Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Performance Monitoring Committee Meeting, Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 1h 5m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1170094087?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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] All right, good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call this March 3rd, 2026 meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee to order. My name is Amy Riccardi, and I'm the chair of this committee, and I'm joined by Ms. Chernoff and Ms. Chandler. Thank you both for being here. The purpose of today's meeting is to work through our agenda items, which include, I was going to ask, do we have any public comment today?

[00:00:20] We've been 0 for 3 today, so far, or 0 for 3 so far, so all right. we have two information items this afternoon from the Department of academics on instructional framework and from the Department of School leadership on discipline data so we'll be going through there before we get to our first item do we have we need to do approval of the minutes from a February 18th many meeting does anybody have any changes or adjustments nope I've seen then is there a motion to approve the minutes I move to approve the draft

[00:01:00] minutes of the february 18th meeting second great thank you both so it has been approved and seconded to approve the meeting minutes from the february 18th meeting if there are no objections i'll entertain a motion to we just did didn't we just did that yeah there we go um all those in favor say aye great aye so it is um approved we have approved the meeting minutes from the february 18th meeting are there any adjustments or changes to the agenda as it is so far nope great then we'll

[00:01:34] move into agenda item 4.01 the department of academics instructional framework presented by dr ashley ellis and mr jeff rounsley and oh mr o'brien as well good afternoon um we're excited to be here tonight to talk about the instructional framework and i'm joined by chad o'brien as well who's gonna talk a little bit about some of the data that we've been able to collect so far from the instructional framework and what it can reveal to us about what's happening in our classrooms and the state of teaching and learning in LCPS.

[00:02:09] I know we have some new members on this committee and so I just wanna take a moment to give a very high level overview of our instructional framework and the purpose that it serves for our division. It really is a key part to, I think, to the strategic plan on the next slide around the idea of our empowered students and making sure that all of our students have access to really high quality instruction that helps them grow and thrive in our classrooms.

[00:02:42] On the next slide is just a few ideas around what is an instructional framework. And so the instructional framework is our shared vision of effective instruction. We implemented this in the fall of 2024 and it really is a collaborative work among our school leaders, our principals, our students, our teachers, members of the central office as well, but all of us trying to come together to articulate what exactly we want to see in the classrooms in LCPS.

[00:03:05] It's student-centered. It is meant to be across all grade levels and all content areas, K through 12, and to kind of articulate a set of core principles around teaching and learning. And we really want it to be a foundational piece that drives daily instructional and assessment practices. It's not meant to be shelfware.

[00:03:21] It's not meant to collect dust. It's meant to be with teachers in their CLTs and helping them hone in on exactly what kinds of instructional practices best suit their students. So the instructional framework has several layers, and the first one are what we call our key components.

[00:03:38] And the key components are just the basic building blocks of teaching. For us, it's student-centered, design, engage, and assess. From there, we have teacher actions, and those teacher actions are the behaviors and actions we want to see from our teachers every day in every classroom, regardless of content, regardless of grade level. The reflect and respond questions are meant to be coaching conversations. They might be questions that teachers ask each other in a PLC or CLT. It may also be the kinds of questions that an administrator might ask as a follow-up to an observation or an instructional coach might use when working with

[00:04:16] teachers, but meant to guide teachers in some self-reflection, thinking about their classroom practices. And finally, we have student actions. And the idea of student actions are that if we implement our teacher actions at really high levels, if our teachers are doing this on a consistent basis, then what exactly will we see from our students? What kinds of observable behaviors will we see from our students in our classrooms? And really, the instructional framework tells us a story around what we believe high quality and effective teaching and learning is.

[00:04:49] And so when we design for learning intentionally, when we gauge our students authentically, and we assess progress purposefully in a supportive student environment and when we give teachers the tools that they need to reflect and respond to those processes continuously then growth will happen for every teacher and student in LCPS not just about student growth but also about our teachers honing their craft and having the professional learning they need to grow in their practices as well. So I'm going to turn it over to Chad to talk a little bit about some of the work we've done to align the instructional framework to our evaluation practices and some

[00:05:23] of the data that we've been able to gather from that thank you Jeff is this coming through yeah thank you all for having me here tonight as Jeff said I'm Chad O'Brien the supervisor of performance management and this collaboration started well over a year ago and it was a very powerful thing to get teaching and learning and HRTD working hand in hand for if this is what we say teaching and learning should look like k-12 in every single classroom then this is how we want to provide feedback to our teachers and support their growth in supporting every single student like

[00:05:58] Jeff said that aligns with our goal to exemplary staff and we have this tagline and talent development that is your success is our mission and we firmly believe that that if we have an exemplary teacher in every single classroom in Loudoun then our student achievement will go through the roof as well you probably know John Hattie's work that's the meta-analysis of tons and tons of factors. There was, I believe, 138 factors, and teacher collective efficacy was the top at 1.57 of an effect size. And so that's why this work is so powerful, because we want to

[00:06:33] empower every single teacher. It was a year-long process, like I shared. If we're changing evaluation processes and feedback for teachers, we want to make sure we have every voice, every perspective, every expertise in the room. And so it started with collaboration cross-departmentally, led into focus groups of principals and assistant principals, teachers and specialists, so that, again, all those voices were heard and what changes might be made.

[00:06:59] And then finally, review from Department of School Leadership, HRTD Senior Leadership, and Cabinet to ensure the changes that were made were approved. And lastly, professional learning in July and August to ensure that our teachers knew what the target was and that our school leaders felt empowered to how to provide that feedback.

[00:07:17] As I said before, the strength is the connection between the instructional framework. If this is what we believe instruction should look like K-12, then this is how we want to provide teachers feedback in alignment with what we're required to do under the Code of Virginia, which is the eight standards and 64 non-exhaustive indicators.

[00:07:36] That was a big charge, but our principals, assistant principals, and teachers took it on head-on and were amazing. And for transparency and clarity, they, along with us in the Office of Performance Management, created a crosswalk document that was open and transparent for all of our leaders and for all of our teachers to see where the instructional framework, those 17 teacher actions, align to the eight standards that are provided to us from the state of Virginia.

[00:08:07] Lastly, one of the most powerful things, like Jeff said when he teed up my part, is for the first time and as far as I can remember as a leader in Lauda we have quantitative data from teacher observations to go with the typical qualitative data that's valuable for teacher growth but this quantitative data can lead to really powerful leadership decisions that can be made as a school and division-wide you'll see on the next slide the what a one-pager would look like school principals have access to this in a much more dynamic way but there are things that

[00:08:42] come out of this data. We can identify trends across the division per school. We can look at targeted support, what individual teachers or what CLTs or what schools need support with implementing the instructional framework. It can really facilitate that coaching conversation between a principal and a teacher grounded in what we believe in the instructional framework.

[00:09:04] And lastly, allows all of us as central office leaders to monitor progress, look for ways we might need to shift or re-strategize supporting our teachers. So far, we are doing amazing, the highest that we've done in many years. We have over 5,000 teacher observations completed as of February 19th when the data was pulled. There's only three strengths listed here, but there are tons. It was an overwhelming, really powerful view of what our teachers are doing in Loudoun County. They are committed to students, providing belonging, caring environments,

[00:09:40] high expectations. They're really implementing strong instructional practices and strong rigor that is student-centered, and they're also engaging students in literacy and meaningful learning that students can connect to. We also always look to improve in Loudoun and in schools in general, and some opportunities that came up from the data as of now. Some are strengthening student ownership through goal reflection, revision of their work, and then flexible pathways for students that might need scaffolding or enrichment and with that I'm gonna turn it back to Jeff and see some student action data that we get so in the same

[00:10:16] way that we we used our teacher actions to modify our observation and evaluation practices we've done the same thing with those student actions that I referenced earlier and provided schools with some baseline walkthrough tools to help gather data on what they're seeing from their students in their classrooms every day so on the next slide we have the baseline tool which is really helpful to help schools collect baseline data to focus their efforts and to see where there might be some room for school improvement goals or growth to target professional learning and support and to strengthen our division support as well to think about how we here and this building can support the professional

[00:10:55] learning needs and the school improvement goals of the teachers in every classroom and LCPS we also have provided schools with some targeted walk-through forms, so if there is a specific teacher action or student action that a school chooses to focus on, they can really hone in on those particular goals and craft a walk-through form or a tool that's really helpful for them for their specific purposes. But we have asked schools to start with the baseline tool to help us gather some really robust data around what we're seeing from our students in our classrooms every day. To help us do that, we've done some learning walks at both the elementary and secondary level, so these schools that are listed here are schools that have participated in our learning walks.

[00:11:34] The learning walks are made up of principals and school leaders from across the division, representatives of our instructional framework team, representatives from our professional learning office. We go and visit several classrooms across the school and different teams and use that baseline tool to gather data on our student actions.

[00:11:52] And so those are reflected in some of our walkthrough tools as well. And we have schools that have just kind of taken this on as something that they find of value to gather data about their own school as well. but we've been out testing this and making sure that the information we're collecting really is reflective of the data that we're seeing in our schools.

[00:12:12] So you have a link here, and it was also attached in BoardDocs tonight of a one-pager for elementary, middle school, and high school to see what the results of our student walkthrough data has been so far. And what I love is that these strengths and opportunities that come out of these student actions match up almost exactly with what Chad just shared about teacher actions.

[00:12:33] And to second what Chad is saying, that our teachers do amazing work every day. And when we see teachers doing these teacher actions at a high level, we see it translating to our students as well, which is really encouraging, I think, even for these areas of opportunity that we have, that with additional support or maybe additional clarification, we can help teachers close some of these gaps that we're seeing as well.

[00:12:55] So strong classroom cultures, upwards of 80 to 90% in our student walkthrough forms, Frequent opportunities for students to apply learning and make connections. It's very similar to the kind of rigorous classrooms that Chad described as a strength that we have so far.

[00:13:11] And again, the same opportunities for growth. How do we help students reflect, set goals, use feedback to make their work better? And how do we equip teachers with the tools they need to meet the needs of their students where they are? Those are come out in both of our teacher action and student action data as a point where we can probably grow and make some improvements in the support that we're providing to our teachers and schools.

[00:13:35] So just a few next steps that we're considering on the next slide. One of the things we're talking about right now is the connection between the instructional framework, school improvement and professional learning. If the instructional framework can help us identify some core values and data that we're seeing in our classrooms, then the school improvement process can help us take that and help our school set goals for improvement and we should have professional learning that's aligned to that, that how we can help schools meet these needs, and the articulation of those teacher actions and student actions is a key part of helping us design professional learning that supports the work that's happening.

[00:14:13] And we're gonna have a team that is gonna take you on a much deeper dive into all of this work that's happening right now at the March 10th work session. Our principals went through a version of this today, and there was lots of positive feedback, and we wanna share with you as well the process that our schools will be following as part of the school improvement process to identify some areas of need and to align professional learning and goal setting around that.

[00:14:37] So that is all we have for this evening and happy to take any questions that you might have. - Mr. Carty, if you don't mind, I have one more thing that I wanna add. So am I correct, Jeff and Chad, that the evaluation, that the walkthrough tools are not required to be used just yet?

[00:14:55] These are optional tools or have we required them? - We have required the teacher action information that Chad shared. the student walk-through form that I'm talking or that I shared about has been either a school participating in a learning walk or taking that on as their own as a data point that they might value. And we know there's lots of other data that schools use as well. So this can be useful for them or they may choose to collect data in other ways as well. Awesome. Thank you. And I just want to add that we had our all-county principal meeting today and one of the sessions was about the instructional framework and connecting it to the school improvement process and I was only in

[00:15:35] one group we split them into smaller groups so maybe others can speak to the conversation in other groups but the conversation that I was in centered on the data that you have in board docs and how useful it will be to principals in working with their leadership teams looking at their school improvement goals looking at their student achievement data and really honing in on particular focus areas in the instructional framework and really tightening up their school improvement goals and just the kudos to I can't say enough positive things about these two teams working together to develop that walkthrough tool the data that principals now have and will have as

[00:16:14] they continue to do those walkthroughs is is really powerful and something that we've we've never we've never been able to crack that nut before so just huge appreciation to teaching and learning and HR for this collaboration. Great. Thank you guys so much. This is really fascinating.

[00:16:33] So it's always such good. It's just always such good information. I don't even know where to start, but I know Ms. Chernoff has questions or thoughts because it wouldn't be a meeting without them. So go for it. I think I'm okay with this reputation. I have so many, I feel like Dr. Ellis, You summarized a lot of my sentiments as well.

[00:16:58] I feel like having been in this division, at the division level and then at the school level, I just felt like for so many years we were, like, nibbling around the edges of this. And we were hitting on some really great best practices across different departments. And different people were focusing on different things.

[00:17:15] But then it sort of became this narrative of it's just one more thing. It's just one more thing. And so I'll be honest. Like, when I got on the school board and that was sort of when the instructional framework was sort of in its early phases, I was just like, oh, no, one more thing. Like, honestly, I was like, this is not going to sit well.

[00:17:33] And I just, I have been proven completely wrong. Like, I just feel so grateful for the efforts of the collaboration and the team and involving teachers and student voice and parents at the ground level to kind of roll this out. And I really feel like you took, like, the greatest hits of all the things we were doing and you grounded them here in this framework, which is what an instructional framework is supposed to do.

[00:17:58] And I'm just, I'm really proud of this work that LCPS is doing. I'm kind of envious that I'm not doing it alongside the educators in Loudoun because I think this would have really helped me fine-tune my own practice in so many different ways. And I really feel like it's just a coming together and sort of a unified way to approach how we, you know, tackle this very amazing thing that is teaching all these unique little ones that come to us or big ones that come to us each and every day.

[00:18:27] So just overall, I'm just so impressed with the journey that this has been on and where it's come from. and I feel deeply personally connected to parts of it because it really does aid itself to the work that I was a part of and just really streamlining it.

[00:18:45] So I don't think it will collect dust, and I'm really glad for that. And I see when I'm in schools, teachers are talking about this work. They're talking about it in their CLTs. The principals are talking about how it connects to the school improvement program, and it feels like that missing piece that we have needed.

[00:19:02] bring along the data and I'm like oh my gosh this is so great so I didn't realize we would have data this quickly from the walkthroughs and I find it very fascinating and interesting and I loved so much that the student strengths and opportunities aligned with the teachers like that just makes sense and that means that the tool is working for us and it means that the tool will continue to help hone in those areas that we need to strengthen I have a couple of questions you mentioned that there's division level walkthroughs so those were the schools that you've highlighted here but then you've also talked about schools kind of taking this on is this data representative

[00:19:41] of all of those things or is this data representative of just the division ones that you've done uh that data is just representative of the division ones okay and so that is kind of a point of attention like we want this data but we also know that schools have specific needs and context so we have asked all schools to at least start with that form yeah um and then as they kind of gather some data around their school and they may have a particular focus that they want to hone in on um that they can take that and target that in a specific walkthrough form but the drawback to that is we don't really have as much insight into that data yeah um but it also kind of serves

[00:20:17] the the specific need of the school and and i do want to shout out that uh this has been a great collaboration with chad but those forms and everything would not have been possible without the work of Razzie, with Dr. Tyler and Dr. Blakelock back there, who did help us build that student walkthrough form. And so this has really been such a collaboration across many different offices. But to answer your specific question, that does just cover what was collected through the baseline walkthrough form. Okay. And so my follow-up to that is, and of course, amazing work as always, Dr. Tyler and Dr. Blakelock. I feel like I sing your praises enough, so we'll give

[00:20:50] another one um my follow-up to that is then is the plan to just continue to chug through i mean there's a hundred schools so it's a lot that would be a lot of data you know and it would be interesting to me what the plan is and is there some thinking about clusters and you know different populations and alignment and are we seeing trends in certain demographics i mean we could go on and on in the data pool but is there sort of a mapped out plan for how we're approaching more walkthroughs so that form um is available to so any school could filter to any other school okay and you

[00:21:29] can filter down into content levels as well so you can see how english is doing a specific school or our content offices here can look at english for just their particular areas so there is some ability there to gather some insight and really i think what we're trying to do right now is this is a new process and so we did kind of just open it up to these learning walks and to some schools that took special interest in it I think my hope after our presentation today and schools kind of seeing the power that comes from this is that we would have more schools using this next year we do have some plans at our Lee Loudon event in the summer to really stress this and talk about

[00:22:05] how this could be useful to use these walkthrough tools we launched these tools after the start of the year and I'm really excited to see if we can do some really targeted learning in the summer when our principals are gathered for lead loudon and they see through the school improvement process and what we did today that we might have even greater buy-in next year and more schools using this as a tool that that they might deploy okay I have one more question here that's okay chair and then just the well actually it's kind of twofold so one is what I guess the follow I mean I'm not trying to create more work for you I'm really not but what is sort of is there going to

[00:22:43] be a plan for like a baseline threshold that you're looking for to like deploy supports because what I envision happening much like it happened I think with the PL walkthroughs personalized learning for those listening was once we saw the areas of need then people wanted support so how do we envision that sort of playing out especially if we're seeing trends across two areas I would imagine that could be some high level PD across but as individual schools come in are there going to be some thresholds that say, hey, you might need some support for literacy coaching, or maybe

[00:23:18] we need to send in, you know, more math resources, or whatever that may be. So I don't want to, I don't want to spoil the March 10th work session presentation, but I'll say this, that I'll talk about my own experience as a principal, that when I was the principal of Willard Middle School, we had some times where we were, we had some identified issues around special education reading, and I am not a special education teacher, I was never a reading teacher, and I don't know how to respond to that necessarily, just on my own. But what I found most helpful was sitting with those experts who knew that, and to hear from them around what would you do? If you were the principal of this

[00:23:55] school, what would you do? And that's what we've been engaged in over the last year or so, is working with these diverse groups of experts across some of these areas that we see in the instructional framework, and having them map out for us what are the most useful strategies and resources available to help you so that a school could basically have that conversation with the experts in the room special education el our content offices our principals who have been successful in this work and see what are the most useful strategies and resources available at your disposal when you are trying to focus in on a particular thing and on march 10th we're going to delve into that in much greater detail but that's a very high level answer to what you just

[00:24:33] asked i love that and i would love even to see i mean we did a lot of work vertically when we were in elementary school, you know, working across the grade levels to support each other. You know, this is what's coming. This is what we're doing foundationally. I mean, I see some real areas of strength across elementary, middle, and high. I see some trends, but I see some areas where one is weak and one is not. I would love to, like, dive into that, too, and see if there's some vertical supports that we can glean from one another, because, I mean, teachers are their best teachers, right? So, I would love to see work around that, too. I'm sure you've probably already thought of it, and I will yield to my colleagues now thank you all right mrs. Chandler thank

[00:25:09] you madam chair and thank you so much for this very engaging presentation I kind of want to walk through it from a parent's perspective and sort of take a layman's look so essentially at the beginning of the year everybody got the framework right so we set a table set set a baseline for what teaching should look like in LCPS and then throughout the year principals have been using the teacher instructional observational tool to perform observations and I'm thrilled to hear that five thousand have been done as of February and so that is

[00:25:45] standard and then the walkthroughs and the learning walks are available if somebody wants to do them but as of right now they are an ask if you need it tool yes and you know walkthroughs have been in learning walks have been a standard part of our practice for a long time right I think right now different schools different departments might have their own form and really what the instructional framework gave us an opportunity to do was to hone in on on what exactly we would want to see when we walked in the classroom so that form that we shared has been used many times in the learning walks and

[00:26:22] there are also other things happening in the division that is providing schools with data as well that's great and so then in terms of how a teacher would engage so the teacher instructional observation tool what does that look like could you tell me a little bit more about how a teacher would engage with that sure I can take that one so that form is the required observation forum that is under Virginia code that states observation has to be part of the evaluation process so while I'm really proud of the 5,000 I would love to say it was me but it's required by law but we are very

[00:26:59] proud of our principals and assistant principals for their compliance with that it's it's been phenomenal this year but the teacher would experience that through power school perform so typical to how an observation may work I may go see my teacher I provide them feedback both verbally in a meeting in a post observation meeting and through the forum through power school perform and then that's maintained in their electronic power school file they can comment on it it can be a two-way conversation that's really powerful about where the strengths and opportunities for growth were I love

[00:27:33] Honestly, the teacher instructional observational data is going to enable teachers and principals to work together to improve performance. That really appeals to me. I'm just curious, how will other data that we have access to intersect with this data?

[00:27:54] So, I mean, in terms of grades, SOL scores, could you tell me a little bit more about that? So I think we talked about this today with principals, and this was something that came up for them as well. This is one data point, and we know our schools are really complex places and operate in different contexts, have different pressures, different accountabilities.

[00:28:17] And so we never want to say that this one data point that we've given you, these walkthrough forms or the teacher observation, should be the main thing that you use. It is an additional point to give you some insight into what's happening around teaching and learning in your schools, and there's many other ways to do it. You mentioned grades, SOL scores, WIDA scores, climate survey data.

[00:28:36] There's lots of things that schools do. And hopefully all of that is taken into account as schools think about what their school improvement goals might be and what kind of professional learning teachers need. So this is not the only answer, but we hope it is a way to give some additional insight into schools to think through teaching and learning in their schools and recognizing that there's lots of different ways that schools might approach some of this work.

[00:29:01] It's great. Thank you. You both asked some really great questions. Thank you for the clarification. And I appreciate Ms. Chandler kind of walking through this from a parent's perspective because I needed that reset on the context. So I appreciate that. Just a couple of questions for you because it's really interesting.

[00:29:18] So when you're talking about the opportunities and them being aligned between the students and the teachers, so what are some of the ideas or thoughts about those opportunities, especially around the goal-setting piece? We saw a little bit of that with the tracker form.

[00:29:34] We saw at Sterling Middle School in reading scores, and the students are given their SOL scores and then mapped to that, and they have that right in front of them. But what are, have you guys given any thought yet kind of what the kind of action items are on that one? And I'm going to just tag that on with the second one, which is the expanding the flexible learning paths.

[00:29:52] But I think the one for me is the relevant learning experiences. We see that at the college level, at Mason a lot, and one of my big things is that I don't teach a class that's grounded, well, I teach a class that's very grounded in what's actually happening in the workplace right now, not necessarily the theory that gets taught in a lot of other classes, and so I guess is that kind of what we're talking about here, about the relevance and learning experiences, that they're relevant to what's happening in the world now versus it being theory?

[00:30:25] I think it could be that, and I also think relevance can come from students' backgrounds and experiences, a connection to make the learning meaningful to them. or I think it could be an application to a real world context as well. There's lots of different ways that you would approach that.

[00:30:43] And again, like I know we keep talking about the March 10th presentation, but I think one of the things that's gonna come up there is something that we call framework focus areas. And to say that there are themes that are we through the instructional framework, through lines that a school might choose to focus on.

[00:30:58] And any one of those teacher actions, like we know teaching is way more complicated than that one teacher action. And to enable that to happen, there's probably other things happening as well. So when you talk about relevance, we have one of our focus areas is about authenticity. And that would be kind of a set of resources and professional learning tag to help schools think through how do I make this learning more authentic for students, more relevant to their background, to their interests, to their needs, to their strengths, to a real world application.

[00:31:26] And so we don't have enough time to talk about focus areas tonight. You're gonna hear a much deeper dive into that. but there are themes that emerge from this instructional framework and we wanna help schools and support those because we know it's very holistic. It's not just one teacher action that allows you to create an authentic classroom.

[00:31:45] And your other question was around ownership. And even today in the principal meeting, we heard some talk about this. So there was a principal who was reflecting on some of those low numbers around ownership at the middle school level and our goal setting at the middle school level and said, we do too much to help, to set goals in Lexia.

[00:32:03] We should enable kids and teach kids how to do that on their own and think about how to set goals and what goal would be meaningful to them. So there's just a very short example today of a principal seeing that data and starting to reflect on how they might structure things differently at their school to meet that specific need and help support students at getting better at setting goals and monitoring those goals.

[00:32:26] - Yeah, I love that idea. I would just say one thing about that, And in our practice, we have an assessment tool that we use, and it looks at people and the way they like to take action and make decisions. And with children, too, it's really fascinating.

[00:32:41] But the reality of it is that children with different types of, in our case, assessment results or personalities would organize and do goal setting differently. It isn't a one-size-fits-all. And so I'm excited about the idea of goal setting, but I just want to make sure that we do it in the right context, that every child has a very different way of liking to set those goals and then how they're going to go about achieving those goals and tracking it.

[00:33:08] And, you know, as someone who has four kids, I can tell you there are four ways in my household to do goal setting and tracking, and they're not the same for sure. So, yeah, I would love us to be able to do that because I think it's really important too, and I think it's a great way, a great executive functioning skill in many ways too.

[00:33:26] It definitely translates into real life. So thank you guys. So when is the next time, is there another round of these, or is this just an ongoing data collection piece? Ongoing, okay. Thank you. Ongoing. So principals will continue collecting that data in advance of writing final evaluations at the end of the year, so all data will help inform that.

[00:33:50] And our walkthrough tool is open, ongoing. We talked to principals today about gathering some data, using it in preparation for the work they'll do around their school improvement goal setting later this year and into the summer so it will be available and open and hopefully continue to be used great well so we're not going to let the cat out of the bag before march 10th but thank you guys so much for this i'm looking forward to it it'll be really great thank you guys so much thank you great we'll move on to our next topic which is 4.01 department of school leadership discipline

[00:34:23] data by our chief of schools ray mitchell thank you so much for being here thank you good evening So, I'm going to present a few slides on our student discipline data.

[00:34:38] Are you going to draw for me, Dr. Ellis? Next slide. So, for the purposes of this presentation, we are going to look at incidents approximately for the first 90 days over the past four years so that we're comparing apples to apples.

[00:34:55] We will look at some suspension data, data disproportionality, and then some focus questions at the end that we will be presenting to SBAC. Next slide. Nope, there was one before that.

[00:35:13] Thank you. That's okay. So these are a couple of terms that are used when discussing student discipline. So an office discipline referral, or ODR, is what is used to document behavior and can be completed by a staff member.

[00:35:30] If an administrator acts on the ODR, it becomes recorded as an incident, and that is what we will focus on for the purposes of this presentation. At times, incidences can result in sanctions or suspensions, so your sanction is your response to the incident.

[00:35:48] Suspensions can be short-term, long-term, or in school, which is often referred to as ISR. We will also look at instances of disproportionality, which is the over- or under-representation of student groups when we look at discipline. As we place a focus on reviewing different types of data, we recognize that student discipline data is an integral part of the work with multiple departments involved.

[00:36:15] Collectively, we recognize that we need to have a multidisciplinary approach to looking at discipline data and determining a focus on what is occurring, what may lead to the behavior, what our response to the behavior is, and what we will do to address next steps for prevention and intervention.

[00:36:35] Next slide. So for this slide, there are, again, the number of incidences within the first 90 days for each of those years presented. So the gray bar that you see is the number of incidences, and then the orange bar is the number of students that are involved in those incidences. So the reason why you might see a big gap is because you can have multiple students involved in the same or multiple incidences. So you can have one student that is involved in five different incidences. So that's

[00:37:12] why you see the difference between the two bars. Next slide. So this graph represents the percentages of students that are involved in incidences by race and ethnicity. Next slide. So for this involves some risk ratio, and I will turn it over to Dr. Tyler to explain risk ratio. Thank you.

[00:37:41] Good evening. So when we're considering the fair and equitable treatment of different groups of students. We present the idea of proportionality, meaning if one particular group of students, if 10% of that particular group A receiving incidents or recorded behavioral incidents compared to group B, which is also a 10%, you have proportionality. When you see disproportionality where one group is being either identified for behavioral incidents or suspensions at a higher rate, disproportionality results in differential treatment. And if it's not explained by the actual

[00:38:20] behaviors of the students, the Office of Civil Rights and other legal organizations may draw a conclusion that there's unfair or unequitable or unfair treatment of student groups. And then you see on this particular slide, the previous slide had the percentage of students of incidents.

[00:38:36] And when you see Hispanic students being compared to all other students, the risk ratio is 1.62 for Pacific Islanders, 1.61, meaning there is a higher risk of Hispanic students being identified for behavioral incidents compared to all other students.

[00:38:55] And when we see the threshold over 1.5, it gets into an area of concern and 2.0 or higher, two times higher risk gets into an area of unfair, unequitable treatment.

[00:39:11] And that's where the Office of Rights and other organizations over time look into that to determine if there is, again, unfair, unequitable treatment. So we see disproportionality for Hispanic and Pacific Islander students compared to all other students.

[00:39:55] And as we continue the theme of looking at proportionality, fairness, we see that there's increased disproportionality for English learners, students of disabilities. Again, sometimes we look at pass rates and we'll see a pass rate overall and we'll see the pass rate for a particular student group embedded within that overall pass rate.

[00:40:15] That's different. That's an index. we're actually comparing English learners to all other students and we see we're approaching disproportionality of two points or higher two times higher for both groups so similar to the one of the previous graphs where you have the number of suspensions compared to students with those suspensions so again you could have one student depending on the incidences that are they are involved in could be suspended more than one time however we do see that our response to

[00:40:52] suspensions are low and we also are looking at progressive discipline so how we respond to incidences prior to suspending a student with the exception if a student is involved in a particular incident where the response is suspension which is mandated by our student response and administrative code so again as a similar graph instead of incidences these are suspensions

[00:41:24] that are broken out by race and ethnicity next slide so now we've moved from incidents which may or may not result in an actual consequence for students we're missing instructional time now we're looking at suspension so the idea of loss of instructional time and we see that the actual risk ratio is increasing so for hispanic students you see it's it's actually exceeded that threshold of two to one meaning hispanic students are two and a half times more likely to be suspended compared to non-Hispanic students.

[00:42:03] And again, as Ms. Mitchell was stating there, suspension is loss of instructional time, a significant impact on students. It can be very disruptive to their educational experience. This is why it's monitored very closely. So while we compared our incidences and the number of L students and students with disabilities, looking at suspensions, that gap is narrowing, which is encouraging.

[00:42:32] So they are not getting suspended at a higher rate Compared to all other students and now you see when we're looking at Suspension disproportionality risk ratio for English learners and students with disabilities You see the actual rate for students of disabilities is where it's been historically throughout the division in my 13 years here It's hovered around for 4.2 to 1 and you see why this has been something that we focused on for a number of years

[00:43:08] looking at our actual treatment of students, trying to find that balance between keeping students, the students themselves, adults, other students in the building safe, but also being fair and equitable to the students themselves. This is dramatically disproportionate, similar to what we're seeing in other divisions, and has been an area of focus for us for 10 plus years.

[00:43:31] So now what? So we have this data. We are able to see the risk ratios and the disproportionality of our student subgroups so it led to some additional questions and these questions are going to be used as a focus for a presentation for a deeper dive into our discipline data when we present to our student behavior and accountability committee also known as SBAT so these are some of the questions that we're going to be looking at and again as I said earlier what behaviors are leading to these risk ratios what is our response to these behaviors

[00:44:10] and making sure that we have some consistency in our response because even though we have the SBAR, there's still a range. So you can have a behavior or an incident and an administrator has a range of, for example, suspension.

[00:44:25] So when we look at data, it's suspensions, period. But when we do a deeper dive, is it one day of suspension compared to five days of suspension for the same behavior? And then what are those elements that are leading to that response? So those will be some of the deeper dive conversations that we will be looking at with our discipline data and working with SBAC.

[00:44:47] So that concludes this brief presentation for discipline data, and now I'm going to turn it back over to you for some questions. And please know, some questions, depending on what they are, I may take back for our Office of School Administration because Dana is not here tonight.

[00:45:04] Well, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. I have a ton of questions, but I'm going to let you guys go first. Okay. There we go. Okay. This is absolutely fascinating. Of course, it leaves me with the most important question, which is what are we going to do about it? Which is something I think will be an important, and I hear you when you say that's something that we've been working on for 10 years, but obviously we haven't gotten to the goal yet, so we'll be continuing to work on it.

[00:45:42] So in terms of, one of the things that stands out to me the most is the disproportionality around the Pacific Islander population, especially when I look at the dashboard and see how small it is.

[00:46:01] Although I think it's fair to say there are some improvement trends in the data. Just fascinating. Really, could you repeat, I want to go back to the beginning and ask you please to repeat that number that you said, that it's the repeat areas of concern number, maybe in comparison to other districts, like what is the standard?

[00:46:32] So the Office of Civil Rights, and there's a Virginia legislative organization several years ago that set a threshold of two to one. And the premise is that if you have a risk ratio of two to one or higher, and it cannot be explained by the behavior of the students or other factors, and it's persistent, the idea of that may spur review into actual unfair or unequitable practices towards a particular student group.

[00:46:59] And the Office of Civil Rights conducts, every couple of years, a civil rights data collection. And that data has been monitored for U.S. school districts for 35 or 40 years or so. And it has been a persistent issue across the country.

[00:47:18] So whether it's the Office of Civil Rights, I'll look up the actual name of the Virginia legislative organization, but it was maybe about seven or eight, maybe nine years ago. two to one as a threshold, if it cannot be explained by behaviors of the students and other factors, is that a potential issue for maybe evidence of unfair treatment? Okay. And then could you walk us through what a standard progressive discipline plan would look like in the event of repeat offenses? So it could look a couple of ways. So if you have a student

[00:47:56] that is involved in a variety of incidences, and the response level is anywhere from a one to a three. So it could be a level one where it's simply a parent contact, and it rises to an ISR.

[00:48:14] So if you've done all of these things, you've put plans in place, and the student continues to engage in those incidences, and it gets to an ISR, if you can look back and see, we've done all of these things to try to address the behavior. That would be progressive discipline versus some incidences or behaviors mandated by Virginia Code, for example, we have to. It results in, for example, a packet to OSA, Office of School Administration, for a suspension.

[00:48:44] So we're trying to look at if it is progressive discipline, why is it still progressing? What's not working? What are some things that we need to change? So that's an example of progressive of discipline. Okay. And then, um, in most cases when discipline, um, is doled out, it's doled out at the school level. So it could be teachers, but mostly it may be an administrator. So only administrators, only administrators. Okay. Issue discipline. Yes. And unless there is a certain

[00:49:16] incident that is mandated to go to Dana Scanlon's office, um, where, where Dana's office is suspension. They don't do like your parent contacts and things like that. Those are all maintained at the school level. But that really is, so everything really is maintained at the school level unless it's designated by code or rises to the point where it needs to go to Dana Scanlon's office. Yes. Okay. And then when is the SBAC presentation? I won't say the very next one

[00:49:52] because there's so much data that we have to work with RASI to get and make sure they answer those questions but i know that dana and i did talk about it because we're finishing up some policy work and want to be able to dedicate a couple of meetings to a thorough data discussion around our student discipline okay thank you thank you chair carty um yeah i also like more questions and

[00:50:24] answers i think i it perplexes me also that we've been working at it and we're not seeing you know some of that so that that's kind of like floating in my head but I think something that I would like to know further is sort of the breakout of elementary middle and high I think seeing that across the first semester would be helpful I don't know if you know off the top of your head if it's more in one area or another I think that's always an interesting data point because the structures

[00:50:59] are just different and the maturity is different of students in the development so I don't know if you have that general information but I would love to see that. We do have data for each level and something that Dana and I also talked about is what those incidences incidents look like at each level. Yeah. Because the response to the incident may differ for that level. So you may see some overlap and commonalities and you may also see some big differences just because of the age of the students involved. Yeah, that was going to be sort of my next follow-up is sort of like,

[00:51:36] is there a crosswalk sort of guide that kind of outlines that for those different scenarios based on a child's development? Yes. So we have the SBAR, which there is a section for elementary students, and then there is a secondary for your middle and high school. So you'll see some of the same codes, which are used to reference the behavior. However, the response or the sanction affiliated with those incidences may differ from elementary to, for example, we don't suspend

[00:52:12] kindergarten students, right? So you may, like I said, just some differences. So just making sure that we're comparing apples to apples. And when we tease that out, having some examples of what those behaviors are and the responses to those behaviors at elementary and then what they look like at the secondary level. Okay and then I noticed on so I would love just personally later not today to have those elementary middle high for the first semester just to see what the breakout is across the different slides and then for the ratios that you showed us today are those like

[00:52:48] the ratios as of right now based off of the first semester data or is that like cumulative over a year? So I think in this slide, it indicates for this year is as of February 25th. Okay. If I remember correctly from the slides. Starting from the beginning of the year. And then from the previous years we were looking at after the first 88 days of school. Okay. I see that now. Yep. Okay.

[00:53:11] Thank you. And then, um, I noticed on slide 10, there's like a drastic drop-off for the Pacific Islander population. Is that like, I mean, I guess what I'm kind of looking for is those windows of If something worked and it helped, can we replicate that?

[00:53:29] Is that just a one-off or is that something that we kind of cracked a code there? When you're looking at smaller student groups, and I'll take a look at the division website. If we're talking about a couple of hundred students in a particular group, you can see a lot of fluctuations in the rates where if you have a couple of hundred students and our suspension rate is so low to begin with at 1%.

[00:53:51] So it can spike quickly. One or two suspensions for a small group of students can really make the rate fluctuate. Okay. And I can take a look at the revision website, but that is a smaller group of students that might be more volatile as far as the actual rates adjusting. Yeah, you mentioned that.

[00:54:07] And then is there, I guess for the students with disabilities, because that ratio is pretty concerning, I know, you know, sometimes there's BIPs and, you know, different plans. Do you disaggregate that too? Do you look at that data and say, like, who's on a plan? Who's not on a plan?

[00:54:23] And then look at those numbers in terms of how the discipline is managed. Because I would imagine if a student with disabilities doesn't have a behavior intervention plan but starts down that path, that might signal the need for one. So I'm kind of interested in that trajectory as well and sort of how that relates to the discipline data.

[00:54:43] I don't think we discipline kids differently based on whether or not they have a behavior intervention plan. I think the standard is the standard, and correct me if I'm wrong. But I am interested in what might signal that because that seems like a tool at our disposal in that area that could help us unlock some things potentially.

[00:55:04] So more just thoughts surrounding the curiosity around this data, which I think my colleague has also expressed. So I will marinate on this, but I appreciate the data, and I hope that maybe at the end of the year we can circle back and sort of see the year-long trends as well.

[00:55:20] I think we had stated that in our roadmap anyway, but thank you. And I just noticed that the Virginia Department of Education has updated their ratio threshold to 3 to 1, but we still exceed that as well, so. Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, the Pacific Islander number, I mean, and again, I just, knowing my own district, my Pacific Islander population is like 0. 08%, or it's like basically a couple of students in the entire district.

[00:55:54] It's really, really small, so I read this as saying that person graduated, and they're not in the system. maybe or or or whatever you know and i'm not suggesting it was there you know in my district but the numbers are yeah the numbers are really small and i guess that's one of my questions is um and i i would actually like to see some of these data points in like a 10 year because i want to see the pre-covid numbers i don't want the covid year obviously that doesn't matter to me but i want to see like the pre-covid the gap of pandemic and then these last four years i think

[00:56:32] and seeing the longevity and then I guess my other question is have we at what point in time did we significantly change the discipline policy so I want to kind of see a before and before and after and see if the numbers have shifted so for the past last year and this year we have worked on our policies for student discipline so you're going to see some differences with that, looking at the out years, especially compared to pre-COVID. We've also changed, for example, our SBAR codes and the response to that. We have changed what's reported to

[00:57:12] law enforcement. So there are going to be some things that are going to attribute to those differences, and it'll be important to mark when those things happened and what we see as it correlates with our discipline data. Yeah. So it'd be awesome to see the time, like a 10-year timeline and then over, you know, the numbers and then underlaid or overlaid on top of that where major policy changes occurred and see if we can correlate the policy changes and how those are being implemented to, and not just the policy changes, but when they were also implemented. I think that's really the more important piece and see that data along that

[00:57:50] trend line. I have some guesses on where I think that's going to go, but I'm going to save that for much later time when i actually see the data but i have some ideas on where that might be um and you know and again i think the other thing that would be really interesting for for here too i would be really curious to see the these data points i don't know if you can do it by school but yeah it's partially the grade level thing that i'm very curious about too but also if we have um kind of hotbeds of places that need more attention and more focus that also

[00:58:29] tells us that we need to put more resources to those schools in varying ways like a whole series of things um and so are there schools that are over this threshold at or over this threshold these thresholds from um this is on this slide 13 especially for our english learner and student with disabilities schools um that where we need to be aware from a board perspective so we can help funnel additional resources for supports for those places so one of the things that we started doing this year is a staff member in our office of school administration has started to break down

[00:59:08] for us particularly for out-of-school suspensions per school we don't have the I mean we could get it but it's not included in terms of what the incidents were that led to those out-of-school suspensions but we definitely now have an overview of what schools might be suspending more and then we are able to connect with those schools to really look at what's occurring why is it happening and what supports might we use so we're now talking about broadening that to bring in

[00:59:41] other departments for example school i'm sorry special education and particularly in dss where we have mtss and we have some of our tiered interventions and responses so how are we working with other departments to address some of these data points that we're seeing.

[01:00:03] I mean, because I'll be honest with you, I've been talking to a lot of teachers, and I'm, you know, the whole issue of discipline in the classroom, discipline in general, is really challenging. It's really hard when we have disruptions in the classroom to continue teaching. So I think, yeah, I think this would be really helpful to take a bigger dive, and actually a longitudinal dive, kind of, it's not really a dive, it's a whatever you want to call the width of that to take a look at that that data just to kind of see if we can correlate some policy issues that may have impacted positively or negatively to that and clearly we need to crack the nut on

[01:00:38] this 10-year deep that is a deep dive right there we got to figure that one out so yeah please go ahead um just as you were talking it made me think about because the really the purpose for me of pmc has been you know sort of listening watching looking at trends and then thinking about the things that are at our disposal mainly budget to and policy to implement to help support so I know we had the behavior specialist presentation here that had been deployed to a lot of our schools so I would be curious too to see now in the out years of that program are we seeing a math are we

[01:01:16] seeing a decrease in some of that because those are pretty targeted supports from my understanding from the presentation so I would love to see that because if that's working like let's do more of that. And I know they're already asking for more. And teachers are really appreciative of that support. So that was just something that popped in my head. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I'll be the first to admit that my school board work over the last two years has really only been peripheral to discipline and to data. And so I am coming with some basic questions. But I'm just curious

[01:01:50] across the division if there's a framework or a baseline standard for discipline so that leadership across the division has any sort of guideline or guidepost to say this is an appropriate discipline sanction for this action or this behavior? I'm just curious.

[01:02:15] So if I understand your question correctly, you're saying is there a guideline that all administrators can look at to judge yes and that is our s bar so it is very specific with all of the codes we've even revised it to break out certain things so they can't be coupled it's very clear and then it has all the different levels of responses that administrator can use in terms of a sanction and so that was going back to the progressive discipline now there are some

[01:02:49] things where an administrator does have choice. For example, if there is incident and the responses an administrator can suspend between one day and five days. So there is that autonomy in terms of how many days the administrator uses. And we've been providing school leaders with, again, if this is the very first time a student has engaged in something versus they're committing the same infraction over and over and over again.

[01:03:20] But that SBAR is every administrator, principal assistant, principal dean that handle discipline, that is what they use because when they have to input it in Phoenix, they have to include that information. Great. Thank you for that clarification.

[01:03:36] That's very helpful. And just at the last follow-up, really, as you mentioned previously, a lot of that work has been ongoing and has changed a lot in the last two years. So, it could be that we see more consistency as time goes on.

[01:03:53] Absolutely. So, just to kind of give a reference point in terms of the Office of School Administration, went from a director and a supervisor. So, now we have a director. We have two hearings officers. We also have a supervisor that does a lot of this data maintenance and making sure that schools are completing a lot of the follow-ups that are needed in Phoenix so that we don't have gaps and things of that nature or so. And Dana has spent the past two years revising a lot of our policies, even if they're not up for review, but because there are some changes that are needed

[01:04:29] and they need to be addressed through policy. So a lot of that work, I would say, has shifted in the past two years to include revisions in the SBAR, which we invited principals in to give some feedback because they're seeing these behaviors and what is the appropriate response that we need to use when those incidents happen great thank you so much I appreciate all of your time today thank you for the presentations as well do we have any new business great all right our March

[01:05:06] 3rd meeting will adjourn we will be back here on Tuesday April 7th thank you so much

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