The Virginia State Board of Education voted 7-1 Thursday to change the school accreditation model, creating at least four performance categories to publicly rank Virginia schools.
The new system could evolve into a school rating score indicated by a number of stars or various category labels for schools.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin's administration has long criticized Virginia's current accreditation system, saying it is confusing for parents and lacks transparency. The governor announced that in 2022 he will overhaul the state's accreditation system.
Virginia's current accreditation system designates schools as “accredited,” “conditionally accredited,” or “nonaccredited.” This school year, 89% of Virginia schools were fully accredited and 11% were conditionally accredited.
Others are also reading…
“We need to be clear that what the (Youngkin) administration is proposing here is an A to F grading system for schools,” said the board, which was appointed in 2017 by then-Governor Johnson. member Ann Holton said. Terry McAuliffe and, in 2021, Gov. Ralph Northam (both Democrats) will take office again.
Mr. Holton, a former state education secretary in the McAuliffe administration, is the only survivor of the nine-member board not appointed by Mr. Youngkin, a Republican.
“It may not be completely obvious, as key provisions are buried within a 60-page regulation that was just shared publicly a few days ago and were not highlighted in the presentation, but this is what it is,” Holton said. he said. “To soften the blow, they may be given a label, such as a star, rather than a letter grade.”
Board members said last fall that they didn't like the AF system, but the rules the commission approved Thursday do not prevent the board from making that decision in the future.
On Thursday, Andy Rotherham, a Youngkin appointed director who served on the board from 2005 to 2009 as an appointee of Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, pushed back against Holton's criticism of the system adopted.
He said grades don't have to be an A-to-F system and talking like that is a way to “fire everyone and…start a big political storm.”
“You could call it a blow, but Mr. Holton, respectfully telling the truth is not a blow. It's our duty, and it's a duty we've neglected for far too long.” said Rotherham, co-founder of the national nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners.
The AF School Rating System has been adopted in at least 10 other states, including Florida and North Carolina, but it is generally not viewed favorably in Virginia and was rejected by the state legislature.
Holton cites school racism
Holton said at Thursday's meeting that the system would likely exacerbate racial discrimination in schools, but nearly all of the other board members at the meeting pushed back on her remarks.
“It's not hard to see how it works when you categorize some schools as C, D, and F schools, families, and teachers. Those who can afford it are the most disadvantaged students,” Holton said. “They will try to leave those schools and leave behind their own.” The students are mostly black and brown, and include some inexperienced teachers. Those schools will fall further behind. ”
Mr Rotherham said residential segregation was a problem, but the solution was to stop lying to the public about school performance.
From 2012 to 2015, toward the end of No Child Left Behind, many states implemented rating systems. A federal law signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 and revised in 2015 significantly strengthens the federal role in holding schools accountable for student achievement. Now, nearly a decade after states adopted the new evaluation system, experimental studies are beginning to be published.
Most school rating systems reflect student race rather than quality, according to a new study released Thursday by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Simple measures of school quality based on the school's average statistics are always highly correlated with race, and they are a misleading guide to what you can expect by sending your child to that school.” MIT writes. Economist Josh Angrist.
Rotherham said school choice, which allows families to decide where they want to attend school, is a more logical way to address school segregation.
“If we want to address racism, let's start there. We need to stop treating school district lines as national borders and ensure that only mostly wealthy children can move across them. You can … (and) you can lock poor kids into other school districts,” Rotherham said.
Youngkin has long criticized the state's current accreditation system, saying it doesn't reflect the learning loss and achievement gaps faced by Virginia students and that parents, teachers and local school departments have They have argued that they fail to provide a clear picture of the academic performance of Virginia schools. .
Under the current system, more than half of the students in non-fully accredited schools are black, but they make up only about 20% of Virginia's overall student population.
Critics of the new system worry that a return to a stronger emphasis on proficiency would return the certification system to the state it was in from 2014 to 2016, when it was more racially segregated than it is now. It has said.
In Virginia, schools that are not fully accredited spend less per student on average than schools that are accredited, according to the latest school finance data.
At Thursday's meeting, Virginia Education Association President James Federman urged the board not to adopt a system that would classify schools into such performance categories.
Government concerned that Virginia school district is using Chinese-funded tutoring platform
“Overall scores like star ratings and grades will not provide the level of nuance that parents need to make informed decisions,” Federman said during a public comment period. “Parents can easily be misled by total scores based primarily on proficiency to enroll students in schools with high pass rates but low growth rates.
“As we have seen in other states, this type of total score can also contribute to worsening racial segregation in schools.”
Board member Bill Hansen called Holton's comments about school segregation “offensive” and said there is no better equalizer than school choice.
The changes adopted Thursday are now posted for a 60-day public comment period.
Mastery or growth?
The new model approved by the board puts more emphasis on proficiency scores than on elementary student growth in certification scores.
Critics say the measure does not take into account that young students enter school with achievement gaps unrelated to school.
On Wednesday, the first day of a two-day board meeting, Amber Northern, senior vice president of research at the Thomas B. The idea of claiming and evaluating elementary school growth at 40%.
The board has not yet defined metrics for growth and proficiency, so the debate over which aspects to give more weight to is largely theoretical.
“You could have strict growth standards and then very low mastery standards,” Northern said Wednesday. “Just because mastery says he'll be at 70% is no guarantee that we're holding someone close to the fire, because we haven't even set the mastery score bar yet.”
Last fall, the board held a hearing tour across the state, and a summary of its feedback found “general agreement that growth should be weighted at least as much, if not more, than achievement. It is said that
During Wednesday's school board lunch break, Virginia Secretary of Education Amy Guidera urged the school board to adopt a system that focuses more on proficiency.
The debate over growth and proficiency was contested, but the board ultimately voted 7-1 Thursday to adopt a system that emphasizes 65% content proficiency, 25% growth and 10% readiness for elementary students. I have decided that.
There was less discussion about middle and high school, as it was widely agreed that at that stage students should be evaluated on whether they had mastered the content.
Photo: Fishing around Mayo Island