DC Schools Lag Behind London, Singapore on STEM and Equity Funding — And This Week's Budget Talks Made It Worse

Washington DC's public school system is falling further behind peer cities on science, technology, engineering and mathematics funding — and on ensuring that gap doesn't split along neighborhood lines. A comparative report released Tuesday by the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy found that DC Public Schools spent an average of $1,840 per student on dedicated STEM programming in fiscal year 2025, compared to roughly $3,600 per student in Singapore's state system and approximately $2,900 in London's inner-borough schools. The numbers landed in the middle of a fraught budget week at the Wilson Building, where the DC Council is scrambling to backfill federal cuts before the October 1 fiscal deadline.

The timing matters. The Trump administration's ongoing federal workforce restructuring — pushed through partly via the Department of Government Efficiency — has already stripped an estimated $47 million from DC's Title I allocation since January, according to figures compiled by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. Title I money flows disproportionately to schools east of the Anacostia River, where more than 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced lunch. That's schools like Ballou High School in Congress Heights and Maya Angelou Public Charter School on 50th Street NE — institutions that education advocates say were already operating on threadbare STEM budgets before the latest round of federal cuts.

The Equity Fault Line Runs East of the River

The McCourt report is blunt about where the disparity is sharpest inside DC itself. Schools in Ward 3, which covers upper Northwest neighborhoods like Tenleytown and Chevy Chase, spend nearly twice as much per pupil on STEM electives and after-school programming as schools in Wards 7 and 8, which cover neighborhoods including Deanwood, Marshall Heights and Bellevue. The average STEM enrichment expenditure in Ward 3 schools ran to $2,210 per student last year. In Ward 8, it was $980. London's equivalent divide between its wealthiest and most deprived boroughs — roughly a 1.4-to-1 ratio — is considerably narrower.

Mayor Muriel Bowser's office pointed this week to the DC STEM Network, a city-backed consortium of 34 organizations headquartered at 1200 First Street NE, as evidence that the District is trying to close the gap without waiting on federal money. The Network launched a $6.2 million three-year initiative in March 2025 aimed at training 500 STEM teachers in high-need schools. But critics note the program has so far certified 112 teachers — less than a quarter of its target, with 18 months left on the clock and no confirmed funding for a second phase.

Council Debates Emergency Appropriation as Clock Ticks

At a DC Council hearing Wednesday morning in the John A. Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, At-Large Councilmember Robert White pressed DCPS Chancellor Maria Croom-Fontenot on whether the administration had contingency plans if the federal STEM grant pipeline dried up entirely. Croom-Fontenot's written testimony, submitted ahead of the session, acknowledged that 23 schools currently rely on federal E-Rate and Perkins V funding for more than 40 percent of their career and technical education budgets — a structural dependency the report describes as unsustainable.

Singapore, by contrast, funds its STEM curriculum entirely through a centralized national budget, insulating individual schools from revenue volatility. London schools draw on a combination of Department for Education grants and local authority levies that spread risk across wealthier and poorer boroughs. DC has neither a centralized state education budget nor a broad municipal tax base — it functions simultaneously as a city and a quasi-state, leaving it exposed when federal transfers shrink.

The Council is expected to vote before July 15 on an emergency supplemental appropriation that would redirect $18 million from the District's general fund toward STEM programming in Wards 5, 7 and 8. Whether that sum covers the federal shortfall is unclear; the Office of the Chief Financial Officer has not yet scored the bill. Parent advocacy groups, including DC Action and the Ward 8 Education Council, have asked residents to testify at a public hearing scheduled for July 9 at Anacostia High School on Avondale Street SE — a symbolic venue, given the school's own STEM lab has been without a full-time instructor since February.