Coraggio Consulting Virginia Board of Education, Work Session (Part 2), Wednesday, August 26, 2026 Date: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 Place: Virginia Board of Education (Virginia Department of Education), Richmond, Virginia Length: 3h 30m (video) Official meeting video (VDOE, YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDx0yBn8e0w 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:51] Good afternoon. The Chair will entertain a motion to certify the purpose of the meeting in closed session. Move. We convene today in a closed meeting pursuant to a recorded vote on the motion above and in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, Section 2.23712 of the Code of Virginia, requires that the Board certify that to the best of each member's knowledge. [00:01:21] One, only public business matters lawfully exempt from open meeting requirements under this chapter, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed, or considered. Any member who believes there was a departure from these requirements shall so state prior to the vote, indicating the substance of the departure that, in his or her judgment, has taken place. [00:01:46] Statement of the departure will be recorded in the minutes. Thank you. do I have to approve the motion to come back and close session yes okay so all in favor to return an open session Ms. Reinhart aye Dr. Bridges aye Ms. McPherson aye Dr. Northern [00:02:15] Dr. Wilson aye Dr. Maxwell aye Mr. Robinson aye Ms. Kilgore aye and chair votes aye okay [00:02:27] A motion has been made in second. Motion carries. We will now, there's a little bit of echo. Do you guys hear that? As long as it's okay. We'll get through it. Okay. In case number 2622, the chair will entertain a motion to revoke the license of Bernadine Regina Brown. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Great. We'll do roll call. Ms. Reinhart. Aye. Dr. Bridges. Aye. [00:03:02] Mrs. McPherson. Mr. Robinson. Aye. Dr. Northern. Aye. Dr. Wilson. Dr. Maxwell. Aye. Mrs. Kilgore. Aye. And Chair votes aye. Thank you. In case 2621, the Chair will entertain a motion to take no action against the license. Is there a motion? I'll make that motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. I'll do a roll call. Ms. Reinhart. Aye. Dr. Bridges. No. [00:03:37] Ms. McPherson? Aye. Mr. Robinson? Aye. Dr. Northern? Aye. Dr. Wilson? Aye. Dr. Maxwell? Aye. Mrs. Kilgore? And chair votes aye. Thank you. In case 2624, the chair will entertain a motion to revoke the license of Amy Catherine Baker. Is there a motion? So moved. Second? Second. Ms. Reinhart? Aye. Dr. Bridges? Aye. Ms. McPherson? Aye. [00:04:19] Mr. Robinson? Aye. Dr. Northern? Aye. Dr. Wilson? Aye. Dr. Maxwell? Mrs. Kilgore? Aye. And chair votes aye. Thank you. In case 2625, the chair will entertain a motion to issue the license. [00:04:37] So moved. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Mrs. Reinhart? Aye. Dr. Bridges? Aye. Mrs. McPherson? Mr. Robinson? Aye. Dr. Northern? Dr. Wilson? Aye. Dr. Maxwell? Aye. Mrs. Kilgore? Aye. And chair votes aye. Thank you. In case 26-23, the chair will entertain a motion to issue the license. [00:05:13] Is there a second? Second. Thank you. Ms. Reinhardt? Aye. Dr. Bridges? Aye. Mrs. McPherson? Aye. Mr. Robinson? Aye. Dr. Northern? dr wilson aye dr maxwell hi mrs kilgore ah and chair votes aye thank you the chair will entertain [00:05:43] a motion to revoke the license of richard j barkowitz second miss reinhardt hi dr bridges hi mrs mcpherson mr robinson hi dr northern dr wilson hi dr maxwell mrs kilgore and chair votes aye thank you the chair will entertain a motion to revoke the license of james william nugent [00:06:12] so moved okay miss reinhardt aye dr bridges hi mrs mcpherson hi mr robinson dr northern dr wilson hi dr maxwell mrs kilgore and chair votes aye the chair will entertain a motion to revoke the license of thomas s kane second thank you ms reinhart aye dr bridges [00:06:44] aye mrs mcpherson mr robinson dr northern dr wilson aye dr maxwell mrs kilgore and chair votes aye that concludes our session on licensure hearings uh the board will now uh take a brief break i think we can do it in a half hour guys one o'clock yes okay we will re reconvene at one [00:07:20] o'clock thank you we are going to come back into session uh superintendent do you want to share [00:56:35] any comments or should we turn it over absolutely i would thank you madam president um we for today's work session have prepared two items for you a huge appreciation to Deputy Superintendent Ann Peislapp and team for what will be a data-filled afternoon that will walk this body through first the results from last year's statewide assessment and then second will provide an [00:57:13] overview to this body on a report required by the legislature on the timeline going forward for the school performance and support framework shifts. I have asked Deputy Superintendent Hyslop to make sure to kind of go through this content in a very thorough way, recognizing for some of you this uh is is very familiar content and that we have we also have [00:57:48] new board members and wanting to make sure that we are all on the same page and have um uh or you know as we sort of think through some of the implications that will come to the decisions rather that will come to this body in the future that we all have the same knowledge basis um so for the first item yesterday the commonwealth announced our results on how our students performed on statewide assessments in the 25-26 school year so this will provide across 2.4 million [00:58:24] assessments what our students know and are able to do and where there may be gaps i want to before we get into the data and it is uh as all data is incredibly valuable data to first recognize just the extraordinary amount of work that this reflects 2.4 million assessments most of which uh are administered in the the the spring this is across grades three grade third grade through through 12th grade and just all of um the effort that goes into assessment administration to make [00:59:01] sure that it is consistent and fair and credible um and that there are no uh concerns of fraud kind of across a very big system right 131 school divisions 1800 schools um and again you know over 2 million of these assessments i know as the the the parent of of of students who take multiple assessments this is um even though uh uh sensibly the these are about understanding what our students know and are able to do there's still a significant amount of energy around these [00:59:38] statewide assessments right and from the the kids talking on the playground or on the soccer field so those of you know i i uh spend my evenings coaching 10 and 11 year olds in soccer and so there's always a little talk that i that i get that i would not otherwise get um through the official channels but they really represent kind of a culminating event and we know that there's a lot of preparation that goes into them and so want to begin recognizing all the work that our educators our leaders our principals and our parents do to prepare our students for these [01:00:14] assessments i also want to recognize the importance of this data and this information what deputy superintendent highslop will uh walk you through today is the kind of what the statewide story is you are the state board of education it is very important that you understand the statewide story but as i noted before we have 131 school divisions and 1800 schools right and across a big number like 2.4 million you know the kind of averages bring you towards the middle and that is not the full story so if you were to look at you know even the kind of media coverage from yesterday and [01:00:50] today you see very different stories emerging school divisions kind of recognizing where they're seeing great gains and also acknowledging where there are gaps and there's urgency um as we as we go forward and so part of uh what today sort of marks the beginning of the using of this information we start with the statewide story but the real challenge as you look at some of the things that have been put forth in front of me and this department of education over the course of the the next few years is thinking about how we're constantly using this data to inform policy and practice and that is less about kind of the statewide story and more around how do we look [01:01:28] specifically at for example third and fourth grade reading and what gains we see and you know the extent to which that is related to the curriculum approved by the virginia literacy act right how do we think about areas where we're seeing the most most growth for example in english language learners. How do we think about comparable schools that have similar populations in terms of students in low income or otherwise disadvantaged households and think about where there are bright spots and where there are gaps and that we should be using this data nearly every day, right, to kind of inform our work, particularly in grades three and above. For those earlier grades, as you've heard me talk about before, we use things like VKRP and VALS, et cetera, et cetera. [01:02:07] so you know ultimately it is the information about the virginia students that needs to be core to our work as we think about improvement we think about instruction we think about opportunities you know for growth over time and ultimately for success after high school lastly before turning it to the deputy superintendent i just want to reiterate um just so that we're we're absolutely crystal clear here that the results that we are presenting today um reflect uh the the cut scores [01:02:43] uh as they have been for the last few years so they do reflect the integration of the higher uh the higher expectations that come along with the new standards for english language arts and for math but this for this year which was again last year um 25 26 year whether administered in the fall or the spring in this case 400 was that was the cut for proficiency 500 was the cut for advanced um so you'll you'll what that sort of these numbers reflect those expectations um as we go forward and as we have been communicating the through the field over the [01:03:21] course of the summer really coming out of the june board meeting you know those expectations are rising. But I just want to be very transparent that the data in front of you reflects the 400 point as the proficiency. And again, with that, I know that there are, that that has some limitations in terms of, is that a cut score that is reflective of nationally competitive expectations? I will note that following our June meeting, rather, we sent communication out [01:03:56] to all of our superintendents helping them understand to be very very clear that for 25 26 that there would be no changes in that proficiency cut score but that you we were committed in partnership with the board of education and with the the governor to implement the four-year phase in of the higher expectations proficiency that that you know started with the 26 27 year as voted on in December and reaffirmed in June and that so that we are going to [01:04:33] begin to even help folks understand that more concretely following the results of the of these from the 2526 is to do even begin to do some modeling where again the 400 was the cut score for this year in accordance with everything approved by this body but even helping folks understand what this year's results would look like if you were to apply that higher threshold so just want to kind of reiterate none of what we're presenting this afternoon changes what was voted on by this body in december what was reaffirmed in june what you are seeing in front of you is just analysis using the [01:05:11] kind of the existing cut scores but we have committed to the field and will continue to work with this body on understanding how do we prepare for the four-year phasing of the four-year phase in of the the higher expectations and just want to be very clear with this group before i turn it over to deputy superintendent hustle thank you superintendent and thank you president ashton and members of the board um very excited i should also say thank you to our assessment and data teams for getting us this information some of it is literally less than a week old because as you know [01:05:47] here in virginia we give assessments over the summer and so there's a lot of updates that have to be made you know we have much of our data in the spring but we have to continue updating it over the summer so as superintendent Conway said we had over 2.4 million tests last year and that includes our sixth grade levels of grades three through six three through eight excuse me and our twelve high school courses so algebra one or science biology etc and here you can see the top lines again these are statewide across all of those grade levels high [01:06:21] school, elementary, and middle, where we saw 74.5% of students were proficient in reading. Again, that's based on the prior cut scores. That is a 0.4 percentage point increase from the prior year 24-25. Very similar story of these sort of incremental gains in most subject areas. With math, we have a 72.9% pass rate. That's also a 0.4 point gain from the prior year. Science, we saw a small marginal dip, 70.9% of students passed science assessments last year. That was a [01:06:56] 0.2 percentage point drop. And then we did see a larger gain in history. 69.6% of students were passing on a history or social science assessment last year. That is up 3.2 percentage points from the prior year. But as we walk through this presentation, I think you will see over and over again this sort of incremental modest progress for most subject areas most grades most courses most student groups and i will point out those but there maybe was a marginal or small decline the other point here which is why reading for like why does reading have an asterisk [01:07:30] that is because last year's reading sols were field testing items based on the updated content standards that were approved by this board in 2024 so those were field tested items they will be fully operational next year in math science and history those assessments were using operational items based on the most recent content standards so the board updated the math standards in 2023 last year's sols had operational items aligned to those math standards the same is true in history [01:08:05] and social studies those standards were also updated in 2023 so last year's assessment included operational items they had already been field tested in the prior year so we are still have one more like you could say these reading assessments will be fully reflective of the updated content standards next year we will also of course be implementing different proficiency cut scores next year but i think given that a lot of the data here is we're saying compared to last year or compared to several years ago and speaking of which that is what we have here on the next [01:08:38] slide. We thought it was helpful to see where have we come as a state since the sort of height of the COVID pandemic. So we looked back five years, and in those five years, I think we've had many investments in high-dosage tutoring, evidence-based reading interventions, and instruction through the Virginia Literacy Act, obviously the adoption of our more rigorous content standards in math and English. And so in that time, we have seen a five percentage point gain in our statewide reading assessment proficiency rates and a 19 point gain in math. So math declined more with COVID [01:09:17] than reading did, but we think it's a wonderful sign to see this academic recovery in both subjects, particularly that 19 points. We may not be where we want to be yet, but I think it speaks to the tremendous work of our public schools, our school leaders, our educators, our division leaders to see that over the last five years. And I think many of the members of this board were part of that recovery. [01:09:39] So this is also, hats off to you in supporting that. Diving a little bit into some of our student group data. So I think this is again, very similar to the overall statewide trend. We weren't seeing any particular student group that had a trend that deviated dramatically from what we were seeing statewide. [01:09:59] Here we just have reading and math. Throughout this presentation, reading is blue, math is orange. So you can see again, sort of very, mostly modest incremental gains For most student groups in reading and in math, the notable exceptions here is we did see a small decline in the performance of students with disabilities in reading, a slightly larger decline of 0.76 points for students with disabilities in math. [01:10:26] We also saw a decline just in reading for our Asian students of 0.74 points and a 0.01 point decline for white students in math. But I think on the whole, you know, you can see there are still, generally speaking, this is all grades and subjects. [01:10:44] We're not just looking at high school versus grades three through eight. This is all tests that were given. Most students were, groups were making incremental gains as well, just as our state data for all students. I think speaking to the, like, what's another sort of takeaway here is that we also thought it was useful to go back to our pre-pandemic. [01:11:05] We know there are things that we can't always fully compare in an apples-to-apples way from the 2018-19 school year to now. A lot has changed, but that five-point gain in reading and that 19-point gain in math are still not equivalent to the passing rates that we saw in 2018-2019. [01:11:25] We're getting close, about four points away in reading where we had a 78 percentage point gain, and we're nine points away in math where we had 82%. students passing in the 2018-19 school year. So I think the takeaway for us here as an agency is really we need to continue to keep our foot on the gas in terms of accelerating student progress and academic learning, carry forward because we're not where we want to be just yet. We are very, very proud of the progress our divisions have made, but there's more work to do. And I think that is also echoed here on this slide. These gaps are not new. They are not ones that they [01:12:04] existed long before 2018-19 but we did want to dig into our students who are furthest from opportunity in particular and here we can see we continue to have persistent large achievement gaps when we compare on the left our economically disadvantaged students to their peers who are not economically disadvantaged in the middle we have students with disabilities as compared to those who are not disabled and then on the right we have english learners compared to students who are not classified as English learners. And you can see persistent large gaps for all three groups. [01:12:40] For economically disadvantaged students, it's roughly a 20-point gap. These are approximate, they're slightly, you know, I can get you the precise numbers if you want, but these are just approximated gaps. It's roughly 20 points in both subjects. For our students with disabilities as compared to their students without disabilities, it's roughly a 35-point gap. And then in English, for our English learners we see kind of a different size of gap it is larger in reading a 45 point gap approximately and it's roughly 30 percentage points in math between English learners and non-English learners so you know if I'm thinking as a you know our focus here on those [01:13:16] students who are furthest from opportunity when I see this data that feels very apt and a continued focus for the next several years in terms of where should we be focusing our attention and resources it's on these student groups. I did want to dive a little bit into now some of the grade level specific data. Everything we've seen so far has been all students, all 2.4 million tests. [01:13:41] But here we are looking just at grades three through eight. And again, I think similar trends as we've seen across the board, where in the vast majority of subjects, we are seeing these small half a percentage point, one percentage point gain. Even if you look at an individual grade 5 assessment, for example. That translates to a 72% overall reading pass rate for grades 3 through 8 and an overall pass rate in math of 69%. The one area where we did see declines on the grade level test was in grades 7 and 8 math, where we saw about a one point decline in grade 8 and [01:14:18] about a one and a half point decline in grade 7. One of the reasons, though, that we included the EOC math line in this table is because we have to keep in mind that many of our middle school students do not take their grade level assessment. Instead, they are accelerated into a higher level, more advanced math course like Algebra 1 or Geometry or Algebra 2. So we pulled the data, the pass rates for our middle school students taking any end of course high school assessment. [01:14:48] And of those students, 95% of them passed the SOL. That is roughly a one-point increase from last year. We also looked at the participation rates in those courses. And so there are more students taking these courses in middle school than the prior year. [01:15:05] That also went up by a point. So I think it's very notable that we will want to continue to monitor the grade 7 and 8 math as well. But also, are we successfully accelerating students into advanced high school math and helping them succeed in those courses. [01:15:21] You know, are we pushing students into math they're not ready for? This data would say, no, we have not. But there was 2025 legislation that the General Assembly passed that was encouraging advanced coursework. There's been a lot of efforts of this board to encourage math acceleration. So we will continue to look at this in the coming years as well. [01:15:38] But I think we were definitely disconcerted by the grade 7 and 8 numbers until we looked at the end of course math. And I think that paints a fuller picture of what's happening with middle school math. Still want to monitor grades seven and eight, of course. But I think it does help paint the fuller story here. [01:15:55] So that's why we included it as a special call out. I want to kind of reiterate a point here. The law required auto enrollment, right? With the idea being that there was a solid research basis, that we have students who were performing well on statewide assessments. [01:16:14] Often it was students who were furthest from opportunities whose parents may or guardians may not have the wherewithal to encourage students to take algebra might end up kind of just sort of continuing on into the grade band level math. [01:16:32] and that is sort of challenging for for two reasons it's not great for students in two reasons number one is you know they can clearly as demonstrated by the data more students for taking algebra and more students for passing um algebra but also algebra is often a gatekeeper for competitive high school and for a math and science trajectory that makes you more competitive for college so the auto enrollment law was very clear either establish a local policy or use a threshold set by the state but it created a way apples to apples across the commonwealth to make sure that students were doing well as sixth graders or fifth and sixth graders were being [01:17:12] rooted into advanced math and what i think we're very pleased to see is that even though more students took advanced math coursework and this is across a big system you saw a higher uh pass rate proficient rate than you did um previously thank you superintendent conway so uh switching to our high schoolers so here is the similar data for our end of course assessments in high school very similar trends of seeing sort of on the whole in general modest progress we had an 86 percent overall passing rate of the end of course reading assessment an 85 percent overall pass rate for our [01:17:50] across all three of our high school end of course assessments so that's algebra one algebra two geometry combined and a 75 percent overall pass rate on our three and of course science assessments. The reason that chemistry is not shown here is that it is our smallest volume test. So we have much much larger numbers of students taking earth science and biology than chemistry. So if you're wondering like how does 71.5 and 76.95 average to 75, you aren't seeing the chemistry line there, but we'd be happy to give you that data if that is of interest. I think we also did note here that [01:18:27] we had some small declines in Algebra 2 and biology pass rates. So those are two points where there was not a modest increase, but rather a slight decline. And this data does include middle school students who took end-of-course assessments. So this is all end-of-course test takers last year. So because I think I feel a little bit like a broken record of small gains, modest gains, kind of all the groups are almost the same. All the courses are mostly the same. [01:18:57] We did want to look at some of the division data. And here we did see, I think, some bright spots that we thought were worth highlighting and noting. We saw 53 divisions that either maintained or saw gains in both their math and reading SOL pass rates. So 53 out of 113. And among those 53, there were several divisions who stood out for having particularly large percentage point gains from the prior year. There were three divisions that saw a five-point gain in reading. There were 10 divisions who achieved a five-point gain in math, and there were nine divisions who achieved [01:19:33] at least a three-point gain in both subjects. And if you're trying, so that's looking at math and reading together. If you were just interested in one subject, we had 72 of our 113 divisions maintained or improved the pass rate in reading, and 75 did so in math. And this data here, this division data is all SOLs, so grades three through eight and high school. I think it's even, it's helpful for me to see this on, what does this look like on a map? And I think one of the things that we were really excited to see here is that that progress of divisions making it a five-point [01:20:09] gain in either subject, it's not all in one region of the state. It's not all our urban school divisions or our rural school divisions or suburban mid-sized ones. It's a nice range of, We have some Southwest counties. We have Southside in Danville. We have Northern Virginia with Alexandria and Clark County. [01:20:27] We have, you know, kind of Central Virginia with Amelia and Cumberland and Fredericksburg city. So it was nice to see this range. At the back on the Eastern shore, you know, I think that was something that we want to, you know, we've had this data roughly a week. So I think this is also something where we would love to look and see what are these divisions doing? [01:20:47] Do they have instructional programs? Have they made changes? Are there lessons learned here that we could share with other divisions who maybe didn't see this progress? But since, you know, these were, when you think about a 0.4 average gain for the state, and these divisions having five point gains, we want to be sure that if there are lessons to be learned here, that we can capture those in the coming weeks and months. [01:21:09] So that is the end of my presentation. I will pause here for questions and, or just, you know, data requests, if we can do more digging in as we analyze this data do just really want to give my appreciation to the team at the videoe who helped crunch the numbers and get all of this onto our website and we will continue to be updating our website um the school quality profiles in the coming days so with more information as we have it thank you uh superintendent [01:21:39] do you have anything to add okay miss mcpherson i'm looking at a chart which is multi-year department so you compared the sfl with them what's the goal 20 20 and 20 21 to 20 25 yes so did you just look [01:22:10] at that one year 2020-21 and compared that or is in this chart does it represent all of the data like from 22 to 23 23 to 24 because it doesn't say that so it looks like you compared one particular year set of data is there any reason why you picked 2020 2021 instead of looking at each of the years to see what the incremental increase was or so we have that data i think it [01:22:45] was mostly from a not trying to overwhelm with a bar graph that showed 10 bars and i think looking into the data we have essentially seen in each of the five years the five years is a nice round number to look back over the last five years we kind of chose that starting point and that end point but if you look at each of those five years we have typically made in reading a small incremental gain every year it wasn't a five point jump in one year yeah could you send us the yes we have that data so we can see what the incremental increase was or whether there was any lapse [01:23:22] before that and also as you can come back to me i'll probably have a couple other questions yeah we can fill that in with the three the three interim years it would be the 2022 23 23 24 and 24 25 data that's not shown on that graph or members any follow-up questions dr wilson thank [01:23:58] you very much for the update um just an observation that i'll make slide seven where we look at the gains across both reading and math and the observation on math, a number of seventh and eighth grade students who actually do not take the grade level assessment but take the end of course. [01:24:19] Those end of course results, we see increase in performance, which is great. But then thinking about those students who are on grade level, not end of course, they are for those who are remaining in those classes their performance has not kept up so so relative but it is still a decline and thinking about how we are supporting teachers who are working with those young people and thus supporting those young people to continue to make progress [01:24:56] even as they are not in end of course taking the end of course assessment so that's an area of interest of mine particularly um you know how are we supporting students who are on grade level who continue who also need to continue to make progress and i think miss mcpherson's request for that additional information that will also you know give a bit more insight into how those students in seventh and eighth grade math are performing over time i'll look forward to seeing that too [01:25:27] thank you so much absolutely dr northern so i am glad to see incremental gains i think incremental gains are better than the alternative. I guess one thing that I'd like to continue to see is some honest reporting. We know that communications is such a big part of what we're trying to move forward on this board, and I think it would be helpful for when we present the SOL results to also look at NAEP results and also look at the education scorecard so that we can have, like, [01:26:04] three different views of how our kids are doing because they're all measuring different things. And it's helpful. So, again, I don't want to beat us over the head with how far we've got to go, because we're not, obviously, every state's in the same boat that we are, but we happen to have an even further ways to go, unfortunately. [01:26:23] So we say 75% of kids are passing reading. NAEP says 31% of our kids. And we say that, you know, so really, in some cases, we're talking about a 40 percentage point difference, which we know because we've already gone over these data with the, quote, honesty gap. [01:26:45] So I don't want us to lose sight that when we say 76% of our kids are passing, that that also means that 31%, according to a very well-recognized national benchmark, is saying 31%. And the other way that we could also look at it is by looking at the education scorecard. [01:27:05] And if folks aren't familiar with that, that's Sean Reardon's work, and he's phenomenal. And he's basically taken all state tests across the country and put them on a standardized scale. And he looked when I asked that website to basically do some translations of our data into his data. [01:27:24] It came out with 0.68 grade equivalents is how far how far below we are. That equates to five months of instruction. So it's like over, you know, two thirds of the year that, you know, that we're still behind. [01:27:42] So all I'm saying is it's sobering. And and the more that we can actually give our folks a nuanced picture of where we stand, according to these different measures, the better. And I think that it will also help with this honesty gap thing that we've been working against and trying to remedy. [01:28:02] Appreciate that. And I think as Superintendent Conway mentioned at her opening remarks, I think that is sort of our immediate. have this data we need to explain what it said and now we are immediately turning to focusing on how do we also help explain to our stakeholders divisions but you know the broader stakeholders about the changes that are coming next year with the proficiency implementation plan and so that will be part of i imagine our reporting next year is going to look completely different you know and it has to be because we are not going to be using that 400 point proficiency the 500 point advanced anymore you know this year's parent reports already had like the url link to the page that [01:28:42] explains the cut scores that are coming but we just are going to have to continue with that drumbeat over the next 12 months yep superintendent uh i appreciate that uh dr northern and i think what's also important and and again um to the point around the the challenge around communication i think there's been a long-standing practice and kind of of just looking at proficiency as this body has recognized we need to have that right expectation there right and we are increasing that to make sure that we have the right benchmark we want our students to um and we believe in our [01:29:19] students who we think they are as capable as any in the nation and then we want them to be successful anywhere they may may go um it is also uh you know while it's it creates simpler slides you know there's a broader trajectory here right I think as we kind of get further into this data understanding how many of our students are advanced as dr. Wilson noted there's a little bit of that story as you start to look at some of the the math opportunities but sort of thinking through not only do we care about students getting kind of above that cut point right but we want a student see every student kind of grow whether that's from below basic to [01:29:58] basic, whether that's from basic to proficient, whether that's proficient to advanced, and really making sure that we're, as we think about these communications, not only being urgent about where we are relative to where we are as a system pre-pandemic, being urgent about these gaps in which where you were born or what household you're born into or your ability status or language spoken is still too predictive of your ability to kind of learn the skills that you need to be proficient in our society, or whether or not, you know, we've inadvertently encouraged folks to focus on the bubble because that is what is, in general, [01:30:38] most of our costs. And so I think, to Deputy Superintendent Hyslop's point, I think, you know, as we go forward, again, this is just the start and that how we're getting divisions and stakeholders to both kind of reckon with what this really means, to reckon with, like, what do these gaps look like in your community right you on average might look good but as we saw with the identification of some of the tsi schools for the first time last year that certain groups within your schools were not doing as well as others and ultimately as we shift the expectations around below basic basic [01:31:14] proficient approaching um and advanced next year really thinking about kind of how all kids are doing not just kids who are right around that that that that that proficiency cut point dr bridges connecting back to dr north's point also a big fan of dr reardon's work at stanford um and one of the things i think we could also do when we when we do more of that sort of triangulating is to look at those bright spots i know i'm noticing that danville's both on our [01:31:50] are divisions with five-point gains, and it was one of the flag bright spots. They were still using last year's data. So it's like, what's going on in Danville? In both places, they're being highlighted for significant gain. So I think that could be helpful as well. And then my additional things to look at that I think would be helpful is where do we have gap closers? Where do we have divisions that and individual schools that are moving the needle more on those gaps for our students furthest from opportunity as you say so we can start trying to see what practices [01:32:28] might be scalable and replicable thank you mr robinson uh well thank you again for the presentation and um uh i also want to highlight a success that i hope is part of the amplification which is that as we think about the gap closures that Dr. Bridges was just talking about, even though it's still too incremental, I am glad to see economically disadvantaged and English learners and Hispanic students' gains outpacing the state. [01:33:04] And I wonder if when we're highlighting potential places to learn from, we're highlighting places that are closing and accelerating faster, and particularly perhaps with an emphasis on students with disabilities given the very disappointing data there. On Dr. Northern's point about comparison, I don't know if this would be possible, but the one thing to consider would be whether we start tracking and modeling against our goal from four years from now, at least in terms of some of the reporting. Where [01:33:40] Are we on our proficiency goal when the cut scores are fully raised and how is that starting to look year over year? Because it's going to be such a complicated communication, each year's proficiency changing, it could be good to have one metric that's staying still. [01:33:58] And again, I think that's more complicated than I'm letting on, but I'm curious about it. And then my final curiosity is I like this hypothesis at the end on the board in the video is good work around evidence-based reading instruction, rigorous standards and high dosage tutoring. [01:34:19] On the high-dosage tutoring and the evidence-based reading instruction itself, you know, this might require more legislative dollars, but I'm very interested in us studying where do we make the, as a state, the greatest investments in high-dosage tutoring? [01:34:38] Where has the VLA been implemented with the most fidelity according to people who are doing that? And how is our, like testing our theory of change, testing whether that theory of change is playing out or not? um, to help, uh, inform our future investments. Thank you. Yeah. We have been exploring, I think, some research partnerships with lots of folks. And I think this is a great topic to consider. [01:35:01] And I've been talking a lot, you know, one of the first people that we brought in when we saw this data was our deputy superintendent for instruction, Jessica Proffitt, because it's exactly that this, you know, and also our deputy superintendent for a special population, Sam Hollins, you know, to think about, like, we want to collaborate and sort of, as we unpack the data and sort of better understand are we seeing divisions that sort of had a different story than what we're seeing statewide or things we can learn from or um testing that out like as you said [01:35:28] test the hypothesis so thank you miss mcpherson on the chart the recovery i noticed that on the recovery chart we have recovery must continue and accelerate so you compare the sol pass rates 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 25, 26. So when you say there was a five-point increase in reading and 19 [01:36:05] points in math, am I to assume that you did not include the data from 22, 23, and 23, 24? And if not, could you revise the chart to put that in? Because I want to know if the percentages hold true if we're looking at 22 23 data and 23 24 data so the the 19 points here and the five points here are true with all years of data it is comparing 2021 end of year to 2026 end of year and if we [01:36:40] had included all the different bars what you would see is we would go from 78 to a big zero because we did not give assessments in 2020. So we are seeing here the lightest blue and the lightest orange is 2018-19. That is the last year that we have SOLs before the pandemic closed schools. The next year would be a zero percent. The year following that is what's the middle bar, 2020-2021, 69%, 54%. We are not seeing here the bars for 2022, 2023, 24, 25. That is what's not here, [01:37:19] but I think what we would see for each of those, and I'm again happy to provide the data, is that the bars would slowly go up from 69 to maybe 70 or 71, and then 72, and then 74. You're seeing that slow, and then in math, it would be a slightly larger increase every year to get between 54 and 73 but the 19 points and the five points gains hold true it would be nice of you and include it because i'd like i want to just make sure for transparency with the public that they don't have the same question did we exclude the data from 22 23 and 23 24 just to make sure the [01:37:58] five points and the 19 points hold and recognizing and if you want to show pre-pandemic post-pandemic because as i understand obviously we have not gotten back to pre-pandemic levels at all so if you want to revise the chart so that everybody is clear about where the scores were pre-pandemic at the highest point versus post-pandemic uh probably would be helpful and the other question i had was about the divisions with the three-point and five-point gains i am not seeing [01:38:36] any area in the Hampton Roads region that posted the gains. And I'm also wondering whether you've looked at any data that comes from those seven cities, and I'm including Hampton, Newport News, as well. Right. Whether you've looked at the population of economically disadvantaged students in that area, as well as what Mr. Robinson said, what resources are you providing? Because I just find it interesting that you're not posting any gains in those areas and I [01:39:13] know there's a high population of economically disadvantaged students I really appreciate that point and I think we'll add that to our follow-up analysis you know we've had this data for roughly a week and I think it did jump out to me as well that there were no divisions in Hampton Roads that are represented on this map and so I think we'd be happy to pull the division specific data for some of those divisions in the region to part of the state um and can get that for all students as well as certain subpopulations of students you know as always i'm concerned because i want to make sure that we drive the resources to that [01:39:51] area because i've met so many teachers that have given everything that they've got in principles and i just want to make sure that from a state standpoint that we're doing everything especially in light of the previous data because a large part of the economically disadvantaged students are of African-American descent, and yet they are posting up gangs at a faster pace than some other ethnicities. So I just want to make sure that they get the resources that they can recover based on what they demonstrated as their ability to recover faster than some other characters. [01:40:27] Absolutely. Superintendent. Thank you, Mr. Pierce. And I think one of the other important points to note and the full spreadsheet kind of division by division and school by school is is available and so hearing about these uh areas of analysis is helpful for us i think it's also should be acknowledged um you know we want to look at both proficiency and growth right and that sort of that what you do see is that while you want to see growth across the board you are more likely to see greater growth at like lower proficiency rates right and you are sort of you're going to and you're going to more likely to see slightly smaller growth once you get to sort of [01:41:06] of higher levels of overall proficiency. And so as we are trying to think through, kind of having heard from at least three of you now about the importance of recognizing these bright spots, making sure we're recognizing bright spots where they have very high levels of proficiency, right, and they're probably less likely to sort of see double, in some ways it might not even be mathematically possible to have double digit gains, for instance, right, like you're never going to see double digit gains in EOC math and middle school if you're already at 98 94.4% I think conversely there's also places where we want to recognize those bright spots in [01:41:45] those gap closers around growth but we've tried to kind of will continue to try to balance telling the story of both ultimately we want you all of our students to be proficient and to be proficient to an expectation that would be competitive anywhere in the country but I think as we go along really looking at who is doing a very good job of getting students to proficiency and even looking at advance right or as Mr. [01:42:10] Robinson noted the kind of modeling out how folks would do if you had this higher overall threshold the true the true north for a few years from now and where we see the most growth as a way of kind kind of more quickly getting to proficiency. Dr. Wilson? Just a general comment. I think I said it, but if I didn't say it loudly enough, thank you all for bringing the data to us, recognizing it's literally fresh off the press, right? And also want to acknowledge your commitment. Superintendent [01:42:47] Conway, I heard you talk about balancing urgency or a commitment to urgency, and then also acknowledging bright spots and identifying gaps and how we fill those. And finally, recognizing that communication is quite important. Dr. Northern mentioned, you know, this, our being honest and forthright or forthcoming with our communication. I think we all as board members would appreciate and agree that purposeful, explicit, clear communication, not only for us [01:43:26] as a board but also for the communities that we are serving to ensure that the information we're providing is understandable and clear so that as we are moving forward everyone is on the same page so thank you all for the work that you're doing in those commitments to those areas but then also helping us as a board be in a position to articulate as well as we possibly can so really appreciate the work that you're doing thank you dr wilson and your meeting was fortuitously timed [01:44:01] to be the day after the release um i also have some additional comments uh first i also want to thank you i um superintendent connie something you said is resonating with me about you know as a board it is our perspective to understand the state and i do want to thank you uh deputy superintendent heislev for like you know i'm looking at slide six where it says despite the progress the gaps remain like we know that there are gaps so there's no hiding of the truth here [01:44:33] into dr northern's point like we know that there's even greater gaps there's no hiding from that um but you know uh as a as a school leader i'll tell you like i just love the data i love the data because it's it's reminding us to ask so many questions about where the resources are um where the bright spots are very much appreciated slide 10 where you go through the divisions that have the five point gains like they're it's not concentrated it's all over the state which [01:45:08] i hope the public takes as a message that it it is being done that there are places in the city in the state where teachers and school divisions and superintendents are really figuring out how to close some of the gaps. And to the point that is made, I think it would be helpful for us to actually go much deeper on a couple of case studies where we, you know, it is hard seeing the whole picture. But if we maybe picked an urban area or suburban area, very similar to, [01:45:44] i think our um divisions that came out of what's it called mou oh mou yes like when we were able to really just sit down with them and they were able to talk to us like what they were doing it was about teachers it was about communication it was about having data be front and center i think that telling those stories is going to help the communication because when you look at the data it's for the these divisions is very personal you know like they they know the kids they know the teachers they know the faces but for us to be able to have a big picture but also go very deep i think [01:46:23] would be uh incredibly helpful and then i also last thing i'll just say about math um you know math is down obviously across the country you know these are the students who are in sixth seventh eighth grade we're literally you know in in the during the pandemic not getting those basic foundational math skills and so we're going to be recovering from math for a very long time that being said what i hope this data does is it's it's not finger pointing but it is data that looks to all of our partners our curriculum partners our professional development partners [01:47:00] our university partners are on how we're doing teacher preparation to really address the data, but also accelerate the learning for the adults who are teaching our kids who are coming at different levels. So I really hope that this doesn't just, you know, it's like the one-stop shop. It's like, how do we use this data to really inform all the stakeholders to help advance the whole state but looking at it at a much deeper level thank you to add just a point of reference [01:47:33] there right so it is um it is only the children entering kindergarten now uh who were not uh impacted by the pandemic right so it was children born in in general uh by september 30th of 2021 um uh who are just entering kindergarten now right so your fifth grade classes your were your kindergartners right um seventh grader or second graders and so um it is it is very important president ashton to note uh the the continuing to tell the story of how what the seismic impact of that uh event on and how we have to continue to try to catch kids up [01:48:18] gratitude and i just thought of another uh model i'd like to see is is we have this was the first year after having schools rated uh in the needs intensive improvement or the off-track you know to be relabeled category um and so it'd be very interesting to see how those schools in aggregate did um you know as well as potentially mo division just to just to keep you know uh that is another [01:48:51] board priority on front and center for us. I think a lot of us have a hypothesis that we haven't yet done as much of the support side as we want. So I think we have a hypothesis that whatever looked like this year, we can improve it in future years. But we need to have a baseline. [01:49:13] And the hope is that even without the support yet increasing, just the signaling might have created urgency and growth but but that that would just be uh again that we're only one week into it but like as we think about then the months to come and decisions we have to make that and and then i just want to plus one um dr ashton's point about president ashton's point about excuse me about um uh connection to dr bridge's point about like yes let's celebrate all these divisions that had the gangs because it meets well the message of, hey, we're going to spotlight that this is possible, but we have an urgency that we're not nearly where we need to be. [01:49:55] In terms of the ones that we actually study, I don't think that this is necessarily the list because some of those might have gone way down the year before and then data could be noisy. but there's probably plenty of divisions now that are outperforming their pre-pandemic averages or had these type of gains multiple years in a row and so just encourage those type of divisions for president ashton's good push thank you there are no other questions i think you're still up is that right i am yes you get to um be switching gears a little bit let's see if i can get [01:50:34] Great. Let me just do a little framing as Deputy Superintendent Islop gets her slides ready. So I just want to put this conversation in context, both for Dr. Maxwell, who's dumped and survived her first Weedy data presentation, gets that badge. But as a kind of framing [01:51:06] Setting the frame for this conversation, House Bill 643, which was passed into law, took what were recommendations from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee and codified them into law. [01:51:21] And so, again, you heard a very lengthy, this body outside of Dr. Maxwell heard a very lengthy presentation from our partners at JLARC in June, really speaking to the school performance and support framework. [01:51:37] So they are talking about the measurement system for schools, that for our elementary, our middle, and our high schools, that is what was initially rolled out last year in December, and JLARC had both done sort of extensive analysis, surveyed school divisions, spoke with stakeholders, and, you know, produced that report. [01:52:05] The bill took 10 of those recommendations and basically went from kind of a nice-to-have to a must-have and saying that this board and the Department of Education must consider those recommendations. So what you have in front of you and what Deputy Superintendent Hyslop will walk you through is the timeline for responding to those recommendations. [01:52:31] It should be noted in that very lengthy JLARC report that they not only had these recommendations, but they also talked about how to approach this. And this was largely based on feedback that they had heard from the field. So, for example, to the point raised earlier about how accountability systems need to be rigorous, need to sort of set a true north on what we want our schools to do in order to support our students to be effective. [01:53:01] And a lot of that is really making sure that there's explicit and clear communication around what the adults need to do differently in order for student outcomes to improve. When J.Lark surveyed the field, for instance, 80% of divisions, like sort of the highest point of disagreement around the rollout of the school performance and support framework related to just not having enough time to prepare, not having sufficient time to prepare, [01:53:30] And that while there was, and Jay Lark noted this, and this is why they said we should stay the course and that the foundation, the bones of this framework were good and worth staying the course on the kind of how we were implementing it, there were some need for changes there. [01:53:47] So what we put in this timeline in response to the law to support this body, to follow that law, was here are the 10 recommendations that must be considered. You know, for many of them, it doesn't say it does not prescribe what this board should do. It just says that you must consider them and how to think about them thoughtfully, some of which, as Jay Lark noted in the report, could be done fairly quickly. [01:54:11] And some of which would because you needed a more fundamental change to an indicator, for example, and then needed to do analysis on that, that that would take more time. And so that's kind of why these have been laid out in this sequence. It should be noted as you go in there, and now there's acknowledgement that, and this is an important acknowledgement, that this plan and timeline assumes the four-year plan around raising the cut score. [01:54:42] So there is no change in what went to the General Assembly and what we have discussed with the various legislators who this went to. The idea is this is just about the recommendations for how we aggregate that information and how that then affects the measures for schools, which is distinct from those cut scores that you voted on as a body in December and reaffirmed in June. [01:55:13] Now, as you will hear in Deputy Superintendent Hyslop's presentation, there are places of overlap, right? So if, you know, in the elementary school measure, for instance, 90% of the measure of a school is the cumulative measure of the students. [01:55:30] it's the proficiency and the growth on the sols the remaining 10 is chronic absenteeism so when you think about um that doesn't mean that we're changing those cut scores they're going in right for third fourth and fifth graders and that four-year phase in to this higher level proficiency that as dr northern noted is in line with um more sort of competitive national expectations um uh so there will be a significant impact on that you know in contrast there are far there are multiple other indicators in the high school framework right that that actually need work that [01:56:06] is entirely separate from um the uh the the work around around the cut scores so i've asked deputy superintendent hyslop to make sure that we're very clear as we walk through what is about student what is about school rating but i just want to reaffirm um going into this conversation that nothing in this plan would change the four-year phase in of those uh of those different cut scores for proficiency across three through eight and those eoc courses as part of that plan that was voted [01:56:41] on in december of 2025 by the board of education and then reaffirmed in june of 2026. thank you you Superintendent Conway so I went ahead and skipped ahead to the slide that says the charge of HB 643 which is the law that was passed this past General Assembly session that really did direct us to develop the plan and timeline to facilitate your work to strengthen the school performance and support framework in response to the JLARC's analysis predominantly which most of of you heard a lot about in our June meeting. So we were required by August 1 to have submitted [01:57:17] and developed this plan and timeline. The link to the full plan and timeline is available here. This is sort of a high level summary of that. There's a lot of detail in that, but wanted to really highlight a few areas, you know, sort of give you all a better sense of when key decisions, at least based on our best knowledge right now, would be coming before the board, as well as when key questions or the key policies would be implemented because sometimes there's a difference there's a gap between when a board action is taken and when it would actually be felt by the field um we also uh just really as superintendent com was saying like this is [01:57:53] building from the really strong foundation of the school performance and support framework but just taking into account sort of 10 specific policy recommendations that the legislature are highlighted as needing consideration. The plan and timeline does not include any decisions or any recommendations. It's just that. It's a timeline. So I think over the next two to three years, we will be making and bringing forward different policy options and recommendations, but that is not happening today. And a few of those decisions are on the [01:58:28] agenda for tomorrow. But today's presentation is mostly just helping you all get a lay of the land of what's the timeline for this work because there are a lot of moving pieces and I think this is probably mostly for Dr. Maxwell's benefit but why does the SPSF need to change so as Jay Lark said you know they found that the SPSF structure is sound refinements though are needed and it was a sufficiently effective and useful system at measuring school and performance it was you know preferred to having our old dual competing systems [01:59:04] of accreditation and accountability side by side. But there were key things that needed to be addressed to really take the system from 1.0 to 2.0. And that's really the charge of this plan, this timeline, and the charge that the board is going to need to take. [01:59:20] And that work of JLURC, as you know, we heard a really wonderful presentation by Mr. Brown and his colleagues with like, they conducted interviews, they did focus groups, they analyzed the data as best they could, it was quite thorough. And I think that's the fact that the legislature incorporated so many of those recommendations for your consideration into this bill, I think also shows their faith in that analysis as well, and really is the foundation for the work moving forward. So we want to build from the great results of last year and continue [01:59:54] to strengthen the system over the next several years. So taking sort of one giant step back of like, what do we get at the end of this? Why are we doing all of this? Why is it better? I think it's just really critical as I'm thinking about the work of my team as we're thinking about the work of the agency that measurement really is our foundation for those improved student outcomes that we were saying. [02:00:17] Like the data, digging into the data is how we are going to reach the student outcomes and the high expectations that we think all of our students can reach. And this is a key component. It's related to our standards of learning here at the top where we actually are setting those high expectations, the work that this board did in 2023 and 2024 to update our content standards in key subject areas. It's related to our assessment system where we're measuring how well students meet the high expectations, but the school performance and support framework is how we're really measuring schools. Are schools helping our students meet those high expectations? It's not directly measuring student performance, it's school [02:00:56] performance. And we are using student outcome data to inform that, but it is sort of the corollary. If we're setting high expectations for kids through our SOLs and our cut scores, we need to set similarly high expectations for our schools. And one of the key ways we do that is through this school performance and support framework. And then the other sort of key piece of this is, as we've also talked about during this presentation, the prior one, the supports and resources that follow. The whole point of this system isn't just to do a giant math equation and come up with a list of schools. It's to actually help the leaders, whether you're a state leader [02:01:34] on the board, whether you're a legislator, whether you're a local supervisor, whether you're a principal, a division leader, prioritize the students who need the most help and target and allocate resources accordingly. Resources means money. It also means professional development and time and attention. So all of these pieces have to work together. And then when they are aligned and coherent, that is at least where I believe we will see improved student outcomes that we know we must achieve. So this slide tries to capture, like, what do we get? What do we get at the end [02:02:10] of this? What is different for division leaders? What is different for state policymakers? What is different for a teacher if we actually succeed in this work of bringing all four of those elements together. And this involves the work of HB 643, but also another critical piece of legislation the General Assembly passed last year, which is HB 924. That is the second bill related to JLARC's analysis that actually officially charges the board and the VDOE with administering an effective school improvement program for schools greatest in need. So if all of this comes together, you know, division leaders will be able to direct more effective targeted support to the [02:02:49] schools that need the help and they have a clearer understanding of areas of need. State policymakers like yourself are going to be able to use the information to inform strategies for strengthening our education system to ensure all students but especially those that are furthest from opportunity have the support and resources they need to meet our high expectations. A parent, a family member will be able to better support their child based on a clearer understanding of how their school is performing and know the areas of growth as well as the areas where they're already meeting our high expectations. So this, I think, we really just wanted to ground this plan and timeline that went to the legislature of like, there's a lot that is happening over the next few years, but this is the [02:03:29] goal. This is the North Star for this work. This is what will be better for each of these groups of folks once we do this work in partnership. And with that, we can now get into some of the weeds. So start really high level. I think a few sort of key takeaways here, just as Superintendent Superintendent Conway alluded to was this is a multi-step process. There are 10 different considerations in that bill and we need to account for different types of changes, their impact on the field, their unique requirements for approval. Is it a regulation? Is it a board vote? Is it [02:04:08] something the VDOE can take action on their own? You know, we have to keep that into account. So it's not a, we can't just do it in one step. It is a multi-step process. We also do really want to do this complicated work in partnership with you as a board but also in partnership with our stakeholders it's incredibly important that we maintain transparency communication and a clear previewing and understanding of any changes that this board does decide to take and we want to give them as much time as possible to understand that while not saying this is not urgent work but we do [02:04:45] want to be sure that we are clearly communicating with the field we when we were on our listing tour earlier this year and we mentioned the SPSF, my joke was it's not a sunscreen. Like most people, most parents, most community members had never no idea what we were talking about. So I think we also just have to recognize that there is a lot of work to be done on communications and building understanding even of the system as it is, let alone walking them through this process of change management over the next several years. We are going to be considering and implementing changes each year, beginning with the release of SPSF results that are coming forward in October. [02:05:25] But we're not going to put the system on pause. There will be accountability results this year, next year, the year after that, and the year after that. So even as we're making these refinements, we're not putting things on ice. We are continuing to implement accountability as we make changes to strengthen it. We also have ended up here with a timeline presented to the legislature that essentially leaves us with all potential changes having been modeled for the board to consider and approved by the board by the summer of 2028. So essentially, it's two years where you will [02:06:01] really be doing action. That summer of 2028 would enable us to essentially do a full preview for school divisions in the fall of 2028. And then it would be like, it would count in the fall of 2029. So that is sort of the plan that we had developed for the legislature has, that is the goal. So while we're for, if you're a division, you say, well, it doesn't impact me until the fall of 2029, they will have seen what it would have looked like a full year before that. And I think we will be essentially, I think that's just a key point here. And I would also say, you know, [02:06:39] there's a lot of other moving pieces here, you will be seeing a lot of me between now and 2028. So, you know, this is our represents our best thinking as of the summer of 2026. And I think that's just something that we are going to be open to feedback from the field, from this board, from other folks and make maybe the pivot as we go based on more information and things that are learned along the way. [02:07:02] So I think it's helpful in terms of thinking about how do we come up with this timeline to break down the 10 recommendations that were in the legislation into different categories. And we have three categories here. There are four, I would actually say it's five recommendations that are in the indicator changes bucket. [02:07:24] That is updating the mastery index. So the actual nuts and bolts of how we incorporate student test results into the accountability system. There are two recommendations for consideration around the 3E readiness indicator for high schools that JLARC walked us through in June. [02:07:42] There are then two recommendations specific to English learners. One, our English learner progress indicator. This is the indicator that is based on our WIDA, English language proficiency assessment. So it's not SOL data, but it is still based on test data. [02:07:58] And there's also a specific change about recently arrived English learners. So we bucketed those into indicator changes. The second bucket is regulatory changes. So these are things that the board can't just take a simple vote. will need to go through the regulatory process in order to consider them as a board. That is updating how federal identification for school improvement, so if you are one of those comprehensive support, targeted support, or additional targeted support schools that Mr. Robinson was mentioning, how that impacts your rating. Right now we have a rule in the reg that says if you're a targeted [02:08:34] support school or an additional targeted support school, your summative rating is lowered. That was was something that JLARC mentioned is one of the considerations we have to bring forward, and doing so would require a regulatory change. Similarly, rebalancing the overall weight of the growth component relative to proficiency or mastery would also require a regulatory change. So those are the two that are in that bucket. The third bucket is what I consider the overall design changes. These things are about, that we talked about just now, those six, seven recommendations [02:09:08] were specific indicators, specific measures, this final bucket here on the right is how everything comes together. Once you know how you're measuring college and career readiness through 3E, once you know how you're measuring mastery, once you know how you're measuring English learner progress, and these are items like the school performance category terms, like the overall weight of growth and proficiency. Our regulations don't say growth is 35%. The regulations give a range. So we would have to regulate and then bring a specific recommendation or option to the board [02:09:45] for considerations. That one's actually a two-step process. It's in regulatory change bucket and overall design change bucket. We also have, I think critically here, those scoring thresholds between the categories. So we heard a lot from JLARC in June about how many of our high schools were indistinguished. That just, we have so many high schools that are distinguished and very few elementary and middle schools that were there that 10th recommendation here and the the numbers here are just the order that they appear in the legislation so remember keep in mind this was for the for the legislature so we were trying to use their terminology here so that was the 10th [02:10:24] recommendation in the bill um so that is something that is really thinking about how the overall system comes together and many of these changes not all of them but many of these changes to the the overall design cannot occur until you've done the work on the left. Some of them can be, but others you really need to have, let's figure out how we're measuring 3E and get that right before we go and change the scoring threshold for high schools. Because I think one of our goals with this plan is not to bring back decisions for reconsideration over and over again. We don't want [02:11:00] to overwhelm the field or confuse them further. We want to be able to bring the decisions forward to this board and do it once and do it right, as opposed to having to come back six months later and revisit the topic. So that's partly why things are sequenced the way that they are in this plan. So it tends to be most of the things on the left come before many of the things on the right of this slide. I think further additional context, just to keep in mind, as Superintendent Conway mentioned, we will be accounting for the changes in the cut scores that are coming, [02:11:36] especially because, as you noted on the prior slide, some of these recommendations that we have to consider are related to the mastery measure. So that is something that, you know, noting just, it's going to be in our mind as we model data, wherever possible, we will try to also be thinking about that future state, not just the current state. We have to think about it. [02:11:58] I already mentioned that we have to sequence these changes to allow for modeling with current data. We want to be making informed decisions based on Virginia students, Virginia schools, not guesses or assumptions based on national trends. So we are really wanting to be sure that to the extent possible, if we have to stand up a new data collection, there's time to do that and then model the data and then bring the decision to this board. [02:12:24] That is what the plan is intended to do. We also just want to and we will be maintaining sort of some adaptability along the way. As I said, we are committed to getting feedback from the field, feedback from the board, taking lessons learned, and making adjustments. And we tried to create a timeline that gave us some buffer room where we have some time. [02:12:43] You know, if we need to take a little bit more time on a decision, we can, and we will still meet that summer 2028 goal of having all decisions made by that point. So I think just understand this is our initial plan and timeline subject to change, and we will keep you all informed all along the way. [02:13:03] And generally speaking, we did follow this path with how we were trying to consider each of the 10 changes, that there would be this preparation time where we'd be looking deeply at our data, doing different modeling of different options, and then bringing that forward to you all, but also forward to school leaders and the field and families and parents and educators to see what they think as we are bringing forward decisions so that we're gut checking ourselves as we move forward. [02:13:30] so there's generally this the first phase is this preparations phase then we go into preview so that's where once a change has actually been approved we want to like i said give school divisions a little insight into what's coming before it actually has higher stakes attached to it before it counts and then we get to the implementation phase so this slide here slide 13 really is more of the timeline for you all this is related to when the key decisions will be coming forward to the best of our ability and knowledge right now for the board as we talked about and as [02:14:08] you've seen on your agenda tomorrow we are considering the school category names for this fall's 2026 revolts as well as three changes related a lot many of them to english learners that would take effect next school year but that we want to make a decision now at the start of the 26-27 school year so that we're telling divisions what the expectations are for next year because it affects data collection we are also planning this school year to be bringing forward some of those foundational policy decisions related to those indicator changes and the regulatory changes so that's the growth and mastery indicators the 3e readiness indicator the english learner progress [02:14:47] indicator the weighting parameters that are in regulation and the impact of federal identification in ratings that is also in regulation so if you're thinking like i know we don't have our 2027 board calendar yet, but if you're wondering what might be on the agenda, some of these topics are likely coming forward. And many of them are the building blocks of our accountability system. It's not the overall design. It's the data and the measures. That puts us on a timeline of having the regulations finalized by next summer or early next fall. Then that sets up the 27-28 school year. So next school [02:15:23] year, now that we've made all those wonky decisions about how we're measuring 3E and how we're measuring mastery and growth, we can use the 27-28 school year as a data collection year to communicate those changes to our divisions so that they are set up to actually collect the measures we need them to collect so that in the summer of 2028, we can come back with those overall policy decisions so we can be thinking about the specific weight of growth and mastery because we'll have the 27-28 data to make that decision. We'll be able to use the 27-28 data to think about what is the specific weight of growth that makes sense? What are the thresholds [02:16:02] that make sense? Should we have a different threshold for high schools than for middle schools? We will actually have data to inform that decision. That then gives us the chance in the fall of 2028 to do that preview with our school divisions and set up the 28-29 school year when we would be collecting data and all of that data would feed into the SPSF results that count in the fall of 2029. So this is more of the timeline for you. If you're trying to think about like looking down the pipe, we're going to have a lot of conversations in the coming months around [02:16:36] how do we measure 3E? How do we measure growth? And then I think as we get more into the 2028 school year, that's when we're really going to think and make some of those decisions about should it be a 90 and above for distinguished or not? Like we will get there, but that's a little bit later in the process. If you're a school division, this is more the timeline and helping our school division leaders, I think, understand when things impact them here on slide 14. [02:17:05] So we did want to call out here the specific changes that are sort of highlighted in TEAL. This is what is coming forward tomorrow on the agenda. So the new performance category terms, that for school division would impact the fall 2026 results and take effect immediately. [02:17:24] in October. The other changes in the teal boxes are ones that would either be implemented next fall in terms of the weight of the English learner progress indicator for schools that do not have enough English learners to include that indicator, going to an annual measure of mastery in high school, which we talked about in June, also give us the timeline to set up for this option for including recently arrived English learners. And the reason why that's not fall 27 is it takes two years to implement so that is why for a division you know we would start the work now [02:17:59] we have to we need to make a decision about it now to set us up two years from now to potentially make that change based on some data and we'll talk more about those in the coming school year or coming meeting but we can also see here too that for a school division most of the impact is really felt in that fall 2029 even though this board would likely have made many of these decisions a year prior if not sooner so i hope that that kind of helps we just thought it was helpful to show it both ways sort of the timeline for you all but then also the timeline for the field [02:18:37] i don't know if i can well i think that is the uh very last slide the clicker is not working anymore maybe tim can give me an assist there but i'm happy to turn it over to discussion now or just questions about this i know it's weedy there is the full report on the general assembly website if you're so inclined um but just wanted to give you a little bit of a preview and like i said we will um cue to this but also reserve the right to make changes based on what we learn as we move forward and based on feedback from you and from our stakeholders as we actually get into the [02:19:16] weeds of the work tomorrow and in subsequent meetings thank you board members questions dr northern oh let me just make sure i'm understanding and so i'm looking at the full version that went to the journalist and laid that there um and so and i think i'm getting my scoring thresholds confused with my cut scores i think that's part of what yeah um i get and i really appreciate the iteration here that we're going to keep on with our increases step ladder on the [02:19:56] to cut scores. And I guess I'm kind of like, explain to me, does that mean that the schools won't be getting the SPSF designations until 28, 29, because all these pieces are in? Does it mean how do we give these designations when all these pieces are in flux? Yeah. Yeah. So I think one thing to keep in mind, if you're thinking about what doesn't happen every year with SPSF, one of the things that does not happen each and every year is we do not identify comprehensive support schools every year. So that's, we have the flexibility as many states do to identify those [02:20:34] schools once every three years. But this fall and next fall, we will be issuing school ratings and we will be identifying schools for targeted support. So one of the things, and for next fall, not this fall, because the new cut scores have not started to take effect, we haven't gone to or implement that approaching level, but next fall's SPSF results, we will need to be bringing forward to the board, how do we want to consider approaching in the mastery index? We now have five performance levels. Our current business rules for SPSF, when we think about how we incorporate test [02:21:11] scores into the SPSF, it's only based on the four performance levels. We're going to have five next year. So that's why mastery is on the work plan for this year. But we are not using for next year's results. It's going to reflect the performance expectations that are in effect for the 26-27 school year. And I think part of also the biggest, most of the summative ratings, all of it will reflect that. And I think as we do this modeling and think through, we will make recommendations to try and help that make that make sense for a school division and for a parent because we know [02:21:48] it's complicated but the option of pausing was simply not one that we wanted to contemplate we want we think it's important enough this work is important enough the urgency to increase expectations is important enough and we think you know if we're raising expectations for students we also do need to be raising our expectations for schools at the same time and so this is enabling us to do both. Just to follow up, because I'm like playing words here. Does it mean that we are using our old definitions of each of these things until they come up in your calendar to be [02:22:21] revised and rethought? We are just using the old stuff. And then in fall of 20, summer of 28, it looks like we're going to have new, no, that's new performance terms. Hold on, what's prepare. Now we're preparing twice, but that's a bad example. Yeah. So I think a good example, maybe if I can give a concrete example to help with this. One of the things that JLARC is requiring us to consider as a board and as an agency is the weight of mastery and growth, for example, right? So the current weight of mastery and growth under the plan and timeline, [02:22:57] as it stands now, that would not be changing and taking effect for real until the results that come out in fall of 2029. However, we are not going to keep the 400 cut score in effect. The changes in our cut scores are going to have earlier implications for SPSF because we have to use the performance data on the SOLs in mastery. So even though the weight of mastery might not be changing until fall 29, the way that we are calculating mastery will have to change earlier [02:23:36] because of this board's reaffirmation of the cut scores in January. Does that make sense? So it's, you know, the mastery in measure right now, and I'm happy to get into the weeds a little bit here, it gives different points for students who are at every performance level. [02:23:54] So for a grade three assessment, for example, it is 0.25 points for below basic currently, 0.75 points for a student who is basic, one point for proficient and 1.25 for advanced. There is no approaching. So we have to go in and say, what are the points going to be for approaching? Because next year's data, we will have students who score approaching and our current SPSF business rules don't account for that situation. So we will be adopting those business rules and that will impact next fall's [02:24:32] results. But these bigger questions about like, what's the weight of mastery? Is it 50% is it 40 that's a question that's further into the future just my last comment yeah a lot of people probably have questions um the um am i correct that the high school score thresholds which we've all said are problematic i don't think anybody believes that 92 of our high schools are distinguished or whatever the other category is we all understand that we didn't have all the data we needed you know we're building this plane we all know that metaphor and it's just the way you [02:25:11] got to do this thing when you're starting building things right fresh um but is it that i mean do we have to wait till 2029 i mean because i guess part of me you know and you know we've got some vocal advocates out there part of me is wondering whether we can use 25 26 school year data to run modeling for the higher scut cut score progressions so i think it's a great question and one that like we would love to you know that's our initial plan and timeline the thing that i would point out is that what is so different about high schools and what was driving [02:25:49] largely driving the results for high schools that we saw was not mastery it was 3e and there are two jlark recommendations related to 3e and in our view in developing this plan and timeline we had to get through those recommendations first we had to re-examine the 3e indicator itself and be sure that we are measuring the right things i know superintendent conway has had many conversations with our community colleges about we've made huge investments in the passport program that's not even recognized in 3e we say any dual enrollment we're not giving you know more credit there's [02:26:26] there's some fundamental things i think that we need to look at in that indicator that is why looking at 3e is part of the work plan for this year and then if we do say well we want to look at passport let's be sure that we at the doe add that into our data collection for divisions so that's i think it's as i was sort of saying like we have to sequence things i if we weren't touching 3e i think it's a pretty simple answer to that question like yeah it makes sense to look at this sooner but we have some pretty significant work to consider on 3e and i think we have to do it first and that's what's reflected here you know again happy to have those conversations happy to think [02:27:05] about where we can speed things up but i just would say i think if we were to make a decision about a different threshold we would have to revisit that decision after 3e readiness indicator was updated because it drives so much of a high school's results i pretended yeah so i think an important point and the reason that um added some of the contextual points is i think as we move [02:27:38] forward because we will be rolling this out each year right because we are moving forward year over year with the implementation of the higher cut scores and which is for students right and we are concurrently moving forward year over year like we are committed to rolling out school performance and support framework results that at that time when we do that each october like we will also be positioned to kind of walk through that data with you right and so um and there might be things where you say we would like to you know make a shift right as we go because of what the data [02:28:17] shows us for example i think what we were required to lay out and was to take into consideration was this language of jlark of like you know what were the various steps that would be taken and so in the way um and this looks different across the different ones so let's talk about sort of elementary school versus high school or elementary school there are not a lot of complicated outside indicators 90 of it is the standards of learning results right and again you know now those numbers will look different each year because you're phasing in different cut scores for third fourth [02:28:55] and fifth grade reading and math right across the board and you'll have chronic obstituism which you'll likely sort of see that will move slightly each year hopefully in the direction of less of that you might be able to make some determinations on that sooner in contrast the 3e and what it calls for cannot be easily changed with a test right we have to sort of say do we have the right measures which we jlark says we don't and i think we sort of you know we've got that concern if so if they're not the right measures then what are the right measures and then how do we collect them at scale across 500 high schools now we might end up in a situation this sort of describes uh [02:29:35] the kind of sort of fooling what is needed you as a body might see the results you know for the fall and say okay we know we don't know we don't sort of fully know how we're going to change 3e but we also you know need to take this action to cap it or we need to do something different for next year you always as a body have the ability to do that but what is what this plan reflects is sort of you know the no later than with ultimately some recognition that there is just no way for us to get in front of you today and say here's exactly what the three indicators should be and here's [02:30:15] exactly you know and here's exactly what if we use those indicators what the profile looks like statewide in terms of performance and therefore here's where we think you should draw the overall threshold for high school like we we just don't know what we don't know in sharp contrast you might have either this fall or probably more next year with two years of looking at elementary school school scores and results with higher cut scores and have a good sense of that trend and be ready to be done sort of on elementary we're just saying you can't really say we're done for elementary middle and high school until this further point is that is that clear but none of this [02:30:54] prohibits this body from using data along the way and i just want to reiterate kind of two important points here this assumes a four-year implementation of higher cut scores on student level assessments and it assumes every fall we are rolling out school performance and support framework results um based on your current system whatever you've agreed to that year and what is again we cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good in an ideal situation account an accountability system tells you in june right so that the divisions can do the planning and do the [02:31:31] professional learning in august and prepare that's just not possible right i mean with the sort of 10 recommendations codified into law and so there are places where we will work as quickly as possible we might sort of say in january bringing two changes one is for the year that we're in because we still think and our data will show you this is better to do this than not do this and maybe we'll also bring in january a change for the future you know for the next year um but again don't see this plan as saying that we're one taking no action till this point we're constantly taking action and two recognize that what we had to do in order to be responsive to the jlark [02:32:10] recommendations to sort of lay out kind of the totality of the changes but using three as an example you might say actually what happened between two years of spsf results we have just we have the high school indicator is too inflated we don't know this is just a hypothetical for everybody listening at home we don't know where we're going exactly but we're also very uncomfortable with these scores and we need to cap in the interim right we just think it would be premature to try to cap while recognizing that the ideal would be to be able to say to our high school leaders across the state, these are the right incentives. But this does not limit this board's [02:32:49] action in any way. And I think what Anne and the team were trying to be clear in the report to the General Assembly is this is our best guess with the data available, but these test scores are changing. We don't know what we don't know about some of these indicators that are entirely separate from test scores and that this is sort of our our best guess on phasing with the commitment to be transparent with the field since you highlighted that as the biggest issue but also not prescribing this board in any way from taking actions along the way because each fall we are committed to rolling out school performance and support frameworks based on you know sort of the kind [02:33:25] of the current state all these blue sorry all these blue dots just meant it's not that we're waiting until 28 time with all these blue dots it's that all these blue dots just mean that piece of it has been been previewed tested blah blah and now it's baked yes correct before it wasn't it's essentially like we're in a house under renovation yes you know and that's the key point i mean i guess sort of for the researcher out there i mean the blue dots just mean that's the real baseline like it is you know in us working you know to kind of continually make it better it does make year over year comparison a little more difficult but i think that's the [02:34:03] right thing to do for students to kind of iteratively improve but then know that you're not really in a steady state across these areas you know uh before that piece but you are constantly improving along the way and using the data from virginia to make that improvement and every single one of those decisions would come to this body question so one is our obligation as relates to reporting bad on the house bill is that we just put together a proposed timeline because that was just a requirement we put together close timeline but when jaylock was here and they went over the [02:34:41] 10 recommendations as my recollection is they said seven of the recommendations could be implemented pretty much right away to be done almost in-house you all could work some numbers look at the 3e readiness look at the index make some adjustments come back and make a recommendation to us and that there were just two or three things that may need some tweaking it could take a little bit longer but in no sense in no way did i get an indication that we would be talking about three years it would take for us to actually put together what the expectation was to the field so we might want [02:35:20] to go back and take a look at the minutes from that meeting because i'm really now confused about why this plan is saying let's just say that's going to take us three years to do it when they indicated that we pretty much could get this done almost right away is it not possible taking into consideration what your concerns are that we use one-year data of it of the experimental data okay as it currently exists taking into consideration i realize you got to change the 3e readiness because that produced all of the extra points that some of the high school students [02:35:59] achieved that skewed the uh qualifications of the school in the distinguished category but could you not make a recommendation to us is the word you believe those numbers would better align okay with the total performance framework and allow us to vote on that and have a time that is shorter than what you're currently proposing and then if we had to make changes or we find that something is not working we can tweak it but i think what what we're really saying is is taking the board and all the staff members and all the experts three more years to figure out how to [02:36:36] tweak these 10 action items in order to just to develop a timeline that we're giving in response to j-log and that just seems to be like we're allowing ourselves more flexibility than we're We're allowing the students to step it up, get to the cut score level, but we're going to take three years just trying to tweak what our expectations are and the little percentage points, differences. [02:37:06] There's only two or three categories. So I would say this is a two-year plan. We are not, the decisions are made in the next two years. It's not the final board votes that I'm anticipating in this plan occur in the summer of 2028. That is less than two years from now. [02:37:24] And it is giving us, I think this is the last time we would be coming forward to the board to discuss a timeline. You know, every conversation from here on out is about recommendations, what we are doing, like the conversation we're going to have tomorrow is about recommendations, about here's options. [02:37:43] The conversations that I could bring in September will be about options, like it may be the regulations, for example. The conversations in November, when I come back again, will be about here's how we're to measure growth because we don't have a growth measure for next year the conversations in december when i come back then maybe let's start talking about 3e in january we'll keep talking about 3e like we are i will be bringing forward decisions for this board i am looking at superintendent conway for affirmation here probably at every single board meeting for the next month for the next year and that is to have time to do first review and final review to look at our data to [02:38:22] to talk to experts, to talk to the field, and we have to, I want to get all of that work done so that we can start the 27-28 school year and tell our divisions, here's all the data you need to collect. If we have something new in 3E, here's what you need to collect. If we're using a different growth methodology, here's the methodology. We're modeling it based on the new cut scores. Here's what you can come to expect. That is the work of this year. And then the regulations take a little bit longer. Regulations in Virginia, looking at our lawyers in the room, can take over a year to [02:38:59] finalize. That's why. If we could do it, you know, but we have to go through the process. So that's why the regulations finalize next summer. Then we can make decisions based on that. That's why this is here. But I do want to be really clear that this timeline is a decisions made within two years. Two years. Mr. Robinson. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have two statements I want to say that might seem very basic, but I don't think that we can say them enough, and I want to make [02:39:36] sure I'm saying them accurately. And it's because, to my fellow board members, Dr. Hyslop's joke about... You just made me a doctor, thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. That's my father, but... Joke about It's not a sunscreen. It's a funny way of saying what I saw for the first time when I went to one of the listening sessions was how much confusion and misunderstanding there is. [02:40:04] I work every day with school leaders and folks who are in our schools doing great work, and when I went to one of those listening sessions and actually heard very savvy people conflating SOLs and the SPFF. So I don't think we can over-educate folks on what exactly is currently happening. [02:40:25] And so that slide you had of sort of what's going to change over the next three years, I think we ought to even have a simple slide of what's not going to change. Like every August, you're going to get the SOL scores for every school in the Commonwealth, and students will get them for their individual, well, you know, whenever that happens. [02:40:46] And then every fall, there will be these ratings for these schools to help identify how things are going at the school level, student level, school level. I mean, I think we can keep stating these things over and over. Did I misstate anything, Ms. Hyslop? [02:41:02] You did not. So it's like nothing is changing on that. And in fact, we're getting back to this more regular timing of end of summer, fall for the ratings. I think we can keep stating that over and over again. And trying to help folks make sense of all of this. And then I do have a question at the end of this. And that is that on the on the 3E measure for the first time in the past couple of weeks in talking to some folks in the field, I started hearing these stirrings of questions about 3E being particularly punitive or hard on rural school divisions. [02:41:42] Have you heard anything about that? Because that was not something that I was familiar with. And can you explain how that might be right now and why 3E might be really important to look at sooner rather than later? Yeah, so I think, just keep in mind, a lot of the way that we are doing 3Es, it's looking at pathways and opportunities that are available to high school students often to get sort of either early post-secondary credit through dual enrollment, also through APIB, or like in some one division, at least Cambridge International assessments, through work-based learning opportunities, through CTE credentials. [02:42:19] we know that those opportunities aren't always equitably offered across the commonwealth. We are making improvements on that. And Deputy Superintendent McCleary and his team have worked tirelessly on that. But I think that is a challenge. It can be harder for rural divisions, for example, to find certified educators of dual enrollment, potentially. [02:42:40] So that is something that I think it may just be more challenging to. And I think particularly with the way that the current measure is uncapped if you're a division that has all the resources in the world it may be quite easy for your students to keep we got this one and this one and this one and now i'm maxing out in all three e's and that might be harder for a rural division that doesn't have maybe the same plethora of opportunities so i think the particular recommendation in jlark around capping either like what a school could earn or a student kind of speaks to that maybe [02:43:17] as a way to try and level the playing field but also knowing that's also a way to prevent not to prevent 3e but to bring the 3e indicator more in line with the other indicators in terms of when i said that's driving a lot of the high scores that we're seeing at the high school level it even though it may be more challenging for some of our rural high schools it's one of the higher scoring indicators in the whole system um first of all thank you for all this uh chess playing it's one [02:43:53] stepping out from the weeds for a second, I just want to celebrate that what I'm hearing is deep alignment on directionally excitement about implementing these JLARC recommendations across the legislature, the government's office, the board, the field, and your team giving us a plan for making it happen. And I think once you combine that with also the alignment we heard earlier from superintendent conway on a message going out to the field about the four-year plan on the rising of cut scores and saying that we in the government's office are committed to this [02:44:30] i think uh building on dr bridge's point about a slide about what's not changing i think those type of things are huge celebrations that we're really now talking about some of the details where of course i hope we have some disagreements about what we think collectively is best for students so we can get to some of those nuances but like directionally i before i make moaning the weeds comment i just want to uh celebrate at the macro level where we're going and how exciting that is and thank you for getting this together so quickly and getting us moving on some of the complicated [02:45:03] regulatory changes uh and kind of quick wins with the el and other things we'll be talking about tomorrow um so that's exciting um uh on the uh i'm i'm with dr northern that when we think about this plan even though i totally get that it's a two-year plan uh and if we can get all these things figured out in two years then we would have 28 29 to preview uh so that by the 29 test scores that's why it takes three years for the test scores um uh but i i would like us to at least [02:45:42] consider i see you're bringing these three e indicator uh your uh shifts to us uh hopefully to consider this this school year i'm wondering when you bring those if we could at least uh at request that we at least have a what would it look like if we tried to get the recalibration of scoring thresholds for high schools done in time to count for the 27 28 school year um like maybe that's not possible but i'd like us to at least seriously consider if it's possible i doubt it's possible to get it done by fall 27 where you'd have a full year preview and i know that's the [02:46:20] goal to have a full year preview but i don't think this is a complicated one like growth scores where you necessarily need a full year preview i think it's a pretty simple message of right now 92 of of our high schools are in the top two categories. We think just like having 89% of our schools accredited, that's not differentiated, that doesn't help us target support in alignment with what we want. It's going to go down. And these are the schools that might be at risk of going down. I think there's ways that we might be prioritizing. I love that we're prioritizing greater communication, precision, previewing, and transparency. But I think you [02:46:59] do that and still move with much more urgency on the high school one and i could be wrong so i'd like but i'd like to see us at least consider two side-by-side proposals uh later this year if possible yeah i think that's a great point i think these are the sort of things as we bring forward each of the individual decisions like we'll have likely for many of them multiple options and i think one of the big factors with 3e that i would just reiterate in terms of the timeline is ultimately whether this board wants to consider adding new data into 3e because then we're not just shifting [02:47:34] the data around that we already have it's we got to give divisions have to collect the data so we have to tell them you know let's stand up this data collection so that but maybe not all the options will have new data collection you know i think that's again you know we got to think through that and that's why i think you know this is just meant to sort of show a rough timeline of when things will be coming forward we will be getting into the details of specific options and i think try and come up with you know there's going to be trade-offs and pros and cons of different options i love the example i just want to say like help us help you with that you know when you're [02:48:11] presenting like help us see if we make this change now it's going to make it harder to do x or y or z uh just because if i if i personally knew that in that hypothetical i would prioritize uh delaying getting some of that specifics correct in order to stop recognizing 92 percent of our high schools so that's thank you yeah i think we'll that's really great feedback because we'll be bringing these forward i think you know starting at some of your meetings this fall with different indicators so uh superintendent yeah so i just i want to kind of note i mean one is we're in this place [02:48:49] on three because we moved too quickly so i just i want i just want to be very clear around you where we need to identify indicators create systems for collecting data like that takes more long sort of a longer period of time i think similar to the truth you want to compare the a and the b option on english language learners who recently arrived like you need two years like that's you know like there there's nothing we can do to make that that faster however i think as early as this fall um because to dr northern's point what we have to roll out this fall is what was approved previously you will be able to look at that high school data and if [02:49:26] this body makes a decision that we need because of the concerns of this body to take an intermediary action around a cap on 3e that while we're sort of still figuring out kind of what the right indicators are there is nothing in this plan or in that law or in that jailer report that precludes you from doing that right and so know that one of the important things that was reiterated to me when i first took this position is that um you know it was hard for even jlark because the results weren't even out at the time but the jlark came out right so this idea is that i have been and we [02:50:04] at the department have been under you know under a very clear expectation that we will roll out october results and what that means is that as early as the october meeting we are bringing you that data you know um you know and we will then at that same time also have and again it's not perfect for some of the reasons named by deputy superintendent high slap earlier but also have you know kind of what it would look like if you had the higher cut scores potentially mr robinson both the interim year and the kind of the north star of um 2930. so like that and that's not the beginning of the 26 27 year but there's still there might be cases where [02:50:43] you know you sort of then say to us okay we need to take action for you know for for this year for next based on that so there is um the the that very clear prerogative to kind of get the data about the test scores the data about the sort of preliminary modeling of what the higher expectations would mean and what your your fall spsf results look like on time so there is more time to consider whether more intermediate action is needed before you have exactly what you want [02:51:12] 3e to babe mcpherson so on the timeline that you have and we all do appreciate them but the slide says that all schools are going to be held accountable under the strengthened spsf expectations consistent with j-lock and house bill 643 early fall of 2029 so as i understand you're going to implement the cut scores that they've enhanced cuts we would get the results from that in the [02:51:51] meantime you'll be looking at the performance framework and making the changes in certain categories and you're going to be given the data for the principals in the school division every year every six months whenever it comes out are you going to since this slide says holding schools accountable under the framework beginning in early fall of 2029, what is the expectation [02:52:26] or are you going to do re-ratings between the enhanced cut scores, which is a different performance level, and the framework, are you going to rate the schools or are you not going to have ratings or any of that until you hold them fully accountable? [02:52:46] I just want to make sure that the principals and the people at grassroots level understand what their expectations are going to be in terms of their categories or rating, because now we're going to have two different standards. [02:53:02] We're going to have the standard that's currently in place while we're looking at modifying the standard. And so do I take that to mean that you're only going to give them their results, but we're not doing any kind of rating? Yeah. [02:53:19] no i appreciate that and i think this is important clarification so next fall schools will get a rating in the spsf based on all indicators mastery growth graduation and readiness all of those indicators will be in there the mastery indicator will reflect the cut scores that are in place next year every year and so the cuts as they increase every year that is happening every year next fall we will also identify schools for targeted support and improvement we will not be identifying for [02:53:53] comprehensive support because that is once every three years in our essa plan but that is next fall there will be school ratings they will be public and they will be based on the higher cut scores in the fall of 2028 there will also be school ratings and they will be based on the even higher cut scores that are in place that year because we are doing the stair-step plan that the board voted on and in fall 2029 there will continue to be sbsf school ratings we will identify targeted support and comprehensive support because we're now on that once every three years and they will continue [02:54:28] to reflect the current cut scores what is unique and sort of what this timeline is saying is that in fall 2029 by that point this board will have made all the work and all the decisions that JLAC requires so you know the 3E readiness indicator may be different in fall 2029 we would have gone through the regulatory process but fundamentally school ratings happen each fall and those school ratings are based on the proficiency implementation plan that this board voted on that is also every fall and then I think sort of some of the underlying business [02:55:07] roles, whether it's how we're including recently arrived English learners or how we're measuring 3E, those changes are layered in throughout the process. And that is where, you know, we spent so much time talking about communications and how we support. It's understanding. I think I love the idea of like the what's not changing, what is changing. We will likely need to have some version of that graphic every year because I think there are going to be some sort of North Star truths that are always present always there and then they're going to be some like here's what's new this year and that's just it's kind of the nature like I said we're a little bit like a house under [02:55:46] renovation right now the microwave's in the basement maybe next year the microwave will have moved to the bedroom and then by fall 29 we'll have a kitchen again that will be functioning so but we need to explain that sort of where we are in the process all along the way and be really clear about what's not changing and like we are continuing to have those summative ratings come out every single year and those ratings are going to reflect the proficiency cut scores that this board has voted on and affirmed so many times. Yeah I mean I think I would note I mean this line [02:56:22] was in a sort of as Deputy Superintendent Hyslop noted just meant to say this would be sort of the last point at which we'd be done in response to the the the law that was passed ostensibly based on the four-year phase-in you would also you know because the results would also come out in fall of 2030 at that point it is you then have the the the full alignment right based on the four-year plan because the four-year cut score plan takes you through 29 30. that's what this body voted for in December and reaffirmed in June. And so the, we're saying to the legislature, we're done with [02:57:01] the JLARC, you know, you know, changes by this point. And then you still have the 2930 year and the final, you finally hit the kind of the proficiency set forth, whether that's the 454, the 434 or whatever else it is. And then it's then that's in sort of spring of 2030. And then the fall of 2030 then fully reflects all of the JLARC changes iterated along the way as well as the four full year plan right because we're trying to reconcile what is a mandate from [02:57:33] the General Assembly alongside a four-year phase-in plan but this the this is not first of all SPSF comes out every year and then I should note just because JLARC was that I mean the the General Assembly was asking about the JLARC report the reality is you still in 2930 there's a commitment to get to that final stage and then those those results that were fully reflective of your north star for proficiency would come out in fall of 23rd and but a caveat to that is is that the cut scores are going to be implemented immediately it's still going to impact pass fail rates for students [02:58:12] and so that will always remain the same that's not that implementation is not in any way being delayed by the fact that we're making these no interim changes in the support framework absolutely and miss mcpherson that's like it's member and even though we we sort of present it simply as pass and fail in our kind of broader communications remember the chart that you have a student gets a different point value for below basic basic proficient ultimately excuse me approaching proficient and advanced and that each year whatever the numbers are on here reflect that [02:58:52] so in some ways you know it is not fully complete until inclusive of this plan until 2030 but we're saying to the general assembly the recommendations that you made discreet from that cuts for implementation will all be done the prior year dr northern and then dr wilson so one question two quick comments um so if there are parts of three that we don't have we don't trust do those pieces just get excluded and the other things get evenly distributed like how are we handling now [02:59:28] when we don't have a piece of the puzzle to put in our calculation so it depends on the indicator for example like we're going to talk tomorrow about the el progress indicator that's one when el progress indicator is missing we redistribute that weight because it's you know a small small weighted percentage there are certain indicators where we say like if you don't have mastery you don't get a rating the mastery component is so large that but 3e is similar it's so large that you know we are we give data so for a high school that wouldn't have 3e for example which [03:00:06] I don't think we had any last year so but we created the business rule just in case we did you know that a school like that would get their mastery results they would get their graduation results they just wouldn't get the readiness results and we just didn't feel like we had enough data to give them a summative rating so they still get results they just don't get the rating because we were missing such a large piece but that didn't actually happen in reality every every high school have enough data you anticipate doing the same thing in the years ahead when all these different little pieces are in flux that will still just if we don't have an indicator yes we'll go good about [03:00:46] it and it's going to have to be somehow redistributed not counting but that's right yeah and i think we want to be sure that by and large you know when we're missing indicators the ones that are most commonly missing right now are el progress because of the end count being fewer than 15 English learners in a school. And then occasionally science, because science is not assessed in every grade level. But in the case of science, we have reading and math data. So we have been able to, for those cases, we have business rules in place that redistribute the weight to [03:01:19] say we think we still have in totality enough data that is valid and accurate to ultimately give this school a rating and ultimately, you know, potentially identify them for federal support as well so those business rules will continue to be in place moving forward quick comment is i think we could look at other states as we are you know everybody else is 25 years in on accountability stuff right so like all of the stuff that we're talking about like i would really it would be instructive like when you come back to us say you know tennessee had to do this 10 years ago [03:01:57] and here's what we learned from them um because i feel like we're in a really we're in a good position in one way from sort of being late to the party with us by having so many good state exemplars. And my other quick comment is, I know maybe we'll meet her tomorrow. We have a new, and I think that everything we've been talking about is right for a public campaign. You know, whether it's the road to results, whether you want to do a house under construction, whatever. But this is a sunblock. Yeah, we're going from SPSF 25 to [03:02:32] 50 you know we are get there we're going to get there with a schedule we're going to be very we're going to be like ridiculously transparent um because sometimes it's hard to be transparent sometimes because maybe it's going to make a bunch of people mad um but we're going to do it anyway and really serve as a motto in that way with our communications and i want to thank you i'm i for one came into this meeting um worried a little bit um about this appreciate your walking through [03:03:05] the concerns here um and committing um as the superintendent has done to what we spoke about last time um and addressing our concerns and really giving us more confidence at least i feel that way the duration yeah i just want to to to to qualify i mean again um we just can't reiterate enough i'm glad to hear that compliment dr northern as you will see much of deputy superintendent [03:03:38] high slop over the course the next few months but um you know as early as october sharing with you all the data right which is again we are working hard to gather right now you all have the sol so we can predict him with an addition of um uh chronic absenteeism we're pretty close to being able to run elementary we are not there on um on 3e and some of the graduation right i will be along with the team you know calling superintendents through next week because we have to get this data [03:04:12] in it's essential to be able to do that but to walk this group through in october and i think nothing in this plan prescribes you as you look at the data from year one which as you noted very early on is based on the current cut scores and the current rules that this body agreed to before that you know that might also change some of this timing as you think through do we in the case of 3e where you know we need to cap while we're figuring out where we go you can do that we might also say an english language learner we can't decide between a and b until we have two [03:04:50] years of data right like this there's there's there's but we are we are fully committed to rolling this out including in um eight weeks and then bringing that data immediately back to this group so that you can then say okay this is what we were expecting to go forward but also if the data tells us something like we need to take more immediate action uh that you have the ability to do that right dr wilson thank you just to reiterate a few things that have been said and that are rolling around in my head around communication and support looking at the timeline [03:05:30] and acknowledging that there will be we're going to maybe be changing our case changing our direction perhaps only slightly but there will be change throughout so as we as a board are making decisions around policy direction and where we're going what is the impact on divisions schools in classrooms right so at those various levels and the fact that the public may be watching what we're discussing today but where the rubber is really going to meet the road [03:06:09] is in that school and so to what extent are we in a position we the department and the board in a position to help equip our schools and our divisions with the language the understanding for all of the things this the the chart you know the timeline um and the way you've described what may or may not happen as we go through that that's enough for us to get our heads around and we're steeped in it right but for a family and for a parent who is not steeped in it and what they [03:06:45] will know is a report that they receive one time, right? So just thinking about the long-term or the ripple effects of the work that we're doing to be able to provide clear, consistent, and meaningful support for schools and divisions and classroom teachers and building leaders as they are then trying to turn back to us the results that we are expecting to see right so it's all directions [03:07:16] and so i'm really very um i want to emphasize the need for us to to also be committed to that and i know superintendent and others are in touch with our superintendents at the local level but to assure that they feel the support that we understand we must provide them I love that comment. And I think one of that, too, is a commitment to start within our own agency. [03:07:42] You know, my team is not the only people that go out and talk to school divisions. So another member on a different team who's part of the SPSF project with us said, you know, we need to have a staff lunch and learn because, you know, I want to learn more about this. And I was like, yes, we do. That is an excellent point. Thank you for raising that. Let's find some time in September to do that before October results because you know come October it's not just my team that's going out it's our it's all over all of our folks who interact with divisions need to have the same understanding and be able to share you know maybe not all the weedy technical details but at least that high [03:08:21] level and that we're saying the same message because I think you're absolutely right Dr. Wilson that communications and that's put our you know assistant superintendent for columns on the spot here day two I mean This is really, I think, one of a fundamental part of this plan and timeline. [03:08:36] It was not required to be in the General Assembly report, but it is certainly part of our internal work plan moving forward because it's going to be essential for any of this to be a success. Mr. Robinson? Just building on my excitement from both your comments there, I love it if in our September meeting we had, and I understand we shouldn't spend every meeting with a new update on this complicated timeline but on the communication plan with the field based on your last comments i think that would be great to see if we could be tough partners or even even just use the meeting to help further amplify it to the community and to ensure that when those spf [03:09:16] results come out in october you're ready to step out to the mound and throw a strike right down right down the middle is anyone watching the little league world series fear the bow fear the the bow not following kinley follow kinley but also i just wanted to on the same lines just uh celebrate it wasn't in this it was in the legislature you have afforded a timeline to get the results for sbsf out to school divisions by early october i think that was a question on whether we'd be able to pull that off a few months ago whether we'd be able to pull that off a few months ago and uh i just want to check in because that's a big deal that was a huge part of the [03:09:56] listening tour i just want to make sure that you know uh there's nothing we need to discuss or amplify or do to support the videoe and achieving that goal beyond getting divisions to get you the 3d data because that that would be such a big deal to have that uh timeline significant i appreciate that except for the aside as i'm already feeling hotter on the color around this pitch tonight and you know i i think we we measure this on a daily basis in terms of the implementation and so uh deep appreciation to our accountability and technology teams who are working on this probably [03:10:33] as we speak. This is probably their daily roundup that Anne is now missing. You know, I think a part of what will be the challenge for this body and for the agency as we go forward will be making sure that we are just striking this balance between recognizing the extraordinary work of our thousands and thousands of educators across the Commonwealth, while also keeping the clear call for urgency and for improvement. [03:11:05] And I think as I've been on the road talking about this, starting with this fundamental belief that our children and our students are as capable as any in the nation, recognizing that it's going to truly take all of us um you know and that as we sort of highlight the incremental growth as we did in our first presentation but also recognize as dr northern and dr wilson noted that one is that that is still on a measure that is probably not sufficient to putting our kids where we want them to be particularly when you look at those those national comparables and two [03:11:43] that is still not reaching every student every day um when we think of those those achievement gaps based on on subgroups and so as we roll out the school performance and support frameworks with the support of our new assistant superintendent there we will similarly try to thread that needle where we will recognize our schools our bright spots our gap closers but also um you know be sharing even advance of that like how some of this might look different to use your terms mr robinson what it would look like as we as we raise the bar so that in the very day-to-day work [03:12:21] of the 26-27 school year families educators kind of understand what we want for our students and what that means needs to be different as a result of that i mean you've heard me talk before as we We rolled out higher expectations with the language and literacy screener, as you saw around the rolling out more advanced math in middle school. [03:12:45] Like, we know our students and educators are capable of stepping up. And so each year in these rollouts, and we are committed, Ms. McPherson, each year to sort of putting out those results inherently, inherently the way it works is that, you know, the students and the parents receive the SOL results, you know, before the schools receive the ratings, right? [03:13:04] so there is a um you know there's there's that dynamic at play and so we we're really pushing on schools now to think about this communication with families i know we had we did work with learning heroes and others to sort of get that to a simple kind of language but there's certainly more work to be done between now and april and may on on that um and we you know are are going to be very thoughtful about recognition in october but also the call for more and in particular whether it's the road to results or some other framing how do we not sort of stop thinking about [03:13:41] this on october 15th but really recognize that between october and april when students are going to be taking these assessments and subject to that higher expectation that we're doing everything we possibly do to sort of equip educators and families to support students through that so i just i you know the continual nature of this is really important and you know the comms work ahead of us is is daunting um but i think really important and you're just going to hear me say that over and over again our kids are as capable as any in the nation um and you know we are taking [03:14:15] action now it is a phase-in plan around both the changes for students and the changes for how we measure schools um acting immediately where we can and where it's clearly laid out by jlark and then where it needs a little bit more time because we have to gather new indicators or because we have to factor in all the numbers together um but that that that is a commitment and then to being i think you said this dr northern being transparent with you about that data each step in the process miss dr bridges and then mcpherson and then chair gets to talk i know um so building on [03:14:53] my colleagues comments and especially the term that i uh wrote down that i love being ridiculously transparent i want to talk about the board's role in that governance role in being ridiculously transparent is saying some things that might seem obvious to us but again folks are watching from as far away as london england by the way i've had word on that um that uh that there are four items that we're voting on tomorrow that are all part of the this overall arching plan and so i'm hoping we can talk a little bit more about those but i want to let folks know again those were first [03:15:30] rolled out to the board in June. In the time since June, we as board members had the opportunity to take a deeper dive. Thank you to Ms. Hyslop for answering the wonky questions in that one-on-one. We had the opportunity to sort of walk through some of those things with you. We also had the opportunity one-on-one to talk with the superintendent more about these items and ask questions. We've all, I'm assuming, had time to talk more to constituents. And now we're here in a work session where we can also sort of bandy these things about and make sure that we all are [03:16:03] really clear on the decision so that when we vote tomorrow, that final action reflects not just an in-the-moment decision, but a really cumulative process of governance where we've been trying to educate ourselves, get more familiar with things, and have a really informed vote. Oh, and I left out the part of there will be public comment tomorrow, too, where we will get to hear more from constituents about what we started talking about in June. So with respect to that, is there an opportunity for us to kind of talk more specifically about those four things to get a sense of any lingering questions, knowing that we'll have time tomorrow and ultimately vote [03:16:42] tomorrow? I'm at your disposal. Ms. McPherson, and then I'll come back to Dr. Bridges' question. appreciate that. I do want to just suggest, and I know you do it all the time and you focus on it, but that J-LOC does in its regulations some of it because the very specific event it said it would reduce from 0.75 to 0.5 once a quarter in the mass ratings category [03:17:21] for students whose score failed does not mean efficiency. And also they talk about how you should It talks about how you should cap the points that high school student can earn on 3E readiness by either capping the total school points or capping the points that an actual individual student could earn. [03:17:42] So I was just going to recommend kind of go back and look and see how much of the actual recommendations that they made when they got down into the weeds that you could just incorporate and bring back to us as a recommendation that might help with it. Yeah, thank you for that. [03:17:57] And I think it's a wonderful point there. They did make some very specific recommendations about mastery, but they did not have the benefit of the proficiency implementation plan at the time. So I think that's one of the things that I also appreciate that the legislature did is they didn't say the board must implement JLARC's recommendations as written. [03:18:17] They said the board must consider because it gives us now the opportunity to include additional action that this board has taken in those recommendations. But I think the JLARC recommendations, those specific ones, like you said, are the foundation for the options that me and my team will develop and model. [03:18:36] So, you know, for the 3E cap, like let's look at an option that caps it at the school level. Let's look at an option that caps it at the student level. I think that's the sort of thing that we'd be bringing forward. And I just want to be sure that we get sequencing things right. I think because we currently don't have a growth measure in place for next year, I think maybe the growth and mastery discussion is slightly more urgent to have than 3E. [03:19:02] So I think we're also trying to be mindful of, even as we look at the calendar for the next several board meetings, like which ones come first, just based on so we can continue to have timely results in October, maybe even earlier, every year. that's the goal we got to keep doing that i don't want to over promise but um october is our goal so i just want to be sure that if there's any decision that this board needs to make that is essential for next fall's results that we prioritize those first um as well so that we can continue to [03:19:36] have those school ratings each and every year um i'll go back to dr dr bridges a question which i think is a good one we do have some items on the agenda tomorrow that would want to if there are if there's things that we can work through today um there are big clarifying questions i'm specifically um talking about the actions for final review which is what we talked about in terms of uh the spf spsf the mastery of high school english language learners those are the [03:20:13] items that are up for final review. So hopefully board members have reviewed that. But is there anything else, Anne, that you want to say about that? That you haven't already? Yeah, I mean, I don't think so. I think I'm happy to take questions, especially I know many of you had deeper conversations with members of the team in the interim, but you also may have had conversations with, as Dr. Bridges noted, constituents. The four changes, the one that What would take effect immediately is the changing of the two performance category names where we are proposing to eliminate the off-track category and replace that with approaching expectations. [03:20:53] The eliminating the on-track with meets expectations, that would take effect immediately. And the reason we're bringing it forward now is because if we brought it forward in June, we were mindful of this is sort of the last window of opportunity to change something for this school year, as far as the category ratings go, because we are knee deep in the work of running the data and numbers that's coming out in October. So that is the only change voting on that's coming forward for the final review tomorrow that would take immediate effect. [03:21:25] The other three changes would allow us to move from that cohort measure, where we essentially wait until a student is in 12th grade to know if they're proficient in reading and math. We would ship that up to have annual mastery data collection. [03:21:42] So all students in high school who take tests every year would be counted in the SPSF. We kind of wouldn't wait until that sophomore became a senior. We would count the test in their 10th grade year. That is a change that will allow us for this year's data collection. [03:21:58] And then we kick into the SPSF results that come out next fall. Similarly, the action that is related to our English Learner Progress Indicator. So as Dr. Northern was mentioning, when we don't have enough data to include an indicator, Jay Lark pointed out that the current way that we have treated this in our elementary and middle schools, we take the weight that would have gone to English learner progress and redistribute it solely to the growth component. [03:22:25] And as a result, the SPSF is essentially treating our middle schools and our elementary schools with English learners and those without in an unfair way. the relative importance of growth should be the same, whether or not you have English learners. [03:22:44] And the change that we're voting on to redistribute the weight in a different way would make sure that that would be possible moving forward, that we're not sort of saying growth can matter more, but only if you don't have English learners. You know, that's not the right way to do that. And then the fourth change is what Dr. Conway was saying around supporting our recently arrived English learners that the U.S. Department of Education gives you two different options for how you include recently arrived English learners. We use one way and we want to explore, and Jay Lark has asked us to explore, the other way. It's going to take two years for us to [03:23:22] fully explore that new option because you have to have some recently arrived English learners take a reading test this year, this coming school year, that they wouldn't otherwise take. And then next year we can maybe think about how looking at the accountability results differently but it takes two years so those are the four changes coming forward the one around the category names takes immediate effect and the other two divisions would start to implement throughout the school year and we would start incorporating them into results next fall and the following fall and I think we heard really nothing I would say I mean we'll see what the public comment is tomorrow but I think [03:24:00] all of the conversations we have had with stakeholders have been tremendously positive around all of these and see them as common sense things like make sense aligned with jlark love the idea of piloting and testing this out before making a decision and you know all of that so and then we'll see what we hear tomorrow but i'm happy to also answer more questions or if y'all would want to wait until tomorrow um we can do that as well yeah and just to reiterate one point thank you board president on the the if we have heard any feedback with concern it relates to Virginia's treatment of recently arrived English learners and a desire to go back to how Virginia [03:24:38] used to do it which it was the only state in the nation that did it in that way and that was not in compliance so there's still some change management related to that but I just want to note that because you might you may hear that but again there is you know we at a minimum we have to get into compliance with federal great context you know I don't have any I think what you've outlined makes sense the only comment i will have um this has been a long conversation and it's been a long process and there's a document that we had earlier where it really [03:25:16] just said there's standards there's a framework and then there's accountability and support and i think that is important that we consistently come back to it because sometimes we're conflating the tremendous work that has happened and i want to echo superintendent conway's point which is We have raised the standards for Virginia's kids because we believe that they are more than capable of achieving great things. [03:25:42] And I don't want that to be lost on the whoever is watching online, whether it's in England or around the corner, that we have raised standards and the standards are still in place. And they're going to continue to raise over time in a phased in way, which is, I think, good practice for parents, for kids, for practitioners, while we continue to put in place the support, the SPSF. [03:26:10] The thing that I think we sometimes are directly talking about and sometimes not is around, okay, then once you get all that information, what then do we do? And there's both the accountability, but also the support, but then the resources. [03:26:27] And so how do we make sure that we are aligning all of those things that, you know, I look forward to seeing you every month for this next year. And I think the other the other part that I also want to echo is, you know, we as a board have a responsibility in education around setting the policy, but we're not isolated. [03:26:51] We do have the legislature. I don't think I, as I said the last time, I never, I thought JLARC was a person, didn't even know what JLARC was. But, you know, the recommendations, the recommendation, the presentation was thorough. And I want to applaud Superintendent Conway and Superintendent Hyslip around the timeline. [03:27:12] I do think the timeline is a great level of transparency around what we should expect over these next coming years, which I do think builds more transparency and trust for this board and for our constituents, but at the end of the day, communication is going to, you know, I think make or break the work that we've done. [03:27:36] And so just want to echo, I think for this board to understand, we've spent a lot of time on standards, whether it's standards of learning, the standards of proficiency, the cut scores, and we have put a stake in the ground that we are laying, we are putting high expectations for Virginia's kids. [03:27:55] and that is not insignificant given where we are and where we need to go and now we're working through how to make sure that the right accountability measures are in place and the right supports are in place and what i i am not a builder i like things already done so i i appreciate the messiness of this and i want to just let us all know it's going to be a little bit messy and we're going to continue to work through it but as we continue to get information [03:28:25] I want to make sure everyone feels very clear and comfortable to ask questions and work with the staff so that we can communicate clearly to the board and be thorough in our decision making as a body. And these work sessions are really, really great for that. So I just want to thank the team and thank the board for being comprehensive and thorough and just dedicated to the students of Virginia and raising the bar. [03:28:49] And with that, if there are no other questions, I think it's time for some baseball. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you again. [03:29:05] We are going to conclude our working session and we'll report back tomorrow here at 9:00 a.m. So can I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? So moved. Is there a second? All in favor, say aye. [03:29:20] Aye. No one wants to stay here any longer. All right. Motion adjourned. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com