EdScape Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

EdScape, short for “education landscape,” provides information critical to making decisions about whether, where, and what type of public schools, school facilities, and school programs are needed in Washington, DC. This set of information from the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) is intended for policymakers, school leaders, and the public. This information supports data transparency and is a step towards building a coherent public education system. EdScape is organized into five topic-based chapters and is filled with useful information, data visualizations, and downloadable data. The information critical to help answer these questions fall into three pillars of information: facilities, school quality, and student demand. For the inaugural release, the following topics from the facilities and student demand categories were included: school-age population and public school students, public schools, public school facilities, enrollment patterns, and neighborhood factors. Future iterations will include additional information, such as parent/student demand and more information from the Boundary and Student Assignment Study 2023, DC Public Education Master Facilities Plan 2023, and future Master Facility Plan Supplements. To review the latest additions and updates, visit the Release Notes page. And every year, DME updates the pages with the latest data. Users can submit feedback multiple ways: click on the "Share insights or feedback" lightbulb icon at the bottom of each dashboard, fill out the sitewide survey, or email the DME EdScape team at [email protected]

The DME has two main goals for EdScape: 1) Act as the source of information to support school, program, and facility planning and 2) Provide the public with the same information available to policy makers for transparency purposes. EdScape is not designed for and should not be used by parents and students to determine their school options; instead, resources like OSSE Report Cards, My School DC school finder, DCPS profiles, and the DC Public Charter School Board’s Transparency Hub should be used for this purpose.

EdScape is organized by individual chapters with interactive Tableau dashboards that allow visitors to dig into the information and analyze it by grade band (elementary, middle, high, or adult/alternative), area of the city (ward, DCPS high school boundary, Office of Planning Comprehensive Plan area, neighborhood cluster), or by sector (DCPS or public charter). Most datasets contain information going back at least five years. Each of the dashboards also has downloadable data file that can be used with other software. EdScape no longer includes a PDF document that summarizes the information for ease of use.

DCPS, the DC Public Charter School Board (DC PCSB), school leaders, and District agencies will rely on this to decide about whether, where, and what type of public schools, school facilities, and school programs are needed. Advocacy groups will be interested in this and will use the information for their own analyses. This is not intended for the “everyday” parent making school enrollment decisions.

This is a fundamental step in coordinating school planning across the sectors. Currently, there is no common source of information used across agencies. The Cross Sector Collaboration Task Force and the community recommended that this information be provided and shared with the public, supporting the Mayor’s and DME’s commitment to transparency. Through using EdScape, the agencies and school leaders will be able to develop “data driven” policies. By making EdScape publically available, the community will have access to the same information as policy makers and will be able to “pressure test” the policy makers’ ideas, as well as develop their own.

The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) is required by DC Code § 38-2803 to publish a 10-year master facilities plan that considers the facility planning needs of each local education agency (LEA) in the District of Columbia. The DC Public Education Master Facilities Plan 2023 (MFP), released by the DME in April 2024, provides up-to-date comprehensive information about the physical conditions of our current public school facilities while also analyzing future facility needs based on estimated population growth and enrollment growth. A third-party contractor developed the MFP report and provided recommendations to assist the city in identifying solutions for facility concerns. EdScape builds on the information included in the previous 2018 MFP and curent 2023 MFP. Some of the information in the MFP is included in EdScape and users are able to more easily interact with the data. Future iterations of EdScape will include additional information from the MFP 2023 and will regularly update the information. 

EdScape is not intended for parents and students to choose or evaluate specific schools. The recently released OSSE's school report cards, My School DC school finder, DCPS profiles, and DC PCSB’s Transparency Hub are all existing mechanisms for that purpose. Instead, EdScape is intended to better understand trends and patterns and identify where schools and programs may be needed. In most cases, the data are aggregated at a specific geography or grade level rather than presented as individual schools.

EdScape provides interactive data dashboards and downloadable data. However, users may want to focus on other key aspects and filter the data in other ways. DME encourages users to use the interactive visualizations to discover what works for them. 

We recommend that users start by opening Chapter 1 – Population and Students and clicking through the dashboards. Then progress to Chapter 2 – Schools and Programs and then to each of the following subsequent chapters. We recommend going sequentially through the chapters because the information builds upon itself.

The DME regularly updates the information currently provided in EdScape based on data availability. EdScape was last updated in July 2024 with SY23-24 data. In addition, the DME will collect stakeholder feedback to revise the existing information, if necessary, as well as add new information for future releases of EdScape.

The data supporting each of the EdScape dashboards are available as downloadable files. In the future, data may also be searchable on DC's Open Data platform.  

Readers should refer to the Release Notes page to learn what information is new or has been updated

Please contact us with your interests via emailing your question to the DME EdScape team at [email protected].