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Administrators say it’s hard to predict at this point how Virginia’s new accreditation process set to begin at the start of the 2025-26 school year will affect Isle of Wight County Schools.

The state Board of Education voted in March to adopt new standards, contending the current system in place since 2018 lacks transparency given the number of schools statewide reaccredited despite not returning to their pre-pandemic pass rates on Virginia’s Standards of Learning tests.

Five of Isle of Wight’s nine public schools, as of the end of the 2023-24 school year, were performing at or above the pass rates the division saw in 2018-19, and all nine schools scored well above the state’s 75% benchmark pass rate in English and 70% benchmark in math.

How those results, if repeated during the 2024-25 school year, will translate under the state’s new system is unknown. IWCS administrators gave an overview at the School Board’s Sept. 19 meeting on what is known to date about how the new system will work.

 

New terminology

“What we have been calling accreditation as a measure of school performance is now called accountability,” said Colleen Loud, director of assessment and accountability for IWCS.

The term “accreditation,” Loud said, will from now on refer to operational compliance requirements such as adequate staffing. Student outcomes will fall under the new accountability framework.

“There’s no longer a specific pass rate benchmark,” Loud said. Rather, SOL scores will be evaluated against what she described as a “mastery index.”

The new mastery index, Loud said, is a point-based scoring system that will include a “pass advanced” range of SOL scores weighted at 1.25 points, though the state has yet to advise school divisions what that range will be. There will also be a “pass proficient” range weighted at 1 point, and failures will be weighted at 0.25 to 0.75 points depending on how close they are to the minimum proficiency threshold.

Schools whose weighted SOL results earn 90 points or above will be rated as “distinguished.” Those with 80 to 89 points will be labeled “on track.” Those with 65 to 79 points will be deemed “off track” and those below 65 will be labeled as needing “intensive support.”

“We won’t be telling you that all of our schools are accredited because that’s not going to be the terminology anymore,” Loud said. “We’ll say we have this many schools who are distinguished, this many who are on track, this many who are off track and hopefully, we won’t have any that need intensive support.”

 

How the old system worked

SOLs are currently scored on a 0-600 scale with 400 representing the minimum at which a student is deemed to have passed. The English and math SOLs were assessed under the 2018 system using a combined score based on the percentage of students scoring 400 or higher and those who scored below 400 but showed growth by moving from one of four performance levels to another. For example, a third-grader who scores between zero and 280 in English is currently classified as “below basic low,” but would be counted for accreditation purposes toward a school’s combined pass rate and growth score if he or she scored between 278 and 302, or “below basic high,” in fourth grade.

Schools with a combined pass rate including growth at or above 75% in English and at or above 70% in math currently receive a “level 1” rating under the 2018 system, while those with scores above 65% but below the benchmark equate to “level 2.” Schools with all accreditation factors at levels 1 or 2 were deemed accredited, and those with scores at or below 65% or a level 2 rating that persisted for four consecutive years were deemed “level 3” and became “accredited with conditions.”

 

How growth is changing

The new point system stipulates that true pass rates, not including growth, will account for 65% of a school’s score at the elementary level. Growth will count for 25%, and “readiness,” which includes the percentage of students deemed chronically absent, counts for the remaining 10%. At the middle school level, mastery will count for 60%, growth 20% and readiness 20%.

Rather than using the circa-2018 ranges of non-passing scores, growth under the new system will be measured as a comparison of the amount of growth an individual student made versus the growth made by all students across Virginia who took the same SOL test.

Under the circa-2018 system, English language-learners who failed an SOL and didn’t show sufficient growth wouldn’t detract from a school’s accreditation score unless those students had been enrolled in a Virginia public school for at least 11 semesters or 5½ years. The new system, Loud said, reduces that threshold to three semesters.

At the high school level, mastery will count for 50% of a school’s score. Readiness will count for 35% and a school’s graduation rate will count for the remaining 15%.

 

Which schools are most impacted?

Carrollton Elementary, according to data Loud shared on Sept. 19, saw 73% of its students pass the reading SOL and another 17% show sufficient growth during the 2023-24 school year, which will be the last to use the 2018 methodology. That same year, Carrollton saw 80% of its students pass the math SOL and another 14% show growth to create the combined 94% rate the state used for accreditation purposes.

The Virginia Department of Education’s school quality profile for Carrollton, updated in August at schoolquality.virginia.gov, however, lists differing pass rates at 69% for reading and 77% for math.

Loud told The Smithfield Times that the difference was due to the VDOE website being based on federal accountability rules, while the focus of her report to the board was based on different scoring methodology used solely at the state level for accreditation purposes.

Hardy Elementary saw the next highest share of growth as a factor in its combined accreditation score, reporting a 77% pass rate in reading and 79% in math, with growth accounting for an additional 10% and 11%, respectively.

The growth metric under the new system won’t be available to Carrollton, Loud said, as the circa-1993 school houses preschool through third grade and the new growth methodology that will begin in 2025-26 will only start at fourth grade.

Carrollton is one of seven preschool through third-grade elementary schools in the state that see their pass rates determined solely by one grade level, as SOL testing doesn’t start until third grade. 

Carrollton, which is among the five schools in Isle of Wight that have yet to return to their pre-pandemic pass rates on at least one SOL, had 567 students enrolled last year, 117 in third grade. Because the 25% weighted growth metric will be unavailable to Carrollton and the other six other PreK-3 elementary schools next year, a single student’s SOL scores will have a greater impact on the accountability ranking of those seven schools compared to elementary schools that include additional grade levels.

Loud said the VDOE has not yet provided reports showing how schools, if they repeat their 2023-24 performance on the SOLs, would rank under the new system in 2025-26.

“A preliminary tool was shared for just elementary schools to see how the schools would rank under the new system, but the directions on using the tool and the data are incomplete,” Loud told the Times. “Once the state provides a tool, training and data for all levels, we anticipate sharing an update with the School Board on how our schools would rank using last year’s information in the new system.”