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WHAT’S NEW ON THE EDUCATION FRONT?
There’s an optimism and enthusiasm in beginning another school year. Summer provides space for getting much needed rest and doing things not possible with the commitment of time and responsibilities of school schedules and demands. New faces, new buildings, new things to learn, new responsibilities await both teachers and students as well as new requirements, new guidelines and new rules.
Recently Governor Youngkin appointed two new members to the state Board of Education. Meg Bryce, daughter of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, is from Albemarle County and has a PhD in psychology from UVA. Ida McPherson, former president of the Suffolk chapter of the NAACP, has held several government roles, one being her appointment by Gov. McDonnell as director of Virginia’s Department of Minority Business Enterprise. Interesting short biographies of this nine-member board can be found at www.doe.virginia.gov/.../board-members. Appointments to the board are subject to confirmation by the General Assembly. Each serves a four-year term and may be appointed to one more consecutive term.
We thank Dr. James Fedderman, immediate past president of VEA, for granting us permission to reprint this article presenting their perspective on the new Standards of Accreditation just passed by the BOE.
The Virginia Board of Education has made significant revisions to the state’s Standards of Accreditation, fulfilling a long-time goal of the governor’s administration to label more schools as not meeting state standards. The new Performance Framework will greatly increase the weight of raw pass rates on reading and math standardized tests while reducing the emphasis on student growth. According to projections from the Department of Education, the percentage of schools deemed not meeting state standards will soar from 12% to an estimated 61%.
In response to the passage of the new accountability system, Dr. James Fedderman said “Our students, parents, and educators all deserve so much better than this politically motivated accountability system. Sadly, the results of this new system will mislead the public about the true quality of our schools.” The newly elected President of VEA, Carol Bauer, said “Instead of designing a system with practitioners in mind, to improve teaching and push schools to focus on incremental improvements, this new framework will have the opposite effect.” She added, “Today, the academic bar has been lowered, and our accountability system has been revised to meet political goals rather than serve students. Lawmakers and education advocates must work together to fix this disastrous new system designed by private consultants.”
This drastic change is out of touch with reality, especially considering national rankings, including a recent one from CNBC praised by the governor, which rank Virginia as having the top education system in the country. The new system appears politically motivated, designed to propagate a narrative of “failing schools” to undermine public education and promote privatization.
The new Performance Framework will predominately measure student demographics and privilege rather than the effectiveness of teachers and administrators in enhancing learning and comprehension. By de-emphasizing growth, the new approach will mislead parents and the public by promoting schools with homogeneous, affluent student bodies that traditionally perform well on standardized tests. Conversely, it will penalize schools that demonstrate significant student growth but serve students who start further behind due to various educational barriers. This will likely lead parents to make misguided decisions about enrolling their children in schools labeled as “Distinguished,” despite some of these schools offering lower prospects for improving their child’s achievement than alternatives with higher growth rates. Rather than being a transparent and useful tool, the new system will provide inaccurate information about school quality.
This inverted system undermines public trust, creating perverse incentives for school administrators and teachers to prioritize resources only towards students on the cusp of passing their math and reading tests. Furthermore, it fails to offer meaningful state assistance to schools labeled in the lowest ranking category, “Needs Intensive Support.”
Regardless of the political narrative this administration aims to promote with these punitive revisions to our accountability system, the outcome will undoubtedly harm student achievement in the schools that require the most support. Labeling schools as “Needs Intensive Support” without providing adequate support is both cruel and ineffective. When the Board had the opportunity to recommend resources for high-need schools through revisions to the Standards of Quality in the fall of 2023, they reduced recommendations from $2 billion set by the previous Board to a mere $50 million. The Board has shown no willingness to suggest that Virginia should, for the first time ever, provide more funding to schools currently not meeting state standards. Creating a system that labels schools as needing intensive support while avoiding the responsibility to recommend that support is counterproductive.
Information can be found at www.doe.virginia.gov/...standardsofaccreditation as it is updated on the website.
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