The Virginia Board of Education is trying to figure out the best ways to measure the success of students and teachers.
The discussion started back in 2022 to address Virginia’s current accreditation system.
Over the past few months, the board met with the public all over Virginia’s eight superintendent regions.
They met with a total of 375 people including parents, teachers, principals, and other local leaders to hear their thoughts on achievement and growth.
The general consensus is that achievement matters, but measuring that achievement should be as simple as possible, especially in a post-COVID era where learning loss is at an all-time high.
Another key takeaway was that people have complicated feelings surrounding chronic absenteeism and how it should play into achievement measurement.
“I think we all know the literature shows schools can make a difference, and that if they don’t make a difference if kids aren’t in class they can’t learn, it’s disruptive to teachers. For all of the right reasons I think we should be counting chronic absenteeism in some fashion but giving schools a way to show growth on it, to show improvement on it is important,” Board member Anne Holton said.
The next step is to create a draft for the board to review, and send the proposed system out for public feedback.
The full PowerPoint from the discussion on accountability can be found here.