ECS
2012 State of the State Address
Education-Related Proposals
District of Columbia


Education Commission of the States • 700 Broadway, Suite 810 • Denver, CO 80203-3442 • 303.299.3600 • fax 303.296.8332 • www.ecs.org

The following summary includes education-related proposals from the 2012 state of the state address. To assure that this information reaches you in a timely manner, minimal attention has been paid to style (capitalization, punctuation) or format.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray's State of the District Address

PROPOSALS

High School - Graduation Rates
-- Raise graduation rates.

P-3 - Child Care
-- Expand access to universal, high-quality infant and toddler care.

P-3 Systems - Ensuring Quality
-- Test, learn and teach important best practices about early childhood development.

Student Supports - Integrated Services
-- Offer a new resource in our Early Success plan - $12 million, state-of-the-art early childhood Educare Center in the Kenilworth-Parkside Promise neighborhood, which will provide services to 171 children and their families.

Student Achievement
-- Help more students move beyond mere proficiency to advanced levels of achievement.

Workforce Development - Workforce Demand
-- Fundamentally redesign how we approach job training adapted to the needs of the 21st century. It must be data-driven and must equip people with the hard and soft skills necessary to compete for the jobs of tomorrow.

Charter Schools
-- Be a model of how the best public schools can operate in a healthy, virtuous competition with the best public charter schools to spur creativity, learning and achievement that prepares young people to compete in the new economy.

School Structure - Facilities
-- Continue to implement our comprehensive school-modernization plan, rebuilding or renovating our schools.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Special Education
-- Expanded the quality of special education programming, enabling us to serve students closer to home and reduce the number of students attending non-public schools by 20 percent in just the past 11 months.

Student Achievement
-- Seen gains in student performance as measured both by our DC-CAS test and by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

P-3 - Preschool
-- Became the first city in America to offer universal pre-K, and we are now ranked #1 in the nation in pre-kindergarten enrollment.

School Structure - Facilities
-- Opened a new H.D. Woodson High School; renovated Langley School; modernized and expanded facilities at Woodrow Wilson High School, Anacostia High School and Janney Elementary; restored Takoma Education Campus, where we invested $25 million unexpectedly in the aftermath fire in December of 2010; began the modernization of Cardozo High School; and broke ground on a new Dunbar High School. A new Ballou Senior High School and many others will soon follow.

Youth Engagement/Professional Development
-- Engaged over 14,000 youth in the reformed Summer Youth Employment Program last year, teaching them the culture and value of an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

http://mayor.dc.gov/DC/Mayor/About+the+Mayor/News+Room/Text+of+the+State+of+the+District+Address