School Board Chair Carolyn Pitches joined area school boards from Alexandria, Fairfax County, Falls Church, Arlington, Loudoun, Manassas City, and Prince William County to request an implementation delay of at least one year of the Commonwealth's school performance and supports framework. The statement in its entirety is below.
Position Statement Requesting Implementation Delay of At Least One Year of the
Commonwealth’s School Performance and Supports Framework
Developed by Northern Virginia’s Public School System Leaders
Northern Virginia’s public school divisions educate nearly 1/3 of Virginia’s 1,261,962
PreK-12 students including nearly 33% of the Commonwealth’s students with
disabilities and nearly 60% of students acquiring English language skills. We fully
support a strong accountability framework for our schools and understand its role in
ensuring educational excellence. We believe the Virginia Department of Education’s
Guiding Principle 2: Transparency and access to actionable information is a key to
successful implementation.
In August 2024, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s State Board of Education adopted a
new School Performance and Supports Framework for public schools and districts
across the state. We want to be good partners with the state in our shared mission to
foster the success of each and every student; however, we are concerned that school
divisions have not been provided that appropriate amount of time to address the new
accountability requirements the Commonwealth has established.
The Board of Education adopted the Framework only recently, and well after school
divisions planned, budgeted, and staffed for the current school year, and after students
had selected their courses. One-quarter of the 2024-25 school year has already
passed, and many of the Framework’s measures have still not yet been fully defined
nor has detailed modeling been shared with school divisions. Additionally, the
Commonwealth has yet to identify the types of support it will provide to schools in
need of improvement and secure the necessary related funding.
Because of our serious concerns, we urge the Board of Education and VDOE to
delay implementation of the Framework for at least one year and directly engage
with school division leaders, educators, and families across the state to refine it.
In the spirit of collaboration, we offer the following comments and recommendations
for improvement and we stand ready—starting today—to work with you on these
action steps.
To achieve our shared goal of advancing education in Northern Virginia and in the
Commonwealth, we recommend that the following 5 actions be taken prior to
implementation:
• Reinstate student knowledge growth and alternative measurement alongside
mastery as key Framework components.
Professional educators understand that learner variability is not the exception
but the norm. To ensure access and drive toward success for all students,
effective educators know they must meet students where they are to support
them in meeting their personal academic goals as well as the Commonwealth’s
standards. Mastery measurement that does not build from this understanding
risks demoralizing students, confusing parents and discouraging educators.
Unfortunately, the SOL Mastery-focused model as adopted has short, unrealistic
runways for English Language Learners (3 semesters for Mastery rather than the
current Demonstration of Growth standard), students with disabilities, and other
students who have been historically impacted by interrupted learning or a lack
of access to education. Providing students with multiple opportunities to
experience success improves student confidence, encourages them to take
academic risks and ultimately moves them to academic achievement.
• Fully build out and transparently vet all new components of the Framework’s
calculations, including the underlying algorithms, and provide ample time for
professional, parent and public review, comment and testing.
At present, the Framework is not fully developed, funded, or tested, which raises
concerns about its ability to meet its intended goals.
It’s important to note that several of the new Framework components are
TBD (e.g. the “5 C’s” performance task for elementary and middle school,
advanced coursework in middle school, and high-demand, high wage
CTE offerings in HS) and rely heavily on advanced planning and staffing
decisions which must be made during the prior school year and require
parent engagement and collaboration early on in the planning process.
The Framework requirements are also coming on the heels of multiple
content standard changes during the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years
affecting the majority of the core content areas including Math, Reading,
Science, and Social Studies. Never before have we seen so many
changes required in such a short period of time. Teachers—the key to
successful educational change implementation—have not been given the
essential time and training to successfully incorporate the new standards
into their practice.
Change management takes time. A rushed approach that does not involve all
stakeholders with sufficient time to work through potential challenges and kinks
presents a significant risk of coming to false conclusions which could negatively
impact our students. Parents, educators and school divisions, as well as the
General Assembly, need valid and reliable data—not rushed interpretations—to
make informed decisions about the true needs of our students as we all work to
prepare young people to reach their ultimate goal—preparedness for post-secondary engagement, including college, career, and life.
• Test and validate the fully built out Framework prior to full conversion.
As has been done in the past, provide at least one year in which the old and new
systems are run in parallel to identify anomalies or other issues. We also
recognize that grade level testing by its nature tests a different group of
students every year. We urge you to use a three-year rolling average score to
make determinations of next steps for schools and school divisions. This
method will also allow for a more reliable assessment of our progress in
implementing all of the new standards.
• Clarify and publicly vet the components and intent of any MOU that will be
required of low-performing schools and/or school divisions, and create percentage
tiers based on school division size that would trigger the imposition of any MOU,
rather than straight cut scores.
• Prioritize an immediate increase in appropriated funding for any
Commonwealth school that is identified “Off Track” of “In Need of Support”, as well
as for comprehensive professional development related to the new Framework, for
all school divisions based on their actual number of instructional FTEs. In the longer
term, provide sufficient state funding for the state Standards of Quality as identified
by the 2023 JLARC study.
We stand ready to begin working with you and other stakeholders to perfect the
Framework. Time is an essential ingredient in any educational change. We respectfully
ask that our primary recommendation to delay full implementation for at least one year
be adopted immediately. We offer this in service of our goal to provide excellent
education to all Virginia’s students.