D.C.’s Vast and Successful Education Reforms Raise the Question: What Next to Close Achievement Gaps?

Conor P. Williams wrote for the 74 Million about D.C.'s next wave of education reform:

The businessman visiting from my hometown scrunched up his face in disbelief. Perhaps he hadn’t heard me correctly. Our group was five at a table meant for four in a dark, swanky Dupont Circle restaurant. Servers were shoehorning themselves past like ballpark vendors, shouting out drink specials over the evening’s prandial roar.

“You send your kids to public school here in Washington?”

I did. I still do. But to that conservative Michigan grandfather, this was unthinkable. He was certain that the District was an educational swamp, some awful morass for all right-thinking people of privilege (and especially those of a certain privileged skin color) to flee — and fear.