The top reported proficiency rate is 27% in Math. The lowest is 25% in English language arts.
Original Research by School Decision on Dc Scholars Pcs
DC Scholars PCS is a single-school charter district in the District of Columbia serving prekindergarten through eighth grade. The enrollment is small for its grade span, with the student body almost entirely Black, along with a handful of students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic, Asian, or two or more races. The school has no White students enrolled. Free-or-reduced-price lunch data, special education counts, and English learner counts were not reported in the data we received, so we cannot characterize the economic makeup or the share of students receiving specialized services. No locale brief, housing data, or community context was available for this entity, so we leave those dimensions out rather than guess.
Academically, the most recent state assessment results come from the 2024-25 DCCAPE exam in math and English language arts, tested in grades three through eight. The clearest pattern across both subjects is that proficiency is low in the elementary grades and rises meaningfully by the middle grades, with eighth grade standing out as the strongest. In math, third-grade proficiency sits at the lower end, dips further in fifth grade, then climbs through sixth and eighth grade, where the share of students reaching proficiency is the highest in the school. ELA follows a similar arc: third grade is the weakest, fourth grade improves, fifth grade dips back, and from sixth through eighth grade the proficiency rate rises steadily, with eighth grade again the strongest result by a wide margin over the elementary grades. The progression suggests students who stay at DC Scholars through the upper grades tend to perform better on state assessments than those in the earlier tested grades, though the data captures a single year and does not allow us to track a cohort over time.
Science results are from an older testing cycle, the 2022-23 DC Science assessment, and they are weak. Both fifth-grade and eighth-grade science proficiency were reported in a range that begins at zero, meaning the reported number of proficient students was small enough that the state suppressed it to that band. A parent looking at STEM preparation may want to ask the school what has changed in science instruction since that testing cycle, as no more recent science results were available.
Because DC Scholars does not serve high school grades, there is no graduation rate, no AP or dual-credit data, and no college-readiness pipeline to report. Program offerings, course access details, staffing ratios, attendance figures, and discipline data were not provided, so we cannot speak to the breadth of the curriculum beyond what the state assessment grade bands imply. No civil rights data was available either.
We searched for recent parent-relevant changes at the district level and found no clear evidence of specific shifts with lasting impact. Publicly reported results were primarily school profile pages without substantive change narratives. A family considering DC Scholars would want to ask the school directly about how it supports students in the early elementary years, where proficiency is lowest, and what the science curriculum looks like now, given the older and very low science results. The upward trajectory from third to eighth grade in both tested subjects is the most encouraging signal in the data, and it is worth understanding whether that reflects the school's middle-grade instruction, student attrition patterns, or both.
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