Henderson

Students enrolled in D.C. Public Schools during the 2012-13 academic year improved their math proficiency by 3.6 percent and reading proficiency by 3.9 percent over the previous school year on the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, marking the biggest year-over-year gains in several years.

“We’re beginning to see the systematic changes that we’ve all worked hard for, and hoped for, for so many years,” Mayor Vince Gray said in announcing the test scores today, adding in a fist pump.

The District’s public education policies have come under greater review in recent months as Councilmember David Catania, who chairs the D.C. Council’s Education Committee, has said that test scores have flattened in recent academic years. Last month, Catania introduced legislation to overhaul the school system, including annual standardized tests.

“We’ve come a long way, baby,” D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson said following Gray.

The jump in math scores is the biggest since 2009, while the improvement in reading is the greatest since 2008. Math improvement was distributed across all eight wards, but the gains were not distributed across every school in the system. Some schools made tremendous strides, such as Maury Elementary School, which climbed 19.2 percent in math and 28.8 percent in reading.

But at other schools, there were precipitous drops. Garrison Elementary School, for instance, plummeted by 18 percent in math and 13.9 percent in reading, while Dunbar High School decreased by 2.9 percent in math and 9.8 percent in reading.

The D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams are given annually to students in grades three through 10. Across DCPS, 49.5 percent of students were proficient or better in math, while 47.4 percent were proficient or better in reading.