Maisha Riddlesprigger, this year’s DC Public Schools Principal of the Year, never set out for a career in education. Although she grew up among a family of teachers in Fresno, California — where her father was a professor at a community college, and her aunts were high school and special education teachers — she didn’t intend to follow the same path.
“I thought, ‘Well, that’s great, but I’m not going to do that,’” said Riddlesprigger, who is now principal of Ketcham Elementary School. “I guess it was the rebel in me when everyone around me was doing the same thing.”
When she enrolled in the University of California at Los Angeles in 1996, Riddlesprigger planned to pursue a career in sports medicine, but she ended up majoring in psychology and minoring in education, mindful of her family’s experience in the field. For that minor, she had to put in a lot of field hours, spending time in classrooms for students in elementary through high school. In the end she fell in love with the profession, becoming a fifth-grade teacher in the city of Compton. She went on to earn a master’s degree in educational administration from California State University at Long Beach in 2006.
Around that time, Riddlesprigger’s career search led her to DC. “I had a handful of friends that had relocated to the DC area to work for the public school system,” she said. “They were excited about their experience here and shared information about the impact of the work that they were doing on students and families.”
She started first as an assistant principal at Davis Elementary in Benning Ridge and later became principal of the Ward 7 school.
Today, Riddlesprigger is celebrating her sixth year as the principal of Ketcham Elementary, at 919 15th St. SE in Anacostia.
The 2018-19 school year has proved notable for the Ward 8 school. In the fall EmpowerK12 recognized Ketcham as a Bold Performance and Improvement School for exceeding annual growth and performance expectations. Last month, the school won the school system’s Together With Families Award in recognition of its strong relationships between faculty and families.
In January, Riddlesprigger celebrated a ribbon-cutting for Ketcham’s new child care center, which she noted provides a 10-year pathway for neighborhood children — from infancy up through fifth grade. More than 30 children were due to enter the new program in late February.
The month before, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had visited the school for a supposed rally to promote attendance, before revealing the event’s true purpose: honoring Riddlesprigger as the school system’s Principal of the Year. “[She] is a pillar in this community and means so much to everyone here in this corridor,” said Amanda Alexander, interim chancellor of DCPS at the time.
During her tenure at Ketcham, Riddlesprigger wrote in an op-ed last fall, the school has made noteworthy progress with students who she describes as the “farthest from opportunity.” In the past four years, the number of Ketcham students proficient in math has almost tripled and the number of students proficient in English language arts has doubled on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
But test scores are just one measure of a school’s success. “I knew as an educator that I had to create spaces where students of color felt affirmed and validated not for passing a test, but for their effort and their strength,” Riddlesprigger said when accepting her Principal of the Year award.
In an interview with The DC Line, Riddlesprigger said it’s the children who strengthen and inspire her every day. She reflected on how civic-minded her 310 students have become, particularly the fifth-graders — who, in one ecology unit she observed, were learning how to make their Southeast DC community a better place.
“The next generation of youth are really thinking of these real true challenges in our city at a young age, and they want to make a difference in our community,” she said.
One challenging part of her job, Riddlesprigger said, is the unpredictability. “You never know what you’re going to get — no day is like the previous day, no week like the previous week,” she said. “That’s also what makes it very exciting. Every day is a new opportunity to impact the lives of our students and families in a way we couldn’t even imagine.”
While Riddlesprigger lives in Prince George’s County, she’s had an inside look at DCPS over the past decade. She said she’s seen significant strides during this time.
“Our district has been on the right path identifying and making sure there is a baseline level of education that all students receive in DC public education,” she said. “That means they have more access to things like the arts, physical education and world languages.”
However, Riddlesprigger says there’s still a need for more emphasis on the arts. She’d also like to see more exposure to career opportunities for high school students.
“The part of the Common Core [curriculum] that many forget about is that it’s college- and career-ready — we just focus a lot on the college part,” Riddlesprigger said, noting the promise of career-minded programs like the Anacostia Public Safety Academy and the chef and hospitality program at Ballou High School.
Riddlesprigger also hopes to see a continued focus on equity in DC education, making sure that students with the fewest opportunities are getting the support they need to be successful in the classroom and in life. She praised DCPS for providing schools like hers in wards 7 and 8 — where DC’s lowest-income residents are concentrated — with connections to community-based organizations that provide mentors, tutors and other resources.
Despite her early days rebelling against an education career, Riddlesprigger said her family helped inform and inspire her down this path.
From her mother, she learned the values of being calm, even-keeled and level-headed, Riddlesprigger said. Given how much her father helped guide her career early on, she’s glad he got to see her rise to the roles of assistant principal and then principal before he died.
“I look to him a lot, as far as the blueprint he set out for me,” she said.
In honor of Women’s History Month, The DC Line is profiling notable women shaping DC. This is the last in a series of four articles we’ve published this month; the others profiled Trinity Washington University President Pat McGuire, D.C. Policy Center executive director Yesim Sayin Taylor and Washington Informer publisher Denise Rolark Barnes.
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