District of Columbia Public Schools has been a source of some sensational headlines over the past decade, from an on-camera firing of a school principal to recent revelations of watered-down diplomas.
But the school district arguably has done more to modernize public school teaching than any other in the nation. It is powerful work, yielding compelling results and important lessons for educators and policymakers nationwide.
In A Policymaker’s Playbook: Transforming Public School Teaching in the Nation’s Capital, FutureEd Director Thomas Toch explores how DCPS has transformed teaching into a performance-based profession over the past decade.
Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with past and present DCPS leaders, staff, principals, teachers, union officials, and researchers, the report analyzes in depth the school system’s abandonment of teaching’s traditional policies and practices in pursuit of a new paradigm for public school teaching.
