Overview

Theodore Roosevelt Senior High School is a public high school in the Petworth neighborhood of Ward 4 in Northwest Washington, operated by District of Columbia Public Schools. Built in 1932 at 13th and Upshur Streets NW to accommodate 1,200 students, its colors are orange and blue and its teams the Rough Riders. The school also houses Roosevelt S.T.A.Y., an alternative academic and career/technical program leading to a diploma or vocational certificate.

The enrollment data for this school is five years old, and DC's school records are unusually stale generally. The most recent figure located is 752 students for 2020-21, with an earlier figure of 698 for 2017-18. For a school built for 1,200, that gap matters -- and 2020-21 was a pandemic year, when enrollment counts across the country were atypical.

This is not isolated. Among DC high schools encountered in this research: Ballou High School's most recent figure is 2022-23, H. D. Woodson's is 2021-22, and School Without Walls's is 2020-21. Several other states in this directory carried 2024-25 NCES data. Anyone using DC school figures should check DCPS or OSSE directly rather than relying on aggregated records.

One structural detail visible in the grade breakdown is worth noting: Roosevelt's 2020-21 enrollment ran 245 in grade 9 and 131 in grade 12. Ballou shows a steeper pattern -- 316 in grade 9 against 77 in grade 12 -- and Woodson 193 against 76. We are reporting the figures as published and drawing no conclusion about their cause, which could include transfers, program placement, or attrition.

Academics

No current school-level DC assessment data was located for this profile. Wikipedia records a U.S. News ranking of 13,383-17,843 for 2022 -- a wide band rather than a position, and now several years old. For district context, School Without Walls, a selective DCPS magnet, carried a U.S. News ranking of 68 in 2024 with 12% of students economically disadvantaged, described as having the fewest minority and at-risk students among DCPS high schools. Check OSSE directly for current results.

Neighborhood

Petworth is a Northwest DC neighborhood in Ward 4. CrimeGrade reports a median home value context via Safemap of $626,000.

Crime & safety

Official police data, via local reporting. Petworth News, quoting Metropolitan Police Department Captain John Terry, reports the MPD sector including Petworth saw a 2% decrease in violent crime and a 12% reduction in homicides, with MPD crime cards showing violent crime down across all of Ward 4 year over year. The same article is explicit that residents nonetheless report feeling day-to-day impacts -- shootings between street crews, harassment at a park, and concerns about adjudication. It also notes the Cure the Streets violence-interruption program operates at ten sites including Ward 4. Note this article is dated November 2022; it is the most specific MPD-sourced material located for this neighborhood.

CrimeGrade rates Petworth poorly and consistently. Overall crime: D-, 15th percentile, 64.29 per 1,000 residents, victimization odds 1 in 12 in the south to 1 in 20 in the northeast. Violent crime: D, 21st percentile, 7.382 per 1,000. Property crime: C-, 32nd percentile, 28.37 per 1,000. Cost of crime: $1,266 per resident, $801 above the national average.

AreaVibes broadly agrees: 1 in 110 violent-crime odds, 1 in 34 property, 1 in 26 overall.

Safemap does not. It gives Petworth a safety score of 80.6/100 and a "very safe" overall rating, stating crime rates are "notably lower than what's typical for the city," with Living, Family, and Property safety all rated "Very Safe."

The gap between these two is the largest single-neighborhood contradiction in this directory, and one side's arithmetic explains why.

Safemap's "very safe" verdict rests on approximately 3 incidents per month, with its highest month at 6 and its lowest at 1. Its most common crime category is robbery, at 7 cases -- 22.6% of all incidents -- implying roughly 31 total incidents across its analysis period.

CrimeGrade, for the same neighborhood, reports 64.29 crimes per 1,000 residents and a total projected annual crime cost of $19.5 million. Its violent-crime page alone attributes about 35 incidents per year to the south part of Petworth.

A neighborhood cannot simultaneously have ~31 incidents in a year and a $19.5 million annual crime cost. Safemap appears to be working from a partial feed -- a subset of categories, or a fraction of reported incidents -- and then computing a confident "very safe" rating on top of it. This directory flagged Safemap publishing an implausible zero-incident month on the Houston profile; the Petworth figures suggest the same underlying problem, and its safety scores should not be weighed against providers using fuller data.

Notably, AreaVibes includes the same caveat this directory has credited elsewhere: red areas on heat maps "does not always indicate that it is a dangerous area for its residents," since airports, sports centres, large parks and tourist areas inflate per-resident rates.

Our calculated rating

We don't publish a single proprietary score. The enrollment data is five years old and from a pandemic year, no current academic data was located, and the safety sources range from D- to "very safe" with one of them apparently computing its verdict from a fraction of the incident data. The MPD-sourced material -- violent crime down 2%, homicides down 12% in the sector -- is the most trustworthy element, and it is itself from 2022. See our ratings methodology.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, "Roosevelt High School (Washington, D.C.)" (address, founding, NCES district and school IDs, faculty FTE, 2020-21 enrollment and grade breakdown, ratio, colors, nickname, USNWR ranking band, Roosevelt S.T.A.Y. programme, Ward 4 and Petworth location).
  2. Wikipedia, "District of Columbia Public Schools" (district size, enrollment, staffing, ratio, chancellor, budget, historical enrollment peak).
  3. DC Public Charter School Board, Student Enrollment (2024-25 combined public and charter enrollment).
  4. Wikipedia articles for Ballou High School, H. D. Woodson High School, and School Without Walls (comparative enrollment years and grade breakdowns; SWW ranking and demographics).
  5. Wikipedia, "Booker T. Washington Public Charter School" (1999-2014 operation; cited on the DC state page).
  6. NCES Common Core of Data, District of Columbia International School (110009700492) -- charter district ID example.
  7. Petworth News, "Community members see personal impacts of crime, despite decreasing violent crime rates," November 2022 (MPD Captain John Terry on sector violent crime and homicide reductions; Ward 4 crime cards; Cure the Streets; resident accounts).
  8. CrimeGrade.org, Petworth overall, violent, and property crime pages (grades, percentiles, rates per 1,000, victimization odds, cost of crime).
  9. AreaVibes, Petworth crime rates, citing FBI UCR 2024 (victimization odds; heat-map interpretation caveat).
  10. Safemap, Petworth safety report (safety score, category ratings, monthly incident counts, crime type breakdown).
  11. Niche, Petworth crime and safety.