Me too.
One of the best, certainly.
Below the national average, certainly.
One thing that it shows, right out of the gate, is that school performance isn't directly proportional to school spending. DC per-pupil spending rivals any state, but DC schools rank lower than pretty much all of them in test scores and things like that.
My own high school district (in Silicon valley) was once one of the best in the US. One high school in particular (not mine) was filled with the children of local scientists and engineers and was a national STEM powerhouse (before STEM was a thing). It was known as the school where all the brains went, kind of a school where nerds could be cool. Then the district started bussing in kids from poorer communities as part of some grand social equity scheme. Racial tensions skyrocketed, school violence went from nothing to a constant threat, and the scientists and engineers started pulling their kids out and enrolling them in private school whenever they could. Classes that once had emphasized advanced-placement and college-prep started leaning towards remedial.
The school's effective death came when its always abundant immigrant students, once dominated by high achieving Asian kids, became dominated by kids, often not even in the country legally, who had received little or no formal education wherever they came from and in many/most cases didn't even speak English. Illiterate (even in their native language) 16 year olds were being put in high school classes because they weren't socially appropriate for more academically appropriate first grade classrooms. Kids, often from war-torn places, who had learned to survive with their fists, their gangs and by being as bad-*** as possible, intimidating others. And teachers were expected to make everything right. So the best teachers started leaving too.
The enlightened and oh-so-superior "educators" had succeeded in turning one of the best high schools in the United States into one of the worst. All while patting each other on the back for their superior morality and woke sensibilities.
Social engineering for some nebulous idea that trumps educational goals and policies, that truly is destructive is total nonsense.
Putting kids who cannot speak English, and are culturally ignorant, because of some esoteric sense of equality is expensive, counter productive for the student, and the other students.
Special schools to educate these kids beginning with where they are at in knowledge would be best.
However, these would be portrayed as racist concentration camps.
The social justice warriors have one goal, and they refuse to see the serious problems that are sometimes created by their nonsense.
Consider, they want open borders so the world may share the spoils of the American taxpayer, yet they also demand perfect safety for Americans from the corona virus. Chinese citizens are being found attempting to cross the border illegally. Trump was called a racist for blocking Chinese citizens legally come to the US.
I am a southern Californian ( most don't understand the state is two states) but I left the state for good over 20 years ago.
A few years after I graduated, my school district began bussing. I find it interesting that your district in Northern California experienced the same kind of violence on a rising scale seemingly as a result.
Before she retired, my wife was a school district business manager. Teacher positions were eliminated to hire translators for this influx of kids from a different nation, a different history, a different culture. They may become excellent citizens, but just chucking them into the deep water without preparation doesn't make sense.
As you point out re DC, per spending has no correlation in making students more successful.
Then there are the monolithic teachers unions whose members demand more, and more, yet the more they get, the poorer student performance.
In the SOCAL districts with which I am familiar, union teachers (they are all union teachers) cannot be evaluated on performance. It is virtually impossible to fire one of them.
