Testimony of Shana Bartley, Acting Executive Director DC Action for Children Public Hearing on B22-0594 - Student Fair Access to School Act of 2017 Before the Committee on Education Council of the District of Columbia January 30, 2018 DC Action for Children (DC Action) is pleased to provide written testimony in support of proposed legislation, B22-0594 the Student Fair Access...

Listening to the excellent NPR series on child care has brought the struggle that many DC parents face to manage the steep cost of child care to the forefront of my mind. A new poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that nearly one-third of parents paying for early care...

October is Hispanic Heritage Month! In the District of Columbia, Hispanic children represent 15 percent of the under 18 population. Moreover, there are over 7,000 Hispanic/Latino children under age 5 in DC. In 2014, we released a policy brief entitled Giving Hispanic Students a Chance to Succeed from the Start, that explored how race and ethnicity intersect with early learning...

Every Day Counts Every September we celebrate the beginning of the school year and Attendance Awareness Month because we know that in order for children to reap the benefits of instruction, they must be in school every day. During this same time, schools across the city work to finalize their enrollment numbers ahead of the annual Enrollment Audit in early...

For students in DC, and across the country, the warmer weather and longer days of June mean one thing: the countdown to summer break is almost over. While long summer vacations have been a ritual for American students for generations, the months away from school can also lead to significant losses in academic abilities, especially for lower-income students. From the...

Despite Massive School Reform Efforts, More Children Continue to Fall Off of the Third Grade Reading Cliff Washington, DC – March 1, 2016 – The new report released today by DC Action for Children illustrate that third grade reading proficiency in DC has not improved since 2007. In fact, the analysis shows that for some student subgroups, there was a...

We recently testified during the FY16 Performance Oversight hearing for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Read our full remarks here: Testimony of HyeSook Chung, Executive Director DC Action for Children Agency Performance Oversight Hearing Fiscal Year 2015 Office of the State Superintendent of Education Before the Committee on Education Council of the District of Columbia February 17...

The evidence is piling up: educational achievement in DC is finally on the rise. According to the recently released results of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), DC had the most overall growth in the nation, and stood alone with Tennessee as the only states to make significant gains in math and reading for both fourth and eighth grade...