Photo by lovedc.

This morning, the District of Columbia released its annual Comprehensive Assessment Score results for the previous school year — and the news is, well, familiar.

WAMU was the first to report this morning that secondary students achieved slightly higher scores in math and reading this year, while elementary students were slightly down in both categories. The exact same results were seen last year, when the District’s elementary school scores experienced a decline after rising in both 2008 and 2009.

Here’s the hard data on proficiency:

43.0% of elementary students in reading, down 1.1% from 2010
42.3% of elementary students in math, down 0.8% from 2010
44.2% of secondary students in reading, up 1% from 2010
46.4% of secondary students in math, up 2.7% from 2010

Comprehensive Assessment System tests are administered yearly to students in grades 3 through 8 and high school sophomores. The scores represent the achievement of the city’s public school students, as well as those in around 50 public charter schools which operate under the same assessment system. (Charter schools reportedly posted gains over last year.) The data being released today is only the aggregate reading and math scores for elementary and secondary schools — school-by-school data is usually released in August.

The scores will likely serve as an end point of evaluation for Michelle Rhee’s tenure as schools chancellor. Rhee was replaced by Kaya Henderson after former mayor Adrian Fenty lost to Vince Gray last fall, but most education reform is usually gauged on a three-year delay, so conclusions about Rhee’s reform program certainly can be drawn from these figures, even though she’s no longer running the district.

Those individual school scores will also be under closer scrutiny than ever, given the scandal over possible erasures at schools around the District.

UPDATE: The official statements are out, and — no surprise — they focus on the positive aspects of the results.

“In 2007, our seventh- and eighth-grade students were the lowest-performing in the district,” Chancellor Henderson said in a prepared statement. “Today, seventh and eighth graders have shown they can move us forward by making steady progress in reading and climbing to the top in math proficiency,” Henderson said.

Mayor Vince Gray was also positive about the future.

“I am confident that Chancellor Henderson will use these results to focus on areas in need of improvement and ensure that DCPS students in every ward and at every grade level achieve at high levels,” said Gray, who also admitted this morning that he was pleasantly surprised that Henderson took the job as Chancellor.