Original Research by School Decision on Dyrs
DYRS is an unusual entry in this database because it is not a school district in the conventional sense. The district brief identifies it as the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, a DC government juvenile justice agency. It operates two schools, Maya Angelou Academy at New Beginnings formerly Oak Hill, and Maya Angelou Academy at Youth Services Center. Both are open. A parent encountering this entity should understand that these are educational programs embedded within a juvenile justice setting, serving youth who are detained or committed to DC's care. They are not schools a family would choose through enrollment or a lottery, and they do not function as neighborhood public schools.
The enrollment is very small, which is consistent with the nature of a secured or supervised facility rather than a community school. Students span grades six through twelve, but the population is heavily concentrated in the early high school grades, with the largest group in ninth grade and smaller numbers in the grades above and below. This skew is typical of a setting where young people arrive at various points and may stay for limited periods, rather than progressing through a full grade pipeline from year to year.
The student body is almost entirely Black, with a small number of Hispanic students. No other racial or ethnic categories are represented in the reported figures. Because this is a justice-involved population rather than a geographically drawn one, the demographics reflect who is in the agency's care rather than a neighborhood catchment. The data does not include free-or-reduced-price lunch counts, individualized education program rates, or English learner figures. These gaps are consistent with how a non-traditional agency setting reports, or fails to report, and they mean we cannot characterize the economic or disability profile of the students from what is provided.
State assessment results were not available in the data we received. There are no proficiency summaries, no subject-level breakdowns, and no multi-year trend information. A graduation rate is also absent. These are the kinds of measures that often do not apply cleanly to a juvenile justice educational program, where students may be enrolled for short stays, may transfer in and out frequently, and may not be present during testing windows. The absence here should not be read as a poor result. It reflects the character of the setting. A parent or guardian with a young person in this agency's care would want to ask directly how academic progress is tracked and how credits transfer back to a community school, since the standard public-facing data does not answer those questions.
No community or economic context brief was provided for this entity, which follows from its identity as a government agency rather than a place-based district. There is no locale information, no housing data, and no comparison set against neighboring districts. Program offerings, course access, staffing levels, attendance figures, and civil rights data such as discipline reports were all absent from what we received. We looked for parent-relevant district-level changes and found none reported.
What can be said is that DYRS provides educational services to a small, highly specific population of young people under juvenile justice supervision in DC, through two Maya Angelou Academy sites. The academic picture, the support environment, and the outcomes for students in these settings are not captured by the standard data fields that apply to regular public schools. Anyone trying to understand the quality or character of these programs will need to go to the agency or the school sites directly, because the available data does not support a fuller assessment. We name these gaps rather than fill them with assumptions.
See more original research from School Decision →