Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Performance Monitoring Committee Meeting, Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 1h 06m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1119231053?rel=0

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:03] - Good evening, everyone. Thank you all for being here. I'd like to call to order this September 16th meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee. My name is Arvind Estreffi. I'm joined by Ms. Chernoff, and Chair Mansfield is also a member of the committee, but she is absent for this evening.

[00:00:22] I'd like to start with our first item for tonight, public comment, is there any public comment? - There's not. - Okay, seeing no public comment, thank you. Seeing no public comment, we'll move on to the approval of the meeting minutes. I'll go ahead and make the motion.

[00:00:37] I move that we approve the draft minutes from the August 19th, 2025 meeting of PMC. Do I have a second? - Second. - So I've made that motion and it has been seconded by Ms. Chernoff.

[00:00:53] Is there any discussion? Seeing none, we'll now vote to approve the meeting minutes. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That motion will pass unanimously with Chair Mansfield absent for the vote.

[00:01:09] The meeting minutes have been approved. we'll move on to our information items. I'd like to just reorder the items. I think typically we would address the performance monitoring committee roadmap in previous meetings, so we'll go ahead and start with item 4.03, Department of Academics, Performance Monitoring Committee 2025 to 2026 roadmap, presented by Dr. Ellis.

[00:01:38] - Thank you, Mr. Estreffi, and thank you for reordering these. I think it'll just make more sense in the long run. So we took the committee's feedback from the last meeting and our first meeting of the year, and Dr. Singel mapped out topics that are also aligned to the strategic plan.

[00:01:57] And so you can see here for this month's meeting, we will be going over overall discipline data. This is intended to be a follow-up to the full board conversation that took place at a board meeting last month. And then Dr. Grubbs and Dr. Tyler and I will provide some information regarding the 3E framework.

[00:02:19] That's the new state student accountability framework, one component of it. And it is complex and confusing, and we're still learning all about it as we go. And so we'll share that information with you all this afternoon.

[00:02:35] And then we'll come back in October and focus, dig a little bit deeper into discipline data, specifically racial slurs and hate speech data, and the supports that we provide to schools in that area. So Dr. Ellis Williams from DEIA and her team will be here providing that information, and she will also have multiple teams, school-based teams, with us.

[00:03:03] We wanted to highlight at least one school from each level to show how the different levels approach that work. And then Dr. Tyler and Dr. Blakelock will provide you a schedule for the program evaluations for this year. In November, we will then have access to VALS data for the year.

[00:03:22] I'm sorry, for the fall. We'll have a school-based presentation around that data, dig into that a little bit. And we're hoping to have our friends from HRTD provide an update on staffing data. In December, we'd like to dig deeper based on your feedback at the last meeting on EL performance.

[00:03:44] We would like to invite Ms. Rosario and the EL team and her recommendation on a school-based team. Then we'll also include information around family and community engagement. And then in January, recognizing that board committees may change makeup as they flip over in January.

[00:04:06] We didn't project too far out, but we thought a mid-year check-in, again, based on your feedback that you want to regularly come back to certain topics, a mid-year check-in on discipline and attendance data and review the second semester roadmap.

[00:04:23] So that's our draft plan based on your feedback, and we would welcome any additional feedback or recommendations for changes. Thank you, Dr. Ellis. We'll open it up for discussion. Yes, Ms. Sharma. Thank you, Chair Struffy. Thank you, Dr. Ellis.

[00:04:39] I am very grateful to see this. I think it really reflects the things that we've talked about, and it gets me excited about some of the topics. And I have, I don't want to use the word excited, but I am anxious to dig into next month's topic on racial slurs and hate speech data.

[00:04:57] I feel that there's a lot to unpack there. I think it is, although it's a sensitive subject, I feel that I don't really understand what the process is in terms of what happens when an incident occurs, what the follow-up is, what the discipline measures are, different severity levels.

[00:05:16] So I know we only have so much time in each meeting, but I would really like to see some of those things. I'm also really interested in how we categorize different types of racial slurs in hate speech. Are we talking about anti-Semitism? Do we pull racial slurs separately out?

[00:05:33] How do we deal with that? What is the process for responding? And I'm glad to hear that schools are going to be here because I know there's lots of levels of, you know, student-led equity teams as well as, I think, teacher equity teams. So all of that feels big and a little ambiguous to me. So I'm looking forward to digging into that data. And then I spoke a lot at the last school board meeting about the next school improvement plan and really wanting it to be process-oriented. So I see this as a chance for us to look at some of that data and then look at some of those processes that we are implementing and then maybe come back later in

[00:06:09] of year whether I'm here or not and review whether or not that that worked and then have a conversation about how we move forward because I can guarantee that none of us want any of that to be happening at our schools and as we think about Dr. Spence's theme of belonging I can't imagine something that would take away more than living in an environment every day where you feel that that is being targeted so I am looking forward to that conversation I will save a little bit for next time um and additionally when we get to english language learners i know i have been privileged to do the qtel training but i feel like we throw qtel around a lot and i don't know i was wondering

[00:06:47] um if mr streffi or others might be and i could certainly use just an overview refresher on what that is and why it's so powerful and how it's worked um we just had that presentation in cni and it was just amazing and i'm looking forward to hopefully seeing other schools replicate that as well so just taking it out of that acronym and really learning about what the what the core foundations of that training are for the public too because we've seen such success would be an ask of mine thank you thank you I love that thought on the QTEL training as well just seeing some of the success stories just hearing what's come out so far and I also agree I mean I really

[00:07:26] like the topics that are laid out for the rest of this year all of them are top of mind including racial slurs and hate speech i think for all of these whether that's discipline data or racial slurs and hate speech it's for me i'm very curious around the different layers of the different layers in terms of the the administrative layer the school-based layers and seeing maybe what are the possibilities of incorporating some of this data in making accessible to parents and incorporating it in our school improvement plans if it's not there already and just kind of um bubbling it up

[00:08:06] and making it more transparent and visible to the community because when you put attention on something in whatever way you you can um you can focus on it so and and move the needle so the other thing i think about when i'm looking at this schedule is that and as i you know dug into the content of the discipline data like i have i have so many questions and i'm just wondering like How much of a task is it to try to accomplish, try to dig into all of that within one PMC meeting?

[00:08:43] I just want to be realistic. And if there's any way that we can kind of like logically approach it and just have multiple conversations about it and spread it across multiple meetings, just because I don't know that we'll be able to do justice to the discussions.

[00:09:00] So that's the only concern I have about some of these topics. And I'm just wondering, yeah, if we can do that. That made me remember, I think we talked about possibly looking at this like achievement data and having checkpoints along the way with discipline.

[00:09:18] Is that still part of, would that still be part of the vision here? I don't know if that scratches the itch for you, Arvin, or Mr. Streffy, but I think that that was something that had gotten tossed around in the conversation at least. Yes, that's one of the reasons we put it back on the roadmap for January.

[00:09:34] And I'm also wondering, as I'm listening to you both talk, if there will be certain areas of the discipline data after Ms. Gainlin does her presentation that you have more questions around and not to invite them to another meeting, but you're invited to another meeting.

[00:09:52] Maybe we can lift out specific topics where you want to go deeper and incorporate that into the coming months and not necessarily wait until January. Okay. Thank you. And that's all I had. All right, seeing no other discussion, we'll move on to, I believe, it is 4.01.

[00:10:14] Did you have anything else, Dr. Ellis? Okay. 4.01, Department of School Leadership, Overall Discipline Data, presented by Ray Mitchell, Chief of Schools, Dana Scanlon, Director of School Administration, Dr. Ryan Tyler, Director of Research Assessment and School Improvement.

[00:10:34] So I want to make sure I introduce everybody and not miss anyone. Good evening. Excuse me, it's nice to be with you tonight to provide you with some additional data related to student discipline sanctions and also to the reporting of certain violations that students may commit to law enforcement.

[00:10:57] Of course, this follows a presentation on related data that was given to the full school board on August 12th. What we are looking at first is the percentage of unique students who received an in-school restriction sanction as a result of misconduct.

[00:11:20] In the presentation of August 12th, you and your colleagues were provided with data related to total numbers of students who had been assigned over this four-year period with an in-school restriction. When we look at the data via or through percentages as opposed to total numbers, what you're seeing is a range of a low from 2.6% of all students assigned an ISR in-school restriction during

[00:11:51] the 2021-2022 school year, up to a high of 3.2% of all students being assigned an in-school restriction and while our total numbers of students assigned an in-school restriction trended a little bit down during the last school year compared to the 23-24 school year when we looked at percentages it did hold steady. Next we are looking at again the percentage of unique

[00:12:26] students who were suspended from school over that same four-year period. Again in August you were provided with total numbers. As we look at the percentages, we have seen a low of 0.8% of all Loudoun County Public Schools students suspended from school.

[00:12:47] That was during the 2021-22 school year. And that rose to a high of 1.1% of total students being assigned an out-of-school suspension, one or more out-of-school suspensions. Two things really I think are notable about this data.

[00:13:06] One is that the percentage of students who are being suspended from school is really quite low, hovering below 1% and then only going above 1% and just slightly 1.1% during the last school year.

[00:13:24] The other thing that I think is notable is when you compare the rate at which students are being administered an ISR to the rate at which they are being suspended from school, you see that ISRs are being assigned to students at three times the number that students are being suspended from school.

[00:13:46] And I think what that does is it speaks to the fact that our administrators really are doing their best to keep students in school, even if they have to be removed from the classroom for violations. And I think it also speaks to the attempts by our administrators to engage in progressive discipline, where you see for a student who may repeatedly engage in misconduct, what we hope to see and what we often see is that the administrators respond at a lower level of the range of acceptable sanctions for any given misconduct.

[00:14:26] And then over time, if the student isn't responding to those lower level sanctions, then over time having progressively more stringent sanctions being applied. The rest of our data is going to be related to the reports to law enforcement that are made by school administrators.

[00:14:55] I do want to start out by reemphasizing the point that with these reports to law enforcement, our school administrators have very little to no discretion in determining when to report, what to report, and who to report.

[00:15:15] It is very much an if-then equation. If X violation occurs, that violation requires a report to law enforcement. As I shared in our presentation in August, some of that is determined by the Code of Virginia.

[00:15:36] The most serious offenses, the most potentially dangerous offenses under the Code of Virginia require a report to law enforcement. Absolutely no discretion there. And then beginning with the 2022-2023 school year, Loudoun County Public Schools decided that there would be additional violations over and above what the Code of Virginia requires that would have to be reported to law enforcement.

[00:16:09] That's when you see that significant jump in not only the total number of students reported to law enforcement as we went over in August, but also by the percentage of students reported to law enforcement.

[00:16:25] The decrease that we saw between 2023 and 2024, I expect, and I'm fairly certain, that is the result of the fact that the list of violations that were required to result in a report to law enforcement were narrowed.

[00:16:50] There were nine violations that were removed from the list, and simply removing those nine violations, I do believe, is the primary reason that you see that significant dip in those reports from one year to the next.

[00:17:07] We also disaggregated by student group these reports to law enforcement. In this first graph showing the disaggregation, what you are looking at is the percentage of unique students with disabilities, the rate at which those students are being reported to law enforcement compared to the percentage of unique students without disabilities who are being reported to law enforcement.

[00:17:43] You do see that in each of those four years, there is a gap that our students with disabilities are being reported to law enforcement at higher rates and in higher numbers than our students without disabilities. That gap did widen in school years 22, 23, and 23, 24, but you see a narrowing of that gap last school year.

[00:18:07] I do believe, again, that that narrowing of the gap is in large part, if not entirely, attributable to removing certain violations from the list that require reports to law enforcement. As we move on to school level, what this is showing is the percentage of students at each of our various levels that have been reported to law enforcement over the past four years.

[00:18:39] We are seeing that our middle school students are being reported to law enforcement at higher rates than our high school students who are being reported to law enforcement at higher rates than our elementary school students.

[00:18:56] Again, because this is so inextricably tied to the violations and the types of violations that are occurring, this would map to our middle school students engaging in certain violations that require those reports to law enforcement at higher rates than our high school and our elementary school students.

[00:19:25] We're seeing the same gap with our students who are English language learners compared to our students who are not English language learners. You're seeing the same trend. Our English language learners are reported to law enforcement at higher rates than their There are peers who are not English language learners, and you see the gap widening and then starting to narrow in the same year that nine violations were removed from that list.

[00:19:58] And then finally, we're seeing a very similar trend when you disaggregate those numbers by race and ethnicity. This graph is showing us that our black and Hispanic students have been reported to law enforcement at higher rates than our multiracial, white, and Asian students.

[00:20:24] Again, you see that gap narrowing in interesting ways, I think, how it's narrowing, in the last school year when those certain violations were removed from the list of requiring reports.

[00:20:44] Happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you so much. Any discussion? Sure. So I want to be a polite chair.

[00:21:00] So thank you very much for all of this information. I have a few thoughts. I'm curious about the violation types and the offense types. Can you elaborate around what are the trends that we're seeing?

[00:21:18] I have a lot of other comments. Like I want to dig into the ISR piece and the repeat ISR situation. There's a lot of feedback that we get, whether that's from families or teachers around I don't know if the right word is effectiveness of ISRs so so I'll start with just those two sure in the presentation in August we looked at certain types of violations we put violations into buckets so to speak looking at the most significant violations being our substances assaults

[00:21:56] bullying, drugs, harassment, and weapons. And it was a little bit across the board, depending on how those violations were disaggregated. We saw that alcohol and assault violations were trending slightly upwards, but that other serious violations were trending downwards. In terms of lesser violations, I don't have that data. That's data that I haven't looked at. I do think that a next step in the process, particularly as we look

[00:22:36] at the disproportionality in the discipline sanction, is looking not only at how sanctions are applied in a disaggregated way, but how are the violations disaggregated? Because I think if we have a better handle on violations, how often they're occurring, when they're occurring, where they're occurring, and is there a variation in certain violations?

[00:23:06] For example, we looked at those middle school numbers occurring more frequently. At the middle school level, that would help us then target the appropriate supports and interventions.

[00:23:22] - Thank you, and perhaps incorporating that into the services or the EL services and the way that we approach, just incorporating that back into the different groups themselves, and just kind of, okay.

[00:23:37] So, and then your, you know, what you stated kind of jogged another kind of question. I wanted to see if you had any thoughts on if there was data around repeat offenses from the same student, and-- - Excuse me, finish.

[00:23:58] - Yeah, no, that was really it. Repeat offense from the same student, And are we seeing any trends across maybe different subgroups or student groups and what insights you might have? That's data that we can certainly pull and take a look at.

[00:24:13] You know, I think that when you look at discipline data, right, especially what we're talking about is changing behavior. I know we think in terms of sanctions, right, it would be great to get those suspensions down.

[00:24:31] But to get the suspensions down, we have to change behavior. And I think that we have to look at this in terms of changing the behavior of the students and, in some cases, changing the behavior of the adults, right? And by looking at the data and really targeting, in particular, that violation data, I think we can see or start to understand how much and what types of services and interventions and supports do our students need and what types of training and resources and supports

[00:25:08] and maybe re-emphasizing of expectations do our adults need because I think that that's where you actually can do the best work is not only targeting the adults for changing their behavior or only targeting the students for changing their behavior but it's an equation where we have to be looking at both at the same time. And the data should be leading us into being able to target those interventions, whether it's in partnership with our colleagues in the Office of Special

[00:25:43] Education, whether it's in partnership with our colleagues in DEIA, in prevention and intervention services, in threat assessment, etc. I will pass it on to Ms. Chernoff, but I also want to just mention one thing in terms of just the overall approach in the schools and as I've done learning walks with the different groups including DEIA just thinking about the school climate and just thinking about you know our approach to students who you know if they're late to a class

[00:26:20] are they a knucklehead versus hey we can't start without you I miss you in the classroom like that that type of climate um and how we're you know thinking about those types of things and how all of this is so interconnected um i just wanted to point out but i'll pass it on to you mr thank you mr streffi and i appreciate those questions um i think much like achievement this is just like a web of but why and what does that mean and well what are we doing here and um honestly i could deep dive on each individual graph probably for way too long but i'm going to keep my questions

[00:26:56] pretty high level tonight and then hopefully as this conversation evolves in this committee and as we do begin to look more at school climate culture belonging achievement data overlap I think what we should see is a change and if we don't see a change in the discipline data then we're going to have to really go back to the drawing board and say what then because it is really a cycle of what are we doing to support what's working what's not and how do we keep these kids you know on the right side of things so um for me i also had the repeat offenders question i i would like in the future to kind of dig into that a little bit are we talking about all of these

[00:27:34] are individual cases for isr or are a couple of these kids high flyers does going multiple times isr deter you from getting suspended i don't know you know i don't know how all those things tie together um so that would be something i would also be interested in this is purely naive of me But do referrals to law enforcement not trigger discipline like a suspension level at the school level automatically?

[00:28:01] It seems like to me that those two things would kind of be mutually exclusive. So when I look at C3.7% are referred to law enforcement because if you do this, then you go to law enforcement. Wouldn't that also trigger a severe discipline action at the school?

[00:28:16] Or is that totally not true? It's totally not true. okay but let me let me explain it i don't know i think that that's logical right yeah i mean that number confused me i think that that you would presume that but i think that the presumption is based on the idea that we are only reporting the most serious extreme kind of violations that implicate student safety and therefore warrant a report to law enforcement so i just grabbed my

[00:28:52] little sheet of everything that's required to be reported. And I looked at the very first one on the list and it's possession of stolen items. So that could be very serious. That could be a student who is found in possession of multiple credit cards that belong to students and staff members.

[00:29:10] That could be a student who is involved in the theft and sale of school-owned laptops. It could be a stolen Pokemon card. So the issue is that there are some violations that are very broad, that they can be so many things from a stolen Pokemon card up to a theft ring involving school

[00:29:43] property. But if that code is the appropriate code that requires a report to law enforcement by LCPS practice? Because of that, what you're seeing is, again, because of how broadly some of these codes are defined, that schools are being required to report to law enforcement offenses that are relatively minor and from a student discipline perspective might be responded to

[00:30:19] with a warning, a phone call home, a lunch detention. That's very helpful. I appreciate that context um is that kind of information public about what kids are reported to law enforcement for that you just handy dandily held up you knew that would backfire if you showed me a piece of paper i have no secrets it's color-coded um i'm just curious if like i mean probably not okay probably not what's public for sure would be um the reports to law

[00:30:58] enforcement that are required by the code of virginia and to give perspective um during 24 25 last school year had only the ones that were required to be reported to law enforcement been reported we would have been looking at 32 reports okay instead of 4 000 yeah so it's a significant difference i guess that leads sort of my to my next question and then i'll wrap it up i promise

[00:31:33] When you talk about the nine offenses that were removed at that level, were there any policy changes here to then take on those nine offenses and address them, or were they already addressed in policy?

[00:31:51] Related to the reporting to law enforcement? Yeah, I mean, if we're reporting it to law enforcement, if it could reach to that level, I would think if nine offenses are dropped at that level, they've got to be subsumed somewhere, probably. So the...

[00:32:08] The reporting to law enforcement, the policy that we have about reporting to law enforcement, requires that administrators report to law enforcement those violations that the code requires us to report. Our policy then says principles have discretion that you must report what the code requires you to report and that principles may report other offenses.

[00:32:36] That's the policy, but that's not the practice. Somewhere along the way, and it's before my time, so I don't know why the change was made, but before the 2022-2023 school year, the list of required reports that LCPS was requiring our administrators to report to law enforcement, the list of violations, jumped.

[00:33:07] So the Code of Virginia requires – bear with me for one moment. You're good. I appreciate it. There's approximately 60 different violations, okay, maybe more.

[00:33:23] There's a lot. Actually, I can tell you, it's 90. It's 90. There are 90 different violations, and those violation codes are given by the VDOE. So every school division in the state uses the same violation codes.

[00:33:42] The Code of Virginia requires, out of the 90 different violations, 18 must be reported to law enforcement, and one is conditional, if this, then that. Since the 2022-23 school year, LCPS has required 60 violations, 60 of the 90 be reported, 54 required, and six conditional.

[00:34:16] I appreciate that. It's curious to me that our numbers would go down because there's less offenses to report. And then it's sort of like, well, where do those offenses go then? I mean, if they were offenses for – do you understand what I'm asking?

[00:34:31] When you talk about the graph, you said – maybe I'm misunderstanding. Talked about certain offenses didn't have to be reported to law enforcement anymore. So we're seeing that could account for those dips and that narrowing, right? So I guess I just was wondering where those are accounted for. And you're saying they're still accounted for.

[00:34:47] It's just they're not reported to law enforcement. Exactly. So each, yes, each of those offenses is an offense that a school administrator investigated and determined occurred. And so the school administrator is going to implement a sanction and intervention. Got it. But then over and above that, there is also a requirement to report to law enforcement, which is just that it's not a consequence. It's not a, it's not a punishment. It's just something that the administrators are required to do. They have to make that report. And then law enforcement has to decide if they're going to do anything about that, if they're going to pursue, if they're going to investigate from a law enforcement

[00:35:26] standpoint. No, I appreciate that. I've got a lot to learn in this area, so I appreciate it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I know we have one more other topic, but I did want to dig into the middle school data and just trying to think about how to approach this part of the conversation.

[00:35:46] So one thing that I, as I mentioned earlier, I'm really interested in the accountability piece and the visibility of this information. Because when you make a problem visible, you can focus on it. How do we do that across the different level, whether it's at the school level or higher?

[00:36:02] And what is the, at this point, I think it's really helpful for the public as well. We have different positions, right? We have school psychologists, we have counselors, and we have student assistance specialists. How, what does the flow of that look like?

[00:36:18] And what do the other interventions look like outside of like ISR? And how do we, what's our, what's our, I know this is a lot, but maybe how do we approach lowering these numbers and maybe from the perspective of maybe middle schools? I don't know if that was clear, but that's kind of, you know, what I'm curious about.

[00:36:37] So again, I think that brings us back to the idea of you lower the numbers by changing the behavior, right? you lower the violations by getting the students to a place that they're committing fewer violations.

[00:36:56] And if there are fewer violations, you're going to have fewer reports to law enforcement, you're going to have fewer suspensions, you're going to have fewer ISRs. So the real puzzle in it all is how do we change the behavior? And that, I think, is a multi-leveled, all-hands-on-deck approach.

[00:37:13] It is, you know, my office does discipline, but changing behavior is a shared responsibility. So we will have to work in partnership with other offices, other departments, to look at recidivism.

[00:37:31] Do we have any data that shows certain sanctions work, certain sanctions don't work? To look at, and VDOE, for the last, ever since we came back from COVID, has done something I think is an excellent approach, where prior to the SBAR, which rolled out after COVID, schools would implement a sanction.

[00:37:55] They weren't required to implement also an intervention. But now every single time that a violation is founded and it's met with a sanction, it also has to be met with one or more interventions and that has to be documented. So what are, just like are there sanctions that we're using that are more effective than others?

[00:38:14] Are there interventions that we are using that are more effective than others? Are there interventions that maybe are more effective with certain groups, certain age levels? How are we, number one, determining that, and number two, how are we leveraging that? How are we using our functional behavior assessments, our behavior intervention plans, our behavior contracts, our behavior intervention teachers, our behavior coaches?

[00:38:42] How is all of that coming together to support students? How are we supporting our teachers? What training our teachers getting on classroom management, on creating those positive climates within their classroom to sort of prevent the misconduct from occurring through that sense of belonging and other things that have been discussed here tonight.

[00:39:09] How are we training our administrators? How are we working in partnership with our parents? How are we working in partnership with our community partners in, for example, mental health? substance abuse intervention and treatment it's a multi-faceted web and i think you can only affect real change and bend those curves if you're bringing it all together that was really well

[00:39:44] thank you yes just a last quick question i know this chart says referred to law enforcement by school level is the general discipline referrals higher in middle school historically generally too And if that is not something you know off the top of your head, I would love to see that data.

[00:40:04] I suspect that it is. Okay. So I hesitate to share this, but I used to be a Title IX coordinator. Okay. And what was really interesting to me in looking at that data, but you can generalize it across many different buckets of misconduct.

[00:40:22] In the Title IX realm where I worked, year after year after year, we had by far the most reports coming from the middle school, but the most Title IX investigations coming from the high school.

[00:40:41] And it was because you saw more of the behaviors at the middle school, but they weren't the most serious behaviors. So it generated a lot of reports, but not necessarily a lot of Title IX investigation because it wasn't hitting all of the title line bars.

[00:40:59] And I think that that is very true across many, many violations that we are probably seeing in total number greater misconduct in total number at the middle school level, but not necessarily the most serious misconduct.

[00:41:19] Again, it is that web, and you could dissect that data even further. You could look at the different types and then see what the severity is. And just thinking about our conversation, just go ahead, Dr. Ellison, add this to the list. I would love to see the breakout by racial slurs and hate speech by elementary, middle, high.

[00:41:37] So you're giving me all kinds of ideas tonight. I really appreciate this deeper dive. I appreciate seeing the percentages versus enrollment. I thank you for that responsiveness, and I'm sure I'll have more questions along the way, but thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Streffi. Thank you very much.

[00:41:54] So with that, if that is all for that discussion, we'll move on to 4.02, Department of Academics, 3E Framework Data. And this is presented by Dr. Ellis, Dr. Single, Dr. Grubbs, but this is for the public.

[00:42:24] So we got Dr. Tyler, and I think I didn't miss anyone else. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Tyler to kick us off, and I may jump in with some commentary. Thank you, Dr. Ellis. Good evening. So we're going to take you through a few layers of looking at the school performance and support framework, specifically the three E's.

[00:42:46] And we're actually going to unpack how the indices are calculated and also take a look at one particular example. So my esteemed boss, Dr. Ellis, has pointed out that this system, this new system has value, but it has to be unpacked in the right way, in a layered way, to kind of understand it.

[00:43:07] So I'm going to start with, on the next slide, in the school performance and support framework, there's three different views, elementary, middle, and high school. The high school view that we're going to dig into actually presents a different vision of how we look at high schools.

[00:43:24] The premise is that half of a high school's effectiveness is looking at mastery. And you see the assessments listed there in reading, math, and science, and also looking at progress in English language proficiency for English learners. 35% of a high school's effectiveness actually breaks down into chronic absenteeism, a six-year kind of extended graduation rate for applied studies, and something that is called the Ready for Life 3E framework that we'll unpack a little deeper there, and also the traditional four-year graduation rate.

[00:43:57] Whereas in elementary and middle school, you'll see a growth component, and the premise is about elementary and middle schools preparing students for that high school career. High school is about readiness for life and making sure you know the content. And the premise of the three E's, which we'll unpack, is about students being ready for multiple pathways of success.

[00:44:17] So the first item within 3E looks at enrollment, and the premise is that for a student to be college ready, that student needs evidence that they have had, that student has had success in a college ready course, AP, IB, Cambridge, and so on you see listed there.

[00:44:37] And it ranges from everything from a half a point for a C grade in at least one course, all the way up to 1.25 points for earning the equivalent of an associate's degree. And the premise of this is that what students need beyond just the experience in a college-ready course is evidence that there is proficiency and they know they can do college work because they've actually earned college credit.

[00:44:59] And Dr. Grubbs will chime in with wisdom when he needs to in this. So that's enrollment. Employment is based upon the premise of students being ready for the workforce. This has actually evolved in the two-plus years of the development of the indicator.

[00:45:16] it was actually students kind of completing a CTE pathway, and Dr. Grails will give the technical term, but now it's actually earning a work-based learning or an actual credential, all the way up to not only earning a credential in a high-demand field that has a promise of growth and opportunities, but a high-quality work-based learning experience.

[00:45:41] So it evolved from are you taking enough courses and completing them to actually earning a credential, and having a high quality work based learning experience can include everything from internships and more intensive work and support from someone who's actually in the field. So it's a much higher standard for students being ready for employment after high school. And then next is enlistment.

[00:46:07] The idea of looking at a particular assessment of readiness and this particular assessment while it's really linked to the military it's looking at the idea of readiness in the military but but competencies as well everything from earning a minimum score of military readiness of 31 to earning 65 or higher so you see there that the idea is encouraging students to be prepared multiple pathways throughout the two plus years of development of this school performance and support

[00:46:42] framework. The State Board of Ed, if you go through the glorious 120 plus hours of conversations they've had, at least about the development of this, the premise is that in previous generations you found a path and that was enough. This approach is encouraging students to have multiple pathways, multiple experience, evidence in hand that you can do college level work, that you actually have job skills to go out and get a job, and that you have actually considered and may have readiness level for the military. So what it actually produces is that there is an overall

[00:47:19] index that is produced, but there's also the ability to break it down by areas. So while each school, each high school receive an index score that can rate them anywhere from needs intensive support to distinguished, what we've been able to do is to take the unofficial, the unofficial 3E data. It's not going to be released for the public for another couple of weeks. But to look at the three E's more in depth. Next slide. So unofficially before the release if it had all been released

[00:47:54] as of August 29th we would have had 15 of our 18 high schools would have rated as distinguished just for the area of the three E's. That's not their overall index but it's kind of broken down for that and that indicates that we're seeing a very high level of students participating not only in just one pathway but multiple pathways. However as the wife Dr. Ellis has pointed out when you actually break down the data, there's a story within there that it's important for us to unpack, and you see the example. One school would have been on track. We would have had two and needs intensive supports. We're not releasing the information on the schools yet because it's unofficial because they're still kind of scrubbing the data at the state level, and we'll see the

[00:48:34] final results end of September. So this is just a summary slide. As we actually unpack it, and you'll see on our example, we had fewer than 500 students completing the ASVAB in any particular year. And because there are permissions required for sharing the data, we actually didn't have any scores for ASVAB for last year because it's based upon student interest. Whereas in other divisions that Dr. Grubbs and others could tell you about, it's required for students to take an ASVAB assessment in their high school career. So there are high schools throughout the Commonwealth that earn points in that. But the fact that our high schools earn such a high score with no ASVAB

[00:49:13] points counted indicates that there's a heavy involvement and success in getting students into pathways in the other two areas. And this just kind of summarizes the findings. Now, as we start to dig into it, for example, you saw that many of our high schools would have been considered distinguished, would have scored distinguished. There's a difference in readiness level between the overall student population and certain reporting groups. So as you're looking at this, The overall index score just for three E's would have been a 98%, meaning deeply in two distinguished.

[00:49:49] But for English learners and students with disabilities, it would have been much less. What does that mean? We're not having as much success getting English learners and students with disabilities into the college-rated courses, into the industry-recognized credential pathway. And you will see that in more details as we go to our example.

[00:50:08] So I hope you have this up on your screen. You can zoom in on this. This is an actual report from a school. We've removed the identity of the school. But this is to give you an opportunity to unpack this. So we'll go slowly through this. As you're looking at the actual report, this school, and I would say the row, the column that's like five from the right, the number of students in the 12th grade cohort, it's important to look at that because that's your baseline of 364 students in the graduating cohort.

[00:50:43] And the idea is that because you see that there's so many different point distributions and it's possible for, for example, a 12th grade student named Lauren, who is an enterprising student who took advantage of multiple pathways, it's possible for students to get multiple points in multiple pathways and some students get no points.

[00:51:01] So this school earned an overall index of 103 on a base scale of 100, meaning they had a number of students earning above that, like three AP courses, for example.

[00:51:17] Yes, we actually had students earning the equivalent of an associate's degree. So it's a phenomenal score of 103, which would place them as a high-performing high school. But if you scroll to the left, you actually see that of the 364 students, 290 earned enrollment points.

[00:51:36] So not all of them earned enrollment points, 290 did. And as you look at the 103 score to the right, you'll see 74 students in this cohort earned no enrollment points, meaning they did not complete an AP, IBO dual enrollment course to earn credit.

[00:51:54] There's no evidence we have, if you will, that according to the system that college ready. So if you kind of take a while to digest that and you're thinking to yourself, this is why Dr. Ellis responds sometimes the way she does that. That hundred, well, she'll tell you if she does.

[00:52:10] Maybe I'm not reading her mind. But you see an index score of 103. The presumption may be every student must have participated in an advanced courses or a CT pathway. But as you go to the third column from the left, you see 126 of the 364 students earned employment points, industry-recognized credentials with that high-quality work-based learning experience.

[00:52:38] So that's amazing for those students, but because of the way it's scored, you see that there are a large number of students in that far right column one from the right, 238, that earned no points in the CTE pathways.

[00:52:55] There's no evidence that they completed that industry-recognized credential with a high-quality work-based learning experience. And then finally, none of the students earned ASVAB points. So the interesting thing with this is that the school earns and deserves that high index score.

[00:53:14] And there are students in that graduating cohort that did not earn any points in the pathways where we have no evidence they're college ready or that they're workforce ready based upon the criteria. So I will stop for just a moment before I do some more unpacking of the student groups to see if you have any clarifying questions.

[00:53:34] Go ahead, Dr. Ellis. Can I just add an example of what you're about to share on the next slide? So if you keep looking at this table and look down to the English learner row, you see that there are 33 English learners in this 12th grade cohort.

[00:53:52] And if you go back to the first row, you see only 11 of those 33 earned enrollment points. So that's where I've really challenged the team to dig in, because a 103 overall is wonderful, and I don't think it's fair to students or to any of us to stop there, really needing to dig in and understand what all of these rows mean, and not as all as it seems on the surface.

[00:54:27] So the importance of unpacking this, because the public will see that overall index, they may draw conclusions, and as Dr. Ellis pointed out, the index of 36 for English learners, 44 for students with disabilities, indicates that there's a lot of room or there may have been opportunities lost for a number of students.

[00:54:52] And as she goes to the next slide, you see summaries of that across the student groups. So as I hand it off to Dr. Yes. Can I ask a clarifying question before we move on? Sure. You were about to offer earlier.

[00:55:08] Okay, I think I had this totally confused, and I'm sort of having an aha moment for many reasons. I thought it had to be, like, equal parts, like a third, a third, a third. You just have to hit the mark with one of those pieces. So, okay, which we'll talk about again in the end, which I brought up at the full board meeting.

[00:55:29] But, like, this is not only – this is a huge access issue. Like, this is hiding access issues. It's basically rewarding the few, maybe, could reward the few kids that do all three or do multiple things in multiple categories.

[00:55:46] Is that, am I understanding that correct? And then it's sort of shading over some areas where kids might not even have access to those things. And that may not be here. I think our kids have access for the most part. And I would just maybe rephrase the first part of what you said. But I think if we were able to offer those opportunities to all students, we would want them to take them.

[00:56:07] But it's rewarding the school, the overall school score, with students who take advantage of multiple of these options, if that makes sense. And is it fair to say that some of our schools have more of these options than others?

[00:56:22] A hundred percent. Yeah, I mean, that's... Which Dr. Grubbs is going to get to, yes. Okay, all right. I'll hold, but I really thought it had to be like you had to have... You had to hit the marker on enlist, you had to hit the marker on enroll, and employ. So I'm understanding now that it's more of a lever system as long as you ding, ding, ding on at least one.

[00:56:42] Okay, thank you. So you see, based upon that, I'll hand it off to Dr. Grubbs. What are the next steps when, and this is a real school, and we removed the identity, we're going to be unpacking this. And there's been conversations already.

[00:56:58] Dr. Brooks will speak to next steps as far as unpacking this data, not just for last year's cohort, but for upcoming cohorts. and taking action steps. - Thank you, Dr. Tyler, thank you, Dr. Ellis. On the next slide, I'm gonna unpack a few examples. With 3E, I'm gonna use some examples from the employment components.

[00:57:17] Actually, on the next slide, I'm gonna go to. Some of the examples, and I just wanna highlight is we've been unpacking the data, is no two schools are the exact same. They could even have the exact same score, but have two totally different root causes. And so, from an employment perspective, we are starting to meet with schools unpack the data. And so some examples that I will give you is principals are immediately reaching out and they're saying, well, how do I just get my students more credentials or how do I get the more work-based learning? You have to first make sure that they're enrolled in the courses because you need to be a CTE completer, which are two CTE sequential electives. And so our conversations

[00:57:56] are really more starting with what courses are you offering? And then if you're offering a lot of CTE courses, are you offering the second course in the pathway? That's where we're seeing a lot of variation. You might see one high school that has 21 CT courses and a similar school that has 40, right? And that school that has 21 courses, 50% of those might just be the first course in the pathway. And so in some instances, it doesn't even matter if we give that student a credential and a work-based learning experience. If they don't take that second course, that's not going to show up in the data and it's not going to trigger. So a lot of our conversations are beginning

[00:58:33] with the schools. We have several schools even next week where we are meeting with them to look at their enrollment, their CT electives, and we're going to start having conversations around considering what courses for their school make the most sense to provide the students the best opportunities to leave with a high-demand credential and new high-quality work-based learning.

[00:58:57] So a lot of our focus is, again, meeting with principals, unpacking their data specifically, and thinking about those students and those subgroups that we can impact as well. One thing I just want to highlight is, to Dr. Ellis' point, if you look at employment, you go up to 1.25%.

[00:59:15] There are several schools that I've analyzed, and you could have 50% of your students getting the 1.25, and the other half either getting .5 or nothing, and they are essentially washing out. Yeah, and in the data, we really need to start unpacking some of that data.

[00:59:33] We are also pivoting. Just within the last month, the state approved a new definition of high-quality work-based learning. So a lot of this is, in some regards, waiting for the dust to settle to see how we are going to increase opportunities for high-quality work-based learning.

[00:59:50] What I will offer is I think that in our CT five-year pathway plan, we've already been skating to where the puck is going. So a lot of the conversations we've already been having is how do we increase more programs and pathways in schools. And so I think we're going to continue making strides with getting more students' credentials and work-based learning experiences.

[01:00:12] So from an employment perspective, those are some of the things that we're navigating. We're having those individualized conversations with principals to unpack the data. I'll talk ASVAB, as Dr. Tyler spoke to, and I have extensive experience with ASVAB.

[01:00:33] One of the challenges there is that students have the ability to determine if they report that data or not. And so at the state level, the state was looking at opportunities for how do we find ways to automate that reporting. So we are making some progress.

[01:00:49] Heather Ross with school counseling is increasing opportunities for students to take ASVAB. But those test opportunities are limited to 50 to 100 students per test. And so scaling that up takes a lot of scheduling with the Department of Defense, with our service branches.

[01:01:06] And getting those scores back is something that's going to take some time to navigate. But I do think that we have a good plan in with school counseling to increase opportunities for ASVAB reporting. But I think to Dr. Tyler's point, focusing on employment and enrollment are two areas that are within our control at the moment.

[01:01:27] And one thing I would just add is ASVAB, while it is connected to recruitment efforts for the service branches, it really is a career exploration tool at the end of the day. and so a lot of that career exploration we're doing through RISAC and other career exploration opportunities and school links and they're actually based on the exact same personality tests which are the Holland Codes and RISAC so even if ASVAB is on an area that we're growing in I don't think we're doing a disservice to our students because we're already having those conversations and I think prioritizing the right area and actually it's back to your comments

[01:02:01] Ms. Chernoff, where we don't have to do well in all three. We need to focus on, I think, two priority areas at this point that are within our control. So those are a few examples, I think, how we're navigating. And I think bringing up something that Dr. Ellis has mentioned, what is best for students? We understand that some divisions may feel intense pressure because they have high schools that are needs intensive support off track, but individual decisions for individual students and families and what's best and whatever results we get we we know we're doing

[01:02:36] what's best for families not trying to compel folks to take a test for an accountability system so well i appreciate that dr ellis did you have anything else okay so the schedule is that by the end of september the state will release it and one week before they release it we will get the preliminary data so that is the deadline and then i just had a question as you're talking about

[01:03:10] doing what's best for kids um a topic near and dear to my heart something that is pinging now like in my gut a little bit is are there going to be and this is just sort of a rhetorical question but are do we anticipate there being some unintended consequences for certain electives because of this push because we're already hearing from the arts and world languages that you know kids are they have to choose and it's a it's really tough in this area it's great that we have so much but it also pushes them into so much and so we've been having that conversation

[01:03:49] about balance in mental health for kids and making sure they have all of those things so i'd be i'm curious to see if that will also follow um because some of these other outlets that these kids have i mean we call it just being a kid and having fun um i don't know if we do that anymore um i hope we do but um you know i i'm i'm very curious because this all feels very like machine like almost like pump them in pump them out kind of thing and um i know we don't believe in that here at all so i just hope we can caution i was gonna say i pray um we can caution against

[01:04:27] some of that as we progress i i was going to stress the same thing i was saying to under my breath as you all were speaking i was telling trying to tell ms shirnoff that i was like no wonder kids are so stressed you know um but i appreciate you kind of um helping us dig into this and understand the the the data points and the story that's not being told in this framework um and i just want to say how much i don't like that table i've told dr ellis that as well um it's it's you know unless you have someone really explaining it to you it's it's it's so

[01:05:02] hard to just look at as a graphic and you know get the insight from it so yeah and this is this table is how it will be received by schools from BDOE correct okay this is not the masterpiece of the RASI team just put that out yes exactly yeah that's why I made that comment no it was not a RASI material for sure there was something to be said though for the aha moment that I had because I kind of glanced over it when I looked through materials and was like oh some blue some red some green we're good because i saw the like amazing amount of distinguished schools and like

[01:05:38] as you guys started talking i was like oh no like so there was that dramatic effect so not sure that's what you're going for and i and i wholeheartedly agree i mean you've heard me speak before dr grubbs about how we need to engage students around their curiosity and have more of these opportunities available to them and continue to engage families and um show them that these opportunities are available to them, but we also have to be careful of, you know, pushing them, pitching and holing them and pushing them into one direction when we have so many other things.

[01:06:10] And we do keep hearing about the arts and it's just kind of, it just feels really rigid. And maybe- How about three E's and an A, VDOE, if you're listening? Too soon?

[01:06:26] And maybe even misleading, so, you know. Any other discussion? Thank you. Thank you very much. Seeing no other discussion, we will move on to new business. Is there any new business? All right.

[01:06:43] Seeing no new business, I'll now adjourn this September 16th meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee. Thank you all for coming out.

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