This content is sponsored by the Collaborative for Student Success.
As Washington, D.C. grows into a national center for technology, health sciences, and cybersecurity, city leaders say the next generation of workers will need one skill above all others: math.
Paul Kihn, Washington, D.C.’s Deputy Mayor for Education, says the city’s long-term education plan, Compact 2043, is designed to make that connection clear by ensuring that every student graduates with the skills to thrive in both college and high-growth careers.
“Compact 2043 is our work to ensure that every single child and every student in Washington, D.C. is on a pathway to both higher education and a really good job,” Kihn said.
He hopes to “narrow both the economic and the racial wealth gaps in D.C…focusing relentlessly on the high growth sectors that we expect to see in Washington.”
Those sectors, from health care and information technology to data security, rely on strong quantitative reasoning. To meet that demand, D.C. has opened advanced technical centers focused on health sciences and cybersecurity while expanding career programming in high schools. At the same time, Kihn says the District is investing heavily in the academic foundation those careers require.
“We’ve focused a lot on reading, and we’ve focused a lot on math,” he said. ”Over this past year, we improved four points in our own very rigorous standardized tests in math.” While we know that the numbers are not nearly where they need to be, we know they continue to improve.”
A citywide math task force recently released expert recommendations for strengthening instruction, and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education has made teacher quality a cornerstone of its work. “All of this actually begins and ends with our teachers,” Kihn said. That means compensating educators well, providing access to high-quality instructional materials, and offering curriculum-based professional development, “to make sure that they have the skills that they need.”
Beyond classrooms, D.C. is expanding opportunities for work-based learning that allows students to apply math in real-world settings, experiences Kihn believes make academic learning more meaningful. He says these “work-based learning opportunities could count for credit.”
City officials are also focused on helping families feel confident supporting their children’s math learning. For many parents, today’s emphasis on conceptual problem-solving can feel unfamiliar, Kihn says. “There is a strong sense from a lot of families that it’s a little bit foreign to them, this way of doing math and approaching problems from four or five different angles, as opposed to just learning the rule.”
To bridge that gap, Kihn discusses D.C.’s “parent universities,” school meetings and chats with experts, all aimed at helping families better understand the instructional shifts underway. He says the goal is to create a “culture where everybody understands that everyone is a ‘math person’” and erase the belief that “some people are ‘math people’ and some people aren’t.”
Kihn spoke as part of WTOP’s “Math That Works” series, produced in partnership with the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Collaborative for Student Success, spotlighting how math education fuels economic opportunity across the D.C. region.
