The DC Education Research Collaborative held its fourth meeting of 2025 on August 6. Meetings are an opportunity for the Collaborative’s Advisory Committee of educators, family and community members, school and city leaders, and researchers to share findings from ongoing projects, understand DC students’ needs and priorities, and collaborate on community-centered action-oriented research. At this meeting, new members of the Advisory Committee were introduced, the Committee gave insightful feedback on initial results and research questions from a research project on career development opportunities, and all shared highlights from their communities.

Meeting minutes, slides, and recordings can be found on our website.

Membership

Collaborative Director Dara Shaw completed the onboarding of the Advisory Committee’s new 2025 members: Allison Hoegsdorf, SchoolTalk DC; Ayotunde Ejiko, Cornell University (DCPS Class of 2024); Chioma Oruh, Advocates for Justice and Education; Christina Sessoms, Youth Guidance; Johari Malik, Breakthrough Montessori Public Charter School; Robyn Lingo, 826DC; and Tameria Lewis, DC Charter School Alliance. 

Research Pipeline Update

Dara Shaw provided general status updates on projects in the Collaborative’s research pipeline, including timelines on when the Collaborative can hear more about each project. Projects-in-progress include:

• School Demand and Enrollment (2025)
• School Attendance (2025)
• Equitable Discipline and Student Conduct (2024-2027)
• School Transfer, Grade Repetition, and Attendance (2025-2026)
• Predictors of College Success (2025-2026)

Dara Shaw, DC Policy Center Deputy Director Chelsea Coffin, and Urban Institute Researcher Ariella Meltzer then presented specific updates and detailed findings from the Collaborative project Career Development Opportunities Available to DCPS Students (2024-2028; IES R305N240059). Highlights of the presentation included:

• Researchers recently published another interview in the Q&A series with career development educators.
• Researchers shared detailed findings on their inventory and analysis of available career development opportunities, including programs’ formats, locations, components, goals, and funding sources.
• Collaborative members engaged in an insightful conversation with project researchers on the landscape analysis findings. Members discussed any trends in career development opportunity data based on wards, awareness among family and students of the opportunities, and the cost and management structure of the career development opportunities. Members’ feedback will directly inform the research questions and upcoming reports.

Partner Spotlights and Community Updates

In a Partner Spotlight, James Carter of Collaborative member the Urban Institute presented the Education to Workforce Framework Data Tool. The tool lets users explore data on education and workforce outcomes, and compare data by geography, income, race, ethnicity, and more.

In a Partner Spotlight, Jade Chandler of the Deputy Mayor for Education’s Office of Education Through Employment shared findings from the DC Alumni Early Career Outcomes survey focusing on the classes of 2017 through 2019, highlighting data on financial and overall well-being of DC alumni.

Other members briefly shared recent successes and updates:

• The Office of the State Superintendent of Education shared that the publication of its Educator Preparation Provider landscape report for the school year 2024-2025.
• 826DC shared the coverage of the student book release, providing insight into being a young person in DC and effective strategies for teaching students writing. 

Looking Ahead

The next Collaborative meeting will be held on October 7, 2025. In the meantime, the Collaborative will continue sharing updates via our website and LinkedIn page. Members and community members are encouraged to submit ideas for spotlights, blog posts, or research questions they would like to see explored.

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