DC schools face labels after 2 years of subgroup gaps

In DC, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education said in an Oct. 14 blog post that schools can receive improvement labels after two straight years of low scores for the same student group.

For families in all eight wards, the labels can shape school support before broader intervention begins; Cohort 2024 CSI cutoffs were 18.5 points for elementary and middle schools and 11.9 points for high schools.

The system is part of DC’s federally required school accountability process, which OSSE runs each fall. The agency calculates scores for campuses serving elementary grades, middle grades, high school and alternative programs, then posts school-level results on the DC School Report Card and in downloadable files.

Targeted Support and Improvement, or TSI, applies when a specific student group falls below the relevant Comprehensive Support and Improvement cutoff for two years in a row at the same school. OSSE said the federal Every Student Succeeds Act created TSI to address schools with “consistently underperforming subgroups.”

The groups reviewed for TSI include economically disadvantaged students, English learners, students with disabilities and major racial and ethnic groups. OSSE said it does not use the All Student category when deciding whether a school receives a TSI label.

A student-group score is calculated only when that group is eligible for at least 50 points in the accountability system. OSSE said it uses the same metric weights applied to the overall school accountability score.

Additional Targeted Support and Improvement, or ATSI, is a more serious status for a school already in TSI. A campus moves to ATSI when the same designated student group remains below the cutoff for a third consecutive year; a school cannot hold TSI and ATSI at the same time.

The distinction matters because CSI status focuses on low schoolwide performance, while TSI and ATSI are aimed at gaps affecting particular groups of students. A school already designated CSI, ISI or MIS for a three-year improvement cycle does not also receive TSI or ATSI, though a CSI-Grad high school can.

Exit rules also differ. A TSI school leaves that status when the relevant subgroup score rises above the CSI cutoff. ATSI schools must remain in that category for at least two years and can exit only if the subgroup clears the cutoff in two of the previous three years.

Schools that fail to improve enough after three years in ATSI can move into Comprehensive Support and Improvement–Student Group status for three years. OSSE said CSI-SG designations can be made only in years when the agency is also making CSI designations.

OSSE began making school improvement designations after the 2017-18 school year. The agency says historical designations are available through Accelerate DC, and current calculations are published through the DC School Report Card.

Source: blog post, OSSE, Oct. 14