In D.C.’s Revamped ‘Opportunity Academies,’ There Are No Forgotten Students on Graduation Day

“The rapid improvement in Washington, D.C.’s schools is one of the biggest education stories of the past decade. The graduation rate for D.C. Public Schools, which educate some 60 percent of K-12 students in the capital city, has jumped from 53 percent in 2011 to 69 percent in 2016. That upward trend — on track to hit 75 percent by the end of next school year (the national rate is 83 percent) — isn’t satisfactory for district officials, who have turned their focus on the 31 percent of students who aren’t making it through. ‘There was a time when people thought that if students didn’t graduate in four years, because we don’t get credit for those students, it just didn’t matter,’ said Jane Spence, DCPS’s deputy chief of secondary schools.”