Fairfield resident urges Henrico board to publish raw SOL pass rates, calls state explanations inadequate

Marlene Sherlock, a Fairfield District resident, told the Henrico County School Board on Oct. 23 that presentation materials on state accountability and accreditation lacked the raw pass-rate data needed to judge school performance. "Those percent signs really represent a person, a student," Sherlock said, arguing the board "missed the mark" by highlighting percentage improvements without providing the underlying counts and pass rates.

Sherlock said she reviewed state Department of Education reports and identified what she described as troubling outcomes: "12 of our schools had English pass rates of less than 50%... With a pass rate of only 31 percent in reading and 25 percent in math means over 300 students at that elementary school are not doing well," she said, referring to an elementary school example; she also cited a middle-school example with "34% base pass rate in reading and 32 percent in math" and estimated the raw student counts affected. She characterized some board presentation language about rising cut scores as sounding "a bit more like excuses than explanations."

The board did not respond directly during public forum; the chair closed the public forum after Sherlock's remarks. A staff member was noted as available to follow up with speakers after the meeting. Sherlock asked the board to present hard counts alongside percentage changes so trustees and the public could assess both improvement and baseline performance.

The board's public materials and next steps on accountability were not detailed on the record during the meeting. The speaker urged the board to treat percentage changes as context-dependent and to disclose the absolute numbers on which those percentages were based so the community could see how many students each percentage represented.