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Every day, we work to empower our students with critical knowledge, practical skills, and the social and emotional tools needed to succeed. This year, OSSE is helping LEAs implement Social Studies, Financial Literacy, and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards. This work will help our students become informed, financially savvy, and resilient individuals.
Our team is working closely with schools to bring these standards to life in classrooms. This includes rich new resources for teachers and collaborative connections with experts to provide ongoing professional development. We’re also observing and learning from the incredible work happening in our classrooms to continually refine our approach and offer support where it’s needed most.
This is just the beginning. Our dedicated educators, school leaders, and support staff are at the heart of this effort, and I am grateful for their passion and expertise in helping our students achieve their fullest potential. Together, with these new standards as our guide, we’re shaping a future where every DC student is equipped to thrive.
Thank you for your support and partnership as we advance excellence in every classroom, for every student, across DC.
Antoinette S. Mitchell, Ph.D.
Interim State Superintendent of Education
Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE)
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Partnering with Schools
to Implement Statewide Standards
As the state education agency, OSSE is committed to developing challenging academic learning standards that encourage the highest achievement of every student across the District. For the 2024-25 school year, OSSE has rolled out three new sets of standards for local education agencies (LEAs) to implement: Social Studies, Financial Literacy, and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL).
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Social Studies: Unanimously approved by the DC State Board of Education in June 2023, these updated standards are already making strides. The OSSE team spent the 2023-24 school year working directly with LEAs to ensure the successful implementation of the standards in the 2024-25 and future school years. OSSE is leveraging the OSSE Learning Management System (LMS) to provide DC educators with curricular resources, including sample lesson plans, videos demonstrating best practices, resources to build teacher-facing background knowledge, and primary sources to supplement instruction.
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Financial Literacy: Unanimously approved by the DC State Board of Education in March 2024, these standards aim to build financial knowledge and skills among students across DC. OSSE is working to support LEAs that are currently implementing financial literacy programming to utilize these standards, while simultaneously leveraging these standards to catalyze new financial literacy programming across DC high schools. By collaborating with local and national experts, OSSE is creating professional development opportunities for educators and facilitating school connections to elevate best practices in teaching financial literacy.
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Social and Emotional Learning: Unanimously approved by the DC State Board of Education in May 2024, these standards are being utilized throughout the District in K-12 and Adult education environments. OSSE is directly supporting LEAs directly by creating resources for schools like the SEL Learning Wheel and toolkits for various stakeholder groups to leverage, including a series of educator toolkits and a caregiver toolkit.
OSSE’s Division of Teaching and Learning (TAL) is also excited to be working closely and collaboratively with OSSE’s Division of Postsecondary and Career Education (PCE) to ensure that these new standards are reflected, as appropriate, in the work PCE is leading under the Build Futures: Reimagine High School Graduation Requirements strategic initiative in the strategic plan.
This fall, TAL used the Start of School initiative to conduct targeted school walkthroughs to observe the new standards in action. Before the walkthroughs, the OSSE team developed a standardized walkthrough tool for each new set of standards. LEAs and schools were deliberately selected for walkthroughs using specific criteria, including school type, applicable grade levels, and student populations, to ensure a diverse representation of educational settings across all eight wards of the District.
During the walkthroughs, the OSSE team established relationships with school-based leadership and personnel responsible for the implementation of the standards and conducted observations of educators teaching the standards. OSSE will provide close-out reports that include highlights and additional resources for each LEA visited. The OSSE team will utilize the information from these walkthroughs to plan for next steps with LEAs and to inform investments in future supports for standards implementation.
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Start of School Standards Implementation Visits
Walkthrough visits are a key component of the standards implementation process, as OSSE continues to partner closely with LEAs to ensure success.
- Sets of New Standards: Social Studies, Financial Literacy, Social and Emotional Learning (SEL)
- Start of School Standards Implementation Visits Timeline: Sept. 26-Oct. 11, 2024
 walkthrough visit for standards implementation should reach out to our Division of Teaching and Learning team at osse.tta@dc.gov. All DC LEAs implementing these subject areas are required to leverage the Social Studies, Financial Literacy and SEL standards. To learn more about DC Standards of Learning, visit osse.dc.gov/service/dc-standards-learning.
Meet the 2025 Teacher of the Year
 Pictured (left to right): Stanton Elementary School Principal Allen Richardson, Mayor Muriel Bowser, 2025 DC Teacher of the Year Jazzmyne Townsend, OSSE Interim State Superintendent Dr. Antoinette Mitchell, DCPS Chancellor Dr. Lewis Ferebee, Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn
Earlier this month, Mayor Bowser, Superintendent Mitchell and District officials presented Jazzmyne Townsend with the 2025 DC Teacher of the Year Award during a surprise event. Ms. Townsend is an inspiring Instructional Coach, K-5 English Language Arts (ELA) at Stanton Elementary School. As the 2025 DC Teacher of the Year, Jazzmyne represents DC in the Council of Chief State School Officers National Teacher of the Year program and can advocate for her students on a national level.
2025 Runners Up:
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Kiara McCalvin, French teacher at Howard University Middle School
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Rahshita Lowe-Watson, kindergarten teacher at John Francis Education Campus
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Andrea Baker Barnes-Johnson, special education teacher at Anacostia High School
As the 2025 DC Teacher of the Year, Jazzmyne represents DC in the Council of Chief State School Officers National Teacher of the Year program and can advocate for her students on a national level.
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Every year, OSSE issues the State of Pre-K Report which describes how DC has supported efforts to ensure that all 3- and 4-year-olds have access to high-quality early learning through this system. Highlights from the 2023 report include:
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In FY23, 84 percent of DC’s estimated 3- and 4-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded pre-K.
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In FY23, 83 percent of the District’s pre-K classrooms met or exceeded evidence-based targets in the Emotional Support domain, 67 percent of classrooms met or exceeded targets for Classroom Organization and 22 percent met or exceeded targets for Instructional Support.
 The OSSE 2024-25 Superintendent’s Advisory Councils kicked off this month with an energizing in-person meeting hosted by Superintendent Mitchell and OSSE staff. This year, the councils include the Teacher Advisory Council, the School Leader Advisory Council, and the newly introduced Family Advisory Council. Together, these groups will meet regularly with OSSE leadership and staff to share insights, raise questions, and help shape OSSE programs and policies. Through these councils, we’re amplifying the voices of teachers, school leaders, and families from across the District, making sure their perspectives drive our work forward.
This month, OSSE publicly posted the 2022-23 school year Special Education Performance Report (SEPR) for each LEA on the OSSE SEPR website. The SEPR is an annual report that evaluates the performance of every local education agency's (LEA) special education program across the District of Columbia.
The SEPR assesses two key areas:
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LEA Compliance: Examining how well LEAs fulfill the legal requirements set by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) each year.
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Student Progress: Measuring the effectiveness of services for students with disabilities, focusing on their academic growth and key areas of support.
Through these measures, the SEPR helps ensure that each LEA remains accountable and continuously improves its support for students with disabilities.
The Advanced Technical Center (ATC), led by OSSE and central to Mayor Bowser’s vision for DC high schools, empowers students to gain professional skills, earn industry credentials, and earn college credits in high-demand fields like cybersecurity and nursing, paving pathways to middle-class careers.
To date, the initial 2023-23 ATC cohort has:
- Earned 1,169 college credits;
- Saved $882,134 in college tuition costs
To date, the second cohort that started in 2023-24 has:
- Earned 1,147 college credits;
- Saved $759,539
This equates to a total of 2,316 college credits earned and approximately $1.6 million in tuition saved in the first two years. Pre-nursing and cybersecurity students—17 in pre-nursing and 11 in cybersecurity, both juniors and seniors—have each been awarded $15,000 scholarships and guaranteed admission to Trinity Washington University upon completing the ATC program, totaling $420,000 in annual scholarship support.
 District law and regulations require that schools verify immunization certification for all students as part of enrollment and attendance. Interim State Superintendent Mitchell joined DC Health Director Dr. Ayanna Bennett on Fox5 recently to discuss the importance of pediatric immunizations requirements. Families of students in grades pre-K 3, kindergarten, 7 and 11 have until Dec. 9 to ensure their student is up to date, or else the student risks temporary exclusion from school. See the OSSE and DC Health websites for immunization resources.
 Interim State Superintendent Mitchell joined District education leaders at a forum hosted by the Mayor's Office of Racial Equity to discuss policy solutions and promising practices to advance racial equity. The event featured the launch of the inaugural racial equity dashboard to DC residents, uniting community leaders, policymakers, educators, and families to develop actionable solutions to address education indicators of racial equity in the District’s Racial Equity Action Plan (REAP).
OSSE’s Director of Student Transportation Michael Riley recently spoke with NBC4 to emphasize the importance of safety during National School Bus Safety Week. The Division of Student Transportation provides safe, reliable, and efficient transportation services that positively support learning opportunities for eligible students from the District of Columbia.
Latest Stats on Student Transportation:
- Transport on average 3,800 students per day
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Operate more than 500 active school routes on the road each day
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25 OSSE DOT school buses have stop-arm cameras installed to support DDOT’s Stop-Arm initiative
- OSSE-DOT buses travel approximately 40,000 miles per day
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