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Recently I had the chance to attend the Washington Post’s Children and Families Summit, which featured U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, among other policy leaders and focused on children and families. You can watch video from the event here. The theme (and twitter hashtag) for the event was “investing in youth” (#investinginyouth), and it made me reflect on DC’s investments in our children’s future.

As part of our DC KIDS COUNT project, we make periodic updates to our online data center when new data are available. We wanted to highlight some notable trends, discuss what’s important to know and of course, share new data with you.

Dear Mrs. Obama:

At DC Action for Children, we were excited to read in the New York Times that you want to focus on children as part of your second-term agenda. We are writing to encourage you to put some of that focus on children in your own neighborhood in Northwest DC!

Although the White House lies technically outside of the boundaries of DC’s official neighborhoods, it does border on three:

In today’s economy, a high school degree is a necessary step towards college and a career in the 21st century workforce. According to a new report, however, DC’s average high school graduation rate has not improved since 2003.