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History[edit]Originally named Preparatory High School for Colored Youth and later known as M Street High School, Paul Laurence Dunbar. Founded as an educational mission at the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Dunbar was America's first public high school for black students. It was later the academic high school, with other schools related to vocational or technical training goals. It was known for its excellent academics, enough so that some black parents moved to Washington specifically so their children could attend it. Its faculty was paid well by the standards of the time, earning parity pay to Washington's white school teachers because they were federal employees. It also boasted a remarkably high number of graduates who went on to higher education, and a generally successful student body.
It is similar to Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland and Fort Worth, Texas, as all three schools have a majority African American student body and are of a major importance to the local African American community. All three schools are also highly regarded for their athletic programs within their respective school district in the sports of Football, Basketball, and Track. There is also a Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington, Kentucky.
Since its inception, the school has graduated many well-known figures of the 20th century, including Sterling Brown, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charles R. Drew, William H. Hastie, Charles Hamilton Houston, Robert H. Terrell, Benjamin O. Davis, Benjamin O. Davis JR., Paul Capel, III, Robert C. Weaver, and James E. Bowman. Its illustrious faculty included Anna Julia Cooper, Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, A.A. Birch Jr., Carter G. Woodson and Julia Evangeline Brooks who was also a graduate of the school. Among its principals were Anna J. Cooper, Richard Greener, Mary Jane Patterson, and Robert H. Terrell. An unusual number of teachers and principals held Ph.D. degrees, including Carter G. Woodson, father of Black history Month and the second African American to earn a Phd. from Harvard (after W. E. B. Du Bois). This was the result of the entrenched white supremacy that pervaded the nation's professions and served to exclude the majority of African-American women and men from faculty positions at predominantly white institutions of higher learning. As a consequence, however, Dunbar High School was considered the nation's best high school for African Americans during the first half of the 20th century. It helped make Washington, DC, an educational and cultural capital.
Following desegregation and demolition of the original facility, the school's prestige dropped notably. As of 1976, the campus is situated in a newer, but, to some, far less architecturally appealing, facility in Northwest Washington. Through the years, Dunbar High School continued to perform below the standards and was among a list of failing schools identified for turnaround or closure. In 2008, then schools chancellor Michelle Rhee transferred management of Dunbar to Friends of Bedford, an educational consultancy company known for its ability to transform failing schools in successful ones. Under its management, Dunbar High School achieved the second highest gains on state examinations - second only to another Friends of Bedford managed school. The culture of the school began to transition to one of student success and academic achievement. However, in 2010 and with the election of a new mayor-elect, the direction of education reform within the District took a new direction. Dunbar High School was lost its status as a management school.