The Virginia Board of Education (VBOE) has revised state requirements around accreditation and graduation to provide a more comprehensive picture of school quality while focusing on student growth.
To achieve this, the new system incorporates a wider breadth of indicators than the previous system that will go into effect in the 2018-19 school year.
Accreditation is just one of the ways in which we measure the success of our schools. The aim of the ACPS 2020 Strategic Plan is to see every student succeeds, with awareness that success is different for every student. We measure our own growth and success through the ACPS 2020 plan, which is our road map to becoming a high performing school division.
As part of the transition to the new accountability system transition, the VDOE has provided sample results based on 2016-17 data that show how schools would have performed within the new system. These results are hypothetical and informational only. They will have no impact on school’s current or future accreditation ratings. They are intended as information to facilitate planning within schools and the division as we move towards the full implementation of the new system in 2019. The sample results were presented to the School Board on Thursday for review and were shared with individual school principals.
In summer 2018, VDOE will determine schools’ accreditation statuses by running their SY 17-18 data through both the current and new accreditation systems and using the system, current or new, that produces the highest overall accreditation status for that school. Actual 2018-19 accreditation results will be presented in fall 2018.
Performance data from SY 18-19 will be used only within the new accreditation system in summer 2019 for the calculation of school statuses.
All schools within the new accreditation system will be held to the following indicators:
All Schools
- Overall proficiency and growth in English reading/writing achievement
- Overall proficiency and growth in mathematics
- Overall proficiency in science
- English and mathematics achievement gaps among student groups
- Chronic Absenteeism
High Schools ONLY
- Graduation and Completion Index
- Dropout rate
- College, career and civic readiness (effective 2021-2022)
Within each of these indicators schools will be assigned one of three performance levels based on their performance:
- Accredited – When each school quality indicator is in the Level I (green) range or Level II (yellow) range.
- Accredited with Conditions – When a school has any school quality indicator in the Level III (red) range.
- Accreditation Denied – When a school or school division fails to implement school division or school corrective action plans according to planned timelines, or has taken no action on identified strategies and interventions, the school is reviewed for potential designation by the board as “Accreditation Denied.”
This new ‘stoplight’ approach is designed to allow for to monitoring towards continuous improvement within schools falling in Level I (green) or Level II (yellow) areas for all indicators, while State support would be provided to schools with any indicators falling within Level III (red).