This story was reported and written by our media partner the Virginia Mercury.
The Virginia Board of Education on Wednesday approved the final touches on the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act plan, designed to address concerns with how schools were rated and student performance was measured to determine better how to direct state resources.
During the special meeting in Richmond, the board approved Virginia’s ESSA plan, readiness weighting for different grade levels, and the overall school performance and support framework proposal as part of its package of accountability system changes.
Compared to the existing system, the new regulations are splitting the state’s accreditation system into two: an accreditation system, to assess whether schools meet all requirements laid out in state laws and regulations; and an accountability system, to provide “timely and transparent information on student and school performance.”
VDOE staff said this plan helps meet the board’s goals of setting and assisting students in meeting high expectations and supporting learning loss recovery by ensuring the school performance framework holds schools accountable for actual performance.
“Whether that is human resources or financial resources, whatever it is, targeted support is absolutely what this is,” said Board President Grace Creasey, an appointee of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, like most members of the board, following the group’s vote.
Based on 2022-23 data, VDOE projects that 60.5% of schools are off track or would need intensive support according to the new accountability system standards, meaning they are “significantly” or “not meeting the state’s expectation for growth, achievement, and readiness.”
Compared to the existing system, 11.5% of schools were found not fully accredited, with conditions.
Youngkin, who directed the board to split the accountability system into two, suggested earlier in his tenure that the decisions by previous administrations created an inaccurate picture of the state of K-12 public education in Virginia as identified by state and national assessments.
Board member Mashea Ashton stated that the old system identified schools needing support and resources. Still, it didn’t give schools the data they needed to use their resources appropriately to target the students who needed it most such as English language learner students, who were excluded from that data.
Chad Alderman, a co-consultant on the redesign, said the new accountability system will require more schools to examine a greater number of student groups than under the previous system.
“And when more schools have to pay attention to more groups of students, that’s a good thing,” said Board member Andy Rotherham.
Board Vice President Bill Hansen added that “in so many ways, this is such a wonderful opportunity for us to change our system — bring accountability, bring transparency, bring innovation into this conversation.”
Data collection on assessments is underway, and full implementation of the plan will begin in the 2025-26 school year.
Some members of the public who spoke at Wednesday’s meeting were perplexed by the changes, after Virginia’s education system helped the commonwealth earn CNBC’s rating as the top state for business in 2024. CNBC examined Virginia’s K-12 public schools and higher education institutions.
The board also faced criticism regarding the accountability changes from speakers who claimed the changes will increase current inequities for students, require teachers to earn additional certifications to teach accelerated coursework in middle school mathematics, science, history and social science, and require more English learners to be considered in accountability calculations.
English learners are typically excluded because some children are learning English for the first time and may need more time to become proficient in the language.
The board said the new rules would reduce the number of semesters English learners are excluded from the calculations from 11 to three. Under the previous regulations, approximately 35,000 students were excluded.
“Do you know how many students cannot access advanced classes due a language disability, cost or availability?” asked parent Vanessa Hall. “We asked for equitable support for student success; instead, these measures punish schools with too many low income English language learning or disabled students.”
Hall added that the measures “throws them under the bus” and challenged the board to learn a language in three semesters in order to take science and history tests.
Other speakers embraced the changes. Todd Truitt, a parent with children in Arlington schools, said he supported the newly adopted accountability framework, the middle school accelerated coursework readiness factor and changes to give school districts extra credit for students successfully taking Algebra before the eighth grade.
He also pointed to a social media post from former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who supported updating the accountability framework and said that “Lying to parents about how their children are doing academically is definitely the easier path, but it is always the wrong path.”
Truitt added that with the changes, Virginia will “finally live up to its responsibility” to students, parents and communities with “proper disclosure of academic performance data.”
Last month, the board successfully approved its newly designed Standards of Accreditation regulations, separating the existing system because information about the quality of schools or student learning outcomes wasn’t clearly delineated. In addition, the existing system used the process for accrediting schools as an accountability system to “foster” school improvement, instead of fostering the establishment of effective school-level educational programs.
The ESSA plan is subject to revision by the U.S. Department of Education. According to Todd Reid, a spokesman with VDOE, the federal agency will have 90 days to review and approve the revisions to the ESSA state plan.
“The changes they are making are consistent with components of other states’ plans that have been approved by USDOE previously,” Reid wrote in an email to the Mercury.
Anne Holton, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and former state secretary of education, said she disagreed that the new accountability system enhances transparency. She said the previous system was developed in 2018-2019.
She also said the development process of the new system ignored feedback from parents and members of other academic organizations, some who claimed that it was “wrongheaded” and “not fully flushed out.”
“I certainly can’t say that it’s perfect in every way, and I think there are some legitimate improvements that the new framework would make,” Holton said of the splitting of the system, “but I think that [the new system] is fundamentally flawed in a number of ways.”
Holton said many people have said there is an issue with the “honesty gap” — the perceived difference between how students in Virginia fared on state assessments versus national assessments — but she believes the state should address the “support gap” for schools, which has spanned across different administrations.
“That’s what we need to do next,” Holton said.
