February 9, 2026
Superintendent Dr. Antoinette Mitchell
Office of the State Superintendent of Education
1050 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002
Dear Superintendent Dr. Antoinette Mitchell:
We are writing today to express our concerns about the upcoming District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessments of Progress in Education (DC CAPE), which is scheduled to be administered in the spring of 2026. Under your fresh leadership, you have an opportunity to correct a longstanding practice of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE): releasing DC CAPE results months after the assessment has been administered, thus limiting the time that schools and families have to act on the data.
It is our understanding that the DC CAPE testing window last year ran from March 31 to May 23, 2025. OSSE publicly released the aggregate DC CAPE results, both citywide and by school and sector, on August 21 to 22, 2025. However, individual student results were not delivered to schools for distribution to families until September 2025. Recently, a parent shared that they did not receive their child’s results until October 2025. Given the fact that the test is administered by computer, this timeline is unacceptable.
We know that you are making a significant commitment to improving schools through Accelerate DC: A Vision for School Improvement, which we largely support1. The success of this plan will require that school communities, and therefore families, receive assessment results as quickly as possible. Timely results allow families and educators to know whether students and schools are on track or off track in meeting their goals and to use the summer months to plan meaningfully for the following school year.
OSSE must commit to being faster and more responsive to families and schools by providing actionable results within the same school year as test administration. States across the country are already doing this. In 2025, six states released assessment results by the end of July2. Some states even provide preliminary results privately to parents and educators.
By committing to providing families and schools with timely access to their data, we can build a culture that reinforces academic excellence and delivers the strong public schools all of our students deserve. We welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss this issue in greater detail.
Sincerely,
Center for Strong Public Schools
CitySchools Collaborative
DC Charter School Alliance
D.C. Policy Center
ElectED
EmpowerK12
CC: Chairman Phil Mendelson, DC Council
DC State Board of Education
1. OSSE. Accelerate DC: A Vision for School Improvement. https://osse.dc.gov/acceleratedc
2. EduProgress. State Test Results Are Too Damn Slow. Here’s How to Speed Them Up. https://eduprogress.org/state-test-results-are-too-damn-slow-heres-how-to-speed-them-up/