The top reported proficiency rate is 72% in English language arts. The lowest is 53% in Science.
Original Research by School Decision on Murch Es
MurchElementary sits on 36th Street in upper Northwest Washington, a part of the city where home values run well above the District's own baseline and far above national levels. Buying here requires a substantial income, and the gap between a monthly mortgage and monthly rent is wide enough that many families in the area rent by necessity rather than choice. The school draws from a neighborhood of established residential blocks within a city built around the federal government, where embassies, international organizations, and lobbying firms shape the local economy and the daytime population swells with commuters from Maryland and Virginia.
As a DCPS school serving pre-K through fifth grade, Murch falls under the district's "A Capital Commitment 2023-2028" strategic plan, which centers on academic success, school connection, and post-graduation readiness across all DCPS campuses. The district also adopted a new cell phone policy beginning in the 2025-2026 school year, though at the elementary level this has limited day-to-day impact compared with middle and high schools. Murch is a regular public school, not a charter and not a magnet, so enrollment follows the DCPS assignment rules for its boundary.
Academically, Murch posts strong results on the District's Long-Term Goals assessments for grades three through eight. In both math and English language arts, a solid majority of students meet or exceed expectations, with ELA slightly ahead of math. Science results from the DC Science assessment tell a more mixed story. Fifth-grade science proficiency lands around the midpoint, with near-universal participation among tested students. The science result is not weak in an absolute sense, but it sits below the school's own math and reading performance, and a parent may want to look into how science instruction is sequenced and resourced across the upper grades.
The student body is moderately sized for an elementary school and spans the full pre-K-through-five range, with the largest concentrations in the early elementary grades. The racial and ethnic composition is diverse, with white students forming the largest single group, followed by Black, Hispanic, and Asian students, plus a smaller share of multiracial children. This mix gives children exposure to peers from a range of backgrounds, which families in a cosmopolitan city like Washington often value. What the data does not capture is economic need. Free and reduced-price lunch counts were not reported, and the same gap applies to special-education and English-learner rates. Without those figures, it is hard to gauge how the school serves its most vulnerable students, and a parent would be right to ask the front office directly.
Several other pieces are missing from the available data. There is no multi-year trend line for test scores, so it is not possible to say whether proficiency is rising, falling, or holding steady. No discipline, staffing, attendance, or course-access figures were provided. No graduation rate applies here, since Murch ends at fifth grade, and state testing naturally covers only grades three and above. The absence of these fields reflects the school's grade band rather than a reporting failure. Civil-rights data was also not available, and no program offerings were listed, so nothing can be said about before- or after-care, extracurriculars, or enrichment from the data alone.
What the evidence does show is an elementary school with above-average proficiency in core subjects, a diverse enrollment in an affluent corner of the District, and housing costs that will be the primary filter on who can access it. Families already in the boundary or with the means to rent nearby get a school where most children are hitting state benchmarks in reading and math, set against the broader backdrop of a capital city where the federal presence touches nearly every aspect of civic life. Those looking for a fuller picture of special populations, discipline practices, or recent academic trends will need to go straight to the school and the DCPS central office to fill in what the public data leaves open.
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