D.C. Students See Big Academic Gains

Despite the improvement, District students still have a long way to go. The percentage of students in traditional public schools who reach proficiency is low. In elementary schools, 46 percent of students were considered proficient in reading and 40 percent in math. In secondary schools, 39 percent were proficient in reading and 36 percent in math. In many of the region's school systems, which take a different test, the percentage of students reaching proficiency is twice as high.

"No one in the administration is satisfied. No one thinks we're all the way there or close to being all the way there," Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) said at the news conference.

Still, he said, the results show that "the initiatives the chancellor is putting into place are bearing fruit and the school system is moving in the right direction."

Plummer Elementary Principal Christopher Gray said his school made adequate yearly progress for the first time in his three years there. The school, he said, made progress under the Safe Harbor provision of No Child Left Behind, which gives schools credit for making significant gains without making the academic target.

He said Rhee had schools conduct three pretests early this year to gauge student progress. Students spent several hours a week taking practice tests. Teachers, he said, analyzed the data and retaught material that students got wrong. Before the DC-CAS was administered in the spring, principals were required to devise a plan on how teachers would prepare for it.

"Principals were paying more attention to lesson plans on how teachers would cover [the topics] on the test," Gray said in an interview. "There definitely was [more] accountability for principals and teachers."

School-by-school data will be released this summer after the numbers are verified, Rhee said. The results appear to put the District on par with school systems in cities such as Philadelphia, Richmond and Dallas that have made large annual gains, Casserly said.

Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso said students in the traditional system made strong gains and were outperforming their peers in public charter schools. Although he said school-by-school charter results would be released yesterday, they were not.

Josephine Baker, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said data will not be released until they are verified. "It's been our policy to do the necessary checks and balances to make sure the data is accurate," she said.

She said she had no information to determine whether Reinoso was correct in saying that charter school gains lagged.