Henrico staff brief board on Virginia ccountability overhaul, say ratings still pending

Henrico County Public Schools on Thursday laid out how the Virginia Department of Education—rred in redesigning school accountability this year and described the division—fforts to adapt instruction and supports while VDOE finalizes ratings.

Dr. Tiffany Hinton, HCPS irector of assessment, research and evaluation, outlined the new School Performance and Support Framework that separates accountability (student learning outcomes), federal identification and accreditation. "It is an entirely different framework that will now be applied than the previous accreditation framework," Hinton said, adding the state has not yet released school-level ratings.

The change matters because the framework assigns points across components and places schools into four bands: Distinguished (90 points and above), On Track (80—89), Off Track (65—79) and Needs Intensive Support (below 65). Hinton described different weightings by level: for elementary schools mastery is 65% of the score, growth 25% and readiness 10%; for middle schools mastery is 60%, growth 20% and readiness 20%; high schools prioritize mastery (50%), readiness (35%) and graduation (15%). She also explained federal identification labelsComprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI), Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) and Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI)and noted those federal identifications can lower a school's state performance category by one level.

Why it matters: HCPS staff said the new framework will produce different classifications than the prior blended accreditation model and cautioned the board not to "apples to apples" comparisons when VDOE posts ratings. The division also emphasized how recent state policy changesincluding new math and reading standards, changes to VAAP alternate-assessment eligibility and expansion of the Virginia Literacy Actare reshaping instruction and short-term performance signals.

Taylor Snow, who presented division-level trends, said HCPS—lementary membership rose about 3.7% from the baseline reported in the presentation period and showed sizable increases in students receiving services: elementary special-education identification up roughly 21% and elementary English-learner services up about 66%. Snow said middle school ELL counts increased roughly 89.9% and high school ELL enrollment rose about 106%, which has required new newcomer sites at Tucker, Hermitage, Freeman and Highland Springs and added reading specialists and ESL staff to schools.

Snow also reviewed student outcomes: HCPS reading SOL pass rates rose about 1% (mirroring the state), math pass rates have held largely steady while the state average rose 3%, and science pass rates increased roughly 3% to align with the state average. He pointed to internal assessments (I-Ready, expanded VALS screening) showing early-literacy gains but cautioned the board those are separate from the VDOE accountability calculations.

Ann Marie Seeley, director of school quality, described HCPS—ontinuous improvement process: the division conducts a focus needs assessment, requires schools to create school-support plans with measurable actions and timelines, provides one-to-one coaching and quarterly site visits that conclude with debriefs and action summaries. Seeley said quarterly site-visit data are brought to director teams for resource-allocation discussions so supports (coaching, supplemental tutoring, intervention staffing) can be shifted where needed.

Board questions clustered around three areas: the effect of new measures on teacher evaluation and workload; requests for more granular, school-level data and staffing tallies for intervention teams; and the possibility that state-level cut-score changes could raise the bar and affect graduation or remediation needs. School board member Alicia Atkins pressed for clarity on how the measures would factor into teacher evaluations and asked what the division is doing to help teachers manage the change. Dr. Grant and Dr. Cashwell said teacher evaluations have been recently revised to include targeted measures and that there is not a direct one-to-one correlation between SOL accreditation and an individual teacher—valuation; they acknowledged increased workload from new standards and the reading-law rollout and said the division is providing professional learning, coaching and supports.

On federal identifications, Seeley said HCPS currently has 20 federally identified schools (12 elementary, 8 middle) and no high schools designated under CSI/TSI at present. Hinton explained that the new growth modeling uses SAS statistical models to estimate expected achievement for individual students, separating achievement and growth in ways the prior progress-table method did not.

What the board asked staff to provide: an updated tally of intervention-team staffing at each school or a divisionwide summary; more frequent (non-SOL) progress reports on monitored indicators the division uses to track student growth; and continued follow-up as VDOE publishes accountability ratings and any Board of Education decisions about implementing new cut scores.

No formal votes or policy decisions were taken at the meeting; presenters said they would share school-level score reports and ratings once the VDOE releases them.

The HCPS team closed by asking the board to recognize the division's instructional investments and to allow staff to analyze the forthcoming VDOE data before making comparative judgments. The presentation concluded with the board and staff agreeing to follow up on staffing counts and more frequent progress reporting timelines.