DC schools open with gains on paper and a 40% absenteeism problem waiting at the door

The numbers went up. The bar is still very low.

For the fourth year in a row, DC students scored better on the District's statewide tests. The city's education officials announced those results on August 20, and by this week - as classrooms reopened for the 2026-27 school year - the mayor's office was leading with them. The trajectory is real. So is everything underneath it.

Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education released results from the District's annual statewide assessments in English language arts and math, taken by students in grades 3 through 8 and high school in spring 2026. Districtwide, ELA proficiency came in at 39.6% - up 2 percentage points from last year - and math proficiency landed at 28.5%, up 2.1 points. Those are the highest numbers the District has posted in both subjects since at least 2019.

But step back from the trend line and the picture is harder. Still, 60.4% of students did not meet, partially met, or approached expectations in ELA - and in math, that figure was 71.7%. Roughly seven in ten DC public school students cannot do grade-level math. That's the floor the city is building from.

For parents trying to figure out what this school year will actually look like for their kid, the scores are only part of the story. The bigger immediate question is whether their child walks through the door at all.

A new chancellor, a familiar crisis

This week was the first day of school for tens of thousands of public school students in DC, and their first day with a new chancellor at the helm. Dr. Kim Jackson, who has been with DC Public Schools since 2012, was appointed as interim chancellor in June. Jackson is not new to DCPS - she joined the district in 2012 as principal of Seaton Elementary School.

She inherited a job with a search already attached to it. Outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Jackson's appointment on the same day as the city's primary elections, after the leading Democratic candidates vying to succeed her pledged not to retain Chancellor Lewis Ferebee in the role. Whoever wins the mayor's race in November will almost certainly name a permanent chancellor. Jackson, in other words, is running a school system for someone else's administration while managing its most stubborn problem.

Jackson told 7News her top priority on the first day of the new school year is addressing chronic absenteeism. That is not a rhetorical choice. Last school year, data from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education shows 40% of students were chronically absent. Chronic absenteeism also increased, reaching 38.2% compared with 36.9% the year before in the most recently finalized annual attendance report. The direction of travel, unlike the test scores, is going the wrong way.

A student is considered chronically absent when they miss 10% or more of school. In a 180-day school year, that's 18 days. Miss that many, and no amount of high-impact tutoring or curriculum redesign fully closes the gap.

What DCPS is actually doing about it

Jackson has called chronic absenteeism "a national challenge" and pointed to reductions in truancy at DCPS thanks to targeted programs implemented with city partners, like the Truancy Reduction Pilot. The program intervenes with students showing patterns of persistent absence before the school year is lost.

The district is also leaning on technology. DCPS has teamed up with EveryDayLabs to support attendance, with the company reaching out to families through mailings and text messages covering all absences - both excused and unexcused - because all absences contribute to chronic absenteeism and lost learning time. Starting this year, DCPS will continue sending attendance text messages directly to students in grades 6 through 12 if parents have consented, keeping students informed of the number of days they have been absent.

On the academic side, select schools across all eight wards will pilot new curriculum initiatives in early childhood education and English language arts, and the District plans to expand access to career and technical education beginning in middle school while increasing opportunities for high school students to take college courses through dual-enrollment programs.

An OSSE analysis found that participation in at least 20 hours of high-impact tutoring is associated with more favorable assessment score changes across grade bands. That finding is the clearest argument DCPS has made for its investment in tutoring - and it also explains why the attendance crisis undermines everything else. You can't tutor a student who isn't there.

The DCPS and charter divide

The city's official celebration of the test results deserves a closer read. DC Public Schools' scores surpassed 2019 pre-pandemic levels for both ELA and math, but District-wide scores including public charter schools are still behind on math. That gap matters because nearly half the city's students attend charters.

The distinction between DCPS performance and citywide performance does not always make it into the press releases. While most students aren't proficient in test scores, overall results have been going up in recent years, to the point where DCPS surpassed all of its 2019 pre-pandemic scores - but the same could not be said districtwide when public charter schools were factored in. Families choosing between DCPS and a charter school are living inside that split, even if the city's public framing tends to blur it.

The political backdrop nobody is ignoring

None of this is happening in a vacuum. The school system is entering its most uncertain leadership moment in years. Jackson has noted that despite the impact of federal job cuts on the local economy, Mayor Bowser has increased spending on public education. That's a deliberate acknowledgment - the federal workforce reductions that have hit DC hard this year have strained the tax base and squeezed families who relied on government paychecks.

The next mayor - almost certainly Janeese Lewis George, the Ward 4 councilmember who won the Democratic primary in June - will inherit a chancellor search, the absenteeism crisis, and a test-score story that official Washington has been eager to tell as a success. She will also inherit the budget choices that shaped all of it. The FY2027 spending plan the Council passed this year locked in education funding levels that DCPS is now executing against.

State Superintendent Dr. Antoinette S. Mitchell said this week that the results show 'steady, citywide progress - especially in the early grades where strong foundations are built.' Mitchell set the target plainly: 'I want to see 100% of our students performing on grade level. That's the target, because every student in the District deserves to go to a school where they are challenged, where they are learning and where they can be successful.'

Where the District actually sits: 39.6% proficient in reading. 28.5% in math. Forty percent of kids missing enough school to be counted as chronically absent.

What D.C. Residents Should Watch

• Attendance data, school by school. DCPS has committed to sending absence notifications to students and families. Watch whether the EveryDayLabs outreach program produces measurable drops in chronic absenteeism by the first quarterly attendance report, typically released in November.
• The chancellor search. DCPS is operating under an interim leader. Whoever wins in November will name a permanent chancellor - and that pick will signal how the next administration plans to handle the achievement gap and the absenteeism rate that have co-existed with the city's national recovery narrative.
• Charter vs. DCPS scores. The District's aggregate math proficiency number is dragged down by charter school performance lagging pre-pandemic levels. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education releases school-by-school breakdowns; families should check their own school's trajectory, not just the citywide headline.
• The DC State Board of Education meeting August 31. The Board meets virtually at 5 p.m. - the first session of the new school year - and chronic absenteeism and the statewide assessment results are expected to be on the agenda.
• High-impact tutoring funding. The OSSE analysis tying 20-plus hours of tutoring to better scores is the clearest evidence the city has that the strategy works. Watch whether the next budget cycle preserves those dollars or treats them as optional.

Sources: Mayor's Office / OSSE, Aug. 20, 2026 • WJLA/7News, Aug. 24, 2026 • WJLA, DC schools chronic absenteeism report • WTOP, Aug. 2026 • DCPS Strong, SY 2026-27 • Capitol Times Media, Aug. 2026 • Washington Times, June 2026