The public school system of Washington DC presently has three components: the traditional DC Public Schools, the Board of Education authorized public charter schools, and the Public Charter School Board authorized public charter schools. As these parts of the public schools system have evolved at different times, they use different information systems that function at different levels of sophistication.  In addition, the District has numerous public, private, independent and parochial schools as well as postsecondary institutions (public and private) that constitute the education options available to our residents.  Finally, public support exists for graduates of District schools to matriculate at postsecondary institutions in other states through the Tuition Assistance Grant Program.

The need to answer critical questions about the progress of our students and the success of our schools and education institutions with the depth of analysis afforded by comprehensive realtime data requires a statewide data system capable of tracking students and their academic, demographic and programmatic information over time, as they move within our systems of education.

The OSSE is currently working with the education stakeholders in the District and the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) to create a pre-K-16 Education Data Warehouse. This will provide timely, efficient, and consistent responses to educational inquiries from stakeholders including administrators, educators, parents, students, local policymakers, and professional organizations.

We envision the Education Data Warehouse for Washington DC to be a web-based system that captures real-time longitudinal data on student enrollment, demographics, course and program participation, academic assessment, graduation, college readiness, postsecondary participation, and teacher information.