Giving Compass' Take:

• The “State of D.C. Schools,” released by the D.C. Policy Center is a report on the improvements of DC public schools and examines how the school system can keep sustaining its progress. 

• What resources are you using to examine your local school district? What tools are made available to you? 

• Read more about the journey and learnings of DC public schools. 

In 1996, the Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority — commonly known as the D.C. Financial Control Board, the federal entity that took over the District’s finances in the mid 1990s — released a startling report titled “Children in Crisis.” Its goal: to document the state of public education in the District.

The D.C. Public Schools are “failing … the school system as a whole is in a state of crisis,” it proclaimed. “DCPS fails to teach its pupils even the basics of education.”

The report’s message was clear: In the nation’s capital, our kids were relegated to perhaps the poorest-run school system in America.

But two decades later, the landscape in Washington’s schools has dramatically changed. D.C. is reversing declines that seemed so intractable 20 years ago. The District has invested in educators, paying them more and supporting them more deeply. Its innovative and robust public school choice system delivers more options than ever before. More families are sending their children to public schools, with enrollment climbing every year.

The District’s public education system is now a national model, and a recent report outlines how far the city’s schools have come. The “State of D.C. Schools,” released by the D.C. Policy Center, is the first independent examination of District schools, aggregating data points from a variety of sources to give parents, policymakers and stakeholders access to a wide array of information in a single, easy-to-understand format.

The takeaway? D.C. schools have made dramatic, rapid strides on a wide variety of metrics — and there is still far more to do.

Read the full article about how to keep up D.C. school progress by Maura Marino at The 74.