It’s a question that keeps coming up: Does Virginia need to invest more in its schools? Or, does Virginia need a school accountability system that’s more transparent, honest and responsive to parents?
The answer is: Yes.
Somehow these two commonsense ideas for improving Virginia's schools continue to be pitted against each other when we have an opportunity to address both.
The spending argument is ultimately up to the General Assembly, whose Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission recently put forward an ambitious set of multiyear recommendations to reform how Virginia funds public, K-12 schools. Legislators are establishing a commission to begin a transition to a better way to finance Virginia schools.
While money matters, we can’t just spend our way to better performance. High expectations, transparent results and a focus on rewarding success and addressing failure are essential, too. Here Virginia has fallen far short — especially for students from low-income households, Black students, Hispanic students, and those with special needs. For example, in 2022 the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that about 6 in 10 of Virginia’s Black eighth graders were "below basic" in math while half of low-income Virginia eighth graders and half of Hispanic eighth graders were. As the federal official who oversees this test told the Virginia Board of Education last year, “below basic” means unprepared for almost any opportunity in today’s economy.
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These staggering statistics are a crisis that should regularly be front page news and top of mind for parents and education advocates. But they are not. Part of the reason is that Virginia lacks an accurate reporting system about school results, and the system we do use obscures what’s really going on. Virginia’s data make it appear these students are doing pretty well, leaving everyone confused about student achievement.
That’s because Virginia schools are evaluated based on our school accreditation system, which has relatively minimal performance standards. And accreditation is based on our assessment system, which now has some of the lowest standards in the country. This Russian nesting doll approach to school performance creates a false impression of success. Virginians have been told we’re at the head of the pack; in practice, we’re falling behind.
For instance, our fourth and eighth grade reading standards are set at that “below basic” level, according to federal data. Meanwhile, the way school performance ratings are calculated for accreditation effectively counts a student passing an assessment the same as a student making any progress at all. Those two, quite different outcomes are collapsed into a “combined rate” designed to obscure what’s going on.
This is why although Virginia saw bigger drops than any other state on national assessments because of pandemic-era policies, the number of schools fully accredited under our system barely changed. Virginia’s school performance dropped to 1990s levels and our reporting system still said about 9 in 10 schools were fine. Hopefully another pandemic isn’t in the offing, but this one highlighted just how detached from reality our accreditation system is. To his credit, Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the Board of Education to create a more honest and responsive accountability system for our schools.
However, Virginia can’t have a system where school accreditation itself hinges on year-to-year results. This is why the state board is creating an accountability system and decoupling it from the school accreditation process. The board is in the process of developing regulations for a new accountability system that will report on school performance in a timely, transparent and accurate manner while keeping a separate and more baseline school accreditation system. The board has been working on this for more than a year, including listening sessions around Virginia earlier this year and again this month on the accountability framework the board adopted at its meeting in March.
Research from around the country shows that well-designed accountability systems focusing on clear measurable standards for proficiency increase school performance and student learning. More importantly, parents simply expect and deserve honesty about how schools in their communities are performing. Some Virginia leaders have said that if we level with parents about school quality people won’t want to live in some communities, it will create an adverse climate for attracting business, or will demoralize teachers. We can do better. Virginians deserve education policies that assume their dignity not their density. And we should have more confidence in our great educators.
Unfortunately, the state legislature is moving the wrong direction. Specific and important funding for new student assessments, better ways of measuring student growth, and a new data system are all ignored in the legislature’s pending budget.
We’re long overdue to level with Virginians about what is happening. It’s a core civil rights issue for Virginia students. And only with an accurate system will Virginians see the improvements educators are making to help justify new investments and also see clearly where we’re falling short so we can make changes. A good accountability system means the true story of student performance isn’t privileged information for a cloistered few but instead is public information so Virginians can make informed decisions about their own children and at the ballot box.
Andrew Rotherham is a member of the Virginia Board of Education. He is a cofounder and partner at Bellwether, a national not for profit consulting organization focused on underserved students. He can be reached at andy.rotherham@doe.virginia.gov.