Dear DC School Community Members,
Last week, DC Public Schools communicated to school leaders to pause PARCC planning this year, pending the Office of State Superintendent for Education (OSSE) request for a waiver. This is great news, as it relieves principals, teachers and staff from the burden of planning logistics. We’re curious as to whether other LEAs or schools have sent similar communications to school communities. Please do let us know.
Related to student data and the city’s data collection systems, the Office of the DC Auditor released a report this week with the following findings:
- We [via OSSE] do not collect the data needed to know whether public education in the District of Columbia is succeeding
- We do not know if our interventions are improvements or merely interventions
- Our ability to bring about racial equity through education policy and practice is thereby crippled
We hope you’ll consider reading the report. You can watch the press conference or read the presentation for a summary
We invite you to learn more about the state of transparency in DC education by joining the DC Open Government Coalition’s 2021 Open Government Summit on Thursday, March 18 @ 1:00pm (Register HERE). Details here. (We are sponsors of this event).
Ward 6 Public School Parents Organization 
The data that DCPS does collect often isn’t share with all parents. With one less data point to share with parents due to the elimination of PARCC, I hope we push for DCPS to make sure all diagnostic/formative assessment data is shared with ALL parents. If our kids are spending the time doing these assessments throughout the year, both students and parents should be provide the results. More than any other year, parents need access to data to figure out whether their children are regressing. Subjective grades are not enough.