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Alice Deal Middle School is an award-winning public school in the heart of Washington, D.C., instructing around 1,500 students annually across 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. We educate our students through rigorous academics and meaningful experiences. Deal helps young adolescents to take risks, try new things, and to grow into engaged scholars and active citizens.

Our students are regularly involved in goal-setting, monitoring their own progress, and celebrating their achievement throughout the school year. One of our school mantras is “Here We GROW.” All students at Deal are held to high expectations and are expected to grow as learners. Teachers are intentional about establishing and maintaining effective relationships with all students. Classrooms are designed to increase students’ critical thinking skills and deepen their understanding of new knowledge.

Learning and Growing

At Deal, students receive an extremely challenging academic program, which encompasses the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Program. To keep the middle school experience from feeling overwhelming, each grade is split into several “Teams” - groups of around 100 students who share the same teachers and advisories. We also offer three foreign languages: Spanish, French and Mandarin Chinese, as well as more than 20 sports and as many as 60 extracurricular clubs and activities.

Students learn best when they are happy, healthy, and safe. Deal staff explicitly teach students how to navigate middle school by staying organized, building positive relationships, and reach their goals. Social Emotional Academic Development (SEAD) is a part of daily life in classroom lessons, advisory, assemblies, groups, after-school events, or anywhere else students and staff interact.

Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

At Deal, we recognize that the work of creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive community is evolving, often difficult, and critically important. Our classes engage vital questions of inclusion, equity, and social justice. We challenge our students to consider multiple perspectives as they learn in and out of the classroom.

History

Deal’s main building was opened in 1931 as an all-white junior high school. It was named for Alice Deal, a teacher who introduced the concept of the middle school to Washington as the first principal of Columbia Junior High, which opened in 1921 on O Street NW.

The building was constructed just behind the racially integrated K-8th Jesse Reno School, which had been founded three decades earlier. By 1937, Deal had enrolled more than 1,300 students in grades 7, 8, and 9. Over time, local black residents were displaced and, in 1950, the Reno School closed. D.C. schools became legally desegregated in 1954.

The Deal building has been modernized several times, and in 2014 after a renovation of the Reno building, a passage was built to connect and join the two. (Read more here, here, and here.)

Over the years the school has hosted national leaders and dignitaries, including President George H.W. Bush, and then-First Ladies Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.

In 2019, Deal was named as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence by the U.S. Department of Education.

Deal has educated well-known alumni including D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George, investor Warren Buffett, film director Merawi Gerima, and Bill Nye the Science Guy.