WJCC reports midyear academic gains as Virginia shifts to new accountability framework

Williamsburg, Va. — Williamsburg-James City County Schools presented a midyear academic update to the joint meeting of the school board, county board of supervisors and city council, reporting diagnostic gains across grade levels while explaining how the Virginia Department of Education’s new accountability framework will change school ratings.

The update, presented by Acting Superintendent Dr. Cooper and Assistant Superintendents Sean Walker (elementary) and Kathy Worley (secondary), covered division demographics, an overview of the VDOE framework, school improvement planning aligned to the Elevate to ’28 strategic plan, and midyear results from state and locally administered assessments.

The new Virginia School Performance and Support Framework replaces the previous accreditation labels and uses a 100-point weighted model that emphasizes mastery, growth and readiness. Walker said mastery carries the largest share of the score (about 65% at the elementary level, 60% at middle and 50% at high school), readiness includes chronic absenteeism and high schools receive additional weight for graduation and a “ready for life” indicator tied to enrollment, employment or enlistment (the “3 E” metric). The state also lowered the minimum student-reporting group from 30 to 15 students, and replaced the old accredited/accredited-with-conditions/denied labels with four performance categories.

Why it matters: the division modeled last year’s SOL results under the new framework and found 13 of 16 schools (about 81%) would fall into the top two performance categories of “on track” or “distinguished,” a drop from the 100% “fully accredited” classification under the former model. Dr. Cooper warned the change could lead to different public perceptions and said the division aims to avoid “whiplash” if the framework is altered in future legislative cycles.

Key data presented: - Enrollment and demographics: the division serves about 11,300 students across 16 schools (PreK–12); nearly 4,000 students are economically disadvantaged; more than 1,000 are English learners; roughly 1,700 receive gifted services and about 1,800 receive special education services. The division reports students represent 84 countries and 49 languages. - Graduation: the class of 2024 on-time graduation rate was reported at 95.3%, the highest recorded for the division. - Early literacy: the state’s new K–2 screener (Virginia Language and Literacy Screener, or VALS) administered in fall 2024 identified about 28% of K–2 students (reported as 651 students) as high risk and in need of intervention; individualized reading plans were developed for those students. - Diagnostic growth: the division used IXL diagnostic assessments in grades 1–8; presenters said all grade levels showed growth from fall to midyear in both reading and math. For elementary intervention, presenters said 1,706 students (about 22% of elementary enrollment) received additional literacy intervention and 767 elementary students (about 16%) received additional math intervention. Middle-school midyear figures included 623 students (23%) receiving literacy interventions and 369 (about 20.5%) receiving math interventions; 84 students were enrolled in after-school tutoring at the time of the presentation. - Chronic absenteeism: semester 1 K–12 chronic absenteeism was reported at 12.2% (presenter said “13 89 students,” interpreted in the slides as roughly 1,389 students). Presenters described ongoing family outreach, attendance plans and partnerships to reduce absences.

Division response and next steps: presenters emphasized that every school produces an annual school improvement plan aligned to the Elevate to ’28 strategic plan. The division plans to publish a dashboard (a QR code was provided on the informational card distributed at the meeting) with key performance indicators and said it will return to both governing bodies with more detailed subgroup and school-level data in the fall after SOL results are available.

Quotes: Dr. Cooper: “As of today, the arrows are all pointing in the right direction.” Sean Walker: “The mastery component … makes up the largest piece of the 100 model.”

The presentation opened a number of questions from supervisors and council members about how the new categories map to the old accreditation labels and about the stability of the framework under future administrations. Presenters said the new labels will be reported as “distinguished,” “on track,” “monitoring,” or “off track” and that off-track schools would be eligible for state supports, such as school improvement funding. They also said there is no guarantee the framework will remain unchanged under a future administration, and that the division will work to provide community context around the shift.

The midyear update portion of the joint meeting concluded with the division offering to return with a more disaggregated report in the fall, including subgroup performance and school-level detail.

Ending: The division emphasized ongoing interventions, the use of multiple data points to guide instruction, and that school teams will continue monitoring progress to support students before the spring SOL cycle and the fall reporting under the new VDOE framework.