Lewis Ferebee is the outgoing chancellor of DC Public Schools and incoming president of EdReports, a nonprofit that aims to improve pre-K-12 education.
D.C. Public Schools just concluded another season of state testing, the results of which I am confident will demonstrate the accelerated learning that has now become part and parcel of education in our nation’s capital.
That proof can be found in the latest research released through the annual Education Scorecard. Education experts from Harvard University, Stanford University and Dartmouth College found D.C. led the nation in academic recovery for both English language arts and math between 2022 and 2025.
Behind that report are the students, educators and central supports focused on using the evidence-based strategies that we know work. Combined with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s leadership and DCPS’ continued investment in teacher compensation and development, along with tens of millions of dollars set aside for high-impact tutoring, these efforts have created the conditions for our academic progress.
It’s why DCPS is, by many accounts, the fastest-improving urban school district in the country.
The Education Scorecard combines National Assessment of Educational Progress data and data from our state assessment — DC CAPE — to compare the progress of DCPS students to that of their peers across the country. Among the findings, our scholars have made historic gains, with a nearly 3-percentage-point increase in prepandemic performance in ELA and the largest year-over-year math proficiency gains in the history of the District of Columbia's assessment.
So, how did we become a national model in pandemic recovery?
First, in alignment with our strategic plan, A Capital Commitment 2023-2028, we ensure that we value our people. Our school district offers one of the highest annual starting salaries in the country, hovering just over $66,000 — with the average educator earning above $100,000 annually. By supporting our educators and their development, DCPS has retained more than 95% of our effective and highly effective teachers.
We also remain committed to locally funding high-impact tutoring. Guided by our multi-tiered systems of support framework, HIT allows us to deliver free, high-dosage one-on-one and small-group support in both ELA and math for the students who need it most. According to local education advocacy organization EmpowerK12, math tutoring across the district has led to the equivalent of an additional 59 instructional days for students receiving HIT.
When federal pandemic relief dollars ended, Mayor Bowser made certain that local funds filled the void so we could continue providing essential tutoring services to bring students back up to speed. In her proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, that promise adds $3 million in annual recurring funding.
All states that made testing gains in literacy in this year’s national scorecard embraced science of reading techniques in instruction, but DCPS was an early adopter.
Taking a clinical approach to giving educators the tools and training to teach reading effectively, we launched the DCPS Reading Clinic in 2018. In addition to preparing teachers with coaching and professional development, the clinic provides one-on-one decoding interventions for students who struggle with word recognition difficulties.
In an internal evaluation from the 2024-25 school year, DCPS found K-5 students in reading clinic classrooms increased grade-level proficiency by over 40 percentage points, compared to a 32‑percentage-point increase among students not receiving the same support.
As DCPS continues to move our absolute outcomes closer to where we want them to be, our strategy is focused on recreating the success of the DCPS reading clinic with a similar approach to math.
That work is already underway thanks to a recent anonymous donation of $20 million for math acceleration. The result of that generous investment created the Capital Math Collective, a citywide effort to support high-quality math instruction and well-prepared and supported math educators.
When I reflect on the progress of the last three years and my entire tenure as the longest-serving chancellor in DCPS history, I think about what recovery and learning look like in real time. It looks like joy and rigor, and I recently saw that in our students as they nearly swept a citywide math competition at Nationals Park, home of Washington's baseball team.
Though my time as chancellor is ending, the district’s vision is clear, and DCPS has the systems in place to keep its eye on the ball and continue delivering for our students.
