Here's a program from which DC should have plagiarized

From "Pathways program pays off for youth," in the Toronto Star:

Six years after the program [Pathways to Education Canada] started offering academic support, mentoring and financial assistance to young people living in Regent Park, one of Toronto's poorest neighbourhoods, the area's high-school dropout rate has plummeted from 56 per cent to only 10 per cent, significantly below city and provincial averages.

At the same time, the proportion of young people from the area who go on to attend college or university has jumped from 20 per cent to an astonishing 80 per cent, according to the Boston Consulting Group study. Teen pregnancies and crime have also fallen dramatically. Taken together, these statistics paint a picture of a struggling community that, against all odds, has rediscovered hope.

The secret of the program's success is easy to pinpoint. Unlike many projects aimed at keeping disadvantaged kids in school, this one goes well beyond tutoring. It also provides career mentoring and links students and their families with support workers.
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Along similar lines is this article from the Baltimore Sun, "How schools get it right."

Tucked amid a block of rowhouses around the corner from Camden Yards is an elementary school with a statistical profile that often spells academic trouble: 76 percent of the students are poor, and 95 percent are minorities. But George Washington Elementary has more academic whizzes than most of the schools in Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll and Baltimore counties. These students don't just pass the Maryland School Assessment - they ace it. About 46.2 percent of George Washington students are scoring at the advanced level, representing nearly half of the school's 94 percent pass rate....

Whether they are in wealthy or poor neighborhoods, schools with lots of high-scoring students share certain characteristics. They have experienced teachers who stay for years, and they offer extracurricular activities after school. Sometimes, they have many students in gifted-and-talented classes working with advanced material.

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It's not that people don't know what needs to be done. It's that people in DC don't want to do what needs to be done. Also see "Amplifying positive deviance in schools."