Chart of the week: Amid widespread reductions in chronic absenteeism, about half of schools saw an improvement in learning outcomes this past year. 

In late August, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) released D.C. results on the CAPE statewide assessment for school year 2023-24.¹ Overall, 34 percent of students met or exceeded expectations in English Language Arts (ELA), and 22.6 percent of student did so in math. These results represent small improvements over 2022-23, at 0.3 percentage points in ELA and 0.8 percentage points in math. In both subjects, these changes are lower last year’s annual improvement.² They are also lower than typical annual improvements that the city experienced in pre-pandemic years (between 2 and 3 percentage points).  

At the school level, changes in learning outcomes were mixed. In ELA, for example, data were available in both years for 208 schools. Among those, 31 schools (about one in six) were within one percentage point of their scores from last year, experiencing small changes. Some schools continued last year’s trend, with 65 schools (31 percent) having growth at or above last year’s annual improvement of 2.9 percentage points (a similar number of schools saw declines of the same magnitude). Results were similar for math.³  

As in previous years, there is a strong relationship between chronic absenteeism and learning outcomes. Variations in chronic absenteeism can explain half the variation in learning outcomes in ELA, and 58 percent of variation in learning outcomes in math. This suggests that improving chronic absenteeism should have a profound impact on learning outcomes. But turns out this is not really the case. 

Across all D.C. public schools last year, chronic absenteeism improved by 4.3 percentage points (data as of May 2024) and a majority of schools improved by at least 1 percentage point.⁴ However, the correlation between changes in chronic absenteeism and changes in learning outcomes is very weak. This suggests that just improving chronic absenteeism is not sufficient—there are many other factors influencing learning outcomes, including but not limited to a need to improve attendance above a certain threshold or better supporting students who are designated as at-risk, for example.