As Sheila Carr prepares for her 30th school year as an education advocate, District education officials continue to celebrate what’s been described as consistent gains in reading and math proficiency since students’ post-pandemic return to the classroom.
Even so, Carr says that she and other parents remain anxious about the quality of the literacy instruction that young people receive in District public and public charter schools. For her, it’s imperative that teachers and administrators across the city are equipped with the tools to help young people struggling with dyslexia.
“The D.C. Council and the mayor need to make sure that the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) Reading Clinic is getting proper funding so that they could train more teachers in the Science of Reading,” said Carr, a mother and grandmother who lives in Ward 7.
In 2018, Carr counted among several parents who advocated for the passage of the Addressing Dyslexia and Other Reading Difficulties Amendment Act, which established a dyslexia screening and intervention program operated by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE).
Per OSSE, more than 1,400 teachers citywide have been trained over the last year in how to recognize and tackle dyslexia over the last couple of years.
By the time the Addressing Dyslexia and Other Reading Difficulties Amendment Act, also known as Law 23-191, went into effect, DCPS launched its reading clinic with the goal of equipping teachers with the tools needed to teach young people.
It’s also a place where students, as they would in the classroom, receive one-on-one research-based literacy instruction known as the Science of Reading Curriculum, which focuses on word recognition and language comprehension.
In 2022, Carr and other advocates watched as DCPS Chancellor Dr. Lewis D. Ferebee and a cadre of education officials saw teachers at Stanton Elementary School in Southeast executing the Science of Reading Curriculum in the classroom.
Years later, she acknowledges progress made, but said she wants to see greater gains in reading fluency.
“I’m concerned that the teachers won’t have the support that they need in order to truly implement the Science of Reading and the new programs that they have in their school so that they can feel comfortable with it and be able to give it out to the children,” Carr told The Informer.
Local Education Officials Celebrate Gains Made in English and Math
In the days leading to the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, Ferebee confirmed that the DCPS Reading Lab is still up and running.
“We’ve seen so much success with this strategy,” Ferebee said. “We’ve expanded beyond just our lower grades and also extended it to our middle grades as well. It’s something that we’re looking forward to replicating in math as we’re going to launch a similar clinical model for math instruction and professional learning for educators.”
On Aug. 21, education officials celebrated what’s been described as the greatest improvement in English and Language Arts (ELA) proficiency since 2015, and more specifically since before the pandemic.
The 2025 results of the D.C. Comprehensive Assessments of Progress in Education (CAPE) showed that economically disadvantaged students across the District had higher ELA results than in years past. Further, more than 40% of schools experienced an increase of at least 5% in either ELA or math.
There was also an increase in ELA aptitude, with 57.7% of students in third through eights grades designated as proficient and approaching proficiency. Meanwhile, ELA proficiency increased by 3.6% percentage points from the percentage (37.5%) reported in 2019, while the proportion of struggling students (26.4%) dropped by 2.4 percentage points.
In the charter sector, schools utilized data-driven instruction and restructured core instructions to make space for personalized instruction. Like the public schools, many of the public charter schools also utilized high-impact tutoring.
Also of significance was a focus on truancy and chronic absenteeism, and the implementation of recommendations issued by a Literacy Education Task Force. Those recommendations include: professional development of teachers and administrators in the Science of Reading Curriculum, training of structured literacy [phonics] by 2030, increase of teacher coaching, and an understanding of high-quality instructional materials by the Office of the State of Superintendent.
State Superintendent Dr. Antionette S. Mitchell credited the Literacy Education Task Force, established in 2022, as a resource in getting teachers and administrators across the public and public charter sectors on one accord, as it relates to ELA instruction.
“We have committed to providing that professional development to our teachers, and they are picking it up in a really significant way,” Mitchell said. “We have also made available a test to ensure that teachers can demonstrate their knowledge of structured literacy…We are delighted with the progress that we’re making. We are on track to train all of our teachers in this approach by 2030.”
Carr Looks to the New School Year, Anxious but Hopeful
As dozens of law enforcement agencies, and even the National Guard, flood the District, and particularly communities east of the Anacostia River, Carr continues to encourage young people to learn about their rights.
She said she did so as recently as last week, when President Donald J. Trump evoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act, which allows him to temporarily federalize the Metropolitan Police Department.
“Because of the literacy rate and dropping out of school, they’re in the corners, they’re in areas where the establishment has deemed as not acceptable,” Carr said. “I told them that not only could they be arrested, but..shipped out the country.”
Carr’s education advocacy journey started in the 1990s when she, as a parent, decided to enroll her children in their neighborhood schools. She served as a co-chair of what was known as Parents United, and later a member of Parent Watch, through which she and other parents met with educational officials at least once a month.
However, Carr’s insistence that schools focus on dyslexia– a reading disorder characterized by identifying how speech sounds relate to letters and words— stemmed from her discovery at the age of 40 that she has the disorder, and later a chance encounter with leaders of the International Dyslexia Association.
She said those moments set her on a path to advocate for youth who get overlooked in the classroom, and, as a result, suffer in adulthood.
“People who struggle with reading also struggle with employment and housing and health and other things. That’s why I fight so hard because it’s a trickle-down effect,” Carr told The Informer. “If you have dyslexia or other reading disabilities, sometimes it’s hereditary. So it needs to be a kind of a multifaceted thing that if you find a child that has dyslexia, we need to have wraparound services to help the whole family.”