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Jan. 31, 2024
Building upon the leadership of Mayor Muriel Bowser, OSSE continues to lay a clear pathway for recovery to restoration and beyond as we move into the second year of our strategic plan. We are always looking to improve the quality of data that we collect and share with the community, particularly when it can connect to other data and enhance our ability to help families make decisions.
For the first time in 2023, OSSE collected school course catalogs from all LEAs. This achievement puts us well on our way to scaling up our analysis efforts to determine which students have access to which courses, what interventions are most successful, and to better understand our greatest instructional strengths, gaps and needs.
At OSSE, we are constantly working to improve internal systems and processes so that OSSE staff are equipped and ready to provide high quality services to students, families, educators and schools in the District. We have worked to focus on operational excellence, streamline reporting, improve data sharing, and use better data to support families.
OSSE is investing $12.4 million in federal stimulus funds towards strengthening our core infrastructure and operations, focused on building out new systems and capacity to support all of our strategic plan priorities and strengthening our data collection and analysis capabilities for the long run. This includes investing close to $1 million to launch and pilot the course data collection project.
As we embark on our work in 2024, I am excited and inspired for what’s ahead. Read on to learn more about our investments to reimagine systems.
In service,
Dr. Christina Grant
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Launching First Statewide Course Collection
In 2023, OSSE collected school course catalogs ($) from all LEAs for the first time ever, which will help the District understand which students have access to rigorous coursework and effective educators. This collection will help OSSE streamline existing data collections and allow us to gain new insights into the ways that instruction is delivered across the District. Starting with the 2024-25 school year, this collection will be expanded to link the course catalogs to student and teacher data.
OSSE defines a “course” in the statewide course collection as a structured series of instructional materials, lessons and assessments designed to teach a specific subject or topic within a particular grade level or range of grades, which typically includes a set of learning objectives or standards that students are expected to achieve by the end of the course. This data collection includes information about all courses offered to pre-K 3 through adult students by LEAs. Intervention services, before and after school programs, and other ways that schools serve students outside of time spent in academic courses is not within the scope of this collection.
To read more about the Course Data Collection process, please visit this post on the OSSE Data Discovery blog from the Division of Division of Data, Analysis and Research.
Additional Investments in Reimagine Systems
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OSSE was awarded a $4 million Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) Grant by the US Department of Education, which will support significant modernization to our pre-K-12 and post-secondary data systems.
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We launched a new Learning Management System ($) to provide educators across the District with on-demand access to high-quality professional learning opportunities and resources.
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The first quarterly payments from the fiscal year 2024 Pay Equity Fund went out to more than 270 facilities at the end of December 2023, totaling $13.9 million. The updated education requirements for the pay equity fund maintain strong education requirements for early childhood educators while providing flexibility in meeting those standards. |
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OSSE is developing financial literacy standards for high school students across the District that will include important financial knowledge and skills. In January, the team worked with educators and experts to incorporate feedback from public comment and update the draft financial literacy standards. |
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Superintendent Grant joined Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, US Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden, and other leaders at a special White House event on improving student achievement to share the District’s efforts on our strategic investment in District committed approximately $35 million over three years to fund high impact tutoring in math and literacy, and is currently on track to reach a total of more than 10,000 students across both math and literacy by fall 2024. |
 Pictured: Wes Moore, Governor, State of Maryland; Dr. Eric Mackey, State Superintendent of Education, Alabama State Department of Education; Neera Tanden, Director of the Domestic Policy Council; Miguel Cardona, U.S. Secretary of Education; Dr. Christina Grant, State Superintendent of Education; Charlene Tucker-Russell, Commissioner of Education, Connecticut State Department of Education (Photo credit: U.S. Department of Education)
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OSSE received a $4.1 million Career Connected High School Grant from the Biden-Harris Administration to expand access to the District’s . |
 Pictured: U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant during tour of the Advanced Technical Center
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OSSE is offering a one-time retention bonus of $1,000 to eligible school-based behavioral health providers employed by DC public and public charter schools, the Department of Behavioral Health and community-based organizations that participate in the Comprehensive School Behavioral Health System. Eligible providers include school-based psychologists, social workers and counselors who offer mental and behavioral health services in their school placement and have been employed as a school-based behavioral health provider in an eligible placement since Oct. 31, 2022. Providers may learn more about this opportunity and apply here. |
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OSSE continues to actively focus on staff recruitment and looks forward to participating in the District’s Winter Hiring event in February. Registration is open for the District’s next hiring fair on Tuesday, Feb. 13, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. |
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OSSE has published a new bus resource kit for parents and families. The Student Transportation Family Handbook features updates and key information on how OSSE works collaboratively with families and schools to provide safe, reliable and efficient transportation to and from school for eligible students with disabilities. |
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The District has implemented a robust recovery to restoration plan, which includes investing nearly $1 billion of federal stimulus funds to support the recovery and restoration of the public education and child care sectors. Projects funded in full or in part by federal recovery dollars feature this symbol ($).
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Missed our previously published strategic plan newsletters?
View them online here.
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