The DC Education Research Collaborative held its third meeting of 2025 on June 10. 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 preliminary results from a research project on measuring school attendance, and shared highlights from their communities.

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

Membership

Collaborative cochair Aysha Keisler introduced 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

Collaborative director Dara Shaw provided updates on current Collaborative research projects, including the following:

• Career Development Opportunities for DCPS Students: Researchers recently published a First Look of findings and the first in a Q&A series with career development educators. The next publications—a comprehensive catalog of career development opportunities and a look at each one’s locations, components, participants, and goals—will be published in the fall.
• Attendance and School Characteristics: The project, led by the Urban Institute, is making progress with preliminary findings that were shared with the Collaborative. Collaborative members engaged in an insightful conversation with project researchers on how to define “good” attendance and how to measure whether attendance is “improving” or is “better than expected.” Members’ feedback will directly inform the project’s research questions and methods, which explore annual attendance and attendance trends in DC’s schools.

Partner Spotlight and Community Updates

With a partner spotlight presentation, 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 its Statewide School Climate Survey had a 75 percent response rate, noting that findings will be shared at upcoming Collaborative meetings.
• The State Board of Education noted the upcoming work of the Graduation Requirements Taskforce.
• McKinley Tech High School uplifted its senior projects showcase, which was held on May 22, 2025, encouraging members to attend next year to see the work from students in career and technical education programs.  

Looking Ahead

The next Collaborative meeting will be held on August 6, 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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