City and district rankings from federal incident data · 2021-22 collection
The District of Columbia has 62 school districts and 243 schools. Only three of those districts have enough scoreable schools to rank against districts elsewhere in the country. That is not a flaw in the city's data — it is what happens when a school system is made up largely of very small districts. A district needs several schools we can score before a district-level number means anything, and most here do not have them. On this page, the school-level entries carry almost all of the useful information.
Of the 243 schools, 168 have a published safety score. The rest do not, and that is the method working as intended. We publish a score only for schools whose reporting we believe — grades A and B. Where a school reported almost nothing, we say so and stop there. A quiet record is not evidence of safety.
Fifteen District of Columbia schools fall into the grades we call doubtful, D or E. Schools of that size normally report several incidents, or ten or more; these reported almost none. That works out to 6.2% of schools in the District, against 11.3% nationally. So a smaller share of records here raise that question than in the country as a whole. Read that as a statement about paperwork, not about children. It means more District schools filed records complete enough for us to check. It does not mean District schools are safer than schools elsewhere, and we do not adjust these comparisons by state — differences between states in this collection are differences in reporting habits.
Among the three ranked districts: KIPP DC PCS comes out safer than 53% of ranked US districts, with 19 of the 20 schools in its scored set complete enough to score. Friendship PCS is safer than 32%, with 9 of 15. District of Columbia Public Schools is safer than 23%, with 103 of 116.
All of it comes from the 2021-22 Civil Rights Data Collection, which schools file with the federal government. If your child's school shows no score, the honest answer is that we could not verify what it reported. That is worth asking the school about directly.
Percentile is against all ranked U.S. cities (higher = safer). Only cities with ≥5 trustworthy-data schools are ranked. Home value is Zillow's ZHVI.
| # | CITY | SAFETY PCTL | SCHOOLS | HOME VALUE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | 33 | 168 of 237 | $579,159 |
| # | DISTRICT | SAFETY PCTL | SCHOOLS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kipp Dc Pcs | 53 | 19 of 20 |
| 2 | Friendship PCS | 32 | 9 of 15 |
| 3 | District of Columbia Public Schools | 23 | 103 of 116 |