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Henrico resident calls on school board to publish raw test counts after accountability presentation
Summary
At the Oct. 23 public forum, Fairfield District resident Marlene Sherlock said the district's presentation relied on percentage changes and omitted raw pass/fail counts, citing dozens of schools with sub‑50% pass rates and urging the board to release underlying data.
Marlene Sherlock, a Fairfield District resident, used the Henrico County Public Schools public forum on Oct. 23 to challenge the district’s reporting on state accountability and accreditation, saying the board’s presentation highlighted percentage improvements but failed to show underlying counts.
"Those percent signs really represent a person, a student," Sherlock said, pressing the board to publish the raw numbers behind reported percentage changes. She said the State Department of Education reports she reviewed showed 12 schools with English pass rates below 50% and 16 schools with math pass rates below 50% and cited examples she described as alarming: "a pass rate of only 31 percent in reading and 25 in math" at one elementary school and "only a 34% base pass rate in reading and 32 percent in math" at a middle school.
Sherlock said the district’s presentation emphasized percentage increases without giving the absolute pass rates or counts that would indicate how many students were affected. "I think you missed the mark in your presentation by dangling tiny percentage improvements, but not giving the hard data on which you based it," she said.
Board members did not respond directly during the forum; the chair reminded speakers that staff would follow up on comments. The district’s public materials and the board presentation were not updated on the record during the meeting, and no immediate district clarification was offered at the podium.
The exchange raised procedural and substantive questions about the board’s public reporting on accountability: Sherlock urged the board to provide both percentage change and the base counts so the public can understand the scale of students not meeting standards. The board did not announce a specific follow-up action at the meeting.
The public forum was one item among recognitions and business at the Oct. 23 meeting; the board later approved routine consent items and named the new Tuckahoe Middle School auditorium for music educator Kirkland Jackson.
