fastest-improving but – A new Education Scorecard analysis finds Washington, D.C., is the fastest-improving school system in the U.S. on student test growth, yet proficiency numbers in 2025 remain low—fueling a debate over whether schools should be judged by year-to-year progress or
Washington, D.C. is being talked about as the country’s standout for learning gains—yet the figures that define whether students are meeting grade-level expectations paint a far harsher picture.
A major new analysis of student test scores released last week by researchers at Stanford. Harvard and Dartmouth puts the District of Columbia at the top for improvement.. The Education Scorecard compares more than 5. 000 school districts across 38 states and finds that much of the country has been stuck in a reading recession—a decade-long slide in achievement that predates the pandemic.. Between 2022 and 2025, only five states and the District of Columbia showed meaningful gains in reading.. The capital posted the strongest growth overall and also led in math improvement.
For students in both public and charter schools, the gains over that period are measurable.. According to the analysis. Washington students gained roughly two-thirds of a grade level in math and about a third of a grade level in reading from 2022 to 2025.. A grade level represents roughly a year’s worth of learning. which means that eighth graders in 2025 were about six months ahead in math compared with eighth graders in 2022.
Still, rapid improvement does not automatically translate into students catching up.. In 2025, separate reporting from the D.C.. Policy Center. an independent local think tank. found that only 26 percent of Washington students met grade-level standards in math and only 38 percent were proficient in reading.. The same report says just 16 percent of high school juniors and seniors were considered to be college or career ready.
That gap between momentum and mastery is at the center of an increasingly charged argument in education. Should schools be evaluated on how many students reach proficiency, or on how much students improve each year?
Critics of public schools are leaning hard on the low proficiency rates.. Steven Wilson. a former education policymaker in Massachusetts and a charter school leader. said the gains aren’t enough when students are still far from grade level.. “Gains of any magnitude are a good thing. but when most students — roughly two-thirds to three-quarters in the case of D.C.. — are not functioning at grade level, this is nothing to applaud,” Wilson said.. “Most students are still being failed by the system.” Wilson’s 2025 book, “The Lost Decade,” criticizes recent school reform efforts.
At the same time, school leaders in Washington have been celebrating the growth numbers.. Even before the national analysis was released. deputy mayor for education Paul Kihn highlighted results from 2025 annual tests. saying they showed a 3.6 percent improvement in reading and math—similar to the grade-level increases described in the Education Scorecard work.. In a March 2026 blog post, Kihn said, “Our academic achievement is unsurpassed in the country in terms of growth.”
Tom Kane. a Harvard economist and one of the authors of the Education Scorecard report. framed the methodological choice as a response to a broader narrative about public education.. Kane said the long-running debate in education—whether to focus on proficiency or growth—shaped the approach. and that this report chose growth to “combat” what the team sees as an overly pessimistic narrative about public education.. “We’re trying to highlight that something good is happening in some of these places,” Kane said.. “And hopefully, if we can, rebuild the public sense of agency with respect to public education.”
The research team also released a list of 108 “districts on the rise. ” defined as school districts where math and reading gains exceeded those of similar districts in their state.. Washington was not included on that list because there are no comparable districts within the city. but the capital’s gains were described as comparable to many districts that are on the list.. Even so, the districts identified still have large shares of students below grade level.
In theory. Kane’s team argues. growth of outsized amounts each year could eventually help students catch up and reach grade level.. Wilson disputes how quickly that can happen in practice.. Even if a school system improves by one or two percentage points a year. he said. it could take decades for most students to get a decent education. meaning students currently enrolled could lose out while waiting for progress.. He also warned that spotlighting a system where most students are far behind could push leaders toward policies that don’t address current proficiency gaps.
“Let’s take the klieg light and move it to the school systems that are educating nearly all of their students, rather than a third of their students,” Wilson said.
Wilson pointed instead to individual schools or charter school networks where very high percentages of low-income students are at or exceeding grade level. He said it is much harder to replicate that success with low-income students across an entire large district.
The tension is not just about metrics—it’s also tied to demographics and what the public sees in district comparisons.. Income is a major factor in the debate: if policymakers focus only on proficiency, affluent suburbs can dominate the results.. High-income districts may appear more successful. Wilson and others argue. not necessarily because their schools are more effective. but because students from wealthier families begin far ahead.
That concern helped drive researchers toward growth-based measures over the past couple decades.. A widely cited example came from research by Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist and co-author of the current report.. A decade ago. Reardon found that Chicago was running the most effective schools in the country based on student growth. even though many students were behind grade level.. The latest Education Scorecard analysis did not include Illinois because of changes to its state assessment. leaving Chicago’s current position unclear.
Many parents, meanwhile, may weigh a different question. They might prefer enrolling a child in a system where most students are on grade level even if annual improvements are small, rather than in a district where only a smaller share of students are on grade level but the system is improving.
Kane agreed that getting more students over the proficiency line matters too. For the next Education Scorecard report, researchers said they are planning to add a new data point showing the share of kids who are proficient compared to other districts with similar demographics.
The dispute persists because growth and proficiency answer different questions: growth captures whether students are learning more than they used to, while proficiency captures whether students have learned enough.
What makes Washington such a high-profile case is that it combines both—some of the strongest gains with the weakest basic measure of success. whether students can read and do math at grade level.. The pattern is also visible in the broader national findings: while most of the country has been stuck in a reading recession. the Education Scorecard shows only five states and the District of Columbia posting meaningful reading gains between 2022 and 2025. even as Washington’s own proficiency numbers in 2025 remain low.
As the next wave of reporting approaches. the question for school systems and policymakers is likely to stay the same: can fast improvement in growth eventually translate into enough students meeting grade-level expectations—and will the public judge progress by where students start improving. or by where they actually land.
Education Scorecard Washington D.C. schools reading recession student test scores proficiency growth measures Paul Kihn Tom Kane Steven Wilson D.C. Policy Center