The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education is pleased to introduce Inside DC Education — our blog featuring stories, updates, and perspectives from across the District’s education continuum, from early childhood to career pathways.
We’ll take you behind the scenes to highlight the people, partnerships, and progress shaping the future of education in Washington, DC. You’ll hear directly from the Deputy Mayor for Education and our partners on how we’re working together to make sure every student in DC can learn, grow, and thrive.
The State of Schools in Washington, DC Is Strong — and Getting Stronger
March 26, 2026 by Paul Kihn, Deputy Mayor for Education
This blog post is adapted from remarks delivered by Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn at the D.C. Policy Center’s annual “State of Schools” event on March 11, 2026, highlighting key findings from the 2024–25 State of D.C. Schools Report
The state of schools in Washington, DC is strong. We beat ourselves up all the time because we ask the question, is it strong enough? And the answer to that is, of course, no. But the state of the schools is strong and getting stronger every single year. We have a lot to be proud of.
How do we know that the state of the schools is strong? When I think about our strength, I think about teacher retention, which is now up at 78% same school retention across the city. While across the country, high-need schools usually see about 30% or more of their teachers leave every year.
Our academic achievement is unsurpassed in the country in terms of growth. This year, we saw 3.6% growth in ELA [English Language Arts] and Math in our very rigorous DC CAPE [Comprehensive Assessments of Progress in Education] assessments. You'll recall last year, on NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress], we learned that DC as a location was the same or better across all four of the tested areas, unlike the country that saw declines. So, our academic achievement remains strong.
And of course, our graduation rate is remarkable. This year, we're up at 78.7%. In 2011, it was just over half. That's 26 points over that period of time that we've improved. Think of the number of young people now who are walking across the stage because of the work that we’re all doing.
Now, of course, it's not just enough for us to say the state of the schools is strong and reflect on it. We have got to ask the question, why? Why have we seen this dramatic improvement across our city in our public schools? We have to ask why, because if we don't understand why, or have a perspective on that, we are not going to sustain the things that actually are working. We are at risk of abandoning the drivers of our success. And so today I want to share a couple of reflections on why I think the schools have been improving.
First and foremost, of course, is the incredibly hard work of teachers, leaders, and entrepreneurs. Recently, I have, as many of you, been celebrating Susan Schaeffler's tenure at KIPP DC. And when you listen to the stories of 2001, 2002, schools in church basements, anti-Charter advocacy, and a split City Council, it is remarkable the work that went into creating the system that we now take for granted.
Leadership is another core element of why we're here. We have seen remarkable leadership over the last 30 years in the city, in our Mayors, in council, amongst our systems, at schools. Leadership is courageous. Leadership is as good as its people. We've been very, very fortunate.
Another important reason for our success is, of course, the money. The city has monumentally invested in our public schools. In the past decade, that investment has doubled to $2.8 billion. And if you account for enrollment increases, we have increased our per-student funding 75%. I'm not an economist, but that's quite a bit higher than inflation. And that's an incredible investment in our young people.
Now, the money, of course, only matters if you spend it well. And I would argue we have been spending it well. We have a best-in-class per-student funding formula that is no accident. Our money follows our students, contributes more to those with greater needs, and goes to wherever they choose to go in our system. We have invested in our young people.
Our teachers’ starting salaries are the highest in the country. The highest. We respect and honor our teachers. And we have made very important investments in structured literacy, high-impact tutoring, and other things that we do as a system. So, we've been spending our money very, very well.
Now, when people say to me at cocktail parties, well, what's going on in the DC schools? Why are they so good? I don't talk about leadership or hard work or money. I talk about two things.
The first of those things I say is our schools are doing well because of 30 years of the public charter sector in the first instance. And our schools are doing well because of DCPS's turnaround and mayoral control that allowed us to invest heavily in our teachers and develop an evaluation system that is focused on individual development and performance, and growth.
It's the charter sector, DCPS's turnaround and mayoral control. Those are precious commodities in Washington, DC, and we have to continue to value and sustain them.
When you combine those together, you see that we are building more and more coherence. And the cross-sector collaboration has been an extraordinary contributor as well. For example, My School DC-what a gift for families and parents. The Advanced Technical Centers led by OSSE (Office of the State Superintendent for Education), is the product of incredible cross-sector collaboration to provide access to college credit and advanced career and technical education coursework that otherwise students wouldn't have.
So that's why I think we've gotten better. Those are the things that I think we should cherish and honor and sustain. And we're going to need it because we have a lot of hard work in front of us.
Enrollment, that is a headwind. This year, we declined slightly. And we know that we've been expecting a decrease in enrollment, and now it's likely going to hit us hard.
We have a chronic absenteeism challenge in the city. It's stubbornly stuck at 39%. That's more than a third of our young people that we're working extremely hard to resolve.
We've got stubborn equity gaps that we all know about and work on every single day.
And there are very strong economic headwinds. AI is the elephant in every single room. And this world and the world of work and the world that our children are inheriting will look very, very different whether we want it to or not. And we've got to make sure we're getting them ready.
So, we've got to keep doing the very hard things. We've got to keep working together. We have to keep expanding access to quality schools.
These are the hard things we've got to do. We have to get better and more creative about training our educators and working with students with special needs. In the charter sector, we have to hold the line on quality and accountability and be more strategic about our openings to focus on quality and unmet need.
So too in DCPS, where we have to recommit to the excellence of every single neighborhood school so that families, through their by-right schools, have access to meaningful choice. And we have to sustain fair and equal funding across all of our students, and we cannot lose sight of that.
We have to embrace AI. We've got to teach it in schools, unleash our teachers on it, get our youth ready for this vastly new world that we are handing to them.
We've got so much left to do, but in the midst of this work, we cannot forget that together we have built something incredibly special. Something that no other place in the country has. And it's really, really important that we sustain it.
The story is clear. The state of DC schools is strong and getting stronger. Let’s keep it that way.
Making dollars and sense: how DC funds our public school systems through the uniform per student funding formula
October 8, 2025 by TJ Sell, Director of Budget and Performance | [email protected]
Investing in our Students
It’s back-to-school season in the District, and while our nearly 100,000 students are heading into math class, we’ve been focused on the math that makes up our public schools’ budgets. This year, DC allocated over $2.8 billion to support public schools across the city. Most of these dollars flow through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula (UPSFF), which provides per-student dollars to local education agencies (LEAs).
The UPSFF is a best-in-class funding approach built on two principles: stability and equity. It provides consistent funding for every student while targeting additional dollars to students with greater needs.
Stability: A Strong Foundation for Every Student
Each year, central to the UPSFF is the foundation level — the base amount of funding allocated per student — which is adjusted for different grade levels to reflect the cost of services required learning stage. Over time, this foundation level has grown in step with the real costs of providing a high-quality education. Since 2015, the foundation level has increased by nearly 60%, rising from $9,492 to $15,070 per student for the current school year
Equity: Targeting Resources Where They’re Needed Most
Because students have diverse needs and circumstances, additional resources beyond the foundation level are vital for LEAs to meet those needs. The UPSFF accomplishes this through supplemental weights which serve as multipliers of the foundation, including:
- Special education students
- English language learners (ELL)
- Students considered “at-risk” (such as those experiencing homelessness, in foster care, or qualifying for federal assistance programs)
For example, last school year the at-risk weight increased from 0.24 to 0.30, adding an additional $1,269 per at-risk student (see end of this post for a complete list of weights in the formula). These targeted investments help close achievement gaps, expand programming, and create safe, supportive learning environments across the District.
Research confirms that this methodology works. The Deputy Mayor for Education’s 2023 School Funding Study found that the UPSFF’s weights, amounts, and categories are aligned with national best practices and expert recommendations, ensuring our schools are robustly resourced year-over-year to meet the growing costs of delivering a high-quality education.
How Funding Flows to Schools
Funding through the UPSFF is budgeted for LEAs, based on projected enrollments for the coming school year. After the District’s annual budget is approved, LEAs then use allocation models to fund individual schools based on UPSFF and anticipated federal and private resources, giving them autonomy to align resources with individual school needs.
For example, DC Public Schools (DCPS) uses its School Funding Model to allocate both UPSFF and other revenue sources to its 117 schools. Principals work with Local School Advisory Teams (LSATs) made up of parents, educators, and community members to decide how to best budget total available resources.
Starting this School Year, DCPS introduced the School Sustainability Fund, which minimizes schools’ year-over-year shifts and ensures they can maintain appropriate staffing levels based on projected enrollments.
Beyond UPSFF: Other Funding Sources
While the UPSFF is the primary source of school funding, LEAs also receive federal, local, and private grants to supplement programming. For example:
- Federal Title funding: Last school year, LEAs received $73 million in Title grants to support English learners and students from low-income households and strengthen academic programming.
- Citywide programs: Local resources from other DC agencies such as the School Health Services Program (DC Health) and the School Behavioral Health Program (Department of Behavioral Health) provide critical health and wellness services in schools.
Together, these funding streams create a comprehensive support system that helps schools meet a wide range of student needs.
A Decade of Growth, A Future of Opportunity
If all of this sounds a little like Algebra class, that’s the point. The UPSFF is designed to serve our complex and evolving public school system that deals with different variables each school year. But here’s the bottom line: When we invest more in schools, students do better.
Over the past decade, UPSFF funding for LEAs has doubled. In that same period, DC has seen:
- More students enroll;
- More students graduate; and,
- More students succeed, including the largest gains in math and English language arts/literacy on statewide assessments since before the pandemic
These are not just numbers; they represent real opportunities and better futures for thousands of DC students.
To keep improving, the District convenes a working group of education advocates, LEA leaders, and public servants twice each year to review the UPSFF and recommend refinements. It’s part of our commitment to making sure every dollar counts and every student has what they need to thrive.
Learn more about how DC resources its 67 local education agencies by reading DME’s 2023 School Funding Study or how you can be part of the conversation by visiting the UPSFF and the District’s biannually-convening working group.
View the Appendix: UPSFF weights proposed for school year 2025-26.
Long-term public school enrollment projected to grow by 550 students by SY26-27, remaining above current levels until SY31-32
October 8, 2025 by Rory Lawless and Jenn Comey, Planning and Analysis | [email protected]
Contributions by Samuel Kligman, summer intern
Across the country, public school enrollment trends are in decline. However, enrollment in the District is expected to buck these trends in the short term, with 0.6% growth projected by SY26-27, after which a decline in enrollment is expected. While the District did rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery shows signs of slowing, and declining births mean we may begin a corresponding fall in enrollment manifesting in the early grades.
- The strong post-pandemic enrollment recovery has driven steadier long-term enrollment projections compared to previous iterations.
- Higher birth-to-preKindergarten 3 (PK3) enrollment rates have shored up the public education system despite fewer births.
- Next year’s Master Facilities Plan Supplement will update the long-term enrollment projections capturing 2025’s emerging trends.
Following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during SY20-21 and SY21-22, long-range enrollment projections predicted steep declines. However, starting SY22-23 the District experienced three years of enrollment growth. During this period, around 4,100 more students enrolled compared to SY19-20.
This strong enrollment recovery has, therefore, influenced the 2024 Master Facilities Plan (MFP) Annual Supplement 5- and 10-year enrollment projections. These latest projections using a baseline of SY24-25 show continued enrollment growth through SY26-27, contrasting with previous predictions of decline. Between SY24-25 and SY26-27, the DME projects 550 more PK3 to 12th grade and Alternative students will enroll, meaning an enrollment peak of almost 94,000 public school students.
Figure 1: Comparison of actual PK3-12 and Alternative enrollment and projections
While these trends illustrate the resilience of DC’s public education system, the projections show the increased pressure of declining births on enrollment. By 2023, the annual number of births had fallen by almost 2,000 since the peak of 9,854 in 2016. Preliminary numbers for 2024 show a further decline of around 300 compared to 2023.
Figure 2: Births since 2013
Fewer births, without being offset by positive net migration (domestic or international), reduce the number of students eligible to enter the system which, in turn, impacts enrollment as cohorts move through. The DC public education ecosystem has, nevertheless, tempered the impact of this trend by enrolling a higher proportion of eligible students in PK3. By SY23-24, PK3 enrollment was 62% of births in 2020, exceeding the pre-pandemic high of 60.9% in SY18-19.
However, signs of stagnation were evident in SY24-25. PK3 enrollment as a percentage of 2021 births declined to 61.4%, which remains above the SY18-19 level but translates to 181 fewer students compared to SY23-24. The projections assume a continuation of this two-year trend, meaning annual decreases in PK3 enrollment are projected until SY29-30. The impact of smaller cohorts endures throughout the projection period and contributes to a loss of 590 students by SY35-36 compared to SY24-25.
SY29-30 is the first projected school year showing a return to growth based on birth forecasts, but projections this far in the future ought to be considered with caution. One reason for this warning is the continued decline in births which has outpaced the Office of Planning forecasts upon which these projections are based.
These projections do not account for new factors impacting the District in 2025, such as the recent federal workforce layoffs, transfer of federal agency personnel to locations outside the District, and latest immigration efforts. The DME will update the enrollment projections annually each spring to take account of such trends.