The state Board of Education approved new standards that will determine how schools are accredited during a meeting Thursday morning.
The new standards of accreditation give more credit for progress made toward reaching benchmarks instead of just hitting a specific target, such as a minimum 75 percent pass rate for the English Standards of Learning exams.
Under the new system, benchmarks have three levels. Meeting or exceeding the standard, such as that 75 percent pass rate, would be Level One. A range “near” the standard would be Level Two; that would be between 66 and 74 percent in the English SOL’s case. Level Two also can be met by improving a certain percentage amount over the previous year, which would indicate that progress is being made.
Level Three, in the case of most benchmarks, is a failure to meet the guidelines for the first two levels.
“Under these new standards, schools will be rewarded for the success of students who are on a trajectory toward meeting Virginia’s high expectations, even if they are not quite there yet,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Steven Staples said in a news release from the state. “This addresses an inequity in our current system, which sometimes labels schools serving children in poverty as failing when in fact students are making great strides and showing high growth from one year to the next.”
The new standards also add new guidelines by which a school will be judged. Drop out rates and a college-, career- and civic-readiness indicator have been added as a factor for high schools, the latter of which will measure students’ successful completion of advanced coursework, career and technical classes and credentials and work- and service-based learning such as internships.
Chronic absenteeism — the percentage of days a student misses, whether they are excused or not — is a factor for all grade levels.
Brian Nichols, chief academic officer for Newport News Public Schools, has been making presentations to the school board about the various factors that make up the new matrix. At Tuesday night’s meeting, he spoke about chronic absenteeism and how the division is working to make sure kids are missing fewer days.
In 2016-17, almost 10 percent of elementary school students missed 18 days — or 10 percent — or more of school, and 15 percent of middle schoolers were chronically absent. Those numbers would be Level One under the system. High schoolers saw the biggest number — just over 17 percent of school missed 10 percent or more, which would fall into Level Two.
The overall numbers last year went down; 5,805 fewer students missed five or more days compared to 2015-16. Nichols said that comes after shifting how the problem was approached.
“For years we chased that we need to get this excused, and what that did was it prevented us from getting to the root cause of why a kid was absent,” Nichols said. “It’s been a big shift for schools, attendance officers, families. It’s not about whether you have a note or not, it’s about if your child is in school.”
The old system gives schools a status of “fully accredited,” “partially accredited” with several different conditions or “denied accreditation.” The newly approved matrix deems schools that fall into Level One and/or Level Two in each category as “accredited.” A school with any indicator in Level Three will be “accredited with conditions,” and accreditation will be denied if a school failed to work with the state to implement a corrective action plan to fix any Level Three factors.
Under the old system, every school in Gloucester, Isle of Wight, Mathews, Poquoson, Williamsburg-James City County and York County is fully accredited this year.
In Hampton, 19 are fully accredited, nine have partial accredited and one was denied accreditation. Newport News currently has 21 fully accredited schools, 12 partially accredited and five were denied.
Officials in both Hampton and Newport News have said in presentations about the new system that it would benefit those schools that are close to full accreditation this year since they could meet the marks for “accredited.”
Schools will be given accreditation ratings next year based on this year’s SOL results under either the old or new system, depending on which one is a more favorable outcome. In 2018-19, the new matrix will be applied with the exception of the college-, career- and civic-ready indicator, which will come into play for the 2021-22 school year.
