announced annually after the public release of assessment results.”

“Learning from Bold Schools

With 3 years of Bold School awards and data, we endeavored to capture what set the Bold schools apart. Our first comprehensive data-driven research report Lessons for All from DC’s Bold Improvement Schools highlights ten schools where students most at risk of academic failure demonstrated academic growth that put them on pace to close the national achievement gap in under five years. We interviewed teachers and school leaders and observed classrooms to learn their secret sauce. Bold schools prioritized: joyful classrooms, high expectations for staff and students, frequent review of data, and focus on collaborative improvement.”

“Applying Bold School Lessons to Our Work

Our team prioritized applying the use of data and collaborative improvement lessons by expanding our services to schools and the city. In addition to our technical data dashboard solutions, we designed and piloted an improvement framework with two DC public charter high schools to increase the percent of 9th grade students on-track to graduate within four years. Educators focused on their students’ co-academic and social-emotional skills. Even though the pandemic upended the collaborative’s work in the spring, teachers enjoyed seeing how data they were already collecting could be turned into powerful insights about student progress and identifying root causes.”

“Focusing on Joy and Collaborative Improvement During the Pandemic

In partnership with Relay Graduate School for Education, DC Public Schools, Friendship PCS, and Eagle Academy PCS, we launched two new teacher collaborative pilots focused on improving outcomes for students with disabilities during the pandemic remote school year. Students in pilot teachers’ classrooms achieved nearly double the fall-to-spring growth of comparable students.

In collaboration with 22 public charter schools, SchoolTalk, and the GW Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, we administered the first locally designed, holistic Student Wellbeing Survey to thousands of students to understand how they were doing and feeling while at home. Results from the Fall administration helped mental health professionals in schools and throughout our community determine what “tier one” action steps were needed to ensure student basic needs were met.”

“ Supporting Schools’ Bold Response to the Pandemic

After 18 months of learning from home, DC students returned to school for in-person learning. Using the Bold Schools’ playbook of focusing on data and collaboration, we joined CityTutor to support innovative data sharing between tutoring organizations and multiple LEAs. We also launched our new school-based improvement team pilot model with DC Bilingual and Social Justice School to rapidly increase student engagement and achievement in their bilingual immersion and math intervention programs.”