Photo by sequill.

In 2007, then-mayor Adrian Fenty took control of the District’s public schools, a decision that had wide-reaching consequences. Five years later, though, we were curious — since that time, how have the District’s students performed on the city’s standardized testing?

The answer: at the most general of levels, there has been improvement.

Using data from the Office of Data and Accountability (courtesy the Washington Post), we took a simple look at what students had scored on their 2007 tests — the last conducted before the city takeover — compared to the scores recorded in 2011.

As you can see, the figures (which depict the percent increase or decrease in the percentage of students performing at proficiency level or better) show that the only scores to not improve in the period were elementary school reading scores in Wards 4, 5 and 8. On the other hand, there were massive improvements on display, especially in math.

Of course, this is an overly simple analysis. The quality of the District’s public education can hardly be measured merely by standardized testing, and these figures might not even represent the be all, end all on that matter — after all, the city is mired in some confusion about how legitimate some of these test results may be. Even with the gains made, there remain huge issues to tackle, of course — the enormous achievement gap between the city’s wealthiest and poorest areas, for example. But it’s certainly interesting to look at the numbers, isn’t it?