The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is the local public school system for the District of Columbia, in the United States. It is distinct from the District of Columbia Public Charter Schools (DCPCS), which governs public charter schools in the district.
Student body Enrollment DCPS schools offer education from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, as well as education for adults. During the 2023–2024 school year, there were 50,839 students enrolled in DCPS, and 4,564.64 FTE teachers, with a student–teacher ratio of 11.14.
Enrollment in D.C. public schools previously reached a peak of 150,000 students in the 1960s before declining over the following decades. In 1996, the first public charter schools opened in the district, drawing more students away from DCPS schools. During the COVID-19 pandemic, public school enrollment decreased in the district as many families chose homeschooling or enrolled their children in private schools.
Demographics The racial and ethnic breakdown of students enrolled in the 2023–2024 school year was 55% Black, 22% Hispanic, 18% White, and 5% other races. DCPS schools have seen a steady increase in White and Hispanic students since the 2013–2014 school year, due to more White students enrolling in pre-kindergarten and elementary schools, and more Hispanic students enrolling in middle and high schools. By contrast, in 2000, the racial and ethnic breakdown of public school students was 84% Black, 9% Hispanic, 5% White, and 2% other races.
As of the 2023–2024 school year, 16% of students were enrolled in special education, 16% were English-language learners, and 46% were deemed "at risk of academic failure".
Attendance School is compulsory in Washington, D.C., for students between the ages of 5 and 17. As of the 2024–2025 school year, 38% of DCPS students from kindergarten to 12th grade were chronically absent, meaning a student missed 10% or more of the school year. During the same school year, DCPS referred 4,956 students ages 5 to 13 to the district's Child and Family Services Agency for educational neglect. DCPS referred an additional 1,495 students ages 14 to 17 to the district's Court Social Services Division for truancy.
Graduation rate As of 2024, 77% of DCPS students graduated high school within four years, an increase from 54% in 2012. The 2024 data shows that 73% of Black students and 76% of Hispanic students graduated in four years, compared to 96% of White students.
In 2017, a report by WAMU and NPR called into question Ballou High School for graduating students that should have failed due to frequent absences. In response, the District's Office of the State Superintendent of Education commissioned an audit that found that 1 in 3 graduates of DCPS high schools that year should not have graduated based on their attendance records.
Teachers Under Teacher Leadership Innovation (TLI), experienced teachers can apply for specialized positions in which they spend at least 50% of their time teaching in the classroom and the rest of the time coaching other teachers and leading school teams.
DCPS has more than 4,000 teachers as of July 2024.
Governance
Within DCPS, schools are classified as either a "neighborhood school" or a "destination school". Neighborhood schools are elementary or secondary schools assigned to students based on their address. Destination schools are feeder-schools for elementary or secondary institutions from a school a student is already attending. Since the fall of 2009, students may choose a destination school, regardless of their neighborhood location. Locations of all schools and the neighborhood divides can be found on the DCPS website.
For the school year ending in spring 2007, the DCPS was governed by the District of Columbia State Board of Education, with eleven members, including two students who had the right to debate but not to vote. Five members were elected, and the Mayor appointed four. The board established DCPS policies and employed a superintendent to serve as chief executive officer of the school district, responsible for day-to-day operations. Four board members represented specific geographical boundaries, and the Board President was elected at large. One condition of the District of Columbia Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 was creating DCPS as a separate cabinet-level agency from the D.C. Board of Education. This moved DCPS within the executive branch of the District of Columbia government—specifically, under Mayoral control. Currently, DCPS is subordinate to District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser. D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty proposed putting the public schools under the direct control of the Mayor's Office upon taking office in January 2007. However, this reform to District of Columbia Public Schools was encouraged by his predecessor and constituents at large. It also placed all of the District of Columbia public charter schools under the care of a new board—the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board (PCSB). Although these schools were previously a part of DCPS, they are now considered a separate district controlled by the D.C. Public Charter School Board (PCSB).
The D.C. Council passed the Mayor's proposal into law, but since the change amended the Home Rule Act, the change needed to gain federal approval before taking effect. D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced H.R. 2080, a bill to amend the D.C. Home Rule Charter Act to provide for the Mayor's proposal. H.R. 2080 was passed by the United States House of Representatives under an expedited procedure on May 8, 2007, by a voice vote. After three U.S. Senators (Ben Cardin of Maryland, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Carl Levin of Michigan) initially placed "holds" on the bill to prevent its consideration in the United States Senate, the Senate agreed to pass H.R. 2080 without amendment on May 22, 2007, by unanimous consent. On May 31, 2007, the bill was presented to the President, and President Bush signed H.R. 2080 into law on June 1, 2007. After the standard Congressional review period expired on June 12, 2007, the Mayor's office had direct control of the Superintendent and the school budget. On June 12, Mayor Fenty appointed Michelle Rhee the new Chancellor, replacing Superintendent Clifford B. Janey.
D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003
In January 2004, Congress passed the D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003. The law established a federally-funded private school voucher program known as the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). The OSP distributes vouchers to low-income families to cover private school tuition. Because there are more eligible applicants than available vouchers, they are distributed by lottery. In 2010, a randomized controlled trial conducted under the auspices of the Department of Education examined the impacts of the OSP students, finding that it raised graduation rates. Students who were offered vouchers had a graduation rate of 82%, while those who used their vouchers had a graduation rate of 91%. By comparison, the rate for students who did not receive vouchers was only 70%. The study received the Department of Education's highest rating for scientific rigor. Over 90% of the study's participants were African American, and most of the remainder were Latino American. Further research found that students who received vouchers were 25% more likely to enroll in college than students with similar demographic characteristics who did not receive vouchers.
Marian Anderson controversy In 1939, writing on behalf of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia now the District of Columbia State Board of Education, Ballou denied a request by contralto Marian Anderson to sing at the auditorium of the segregated white Central High School. As justification, he cited a federal law from 1906 requiring separate schools for the District. Meanwhile, the Daughters of the American Revolution had rejected a similar application. When Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from that organization in protest, author Zora Neale Hurston criticized her for remaining silent about the fact that the board had also excluded Anderson. "As far as the high-school auditorium is concerned," Hurston declared "to jump the people responsible for racial bias would be to accuse and expose the accusers themselves. The District of Columbia has no home rule; it is controlled by congressional committees, and Congress at the time was overwhelmingly Democratic. It was controlled by the very people who were screaming so loudly against the DAR. To my way of thinking, both places should have been denounced, or neither." Although Anderson later performed at an open-air concert at the Lincoln Memorial, the board retained its policy of exclusion.
D.C. Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 The Council of the District of Columbia enacted the DC Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007. This act established a DC public school agency based on authority given to the council in the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973. The Department of Education that was established under the Mayor triggered several changes. The largest was already discussed—DCPCS gained sole authority over chartering and chartered schools, DCPS became subordinate to the Mayor's office. Secondly, many more minor authoritative changes took place. The first is that the State Education Office (SEO) became the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). The four subsections of the District were reaffirmed through location-based State Board of Education selectees. In addition, the smaller eight school election wards were reaffirmed. Finally, the commission was established through this legislature. The "Commission" is the Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission, which includes the Mayor, Chair of the Council of the District of Columbia, Chief Judge of the D.C. Superior Family Court, Superintendent of Education, Chancellor of DCPS, Chair of DCPCSB, and fourteen others.
After the 2007–2008 school year, about one-fifth of the teachers and one-third of the principals resigned, retired, or were terminated from DCPS. DCPS initially experienced a powerful negative impact due to the loss. A GAO-conducted study recommended that the Mayor direct DCPS to establish planning processes for strikes and look to performance reviews from central offices to strengthen accountability. These recommendations were followed, and accountability has increased through academic and financial report generation. Increased accountability made way for other small reforms. One example is implementing a requirement that students entering ninth grade sit down with a school counselor and construct a course plan to reach graduation.
River Terrace Elementary School and Shaed Education Campus shut their doors at the end of the 2010–2011 and 2011–2012 school years, respectively. Students attending River Terrace and Emery Education Campus moved to the Langley Building. In 2019, a proposal was submitted to close Metropolitan High School, an alternative school.
No Child Left Behind compliance In accordance with Section 1116, a provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), entitled "Academic Assessment and Local Education Agency and School Improvement", the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) of the District of Columbia oversees compliance with Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). A large portion of meeting AYP is based on standardized-tests performance; the District used the summative assessment called the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System ("DC CAS") through the 2013–2014 school year, after which it switched to tools from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the National Center and State Collaborative (NCSC).