Coraggio Consulting
Virginia Board of Education, Business Meeting (Part 2), Thursday, June 25, 2026

Date: Thursday, June 25, 2026
Place: Virginia Board of Education (Virginia Department of Education), Richmond, Virginia
Length: 2h 36m (video)
Official meeting video (VDOE, YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wp5CeBjP9E
Board of Education meetings, agendas and minutes (VDOE): https://www.doe.virginia.gov/state-board-data-funding/virginia-board-of-education

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 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:50] And to call us back into session, we are now on item H. We have Mr. Jennings, that is you.

[00:11:40] It's me. Welcome back. So today I have before you item H, which is Amendment 9 to Virginia's ESSA, Consolidated State Plan Amendment. We're specifically looking at two items here, the growth methodology for school year 2526, along with the exit criteria and progress levels for the WIDA alternate access test.

[00:12:02] There are also a few minor revisions to Title III, some programmatic updates to terminology there. And so we'll begin with an outline talking about the purpose for making an amendment to our state plan. We'll share with you stakeholder feedback since our presentation to you in April, the detail on the proposed revisions in these two areas I've mentioned, and then our next steps.

[00:12:25] So these two specific areas, again, we've mentioned to you this is not ideal, this is not best practice that would be coming to you at an end of a school year asking for changes, changes to a school year that's already concluded. And so we want to honor that and recognize that. And these two specific items are needed for federal compliance.

[00:12:44] And it's the work that's been done over the past year and it's been talked about, socialized, and we've been collecting feedback over the past year, but finally now bring it to the board. And so those two specific items that we do need to run accountability for the 25-26 year.

[00:13:02] So since we presented to you in April, we did open up officially the public comment period. Again, we've been talking through this throughout the year and presentations to associations, organizations. I presented to the Virginia English Language Supervisors Association.

[00:13:17] I presented to the coordinators for Title III, specifically around the practices for English language proficiency and how it impacts them. We presented to the Superintendent's Association, secondary principals, elementary principals, principal groups, different focus groups around this, virtual sessions, in-person sessions.

[00:13:37] And so after the board adopted for first review this item, we did open up a 30-day public comment period where they could email or fill in a form. We tried to have a form that would collect some specific data. And from that period, we did receive 81 responses. 97% of those responses support the adoption of the value tables, which we'll talk about.

[00:13:57] 89% were in support of the recommended exit criteria with a level four on the WIDA alternate access test, and 74% supported the proposed progress levels for that assessment, and we'll talk through those. I did want to again share that this has been socialized.

[00:14:14] We've received feedback. We've tweaked. Based on the feedback we received, we've made adjustments to the value tables. We made adjustments from the committee for the alternate access. So we incorporate that. We didn't just go out and share and say, you know, this is what it is. We incorporate that.

[00:14:30] And so in our feedback, the public comment form, all eight superintendent regions were represented. We had division and school leaders who filled in the form, educators, experts, specifically in multilingual learners, community members, parents. We had a nice diverse group that we really were seeking feedback.

[00:14:47] And so with growth, specifically reading and mathematics, many prefer the use of value tables. We shared with you last time what these value tables do as a growth methodology, measuring from one year to the next. Our Technical Advisory Council noted that because of their transparency, consistency, and familiarity at Virginia, they would recommend them.

[00:15:10] Virginia has used student growth percentiles before. And what I would share with you as I looked back about 10 years ago, when we presented to the board at that time to move away from student growth percentiles, it was some of the same themes you're going to hear in our public comment now about why division leaders, school leaders do prefer this to be our growth methodology.

[00:15:30] This would give us consistency between SOL test and VAP test. Last year we used value added, as you know, and we were unable to use value added for our VAP assessments. And so we had two different growth methodologies. would bring both back under the same one and the last bullet there educators stated that using these tables provides better communication with families and public on student growth so currently with our vertical scale is used to measure growth this was through a linking study that we did and we're looking to see the same items the same type of content from one test to

[00:16:05] another and so in reading and mathematics we look to see that correlation there all the way through And so we have a different scale. It's called the vertical scale. It has a different score range than it does with our zero to 600. We explain this to the school systems and we can provide resources to explain this to families. It was used on our previous growth assessments. I'm saying previous, maybe a little ahead of myself because July 1st, those will be eliminated.

[00:16:34] But our growth assessments that we were doing in the fall, winter, and the SOL in the spring also used the vertical scale there to show that measure of growth throughout. And so that's the explanation there and sort of how that was used. The proposal that you see here is set in tiers.

[00:16:51] Again, previously, you know, looking at it, it was if you moved a range, you earned a point. As we work through those groups I mentioned and got feedback, they really wanted to see, like we've done with our framework, the mastery index, you know, providing students with opportunities for partial growth, exceeding growth, meeting growth.

[00:17:10] And so really thinking through, you could argue, more complicated system, but really wanted to value sort of that measured growth approach. And so advancing one range, we did keep it to one point. You know, that's the expectation to show growth as you would move from one range to the next.

[00:17:26] If you're advancing two or more ranges at any point, the example I have here is going from, you know, from the performance level I'm looking. But moving two or more ranges would give you 1.25 points. And then if you do move between the performance levels, so if I move from basic, which is not passing to proficient, we are awarding a 1.25 value.

[00:17:50] And similarly, if you move from proficient to advanced, that's been a priority of the board to really move students towards advanced, excelling. Then we also are awarding a 1.25 value. And so even though they're only moving a range, the idea was that they're moving these performance levels similar to our mastery index. And so they were earning a 1.25 value as well. But again, even if they're not showing proficiency, if they do move two or more ranges at any point, there was a 1.25 value. Then we talk about students who are staying or could be regressing. If they're not showing

[00:18:28] growth, they're regressing back, and they're not proficient, then there were zero point value. If they're moving back one or more range, but they were still proficient, there was a 0.75 value. And then this is some feedback we received through public comment and talking through those different associations initially we had proposed to you a point seven five for students who stayed low proficient they passed the test but really didn't show any sort of growth and from our feedback through public comment and sharing with these groups there was a strong consensus that that should be a one-point value and that's what you're seeing displayed here and so what you

[00:19:07] see in the revised point system is staying in the same range from range 5 to range seven is there's a one point value now. So that 0.75 was removed and it's now a one point value. And that's based on feedback we received since April. And then you see if the students at the highest end of the range, there's nowhere else to go, then it's a 1.25 value as well to honor those students who are still staying, but there again, there's no other range beyond them. So again, as we talked through this and heard from different stakeholders it is more complicated than how we've

[00:19:46] done value tables in the past but the feedback again was based on their thought around partial growth meeting growth exceeding growth and really trying to differentiate as much as we could for where student performance lies year over year i did want to share with you this was done by one of our consultants who helped us with the framework i'd referenced him previously and so this is a correlation here looking at the value-added model we used before and looking at where modeling the data using the value tables there was a 0.96 correlation

[00:20:21] looking at those schools and how they would score using the prior system to using the value tables here so as i shared 97 of our respondents did support the use of value tables some of the feedback we received as consistent expectations help educators focus on instruction rather than shifting accountability rules and then we provided some quotes here some of the standouts you know sort of that through line between the practices of assessment well instruction assessment accountability school improvement the biggest asset of this approach is the transparent targets

[00:20:58] that allow schools teachers and students to set and celebrate individual goals if the accountability system emphasizes growth for all students educators will respond by focusing on growth for all students teachers will work toward the expectations that are clearly established for them And so, again, from our representation, these quotes were pulled from educators, division leaders, community members who felt very strongly about the value tables.

[00:21:25] I'll pause there and see if there's any questions before I move into the alternate access. Mr. Robinson. First of all, thank you for all the work on this and the stakeholder feedback. Certainly, the analysis of the comparing value tables to value added and the strong correlation, you know, helps make me strongly supportive of value tables because, you know, I think it helps address the concerns about, you know, whether we're valuing simplicity too much.

[00:22:04] back thank you there was a question yes um uh my understanding just to clarify first before asking

[00:24:26] why if if you move from three to four you're advancing one range level and you get one point is that correct yes and if you move from six to six you're staying at the same level and you get one point is that correct yes um why would that be if this is a growth measure in the first example you're growing right and the second example you're staying at the same level and so i'm trying to understand given that we have a separate measure that already rewards proficiency why in the growth

[00:25:00] measure is moving from six to six scored the same as moving from three to four excellent question so given i mean obviously feedback was very positive in that uh given historically the expectation was if students were proficient or advanced in the assessment they earned a point that's just I'm just sharing historically that's how the tables were used given the rigor of our assessments and the ideas yes you should move up a range but also given year over year and part of the linking study was with the new standards from 23 in mathematics and reading 2024 was if you did

[00:25:35] stay in the same range that the items the test became more difficult given the new standards and so that was another reason in the thinking to say you did stay in the same range you were proficient but given the new assessments it is worth a point versus a lower value right um and then another quick question for comment it on the if we move forward as is the current voted on plan to move to a higher um cut scores in this next year and essentially there's we might move in

[00:26:12] many categories over half of our students into the low basic category, this plan would still remain the same. So, like, currently, if I'm range one below basic and I move to, you know, range two below basic, I get a point. But in the new world, it would essentially take me moving from range one to much higher like a range four uh depending on the test to get it'd be harder to

[00:26:45] get a point in that below basic range with the higher cutoff is is what i'm assuming excellent and i didn't mention it yet but it's a great segue so based on your feedback in the appendix we did provide for you which kind of gets to a point of looking at value tables differently um and i'll do it because i know some of you are looking at the slide so excuse me a moment i'll slide all the way through but we did provide to you in the appendix looking at value tables with three sub-levels and four sub-levels based on your feedback and so we had talked sort of about this cliff the bubble and so the appendix you have are tables that we would use if adopted by the board with the two you can call them

[00:27:22] the two ranges or two sub-levels per performance level then we had our psychometrician develop three and so we talked through the pros and cons of this but having three and I think to your point if you more students are scoring at the lower end. We could differentiate more, provide more room for growth. And so that's something we could look at. We would have to amend the business rules. The business rules could not stay the same based on the design of the two levels. They would have to be adjusted.

[00:27:47] I will share with you as we talk through, and we've started sharing this with some advisory groups to get their feedback. The concern I would give you, the four, I'm on that slide now with mathematics and having the four ranges for each sub-level. What you get into there is now talking with our statisticians and psychometricians was around the error of measurement.

[00:28:07] We've made it so discreet and so specific, sort of, do we really know the student is growing or is it more just based on the error of measurement? And so that was a flag they had for us. I would say our groups prefer the four because they said the business will be very simple. It's a quarter of a point, maybe, to move between each one.

[00:28:24] But also we have to take the feedback we received. We wanted to hear from you. This is not for 25, 26, I want to lay that out there. But if we did continue with the value tables and wanted to honor what the board asked, we did want to think through, could we, you know, look at them differently? And so that is, you know, we had our psychometricians, but we did want to flag for you with the four ranges, the concern that we had.

[00:28:46] So we were thinking through maybe the three, you know, and then we'd have to come back and say, what are the business rules around that? Well, then, so I'm personally fully supportive of, you know, I know this is a final review and we need to get this out for immediate growth measure. So as exactly as you propose, as we look to the future, I would ask us to look at the two things I named.

[00:29:07] One is I understand why stakeholders may want to award a five to five or six to six and the same, but I think that's completely against the both purpose of growth as well as our value of wanting to ensure that our system is amplifying attention to the students further from opportunity.

[00:29:35] Again, I love a system that also rewards students moving from level 6 to 7 and 7 to 8, so that we're also ensuring we're paying attention to every single student, which is another purpose. But it just feels wrong to, in the growth measure, have tremendously less opportunity for points for students who are starting so far below.

[00:30:03] That's what the proficient measure provides us. And so it feels like we're stacking the deck against schools with more students, far from opportunity, number one. And number two, if we do move, as is the plan now, to the higher cut scores, this might be too complicated, but I would encourage at least the looking, as you've already named, at that four level or three level, particularly at the below basic.

[00:30:29] Again, we want to ensure students are growing, But I fear if the growth range from the lowest flow basic to the high flow basic is from a 300 to a 400, it may disincentivize attention to the students who are furthest from opportunity.

[00:30:45] Thank you. Superintendent Conway, and then Dr. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Robinson. So yeah, I want to be clear that, again, for the proposal in front of you, is with the 25 26 uh cut levels of the 400 right and so to to do that i think the other only important piece i would note and again i think it is is useful as we think about next year and additional data on you know potential implications of of of cut scores and then how to kind of think about how that works with this right and there is urgency here around

[00:31:25] improvement is just thinking through and just this idea of higher expectations each year right and so there is some growth there and again so i would not want us to remove entirety sort of an incentive for staying proficient particularly if that bar increases um but thinking about kind of the assignment of those those points um and thinking through again uh how would we get noting that for 25 26 that that uh to mark's point and as we discussed yesterday that represents for math

[00:32:00] like the full implementation of the more rigorous standards and so that's a good base of data to bring to you all this summer to think about the go forward um and to be able to look with the model with the data both on the implications of the cut scores and on uh what it might look like for 26 27 but for 25 26 it is uh you know uh the agreed upon uh practice year for the cut scores

[00:32:28] dr northern or is it dr wilson okay so um just to sort of layer on here um i think what is going on is we're thinking that the values table is that growth measure and it's not you need to separate two things. Like the value measure is that continuous scale, right? And then the reporting measure are these value tables. Behind the scenes, we've looked at that continuous scale and decided if you move from 400, I'm just making this up, to 480, then we decide how much growth that counts

[00:33:07] for in terms of this other thing that we're using for the public, right? So behind the scenes, like we shouldn't, there's the calculation of the growth, which is on the continuous scale. Because if we treat this table like the measure, instead of just the presentation of the measure, it begins to look like we're losing all of this growth to the point Mr. Robinson's making, right?

[00:33:30] Like you're losing, you're cramming all of this continuous growth on the scale that goes zero to 100 into these little ranges on the table. And I appreciate it because it looks like you went back and ask someone to see what three or four ranges would look like so we'd catch more of the growth within the band. Right. Absolutely. But then to your point, you lose stability. Right.

[00:33:51] Measure gets noisy. Right. Absolutely. So what we need to really think about is, okay, continue to do testing, honestly, with ODU or whoever you're doing it, every state wrestles with this, and figure out how we want to translate what we're doing behind the scenes relative to the growth on continuous scale that catches all the growth and not just this little growth in the end.

[00:34:14] And then try to then portray that for the public easily through the values table. But don't pretend like the values table is the measure itself. It's just a way to present the more nuanced measure that we have on this continuous scale that you showed. Absolutely. Great points. Thank you, Dr.

[00:34:31] Wilson. Thank you. So my only comment is piggybacking on Mr. Robinson's observation about the consistent growth the one point whether you stay within right and your observation or comment about recognizing that we are introducing more rigorous standards right and so wanting to acknowledge that staying the course is valuable so does it make sense to even contemplate that

[00:35:07] recognition for a period of time and then the expectation is that so once the standards settle and we settle into our understanding of them and the teaching of them, then we undo that kind of stagnation, if you will. Something to consider may introduce more complexity and potential for confusion, but I see both sides of the coin, recognizing the staying power, but then also the expectation that we continue to move forward in terms of growth. And I think to your comments and Dr. Norther's around that reporting mechanism.

[00:35:47] I mean, we want this to be, we hear from the stakeholders. They love to analyze their data quickly. They like to model their schools and see how they perform the accountability system. But ultimately too, for our parents, are their students growing? And so we're thinking through with our vendor and sort of how we report again to Dr. Norther's comments around what we're translating, sharing, sort of understanding as discreetly as we can.

[00:36:07] Where are they growing? You know, which areas are they growing? Where are their areas of support? Where can our instructional offices come in? because my child may have passed the test, but where are they still needing support? And so we want to get down versus just pass-fail. I grew, grew where? Where could I have grown more?

[00:36:23] And so we're working with our reporting system to get better at that. We want clarity. We want transparency, but also in that simplicity, not to lose some of the definitive sort of specific information. Board members, are there any additional questions?

[00:36:43] Mr. Robinson. Real quick. One thing I loved about J. Lark's report yesterday was the analysis they did to show the correlation between, you know, the economic situation of the students of a school and the proficiency of growth measures. As you consider the different options going forward, it might be useful to see that same analysis, to see if the growth measures going forward have a similar correlation or if we're increasing the correlation to the actual economic situation of the students in a school, which I think we should try not to do,

[00:37:21] but that might help provide nuance to the decisions as well. Okay. If there are no other questions, is there a motion to approve the revisions to the ESSA consolidated state education? I need to, sorry. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. I threw you off. I broke in the middle because I want to keep the conversation on growth, and then I'm going to do the second part sorry sorry if you want to vote on one part one that's good but put it all together so part two is very specific to a population it's it's around the weed or alternate access tests as i shared before uh 3200 students took this assessment 24 25 it's around two percent of our english

[00:37:59] learners these are students again who have severe cognitive disabilities uh this is a newer assessment and virginia previously did not have an exit criteria and so federal requirement we need one we also need to have a progress level and so we had a committee meet their recommendation they really were between three and four given again the population and the population not all students can complete all the domains they weighed those factors what does this mean these are duly identified students and so given all those factors looking at the data and these students take the Virginia alternate assessment program the committee wanted to go higher they said let's go for a four as a

[00:38:38] proficiency level versus three uh and so from the you see the results using that from 24 25 data uh 14 of the students uh would have exited obviously level three they saw this 26 would have exited but they felt very strongly and recommended here to the board that the level four would be what we use uh and so the overall we shared the progress levels uh we would use a scale score here uh this again this assessment's different than typical english learner assessments uh students typically with english language learners uh do better at the lower end they're

[00:39:17] they're new uh to the country to the language they actually accelerate grow faster with this assessment is the opposite that students in proficiency level one we see more stagnation we're not seeing as much growth and that's why we're only looking for one point uh scale score uh which is very actually it's very comparable to other states we've researched what other states have done with this and then proficiency levels two through four we're expecting to see more growth and so we have a two-point minimum there for a point and i will share with you this is something that we now will have a third year of data that'll be coming in over the next few weeks and we want to have a committee this fall to analyze this again and see with three years of data is this

[00:39:56] still on trend but based on what we saw in our analysis and looking at the vap assessment this is what the committee recommended and so overall very positive feedback from our we had number of multilingual educators really speak out on this and we share with those groups uh you see some language here about finally seeing a pathway for these students to exit because currently they cannot exit um you see a quote there the updated exit criteria acknowledges that students who who participate in these assessments are working towards language development and are aligned to alternate achievement standards.

[00:40:31] So 89% support the recommendation for level four. Those who did not thought level three would be appropriate. It was between, like I said, the three and four. And so, but the 89% did agree with the level four. And so we wanted to share that feedback with you.

[00:40:47] And then the 74% who agreed, strongly agreed, agreed with the proposed progress levels. It was interesting to read why the 26% did not. There was some confusion around this assessment in particular, it's different than the access where we really do score it based on how many domains they can complete.

[00:41:06] So there was some misunderstanding there which was good feedback for us because some of the feedback was, you know, a student can't complete the whole test. How are you gonna measure growth? Well, that's already factored into this. We based it on the pieces that they can complete given this population.

[00:41:21] Some respondents disagreed because they thought all proficiency levels one through four should be treated the same. And we share again that students at the lower end are not showing as much growth as students at the higher end. And that's why we differentiated between one to two on the scale score.

[00:41:37] And then finally, some respondents felt very strongly with this population that they should not be measured for progress at all. That sort of just taking the assessment should be progress enough. Again, federal law requires us to have a measure of progress, but that was why they disagreed with what we were proposing there in the 26%.

[00:41:58] And so next steps is, if the board does adopt this, we would submit this to the United States Department of Education. If the board does adopt it, they've seen a preview of this, you know, to sort of see what, that way we can accelerate. They know this is being used for the 25, 26 year.

[00:42:14] And so there have been no major flags from them. But if the board adopts this, we'd send this back to them for official approval. And then once it's adopted, we publish that and make it clear to the public that this is our latest approved plan.

[00:42:31] - Board members, any questions? Quick one, okay. Now, the Zoom page here.

[00:42:47] Okay, I just have a quick question. - Sure, so on page 14, one point is really in the margin of error. Like it could mean nothing. So I realize that we need a work, but I'm a little nervous that we're actually not measuring anything but potential measurement error.

[00:43:10] - Great feedback. was something with the committee we worked with and one of our TAC members this was prior to her joining our technical advisory council Dr Molly Faulkner Bond who's now with the center for assessment led this work and we had done a number of statistical analysis for this assessment of this population a scale score in the proficiency level one is we did factor in the standard ever measurement many of these students regress or they say stagnant and so it was considered to be you know sufficient a significantly statistically significant uh for the one scale score i would say to you that's something we also said as a committee we want to see another year of data for that because we also thought sort of are we setting the bar too low there and factoring in the error

[00:43:48] of measurement so i do bring that to you as something that we also have that is concerned uh keeping at the one scale score um and so our thought was you know for 25 26 the first year to do this we are going to have a committee this fall and then reanalyze and then bring that back and say hey now with another year of data we also revised some pieces with our vap we want to look and see more of the correlation maybe it does need to adjust and be higher thanks um just my final question when i look at the actual plan we're submitting to ed i'm on page um 100 and it says

[00:44:27] um these are reading targets and long-term goals yes by race for students by year yes page 100 yes and it says it's our accountability from 22 23 to 28 29 yes yet the text says that we're just using it ink for like what year so i guess obviously when we start getting into doing growth by race i guess you know because we don't want to do that right we want to we want to control by prior test score we don't want to set growth targets by race so i i'm just i guess i'm trying to figure

[00:45:05] out like what what do we really take from this page 100 um and other page 101 all these that are setting growth targets uh racial category excellent question so this is a carryover from no child left behind long-term goals intermeasures of progress it's a requirement that we have these tables uh these are set through the department and the board uh calculating what they think is not like the old days of AMO, AYP, but this was a reporting mechanism we have to do. So the state gets to decide where these targets are. You may see a note on there as well that for some of these

[00:45:40] we were planning to redo these based on the cut scores. And so they do need to be redone because they were based off of our old assessment and the old cut scores. And so there's, you know, in the department we still have that note that we need to redo those. We did in our old accountability system we use the all students group only the all students group as part of our targeted support mechanism we only now use them with our new cohesive system we only use them for reporting and so we do provide it on the school uh the school quality profiles our state report card we do show how the school is doing in uh basically against those benchmarks because that's what they are but they're the state determined benchmarks not federal set benchmarks but it is something

[00:46:20] that based on the cut scores the new assessments we do need to revise then so again but the purpose is just for reporting i'm actually surprised that this current federal administration is still wanting this it's it's under essa it's required under federal law yes it's required yeah but only for reporting great question you have a question questions are we sure yes all right now um is there a motion to approve the revisions to the essa consolidated state plan as described in the item

[00:46:58] is there a second second okay we'll call dr bridges hi mrs mcpherson all right mr hanson dr northern dr wilson mr robinson all right mrs kilgore and chair votes aye thank you thank you

[00:47:22] you mr jennings okay um so pretty superintendent up there she goes we're now under item i what was that pretty superintendent thank you president ashton members of the board it's great to be back today to discuss the previous conversation yesterday we continued that about our roadmap

[00:47:58] for measurement um i do want to first say though that in response to the request yesterday for greater clarity around the difference between the measurement roadmap that we are bringing forward today for consideration for first review and the prior uh votes of the this board in last fall through december there is a new attachment that has been updated to the i should be in your materials for this item i that walks through in detail what the currently approved proficiency implementation plan looks like for every grade every subject level every year at every performance level as

[00:48:37] compared to what we um first discussed yesterday so just wanted to bring that forward um especially because i think as we are discussing this item it's useful to have um complete clarity and sort of be on this um be singing from the same hymnal you might say as far as um what was voted on previously and so that we can start to at least be sure that all of our stakeholders as well also have that clarity so it's clarity for y'all here at the board level but also for the stakeholders out in the field so just wanted to flag that um we will um go through a few materials before first before getting through to that particular item but i did want to let you know that we followed

[00:49:14] through with that um so it is there for your perusal it may just be me agenda well now okay is it on sharepoint okay but obviously somebody's on top of that because it's we're going to take a sorry it's okay thank you for raising dr bridges we're going to

[00:49:51] take a quick five minute break just to see if we can reconcile this thank you okay sounds good we

[00:55:10] have confirmed that the website is uh back up and running and the additional item is available for the public to review uh dr bridges did you have a question as well or is that what you were raising okay great thank you thank you miss president thank you president ashton i'm happy that the documents are now working on the web as well as in our sharepoint so just to uh round the conversation again i think in um sort of the why what we're presenting here is sort of an option

[00:55:48] in addition to um you know the great discussion we had yesterday is that you know we are really trying to think about everything that's in our measurement system as a cohesive role and how it supports not just effective instruction, teaching and learning in our schools, but also ultimately student outcomes. And so we wanted to bring forward an item here that considered assessment, accountability, school improvement, all together with a number of specific actions that are taking place now. But this is really, you know, we had the great presentation from JLARC yesterday. How do we think about implementing a bunch of different changes,

[00:56:27] some coming from the General Assembly, some coming from sort of our own analysis of these systems, moving forward over the next several years to really build from those strengths of the last five years, whether that is the tremendous work to adopt more rigorous standards in reading and mathematics in 2023 and '24, the work that you heard from Dr. Wallace earlier around HQIM and being sure that our teachers and instructors are equipped with instructional materials that are aligned to those standards, And then with the important work that we will complete this year to ensure our assessments are also aligned to those standards, that's really important work that we don't want to discount.

[00:57:06] We want to build on, reinforce, and strengthen, just as we want to build on, reinforce, and strengthen the new accountability system, which JLARC found was more effective and useful than the prior system. We did want to bring forward the idea of this one transition, again, because of how interconnected all of these elements are.

[00:57:27] we need to think about how they're sequenced together and how they build from one another, how they could be reinforcing one another toward that North Star of high expectations for all kids, and found that the 28-29 school year would be the best year that we saw in which all of those different timelines could converge. We do want to be continually signaling high expectations for our students because we know they are capable. We know that when we set the bar high, will need it and we want to also signal that to our parents our families everyone who supports students in the classroom whether that is the bus driver the teacher the school principal the

[00:58:06] assistant principal that needs to be a through line throughout the measurement system we also have a through line here around our um you know students who how do we think about communicating with families, with parents, with the public about what's changing and why and when this is really complicated. So we are trying to present all of those pieces ultimately again so that we can help the adults that work with our students know what they need to do to help our students meet those high expectations so that we can you know highlight bright spots but also identify areas that need

[00:58:42] improvement where additional action can be taken. We heard that great presentation this morning from Dr. Ballard about the work in Danville and Greensville and Prince Edward, but we also want to see similar actions happening in our comprehensive support schools, our targeted support schools. So that is sort of the idea here was that we could think about this cohesive system that is building the vision for what we want all to be true for all kids. Knowing it's going to take maybe take some time to sequence everything together, but this is what this is possible. This is achievable. This is attainable. So here are the five actions that we are bringing forward for first review today again i will likely be in front of this board many many many more times

[00:59:22] as we go through the full suite of those jailer recommendations and more you know uh assistant superintendent jennings was just talking about growth and i think um you know mr robinson and others brought up a really good point around you know this is what we're doing this year what do we want this to look like in the future so that may be it that's likely going to be an item that will come back to this board even though it's not a jailer recommendation there's no jailer recommendation about the growth indicator. But these were the five pieces that we wanted to bring forward today for first review. And I'll walk through them each in turn. So the first is adopting one change to

[00:59:58] increase our expectations for proficiency on state tests, synchronized with the other changes. And this is what that new attachment is really trying to clarify and address, what that would look like, especially in comparison to what this board voted on previously. A lot of things are the same, like that we're still having same high expectations for students. We are not raising the question here about whether we should raise cut scores to a nationally competitive level. That is true in both proposals that have been brought forward. We are also not changing the commitment of this board to providing insight to parents, to families, to educators, to divisions, to school leaders along

[01:00:37] the way about that delta between what's true now and where that North Star is. That is a common feature of both proposals. We are also not going back and reconsidering the consideration around how we think about our verified credits for students who have to pass an assessment to graduate. You know, sticking with this proposal in both that the cut scores that are in place when a student first takes the assessment for verified credit is what holds. That's what this board voted on in December. The big pieces that are different here is that under this proposal, we would get to

[01:01:14] that North Star in 28-29 rather than 29-30, that we were trying to sequence things in a way where the focus would be more on that North Star final destination rather than on maybe moving kids around a bubble each year of wherever the approaching slash passing level was, and really trying to focus more on where we were getting in 28-29 as a goal here. And I think another key piece is, again, that approaching level was unique to the plan this board voted on throughout the

[01:01:52] fall. That level is not part of the roadmap, in part because we felt it was confusing to have this shifting new level only in place for three years, and then it goes away at the same time that we're trying to communicate to parents about a whole other lot of changes that are happening to assessments. So that was, you know, part of the goals here. And hopefully the attachment clarifies exactly what the key differences are and shows, you know, we tried to highlight in every year what the level, what would be the cut score for proficiency. That's what is in bold, whether it's on the left-hand side or the right-hand side, every year. And you can see where

[01:02:29] So if we get to the final destination in 28-29 versus 29-30. And I think this will be, regardless of the conversation today, very helpful for stakeholders to have this in full and laid out in this manner. I wish that we had brought this forward yesterday because I think it would have been helpful for the conversation.

[01:02:49] But it is here now, so I really appreciate the push from Ms. McPherson and others on this board to bring this forward. I think that was exactly the right call today. So that is the first action that we have for first review. The second through fifth are more just focused on the accountability system portion of the measurement roadmap than kind of the big picture. This action would be to update the SPSF school rating names this fall. So this relates to the JLARC recommendation number one and one of the most common concerns that we heard on our

[01:03:25] Commonwealth Listening Tour. In particular, we would be updating the off-track category to approaching expectations and the on-track to meets expectations. That could take effect immediately. It does not have this ripple effect on other elements of this system. It is something that is just a reported label. So it's something that can be done quickly. And I think that quote from the JLARC report here on the slide illustrates why that is true. We also wanted to note that this does not preclude future board action on this question. It may be at the end of the day, once we consider how we want to update the three readiness indicator, and maybe we want to talk

[01:04:05] about the weight of growth and proficiency, and we adjust so that we have a different cut point to be distinguished for high schools than for elementary and middle schools, we may look at that data as part of the preview and decide, I think you heard from Deputy Superintendent Carol this morning about BQB5. They had the same thing where they said, we've been using three levels, now we want to use five. So we may have a similar situation in a few years, but we wanted to take this information right now based on what we know from JLARC, based on what we know from the Commonwealth Listening Tour. And we do think that this is more intuitive and aligned

[01:04:44] with BQB5, actually. These are two terms that they use. So that would be a really nice tie-in between our early childhood accountability system as well as our k-12 accountability system. The third action here is what we talked about yesterday around using more timely data to measure high school mastery. Right now we look at the mastery index based on the 12th grade cohort. So that means students in grade 12 whether they took the EOC reading test in grade 12, in grade 11, in grade

[01:05:17] 10 or in grade 9. And so that data can be several years old by the time it is actually fed into the accountability system. This is most of the high school indicators we use are just looking at the 12th grade cohort. 3E looks at the 12th grade cohort. Graduation rate looks at the 12th grade cohort. And mastery is a really highly weighted portion of our high school SPSF system. And we thought this would be a good change. It is based on feedback we have heard from the field, even though it is not in JLARC, because it would ensure we are focusing on all students in the school,

[01:05:54] not just those in 12th grade. We would be thinking about our 9th graders and our 10th graders and our 11th graders, not waiting until they're a 12th grader to find out if they've met those high expectations and would help us drive more meaningful, timely intervention in high schools that need it. This is a change that, if implemented, would not take effect for fall 26 ratings. It is one that we would implement for the ratings that come out next school year. So we would use 26-27 data and calculate mastery using this more annual measure. And we use annual data in elementary school and middle school. So it's also more similar with how mastery is treated in the other

[01:06:32] grade spans as well. The fourth and the final action that we are considering here for first review are related to English learners. This is the JLARC recommendation around how we reallocate the weight of the English language progress indicator, so that's based on the WIDA assessment that Assistant Superintendent Jennings was just talking about, when a school doesn't have enough English learners in the school. Currently, we reallocate that weight solely to the growth indicator. As Joe talked about yesterday, this results in a system that's fundamentally unfair

[01:07:11] because it means that the relative weight of growth and proficiency is quite different in schools just based on whether you have English learners or not. So if this board would like to consider how we weight growth relative to proficiency, a more fair way to do that is to change the weight of growth for all schools, not just schools that happen to have fewer English learners. So this would be accomplished, again, sort of like the prior action. We would implement it using data from the upcoming school year and would first be seen in the SPSF ratings that come

[01:07:46] out next fall. But this is also how we treat the ELP, the English Language Progress Indicator, in high school. This is only a practice right now that happens in middle school and in elementary school. Finally, our fifth action for first review is how we consider our recently arrived English learners. So the past action was thinking about all English learners. Recently arrived English learners are defined in federal law as any student who has not been enrolled in U.S. schools for a year. So these are students who are in their first year in schools in the U.S. So kindergarteners,

[01:08:23] they're not all recently arrived English learners because many of them, you know, were born here, have been in U.S. schools, but this is really specific to students who have only been arrived in U.S. schools for a year. Right now, we use what's called Exception A, and what we're proposing is to maintain exception A for the upcoming school year. Exception A allows students who are recently arrived to not take reading tests in English in their first year in U.S. schools.

[01:08:56] In their second year in U.S. schools, they do take reading tests. They also take math tests every year. That is consistent across the board. This is only really about when a student takes that reading assessment. Under exception A, the student takes the reading test in their second year, and they're only included in the mastery component because they don't have that prior year score to calculate growth. So a student under exception A is included for mastery and growth in their third year. Under exception B, the biggest difference here are twofold. One, all recently arrived English

[01:09:34] learners must be tested in reading in English in their first year in U.S. schools. In the second year, instead of being included in mastery, they would be included in growth. And in the third year, everything's the same. So it's really this, what does accountability look like in year two, and do we test students in their first year in U.S. schools in reading in English? And this was a piece where it gave us pause. Again, you know, we talked a lot about yesterday about the instructional practices that we want to see, and we were concerned about maybe over-testing EL students

[01:10:08] instead of focusing on them attaining English language proficiency, which is really, really critical, especially for students when they are newly arrived. The faster you can get a student to attain language proficiency, the better off they will be in the long term. We were interested, however, especially because this was a policy option, one of those that, you know, as Joe talked about yesterday, like not quite strong enough to make a recommendation, but an option to consider that we thought maybe there's a way that we could pilot this, give some divisions a chance to see what would happen if they tested their recently arrived English learners in reading

[01:10:43] in year one. Get feedback from those teachers. Get feedback from those divisions. See what happens to their SPSF results. We would need to be sure that this is permissible under federal law. I always would want to have that caveat, but we thought that could be a really great way for us to test it out and sort of do that type of preview it before maybe considering bringing back this item as a change statewide. I know that is wonky and complicated, but that was the intention here that let's stick with the current practice for this year, maintain that focus really on teaching and learning for our recently arrived English learners. But if there are some divisions that

[01:11:20] may be interested in this approach, perhaps we could give, find a way for them to pilot it. And with that, I am going to pause and take questions. Lots of questions. Okay. Ms. McPherson and Dr. Bridges. So I just want to make sure we're clear about your proposal and recommendation of move on versus what we previously as a board have voted so i'm looking at your chart which

[01:11:56] talks about prepare students 2026 2027 so on proficiency cut score changes you say there would be no change in 26 27 that's for all grade levels whereas the board had voted that the change that we were taking into consideration would be the exemption for high school seniors so we wouldn't impactor and then instead what you would do is you would put a what if data preview of new cut scores so you would basically tell principals and superintendents this is what if the new cut scores

[01:12:32] were in place so basically you would be eliminating all of our approaching category and the testing scores for students for cut scores under the proficiency levels that we had adopted under the approaching and the same thing in 2027 you're proposing that there be no change in the cut scores and you would do the same thing again you would tell principals parents this is a what if the new cut scores were in place this is where you would be

[01:13:07] and then at 28 29 you would finally say guess what we're going to implement the new cut scores so i just want to make sure that we're clear that the board said we would implement the new cut scores we would exempt the students we would begin telling parents principals superintendents everybody would have all the information and that approaching would be the passing because we're trying to get them to the proficiency level so that we would be proficient at 28 29. so that's that's a big difference 29 30. okay that's a big difference even if they move it up a year that's

[01:13:44] a big difference okay and as we go back and we look at the november 20 25 materials we actually said that our goal was to get 28 29 anyway that we would phase in but i just it needs to be clear to the public that these two plans are not close at all they're very very different one is what if we implemented cut scores and this is what you would look like and the other one is we're implementing cut scores and we're measuring you according to those cut scores and we're moving you

[01:14:21] incrementally towards proficiency based on the national level that's two very different plans so i think that when i say the similarities here the similarities the three similarities that are summarized on the first page are the at the end of the day where we are in 28 29 under this new option and where we are in 29 2030 under the prior option is exactly the same in every grade level in every subject so that is that is true and then the idea of i think under the uh previously

[01:15:01] approved plan that you all voted on there was a different way of i would say previewing or preparing divisions that was through the approaching level because approaching was considered passing. So it is accurate to say that in 26-27, under the prior vote that you all, this board spent many months deliberating carefully on, that the cut scores, the performance levels change. They do change. They just don't go all the way to that North Star. You can see that whether on pages three and four of the handout that we provided, the attachment, that the fail

[01:15:38] below basic level is a different score. The fail basic level is a different score. The fail pass approaching is a different score. That is different between 26-27 and 25-26. And then the third piece that was the commonality was the way that we were treating students who need to pass for verified credit. So we were just trying to lay out, and it's by showing this level of detail all in one place, which I think this document, you know, was created last night. It has not existed before today. And this level of detail has never been shared, even with our divisions, that I think just wanted to

[01:16:12] have crystal clarity between the two and where they are different and where they are the same. That was our goal so that we could ground this conversation, this discussion for first review with a common set of information. Great. Thank you, Dr. Bridges, and then Mr. Henson.

[01:16:29] Comment that I promise is leading to a question. The question is how you created the left-hand charts and let me share why I'm asking that question. So we all talked yesterday about the previous vote and then I was able to go back last night and review those meetings again as someone who wasn't part of the board at that point. And it was really clear to me that when y'all approved the new cut scores and that this board is not altering that vote at all,

[01:17:07] But the December meeting, when there was approval of this four-year phase-in with a temporary performance category, there was nothing like this document. And so my biggest concern about policy making is public clarity. And I myself, who was taking a lot of time to try to make sense of it, had three example tables. And then there's some conflicting language between the actual superintendent's recommendation then and and the four years that were laid out in that executive summary so it was really hard to understand and i was really concerned that there was no publicly

[01:17:45] available cut scores per sol subject at that time so you've created them but how did you determine what the cut scores were because there was no way to see it was there something that you could use from the previous oh yes i was not at the department so i'll say this is the video e but um we did i will say those sort of words you pieced this together you had to take what was passed in september what was then maybe went out to stakeholders which did not have the 25 26 year

[01:18:19] as a na nothing happens year and then pieced together the examples from the board which were just for three subject areas. That was what was voted on in December. And then the specifics of this, my understanding from talking with the team is that we did work with our TAC, maybe not the full TAC, but a key advisor to the TAC to try and determine what exactly each of the cut scores should be. But you are correct in stating that the table that is on the left hand has only been an internal document up to this point. Okay. So this is the first time the public can see

[01:18:57] what this would look like because the language from December was, again, depending on where you look in that executive summary, I could make an argument that year 1, 26, 27 doesn't even ask for a phase increase because I'm quoting directly from that summary. Introduce a temporary new performance level. That's all it says. It doesn't say that you need to adjust those cut scores in introducing that new temporary performance level. Then in year two, it says modest. Again, I'm quoting from the summary, a modest increase in the cut score. And then in year three, it says

[01:19:35] interim increase. Again, as a member of the public who wasn't there, I was like, what's modest and what's interim? So for the first time, we're seeing how we're thinking about modest and interim and you are including an adjustment in 26, 27 that wasn't necessarily in the language that was approved, right?

[01:19:54] Yeah, I would say the document, maybe it was one of the more detailed documents in terms of sharing the data from multiple grade levels, multiple subjects, was a document that went out to stakeholders during those focus groups, the tour that the team led.

[01:20:10] And they presented a four-year approach and a five-year approach. So it doesn't say which of the options are there. And in particular, it shows what some of these approaching levels would be. It doesn't talk about the changes, though, to fail below BASIC or fail BASIC. So even a stakeholder that went to that may have seen the approaching level, but they might not have seen sort of the shifts in those two lower levels based on my review of what I've got from the team and what I've seen publicly as well.

[01:20:40] So I do think there is part of what I do really appreciate about the push from so many members of this board yesterday was in urging us to bring this forward so that there is crystal clear, we are crystal clear on the path ahead of us and that we can start, use the next two months to really disseminate this widely, broadly with as many folks as possible who would be impacted by that.

[01:21:08] you know our families our parents our educators um to really lay it out in a very this this stark and this clear way as clear as we possibly can be so that they can make the shifts and instruction that we need to just have one more clarifying question for her and then uh wondering to the board but madam chair i'm happy to alternate if i could just ask the one clarifying ask the question please thank you and again this is all for public clarity i want to make sure we're being really clear to to the audience that hopefully is able to to view this as well the rating change, the second item that you're presenting today would not lose categories. It

[01:21:46] would still be, there would be four categories for the full performance framework, support framework. Needs intensive support, approaching expectations, meets expectations, and distinguish. That is correct, yes. Action two does not impact our sort of two, the highest and the lowest, or the number of categories um you know as they teased you know we may want to come back in the future if we look at the data after making number numerous jlark changes but yes this fall and in fall 2027 the four i should say this fall this fall the four categories would be needs intensive

[01:22:24] support approaching expectations meets expectations and distinguished thank you so i just wanted to make sure because you didn't discuss those and i yes yeah it is only those two categories that would be changing thank you and i'll reserve my next comment for so others can sure let's make sure we uh help have other board members comment uh mr henson um i just think that there's some really mixed information going on here somebody who's been here for four years we've been at this accountability framework discussion three of those years the actions that took place last summer

[01:23:03] last fall, last winter, public record, we were all here. We had outside experts come in and show where we stood with our cut scores in all these categories, lowest in the country in most of them, and the fact that we made a conscientious decision unanimously to move forward in a tiered

[01:23:34] structure so that we don't have a cliff coming upon it so that we also get some exercise with the participants in this to build towards this, to get the culture changing towards accountability, transparency. And so it's also not rocket science, frankly, to figure out if we're in our fifth grade reading at 400 and we want to get to 500 that over three or four years there's

[01:24:12] going to be an incremental approach i would also ask where's the department been for the last eight months to help us put this together rhetorical question right now and i would also say that the presentation you just walked through especially for number one um had nothing said about our children and I went back just the very first conversation we had about this in 2022 and we

[01:24:45] had Dr. Schneider here and this is when we were coming out of COVID. It's after five years from 2017 to 2022 that we had the largest learning loss in the entire and it was by far and there were half the states that didn't have learn loss. Ours was 14% across the board. And a lot of that also

[01:25:18] coincided with the Board of Education 2017 dropping the math and the reading standards. And so, you know, the way in which we handled or didn't handle the COVID situation, as well as making a conscientious decision to lower our standards. We're direct correlating events to

[01:25:49] anybody who wants to go back and look at the slides that were presented Dr. Schneider in 2022. And I'd also say that we've sat here through hours and hours and hours of our expert consultants walking us through these cut scores the last year. So this whole conversation, and again, I'm going to just throw out another organizational issue for the department. There was no discussion about this. None of us, I didn't know this was coming. And this is not best practice in

[01:26:26] management and in conversation. You know, last summer and fall, we had 17 listening sessions, hold all that information, 1,500 comments online, and very transparent system, and I just think, you know, in our true north right now, it needs to be, how do we close the massive NAEP score gaps for our black children, our Hispanic children, for our disadvantaged children,

[01:27:02] across the board, where again, we have made dramatic improvements these last four years to to where we maybe got back to where we were when we dropped very far in 2021.

[01:27:18] And I just think that for kicking this can down the road for another three years, not getting the ultra changing in our school system with our leaders, with our families, with our expectations, even what's coming out of Richmond to be able to explain why this is important.

[01:27:41] And by making this type of recommendation, we're saying this isn't important. And there's a lot of mumbo jumbo in here about communication and about that the best way to communicate is to do something. And, you know, this, I heard a lot yesterday about plans.

[01:27:57] We need action. And I'm repeating myself from yesterday, but this whole notion about, you know, having one big change, you know, the way things have gone these last eight years, This is kicking the can down the road and giving you an opportunity when all of a sudden people's hair is going to be on fire because we've got the one big change coming in 2028, 2029.

[01:28:22] It's much more thoughtful, much more respectful, much more meaningful, much more plausible and possible if we go with this phased in approach that we spent years working on with outside experts. And again, we're trying to get Virginia out of the ditch of being the lowest cut scores in most cases in the country.

[01:28:47] Ms. McPherson, I'm going to go to Dr. Wilson, and then I'll go back to Ms. McPherson. Thank you. I have a question about the name change as it relates to the question of number one and the path.

[01:29:07] So, in the name change, the recommendation will be approaching proficiency? Yes, that was what was voted on by the board. And so, how is that defined, right?

[01:29:23] So, thinking about how the two pieces may fit together, I'm sorry that I don't understand how those things speak to one another. If there is no approaching score, then how will we define approaching proficiency as we're identifying schools?

[01:29:46] When you say there's no approaching, are you talking about the one and two together? I just want to be sure I understand the question, Dr. Wood. Yes. So how do recommendations one and two speak to each other, fit together? Yes. Thank you. Yes. I mean, I think we were thinking of this as a package.

[01:30:04] So I think this speaks a little bit to the confusion around approaching proficiency and what that would mean, and that we would need to do a lot of work with our stakeholders to explain that that was, you know, it's approaching proficiency, but it is considered passing for all intents and purposes.

[01:30:23] And then we would, you know, be implementing that the approaching proficiency level for purposes of calculating mastery for example would be treated the same in the accountability system as a proficient so when it comes to the school accountability system there wouldn't be we use a mastery index where you get it you know as joe walked through yesterday it was you know 0.25 points if you're below basic 0.75 if you're basic mastery for the mastery index proficiency and approaching proficiency would be one point okay and then and then yes we do are we're suggesting

[01:31:00] having this approaching expectations label, replacing off-track for the reasons here that, you know, it would be more intuitive, more aligned with VQB 5 and was trying to address stakeholder feedback. So we would have, you know, if the board were not to move forward ultimately in August with action one, we could have approaching proficiency on parent report cards and things like that. And we could have approaching expectations for SPSF purposes.

[01:31:35] The hope would, of course, be that approaching expectations is a term that sticks around for a while. Approaching proficiency is only applicable for the three school years as shown on the left hand side of that attachment. So that label would go away after those three years and when the plan be fully implemented in 2930. But you are correct, Dr. Wilson, in noting that approaching would be used in two different contexts within the cut scores and with the expectations. Of course, we were bringing this forward together is that, you know, we're all of these five items together.

[01:32:10] So under our scenario of having the one switch, there would be no approaching proficiency level. But if the decision is that this item two, the name change goes forward, and I'm sorry, let me make sure I'm looking at this in the right way, and we change the performance category to approaching expectations, that would remain, correct?

[01:32:45] That would remain until we brought it forward for the board, unless we got additional information. I'm not asking my question as clearly as I should, but if we say that a school is approaching expectations in their performance, my question is, how is that defined as it relates to the first item?

[01:33:13] right? So if there's no cut score, if there's no metric against which we can define approaching expectations, that's what I'm trying to clarify. No, I love this conversation because I think ultimately it's getting to probably one of the single biggest things we are going to need to do to improve the accountability system. And that is the second JLARG recommendation that Joe talked about yesterday, which is how we set the cut points between each of those performance categories. What's the difference between distinguished and what we have right now on track, meeting expectations potentially, what we have between each level. When those cut points

[01:33:52] were defined originally, the numbers were just set, let's make it 90 and above, 80 and above. I would love for us to have a conversation as a board when we get to that point around, let's say we want distinguished to mean it is true that most of the students in your school are meeting our new proficiency cut point. That is what we want. And I think we can have an opportunity in the future to do that. It's not true right now. We had a conversation yesterday about, you know, 60% of our high schools are distinguished, and that's not the case for elementary schools.

[01:34:26] But as we go forward with these JLAC recommendations, we can make it a much more explicit link, potentially, between where we are setting proficiency expectations for kids and what we are doing for schools. And that is something that this board will be able to do in the next several years.

[01:34:44] It's just a little bit further down the pipeline because first we have to consider other JLARC recommendations like that 3E readiness indicator. But I think that would be really helpful to actually define in data, not just in labels, but like define in what does it mean for student outcomes in a school to be distinguished?

[01:35:04] What does it mean for student outcomes in a school to meet expectations and to have that rooted in the SPSF data itself. Thank you. Mr. Henson. I appreciate this conversation. And I think what JLARC recommended yesterday was actually cleaner and a better approach.

[01:35:23] I like the commonality of the word standard, whether it's selling the standard or meeting the standard or partially meeting the standard. And I think partially is a much better word than approaching. approaching has a lot of implications to it, that you're moving in one direction when you might be moving in four different directions.

[01:35:46] And I think our conversation with JLARC yesterday, a variation on the West Virginia example of still needing intensive support because that's the goal here is to help these schools.

[01:36:02] It's not to be punitive, it's to be helpful and to help draw resources to them. But I did find the word approaching confusing not consistent but you know great conversation to we have but um there's a lot of different connotations appreciate that feedback that's exactly why that's what first review is for you know we want to get feedback from everyone about this because we know i mean we heard this from jailer yesterday there's nothing that folks can go around and around as you know those those category names and we heard a lot of that the first time that we did this as a board and i expect we will hear more of that to come in the next several months

[01:36:41] Dr. Bridges. Thank you. I want to make it so clear that my comments are specifically about what the December board action. I think yesterday, I hope you all heard from me, that you built a strong foundation and we were talking about some tweaks. And so please know that this is not re-litigating or even questioning the cut scores themselves or all of the actions that took place up until December. And in fact, when you talked about bringing in national experts, the first time I ever saw Ann Hyslip was because I was watching a board meeting and y'all brought in her as a

[01:37:21] national expert. And I was like, sold on that expertise. So I really appreciate all of those things. I want to get to the real particular part of the policy itself that was approved in December, because not having seen those numbers, if I'm confused and I've got a degree and I spend a lot of my work life looking at policy, I fear that the public is confused.

[01:37:48] And when they don't have access to something, we're not meeting our own stated standard of transparency. But now we've got transparency. So that's the other piece I want to make sure this is clear to the public. As you just said, this is a first read, which means you put things out there, we respond, things get adjusted, and we come up with what we ultimately vote on. We are not voting today. We're wordsmithing and policymaking right now. And so what I heard from board members yesterday, when you think about policy intent and what the goals are for where we

[01:38:20] head next, I heard three big things. Don't lose urgency and momentum. Be transparent. And then the third one is the one where really, I think it's the meat of where we might have some productive discussion. That step the board took in December was an effort to make the gaps between current reality and aspiration really visible. You wanted to be able to show the gaps by doing that phased in four-year plan and incentivize instructional adjustments. And you just mentioned another one,

[01:38:57] Mr. Hanson, which is avoid that clip that's going to startle everyone. And so that's where I'd like to spend some of our board time today and really talking about, are there other ways where we might get to those goals? Because I think we all share those goals of wanting to be able, everybody to be really clear on how much work kids and teachers and leaders have to do to get to where we're trying to get them to go. How do we incentivize those instructional adjustments is huge.

[01:39:24] These two years between now and when the cut scores do become final, whichever way we go, if we're not spending time on instructional adjustments and teaching and learning then all we're doing is setting all these kids up for even worse failure right and so i'd love to hear more from folks about that particular policy impetus in how we're thinking about these two options um that we would be voting on in august no right i want to make sure that i am there is

[01:39:55] confusion but i also want to make going to implement cut scores we were going to implement them and that we would have a category that dealt with approaching so you could see where you were but we were going to implement the test we won't implement the cut scores and everybody you would be passing if you reached the approaching category what the proposal is is that we would not be

[01:40:30] implementing these cut scores until we get down to 28 29 so what i'm saying is that's a two plans are not the same so let me go back and say this we brought in 237 experts we spent millions of dollars in developing this in fact the tax council told us that even using a graduated implementation was not the best way to go we needed to implement the cut scores right away but after listening to

[01:41:06] thousands of individuals and having the staff run all over the state of virginia talk to all the superintendents talk to teachers we set up panels to to realign the textbooks and the materials to the new cut scores take all of that into consideration and the board voted that we were going to implement it and we were going to exclude seniors so that they would not be caught by surprise and be impacted for their college education so these two plans are not closed and i think this board is prepared to move forward today and take item one off of first review final

[01:41:45] review and go back and reiterate to the public that we are committed to all the work that's been done over the past three years. Let me say something. It's not about race. It's about every student, but it impacts. It impacts Black students. I looked at some numbers last night. Let me just find. This is important. 50% of the African-American students live in Portland. That's Senator Lucas's district. 48% live in Hampton. That's Senator Locke's area. Approximately 40% are in Suffolk.

[01:42:23] all of these are region two. I come out of region two. We're talking a significant portion of the population that is sitting in socioeconomically deprived areas and have been. And you're telling me you want to wait until 28, 29? Let me tell you the problem with that. Yesterday, I told you that Amazon put $1.2 billion in raising its workforce from just being people who are packaging materials to making them skilled workers. Elon Musk told the nation that some of what they learned in medical school is not even going to be necessary. They probably ought to just drop out.

[01:43:03] We're making public education obsolete. We don't have time to wait anymore. Martin Luther King said we can't wait. For the lack of knowledge, people will perish. We're talking about a generation of people who need us to act immediately and tell them the truth about where we are. I'm not prepared to wait till 28, 29. I'm telling the public right now, here's what we need to do. Figure out where instruction is going on and where students are succeeding. Send our teachers over there to be trained by those teachers and those principals. Do all these things these young people told us

[01:43:41] that we need to do to be ready for the next century. If not, guess what? Public education is gone. Industry is preparing to teach students what they need because they don't believe that the public education system is doing it. If you think that NVIDIA, Amazon, and all these big companies are going to wait for us to continue to teach students, and they're reading at less than a fourth grade level at this point, I mean, what are we talking about? We don't have any more time. That day is over. So what they decided to do is teach students what they need to be ready

[01:44:19] for in the job market because they don't see us doing it so you're pricing all your school teachers out of business we got to get going i'm prepared for us to vote and reaffirm to the public what we voted on before in december and you're going to have to go back and read august september october november december you also got to go all the way back to 2022 because it was a building path it wasn't just one meeting where maybe we summarize what we've been doing it goes back to 2022.

[01:44:54] Mr. Robinson, and then Dr. Northern, thank you. First of all, I appreciate the comments about our students who are graduating, and there's been a lot of analysis with AI and the shifting job market, increased challenges with students having access to meaningful employment that can disrupt generational poverty.

[01:45:20] That that's already we already see our inequities growing in many ways in this country and that that may that access to the true American dream is harder. It will require more skills, more proficiency, higher lifestyle levels, all those type of things.

[01:45:38] So I and that's ultimately the purpose of education is so students have those options to shape their lives and the lives of those that that they love. And so I share the urgency on no longer having the lowest cut scores in the country and starting the work further, not just through saying, here's where we're going to go, but through the actual hard work of trying to get there, experiencing those higher cut scores and

[01:46:14] experiencing helping teachers experience the misalignments that need to be addressed to improve instructional rigor and help us as a as a board as a body improve our supports to schools improve the resources schools to help them do that and I fundamentally believe that raising cut scores now uh will only benefit students um what i would separate is you know on the big things uh i think that's the only one that i'm hearing disagreement about and i'm not minimum it's a big

[01:46:53] disagreement on whether to change cut scores now um uh i'm hearing alignment on the final destination that virginia will have one of the highest bars in the country that the bar is currently set too low and that's no longer acceptable to anyone on this stage. I'm hearing alignment that we have to improve parental communication and communication to educators with stakeholder previews and time to prepare. No one is saying go to final destination next year.

[01:47:28] And alignment a lot of other things that won't go through. But I think the big alignment that we shouldn't misalignment that we shouldn't dance around is whether we start to raise cut scores now i personally think it's more minor issues regarding do we do a four-step process or two or three-step process uh do we use an approaching designation as a signal for as a mechanism for how we get there i respect that the board put a lot of ton of energy and thought into those two things

[01:48:02] And it is a new administration that's being tasked with implementing this massive change alongside the massive change of assessments and the framework and other changes that we've been discussing. And so for me personally, I have some desire for deference and options on those implementation specifics that I think you can keep our urgency for changing things for students now and not have to have the exact particulars voted on in the first and final review in December.

[01:48:39] But I think where the biggest disagreement is, is again, whether we start raising cut scores significantly now, and I'm in strong favor of raising those scores. I'd love for us to talk about these one at a time. Now, I know you guys saw some usefulness in presenting them as a package, but I'm not that useful. I feel like I'm kind of having a hard time. I do feel like there's a lot of agreement around many of the JLARC. Like there's a lot of agreement about raising cut scores. And like my colleague said, we can dabble about whether it's

[01:49:17] going to be three or four. But yeah, it would be helpful to go one by one. I only, I don't want to repeat too much of what I already said yesterday, but I will say that the approaching idea came from the field. There were many of us, I was on that team at one point, ripped the band-aid off, and then I'm like, we can't stop it. I remember what it was like to be a teacher. It feels like it was coming out of nowhere. So by all means, like, look into it. But my understanding was there were many conversations with districts. The idea of approaching came from them. Last team worked with

[01:49:53] them. Pearson was involved. The company, Pearson, who was our vendor, was involved. Our TAC was involved. And our own team here, because you guys have the data. So I'm assuming some of our own members of the team had that data in a spreadsheet somewhere. Whether or not it all, you know, I thought as you guys know some of these conversations you have with districts behind the scenes because they want it behind the scenes right i don't know to the extent that the last team sat down with district by district and shared these numbers with them um but i do know that sometimes it doesn't

[01:50:30] always happen out in the public because our district our division superintendents ask us not So that said, I do think that we have the information. This is not coming out of left field. This is the approach they wanted. And I do, I'll just repeat again, I think this one, like when you are expecting them to go, I'm just looking at grade four reading, from 400 to 451 in one year, it's almost impossible kids to make 51 points of improvement in one year when they haven't been

[01:51:06] told like here's what you're supposed to be getting to get you up to that place to me like this is exactly what they told us they didn't want they didn't want to rip the band-aid off and so those intervening years there needs to be a purpose to them what i hear is that the purpose is to preview and show them and i feel like because i've been here longer than everybody else and know everybody else doesn't have this feeling but my feeling is done the preview we've done the talking we've done the listening tours and i get it new people come in and they feel like oh we need

[01:51:39] to start afresh but no like let's let's like put your own stamp on it right because i i actually agree that the jailer stuff is hugely helpful hey i'm for tinkering on the labels too let's have that discussion and figure out where we are find all our places of similarity because we all are very similar on a lot of these issues except as fun i'd love for us to just start rowing together on where we agree and not feel like there's more division on this on this stage than there really is superintendent conway thank you all i just want to clarify how we got here to be very explicit

[01:52:17] the ways in which the department and the department staff were simply following the law jlark put out recommendations on the school performance and support framework in those recommendations including one of the sides that joe showed yesterday showed that these cut scores would have a significant impact on the thresholds on the ratings and the sequence how you did this is why this is being re-evaluated that was then turned into a law that was signed in that was passed by the general assembly and signed by our governor so the reason we are here today is not

[01:52:56] because somebody wants to put a stamp on anything or because the department and all of the staff that it represents have been doing nothing for the last six months the reason we are here today and the reason we are presenting these items in concert with each other is that we are following the law our actions and the actions that you know support the school divisions of virginia are guided in part by the board of education guided in part by the governor of the commonwealth of virginia and guided by the laws that the general assembly passes so i just want to take that piece of this conversation off the table out of the respect for the many many people who both

[01:53:32] supported and participated the thousands of folks who participated with learning heroes and in those uh focus groups last year and made the recommendation as dr norther sort of noted about approaching as well as the 2300 people who came out for the listening tour and the many many folks in between and all of the folks who came this morning and spoke to us right i just i really want that to be sort of radically transparent on how we got here this is not an option uh of anybody that once a law is passed and said a bipartisan legislative commission has said you need to

[01:54:06] reevaluate this thing we had to do that so that's that's that's a piece to note um with that i'm comfortable however the board president wants to go through there i just want to make that crystal clear in terms of this was not intended to be at the last minute but really was you know you all made a vote on december 11th i think daylight came out literally the next week the general assembly convened on the 13th it finished bill was passed and that's how we got to where we are today you know i want to chime in just on a couple of things that you said um i'm gonna be so um

[01:54:43] personal i'm sitting here thinking about wilson carmen sophia kyla and olivia who we heard from earlier today and i think they are the best and the brightest of what virginia has to offer and i am sitting here thinking how do we ensure that every student in virginia has the experience that they talked about the issues that they raise they talked about stem education they talked about engagement. They talked about literacy, everything that we, I think, believe in. And I think what

[01:55:23] I want to acknowledge exactly what you just said, Superintendent Conway, which is I chat GPT. It's been 163 days since you were selected as our state superintendent. And I want to thank you and the team for working very hard to make sense of a lot of things and as you've said to me the context has changed and so what you said is the General Assembly has come here J Lark has come here and then there is the last three years which

[01:55:58] we have all been working so diligently to try to and there's there is a lot of consensus and I want to just name the consensus no everyone wants the cut scores to be higher and there's no disagreement there is no confusion about that and i think we should rest on that we do disagree on the how to get there um having been on this board for three years i i is it is my belief firm belief that this board did want to move towards implementing and

[01:56:34] changing and not just recommending. But it is important to acknowledge the brutal facts that there has never been and no one has ever seen the public chart that you developed last night until the wee hours of the night. So let's just acknowledge that brutal fact. That has not been out there. And if that had been out there in January or February or March, then we might say that there isn't confusion or there's there's more clarity and i think to your point um superintendent conway uh this is where they're again coming out of jlark i believe there is a lot of consensus and

[01:57:14] belief on many of the recommendations that came out of jlark right after the december vote and so there's alignment i think we are we are not aligned on point number one and i go back to to Wilson, Carmen, Sophia, Kyla, and Olivia.

[01:57:31] And I think we have to raise the bar for all of our kids as soon as possible. And the last point that Dr. Northam mentioned is that this did directly come from the field around a phased in approach.

[01:57:47] They wanted the feedback, they did not want the clift. And I think it would be a complete reversal to say now that we are going to delay it for another two years, given what we heard and how the board operated for the last three years.

[01:58:07] So what I would entertain and would love for us to consider is if you look at the four recommendations, I think two, three, four, and five, there is a general consensus.

[01:58:25] Now, again, I wanted to acknowledge that you all are living this work day to day, and for you all, there's no way to separate them out. But I think that if we don't separate them out, there will be more confusion than is needed.

[01:58:42] And so my proposal would be that we actually consider two, three, four, five separate than one, and that we come back to one and decide how to best move forward for the students and families of Virginia.

[01:58:58] Is that an amendable approach to how to get where we're going to go today? Sure. So I understand that, Dan, we will recommit to number one. We will recommit to the board's position, and we can adopt 2, 3, 4, and 5 JLOC recommendations.

[01:59:22] Staff can go back and modify and bring back some proposed language, but that we recommit to the implementation of the cut scores, keeping in place our approach and category for what we have voted on before.

[01:59:38] so that's actually not what I'm proposing so let me try to amend it what I am I'm going to need legal counsel on this what I what what is before this board right now is a first review with five recommendations I am saying can we move forward with a first review of items two three four and I'm saying can we just discuss and do a first review of that so moved is there a second okay

[02:00:16] well do you want to know the second part then yeah and then let's have a discussion around how um address number one separately but I'm actually asking to I'm actually I am asking to separate them out separate items can i do that right typically the board simply receives the report there's no action to be taken at this time the purposes of your conversation you want to

[02:00:55] agree that we're done talking about this for now i'm going to i don't think you can even vote so question why can't we you would have to well okay you brought the staff right it for first review we just don't have to agree with we can decide that we want to stay with what we have and that we don't bring that back for a second review that would probably be mcpherson you can make a motion to move like one from first from further review we don't have to be doing first review we just

[02:01:33] remove it from anywhere as it as it is currently it doesn't come back dr wilson you have some boss I I do have I have so in terms of process I tend to agree that we are already we are in the middle of a first review of all five items right so it doesn't seem to me that we can now remove item one from first review so procedurally I'm not the lawyer but what would typically happen

[02:02:07] after today's meeting when we have had time to discuss typically then the item goes to the public or there is this opportunity for other board staff the public to weigh in provide information all of those kinds of things and the way the agenda looks for August items and I believe that i imagine that this at the august meeting it could be that uh the board and staff may decide that they

[02:02:40] do we do not want to move forward with any action on item one and so for the purpose of the agenda next time it would show final review of items if we have to take the slate we take the slate and we can vote on them item by item or we could take the block two through five leaving one off also asking questions and the additional information staff provide providing directions to the superintendent staff about changes you'd like to see or options whatever it is

[02:03:19] provide feedback with staff before it comes back and then then when you vote and that would also mean that staff is currently under the requirement to move forward or what the board has voted on so what we voted on in december needs to be an implementation phase so we come back in august and we started talking about oh well no we're going to change this the students are going to go back to school again and you want to talk about confusion because right now the the staff is under requirement to implement the plan that the board has previously voted on so regardless of how many

[02:03:57] times you try to review this right now they they need to be implementing what we have already approved staff and board are bound by absolutely by the action absolutely and the and the principals and the superintendents are all waiting for information implementation education to the parents all of that needs to be going legal counsel i mean the four votes that we're going to head

[02:04:34] east right you're headed east but more can say you know we're going to change our mind we're going to head northeast instead so i don't know i'm not sure what the question is that i need answered the board's provided direction in the past then that's the direction we're on until the board should like to change direction mr henson if we have a fundamental disagreement with what's been put before us for first review we have the ability as the board to not proceed with it

[02:05:12] you can reject it put it to bed because it's just if anything can be put before this board and it makes it automatic and it goes to the public if the board disagrees with what the department is coming up with i'd like an explanation of how the board can exercise its authority to not proceed with something that we disagree with for first review we've done it before we did

[02:05:46] it on the chronic absenteeism four years ago superintendent made a recommendation for first review that we were going to continue to waive the chronic absenteeism requirements to let Akuna Matata continue and the board said no. Explain to me how it did not go for public

[02:06:16] comment. It did not go for public review. Madam Chair, in my parliamentary experience, then we should, that should have been stricken from the agenda. It's on the agenda now and certainly the board can vote and express its will when when you take action which is not today we've just received it and the one that one of the good things about receiving it is now that the public has access to seeing the phased-in approach that was voted on in december i mean authority

[02:06:53] i believe the board is prepared to vote to take this first review and put it to bed not proceed any further with that and not further confuse the public i'd make a motion that we review this from the agenda second okay there has been a could you clarify your motion we removed this whole thing from the agenda these other four items are not critical they can be brought up to first review again in proper format at the august yeah the j-lock recommendations can be booked okay

[02:07:31] so there has been recommended that we remove this first review from the agenda the entire item and raise the other stephanies there has been a motion to remove first review of the assessment accountability roadmap proficiency implementation in school performance and school support frame framework for the 26-27 update the motion has been moved and it has been seconded yes okay i will

[02:08:03] comments sure so um i i understand the desire to remove this and agree that there is sufficient there is a lot of confusion and a lot of um still i think remaining questions and so the information that the department provided thank you for you all for scrambling and putting this together i mean that i know that that was no small feat and um having time to ensure that one we all understand

[02:08:37] the history. Two, that we have the opportunity to hear from the public in various ways. I do believe that having further input from the public in addition to the input that was provided in 2025 into 2026 is very important and will be helpful to the board as we contemplate further. Dr. Wilson, Can you say more about what input you or would it hope or expect?

[02:09:10] Yes. So what we have discovered today is that the charts, the side-by-side comparisons, which include the specific cut scores, I believe we've discovered today that that specific information was not provided to the public prior to now.

[02:09:33] As a tag on to that, if you recall from Mr. Braban's comments during public comment, he said that VAS, not he, VAS, supported the approaching naming or that with specific scores.

[02:09:56] So there is an indication that more information to the public will be helpful, though as a general matter, their support. So that's the kind of response or input that I would imagine would be helpful for all of us to take into consideration.

[02:10:13] Thank you for clarifying. Mr. Robinson? A point of clarity on separating out one versus what I think was just proposed, which is to do all five. Deputy Superintendent Hyslop, on two through five, are there any major repercussions to not, to waiting for a first review on two through five until August, which would be one of the implications of this? I'm obviously curious if there's a way to consider the proposal from

[02:10:52] Vice Chairman Hanson about number one, and separate two through five, but I don't know, I'm assuming there might be repercussions, but maybe there's not. um so under that if we were to come back with um for first review in august with items two through five that would then put us as soon as for a final review in september on those items that will be particularly challenging for number two and that is because that is something we were hoping to do for this fall we are currently working right now on all the communications materials for the release of the spsf because spsf results came out in december last year and And we are committed to having them come out earlier in the fall this year.

[02:11:31] And so that is a piece of, you know, how we would just need that one in particular. I think the other three are things that, you know, generally best practice for accountability systems is to tell who is being held accountable prior to the start of the school year what they're being held accountable for.

[02:11:47] So deferred to, I think it was his proposal, so deferred to Vice Chairman Hinson Pitt. i would respectfully request at least number two if possibly uh i would recommend all of two through five um not be removed and be allowed to move forward with a first review um in the in the proposed amendment i think that would be better for everyone and for urgency mr henson there has been a he'll accept the amendment mr henson there has been a recommendation that you modify your

[02:12:24] proposal we remove item four pieces of item i exception of number two okay there has been an amendment to the motion on the table which is to remove for first review um there's items one through

[02:13:00] five however mr henson has allowed for first review for item two even just make a suggestion WE HAVE TWO MONTHS BETWEEN NOW AND AUGUST AND I THINK ITEMS TWO, THREE, FOUR, AND FIVE SOMEWHAT STRAIGHTFORWARD. WE HAD A GOOD CONVERSATION WITH JLARC YESTERDAY ABOUT THE NAMES.

[02:13:23] I WOULD GO WITH THE CONVERSATION WE HAD YESTERDAY. I THINK THIS COULD BE DONE IN A MANNER WITH SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE AND THE BOARD TO HAVE SOME CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THIS AND COME BACK IN the august meeting for first and final review for items so that department can go and not have balances in september um that's a pardon department to work together back with first and final review

[02:14:03] on items speak to the motion i'm really concerned about the parliamentary um process here um i'm not i've never been a part and i've been a part of a lot of bodies where you strike an item that you've already considered on an agenda i completely understand the potential of striking an item in the next meeting that you don't want to consider um and that that i would be willing to entertain that but i i think we're getting into really odd territory to strike something that we've already had first review on um i think he says something a little different i think what he's

[02:14:39] saying is you're right we we reviewed them we've reviewed one through five we've done first review And then we just move along if you don't want to consider it. That's what he's saying. Hold on, hold on. We'll go to first and final review at the next meeting. They can bring it for first and final review because they can work on it.

[02:14:57] Item one, we're saying we're putting that one to bed. We're going to vote on that. There's all kinds of parliamentary ways you can do that, tabling an item, etc. We're not, I'm not used to this, and I don't feel good about using procedures that are sort of unorthodox.

[02:15:16] i'm fine again having votes on things or striking things prior to consideration but today we're just receiving the input i thought interesting discussion to weigh options yeah but here's what happened the board didn't bring it to us ahead of time and say do you want to put this on the agenda we didn't have any choice with that they put it on the agenda the staff i'm sorry not what the staff did they didn't contact the board and say do you want us to put it on an agenda it just doesn't work that way it ends up on the agenda so now we get to decide what we want to do with it because that's what the time to do that is when we voted to

[02:15:55] approve the it so chair takes prerogative to move this conversation forward um mr henson could you restate um and dr bridges appreciate your concern about parliamentary procedures and in the spirit of over communication and clarity which i appreciate dr wilson saying that where we are sitting right now there is sufficient confusion and questions uh to uh to the field and we want to make sure that we are taking action that is clear and that communicates clearly to all the

[02:16:31] field where this board stands in context of jlark and the assembly with that mr henson will you please uh clarify your motion so that uh i can we can take action if there is yep go ahead let's do that motion is to remove item i agenda commentary standpoint courage department and the board

[02:17:03] to work in the next two months to come up with first and final review of topics two three four and five second commentary would be if we need to get the advice of our council and to take a three-minute break if there's another parliamentary way of doing this advisable we would welcome it i also would appreciate the opportunity to consider this appreciate it we're just trying

[02:17:41] to make it really clear that we want to break now now i want to forward on okay we are going to take

[02:17:46] a brief five minute break to consult with council thank you are going to come back in session thank

[02:27:16] you are we good over there awesome all right thank you um there was a motion i'm going to turn to mr henson i'm i'm going to withdraw the emotion i made previously and replace it with the new motion to those that we adopt items two three four and five first and final review and i would make a

[02:27:48] recommendation on number two that this conversation or discussion this but we use conversation we had with jlark yesterday to seeds standards meet standards partially meet standards and needs intensive support as the four categories first and final review so the department can go forward

[02:28:21] of these four items immediately there's been a motion is there a second second any discussion just to let you know i'll be opposing the motion because um of the condensing of first and final and the the fact that it limits the opportunity to get public comment and feedback on the vote uh it doesn't mean that i don't support the items thank you thank you any further discussion dr northern i had another um feedback about the labels so um yeah i'm also not gonna vote for the

[02:29:01] motion just because i also think there needs to be more discussion on the labels any further discussion um mr robinson thank you um i don't think anyone's commented yet on number three we discussed four and five yesterday i just wanted to in concept uh name strong support for number three and deep appreciation for the attention to ensuring we're paying attention to high school mastery across every single grade level and based on the current year um so uh i have the next 20

[02:29:36] seconds to figure out how i'll vote so i'm not sure about that yet but i i in a concept i think that's a great concept and i also support getting uh stakeholder feedback on two through five even and as I'm in strong support of two through five.

[02:29:54] Any further discussion? OK, there has been a motion that has been made and is seconded. I will now do roll call. Dr. Bridges? No. Ms. McPherson? Yes.

[02:30:10] Mr. Hanson? No. Dr. Northern? Dr. Wilson? No. Mr. Robinson? No. Mrs. Kilgore? Yes. Chair votes yes.

[02:30:29] What does that mean? I've never had that before. Motion does not pass. Okay, so now where are we? We need a new motion?

[02:30:53] Is it possible to, sorry. Go ahead, Mr. Robinson. Is it possible to amend Vice Chairman's motion to his exact same language, except first move forward first review today for final review in August of items 2 through 5?

[02:31:17] Mr. Henson, there's been a... We need a new motion. I will make a new motion to approve items 2, 3, 4, and 5 for final review at the August meeting and remove item number 1.

[02:31:46] Second. What about it? Remove it. It's removing number 1. Second. So that was for final review for 2, 3, 4, and 5 and removing number 1?

[02:32:04] It's removing item number 1 and moving 2, 3, 4, and 5 to final review in August.

[02:32:09] Yes. Okay. There has been a motion to have first review for two, three, four, and five and to remove item one. It has been made and it has been second. Second. Just final remove in August. That means today would be first. Final will be August. No? Mr. Henson, would you please restate the motion?

[02:32:49] we approve item i take an applause so as i understand that we are we're making a motion

[02:33:51] to remove item one from agenda item i and moving items two three four and five final review in august i would phrase it a different way we are recommending first review and items two three four

[02:34:19] and five review in august period second sure tell me how to do that

[02:35:02] mr henson has a motion move that the board virginia board of education convene in a closed meeting for the following purposes consultation with legal counsel employed by or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such council pursuant to section 2.2-37118 of the code of virginia and the legal counsel to the virginia board of education staff whose presence will aid in the board's consideration of this

[02:35:41] matter anticipate in the closed meeting there's a motion has made is there a second second we'll call dr bridges mrs mcpherson hi mr henson dr northern dr wilson mr robinson Mrs. Kilgore, and Chair votes aye. Okay, we will now go into closed session.

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