Public Charter School Students Continue to Improve Districtwide, New PARCC Scores Show

Date: August 16, 2018
Contact: Tomeika Bowden, tbowden@dcpcsb.org

WASHINGTON, DC – Students at DC public charter schools are continuing to improve on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness in College and Careers (PARCC) test. According to data released today by the DC Public Charter School Board, public charter students earning career and college ready scores (Level 4 or 5) increased by 2.7 percentage points on the English language arts (ELA) assessment and by 1.8 percentage points on the math assessment. For more than a decade, public charter school students have shown steady improvement on the statewide assessment, first on the DC-Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS) and now PARCC.

“The good news is that public charter school students are continuing to improve,” said Scott Pearson, Executive of the DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB). “While we have more to do, we’re on the path to ensuring that every student is getting the best education.”

"For public charter schools, PARCC is only one metric we use to assess the quality of each school. In November we’ll release a more comprehensive assessment,” said Rick Cruz, Chair of DC PCSB.

Some 16,709 public charter school students (representing 78.8% of all audited public charter school students in grades 3-12) took the PARCC. This test-taking population was 77.8% African American and 47.8% At-Risk. Both populations outperformed the District in both ELA and Math. (At-Risk includes students who are homeless, in the District’s foster care system, quality for TANF or SNAP, or are overage high school students.)

Student Group Highlights

• African American student proficiency rates increased by 2.2 percentage points on the ELA assessment ad by 1.9 percentage points on math.
• At-Risk students improved by 2.1 percentage points on ELA and 1.2 percentage points on Math, with homeless students improving by 6.0 percentage points on ELA and 3.1 percentage points on math.
• English Learners improved by 2.0 percentage points on ELA, going from 13.5% to 15.5%.
• Hispanic students increased by 3.7 percentage points on the ELA assessment and 0.4 percentage points on math.
• Students with disabilities improved by 1.3 percentage points on ELA, outpacing the District in growth and improving by 0.8 percentage points on math.

Top Performing Public Charter Schools

These top public charter schools, whose students live in every Ward of the city, have the highest scores on ELA:

These top public charter schools, whose students live in every Ward of the city, have the highest scores on Math:

Most Improved Public Charter Schools

These public charter schools, whose students live in every Ward of the city, achieved at least twice the state average of improvement in both ELA and Math:

View school by school performance on our PARCC web page.

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