(Washington, DC) – Today, at the DC High-Impact Tutoring Summit, Mayor Muriel Bowser previewed Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) investments in two programs with track records of increasing student achievement and increasing attendance: the high-impact tutoring (HIT) program and the District’s Advanced Technical Center. The highlighted investments are part of more than $2.7 billion in local investments to support public schools, sustain high-impact tutoring, and expand the number of students served by the Advanced Technical Center.
“Our public schools continue to be a bright spot in the story of DC, and with this budget we are making strategic investments in two programs that have a proven track record of improving attendance and increasing student achievement: high-impact tutoring and the Advanced Technical Center,” said Mayor Bowser. “These are investments that represent our commitment to equity as well as our commitment to investing in the pillars of DC’s Comeback: Downtown, public safety, and public education.”
At the summit, Mayor Bowser shared the following FY25 investments:
- $4.8 million to continue high-impact tutoring
- $5 million to support the reimagination of high school, including programming at the existing Advanced Technical Center in Ward 5, dual enrollment expansion, and the Advanced Internship Program and Career Ready Internships
- $17 million to open a new health clinic, in partnership with Children’s National Hospital, to provide health care services and training for students at the existing Advanced Technical Center in Ward 5
- $600,000 to open a new Advanced Technical Center at the Whitman-Walker Max Robinson Center in Ward 8
Earlier this year, the Mayor announced a 12.4% increase to the uniform per student funding formula (UPSFF) foundation level for FY25. The $341 million increase will help cover increases in compensation from recently negotiated collective bargaining agreements and mitigate the loss of one-time federal and local pandemic recovery funds. In FY25, the UPSFF will also include increases to the weights for at-risk students, alternative students, and adult students, ensuring a greater proportion of dollars go to students with the greatest needs.
“This year’s education spending reflects our commitment to doing more with what we have and investing with evidence, investing based on need, and investing for the future,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn. “These highlights and the entire proposed FY25 budget double down on our focus to accelerate learning, keep children safe and sound, and build pathways to college and career so that every student in our system succeeds.”
The high-impact tutoring (HIT) initiative, led by Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), was established by the Bowser Administration to accelerate learning for students and to address long-standing academic disparities. The goal of the three-year HIT program is to scale high-quality high-impact tutoring to reach 10,000 public-school students in the District, or approximately 10% of the student population, with a focus on serving students designated as at-risk. Currently, OSSE is on track to exceed that.
Preliminary findings from research conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University provide evidence that high-impact tutoring has positive attendance benefits for DC students. The District is also seeing early signs of academic impact as well, with at-risk students who receive the appropriate amount of high-impact tutoring nearly 7% more likely to achieve their growth goals than at-risk students receiving less tutoring, according to interim assessment data.
The Advanced Technical Center, a central piece of the Bowser Administration’s efforts to reimagine the high school experience for DC students, provides career-focused high school students with an opportunity to acquire professional skills, earn industry credentials, and gain college credits in high-demand, high-wage careers such as cybersecurity and general nursing, that set them on a pathway to the middle class.
The Advanced Technical Center launched as a pilot on the Trinity Washington University campus in August 2022, and then opened this school year in a new permanent home, centrally located at the Penn Center in Ward 5. The program has seen growing interest and demand, with enrollment surging from 96 students from eight different schools in the 2022-23 school year to 191 students from 15 different schools in the 2023-24 school year. The 2022-23 class earned an impressive 740 college credits, valued at over $570,000 in college tuition. In January, Mayor Bowser announced that OSSE received a $4.1 million Career Connected High School Grant from the Biden-Harris Administration to expand access to the District’s Advanced Technical Center.
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