RD379 - 2008 Annual Report on the Condition and Needs of Public Schools in Virginia


Executive Summary:
What are we doing to help our schools and our classroom teachers improve? Will Virginia’s students be able to compete with their counterparts from other states and other countries? Will they have the knowledge and skills to get and keep good jobs in an international economy? Are schools safe for our children?

These are questions parents, public leaders, businessmen, and educators across the state are asking, and these are questions the annual report is designed, at least in part, to answer. The challenges our public schools must tackle are urgent, sometimes intractable, and are not easily solved. There are no quick fixes when it comes to the education of our children. Still, as we assess this year, the Virginia Board of Education takes special pride in the progress and advances Virginia’s public schools have created — and in the very tangible results.

Student academic progress: Virginia’s public schools and our students continue to show overall academic gains and receive national recognition for achievement and innovation. Highlights include:

• Ninety-five percent of Virginia’s public schools are fully accredited and meeting state standards for student achievement in English, mathematics, history and science based on 2007-2008 assessment results. This is the highest percentage of schools reaching full accreditation since the commonwealth began statewide testing ten years ago.

• Black and Hispanic students continued to narrow achievement gaps with White students in mathematics on state tests administered during 2007-2008. During the last three years, the gaps have narrowed by four points for Black students and two points for Hispanic students even though the achievement of White students increased by seven points.

• During the last three years, the achievement gap between Black and White students in reading has narrowed by three points, despite a two-point increase in reading for White students. Hispanic students also have narrowed the achievement gap with White students by three points during the last three years.

• More than 81 percent of the students in the class of 2008 graduated on time with a diploma. The graduation rates for the state, school divisions, and high schools were calculated for the first time this year by tracking individual students from year to year using Virginia’s longitudinal student data system.

• The performance of Virginia public school graduates on the SAT improved significantly in 2008. Although the total number of Virginia public school students taking the SAT dropped by 2.3 percent, the number of minority students taking the tests increased, with minority students now making up one-third of all test takers.

• Virginia boasts the nation’s third-highest percentage of high school seniors earning a grade of 3 or better on Advanced Placement (AP) examinations. Only two states, New York and Maryland, had higher percentages of seniors earning grades of 3 or better on AP tests during 2007.

• For a fourth consecutive year, the percentage of Virginia students graduating with an Advanced Studies Diploma increased and the number of advanced diplomas awarded was greater than the number of Standard Diplomas.

• Virginia was the only state to receive a perfect score for academic standards from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in the union’s Sizing Up Standards 2008 report.

• The influential Thomas B. Fordham Institute last year awarded Virginia an “A” for its coverage of world history in the History and Social Science Standards of Learning and praised the standards as “a model of clarity.”

• Results from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that the reading and mathematics skills of Virginia students continue to improve and that Virginia’s students remain among the nation’s highest achievers in these subjects.

• NAEP results also show that in no state did Black fourth and eighth graders perform at a statistically higher level in reading and mathematics than Black students in Virginia. Virginia also was the only state where Black students improved their performance in mathematics at grade levels four and eight from 2005 to 2007.

• Virginia students outperformed students nationwide on the 2007 NAEP writing test. Virginia students scored significantly higher than students in 20 other states. Test takers in only seven states achieved significantly higher average scores.

Objectives of the Board of Education: The Board of Education’s Comprehensive Plan: 2007-2012 established the following priorities for action:

Objective 1: The Board of Education will continue to enhance the quality standards for all public schools in Virginia.

Objective 2: The Board of Education will provide leadership to help schools and school divisions eliminate the achievement gap between groups of students and increase the academic success of all students.

Objective 3: The Board of Education will support accountability for all schools, focusing on assisting chronically low-performing schools and school divisions while recognizing all schools and school divisions as they move towards excellence.

Objective 4: The Board of Education will work cooperatively with partners to help ensure that all young children are ready to enter kindergarten with the skills they need for success.

Objective 5: The Board of Education will establish policies that support the attainment of literacy skills of all students, kindergarten through grade 12.

Objective 6: The Board of Education will establish policies and standards that enhance the preparation, recruitment, and retention of educational personnel, including their meaningful, ongoing professional development.

Objective 7: The Board of Education will provide leadership in implementing the provisions of state and federal laws and regulations.

Objective 8: The Board of Education will provide leadership to help schools and school divisions ensure a safe and secure environment conducive to facilitating the teaching and learning process.

Critical Areas of Need: The Board’s objectives—and the performance measures used to gauge our progress in meeting those objectives—focus on the most critical needs of the public schools. These needs include the following:

Funding the Standards of Quality (SOQ): In November 2008, the Board of Education adopted a resolution that acknowledges the economic conditions facing the Commonwealth in the next year. The resolution also acknowledges the challenges that are before the Governor and the General Assembly to deal with budget constraints while protecting core services in the area of Pk-12 education. In the resolution, the Board stated its SOQ priorities to the Governor and the General Assembly for their consideration in the 2009 General Assembly Session. Moreover, the Board affirmed its support for those provisions of the Standards of Quality that have been recommended by the Board in recent years and that are yet to be adopted and funded, and the Board stated its intent to request approval and full funding of these staffing requirements beginning in the next biennium.

Further, the resolution outlines the Board’s requests for approval during the 2009 Session of the General Assembly in the form of “intermediate SOQ implementation options” that would enable school divisions to use existing SOQ and incentive program funding to hire data coordinators, reading specialists, mathematics teacher specialists, and English Language Learner (ELL) teachers to provide additional support in classrooms. A description of the four SOQ options is contained in the body of the annual report.

A Persistent Achievement Gap: Virginia is making progress in eliminating achievement gaps among groups of students. Nonetheless, in one-quarter of Virginia’s schools, pass rates for economically disadvantaged students are more than 10 percent lower than for all students in the same schools; in more than half of our schools, pass rates for economically disadvantaged students are more than 5 percentage points lower than the pass rate for all students. Furthermore, Black and Hispanic students have pass rates that are more than 10 percent lower than for all students in 18 and 43 percent of schools, respectively.

Compounding the problem, economically disadvantaged students and minority students are less likely than all students to graduate in four years. There is a 9-, 11-, and 12- point achievement gap for Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, respectively, compared to the overall graduation rate.

Safe and Healthy Environments for Students and Teachers: A high priority for the Board is dealing effectively with the realities of schooling for some children who face difficult personal circumstances such as high poverty, high crime in their neighborhoods, high rates of unhealthy behaviors, poor nutrition, and other circumstances that obstruct their learning at school. The Board of Education must help local divisions by providing solid, workable guidelines and policies to assist those who are responsible for the health and safety of students and staff while they are at school, on school grounds, on their way to or from school, and involved in school-sponsored activities. The Board must continue to stress the importance of successful, community-wide partnerships in the development of procedures and policies that most effectively support healthy, safe, orderly and disciplined school environments.

The Need to Assist Chronically Low-Performing Schools
Aggressive interventions by the Virginia Department of Education and well-defined partnerships between the Board of Education and local school boards have produced positive results in divisions previously identified as low-performing. In the 2007-2008 school year, 33 schools (2 percent) are considered chronically low performing, compared to 42 schools in the previous year. Importantly, with support from the Department of Education’s Office of School Improvement, 22 schools that were chronically low-performing in 2006-2007 were fully accredited this year.

Preparation, Recruitment, and Retention of Educational Personnel
Virginia is proud that 98 percent of all teachers are highly qualified. In 2007-2008 the state retained 91 percent of the work force from the previous year, representing a 2 percent increase from the previous year. The percent of teachers retained for 3 years remains at 82 percent. Of course, these teachers must be talented, caring, and well prepared. Schools in some geographic areas already are unable to recruit enough talented teachers, particularly in fields such as mathematics, science and special education.

A focus of the No Child Left Behind act of 2001 (NCLB) is to eliminate the disparity between non-highly-qualified teachers in low-poverty schools and those in high-poverty schools. The Virginia Department of Education is tracking the state’s progress in this regard, and it remains a critical area of need.

Recruiting Minority Teachers
The gap between the diversity of students in the schools and the ethnic characteristics of the teaching force poses a key question: will teachers reflect the tremendous diversity of the students they will serve? Not without a concerted effort. In Virginia, 13 percent of teachers are Black and 2 percent are Hispanic, compared with approximately 26 and 9 percent of students, respectively.

High-Quality Preschool Programs
The number of school divisions participating in the Virginia Preschool Initiative has grown from 75 in the 2001-2002 school year, to 114 in the 2008-2009 school year. Also, the number of children served has grown from 5,966 in the 2001-2002 school year to 15,657 children being served in 2008-2009. Despite this growth, the number of at-risk four-year olds in Virginia continues to be a concern. Without providing high quality preschool to all at-risk four-year olds, many at-risk five year old children will continue to enter kindergarten without adequate preparation to be fully ready to learn.

A huge step forward to address this issue is the newly created Office of Early Childhood Development is now coordinating state programs aimed at improving the lives and education of the commonwealth’s youngest citizens and residents. The office represents an inter-agency approach to managing services for young children and their families, with the staff reporting to both the Virginia Department of Education and the Virginia Department of Social Services.

The Office of Early Childhood Development is responsible for coordinating services for children from birth to age 5, including the Virginia Preschool Initiative, Head Start, childcare subsidies, provider services and other state-level efforts to advance early childhood development and learning. The office also will work through a liaison with the Virginia Department of Health to ensure the integration of health-related programs.

Twenty-first Century Literacy Skills
In 2007-2008, 87 percent of Virginia’s students passed the Standards of Learning English assessments, compared to 85 percent in the previous year. Also, 84 percent of students passed the statewide mathematics tests, up from 80 percent the previous year. Given the critical importance of reading and mathematics for life success, it is critical that the Board continue to emphasize these skills. While more than 81 percent of the students in the class of 2008 graduated on time with a diploma, almost 20 percent of our students are not graduating on time with their class. We need to know why that is, and we need to address the needs of these students so that everyone graduates successfully.

Virginia has a new initiative that will help parents select books that will strengthen their children’s reading skills. When elementary and middle school students receive their Standards of Learning (SOL) test reports next spring and summer, their reading scores will be accompanied by a corresponding “Lexile measure” parents can use to select books. A Lexile measure ranks reading ability and text difficulty on a single scale, allowing parents — and teachers — to select books at or slightly above a student’s reading level.

Promoting Parental and Family Involvement
The family and the home are both critical education institutions where children begin learning long before they start school, and where they spend much of their time after they start school. It stands to reason that involving parents in their child’s education is conducive to learning. Such involvement is critical if we are to improve the educational achievement of Virginia’s students, promote safe and healthy school environments, and eliminate achievement gaps. To do this, schools need to promote and enhance cooperative partnerships in which families are allies in the efforts of teachers and schools.

Virginia has a new initiative that will help parents select books that will strengthen their children’s reading skills. When elementary and middle school students receive their Standards of Learning (SOL) test reports next spring and summer, their reading scores will be accompanied by a corresponding “Lexile measure” parents can use to select books. A Lexile measure ranks reading ability and text difficulty on a single scale, allowing parents — and teachers — to select books at or slightly above a student’s reading level. Currently, more than 115,000 books have been assigned a Lexile measure. Adding Lexile measures to SOL reports also supports the Board’s objective of increasing early reading skills and the Board of Education’s focus on improving adolescent literacy.

Compliance with the Standards of Quality: Fifty-four divisions reported full compliance with the provisions of the Standards of Quality (SOQ) in the 2007-2008 school year (Appendix D). Appendix E contains a list of school divisions that have reported non-compliance with certain provisions of the SOQ. Appendix F lists the individual schools within the divisions that have failed to meet Standard 3 of the SOQ, which requires all schools to be accredited. The appendices also provide additional information on the status of compliance over the last three years for these divisions.

Compliance with the Standards of Accreditation: Ninety-five percent of the schools in Virginia meet the full accreditation standards. Those meeting full accreditation, as well as those failing to meet all provisions of the SOA, are shown in Appendix F.

Review of the Standards of Quality: Beginning in 2001, the Virginia Board of Education undertook a comprehensive review of the SOQ. From this ongoing review, a number of the recommendations brought forward by the Board have been incorporated into the SOQ. At this time, seven recommendations have not yet been incorporated in the SOQ. The Board continues to support them and has reaffirmed these recommendations every year since their inception.

The Board is keenly aware that state revenues are tenuous and will remain so for a while. Being mindful of fiscal constraints, the Board would like to offer intermediate options to address three of its recommendations, which have not yet become part of the SOQ, and to offer an alternative related to the instruction of English Language Learners. These options do not expend additional resources but do promote flexibility by integrating and linking existing programs that reside both within the SOQ and outside of it. All options would require an amendment to SOQ language either in the Appropriation Act or in the Code of Virginia.

• Recommendation 1: Data Manager/Test Coordinator. This “intermediate option” would address the need for a data manager/test coordinator for every 1,000 students. The position would be Board-licensed and would be responsible for analyzing and interpreting data for the improvement of instruction. The SOQ already provides for one instructional technology resource teacher (ITRT) per 1,000 students. With amended language, school divisions could make a choice to employ the ITRT, the data manager/test coordinator, or a position that blends both duties.

• Recommendation 2: Reading Specialist. This option relates to the recommendation for one reading specialist for every 1,000 students in all grades. An intermediate option is to permit school divisions to hire a Board-licensed position to provide the intervention required for the Early Intervention Reading Initiative (EIRI), a Lottery-funded program outside of the SOQ. School divisions could hire a reading specialist within the scope of the EIRI program. The use of the specialist to provide remedial services would allow for efficiency and flexibility for school divisions delivering services to the K-3 population and would integrate the EIRI with the SOQ.

• Recommendation 3: Mathematics Specialist. The third intermediate option relates to the recommendation of one mathematics specialist for every 1,000 students in grades K-8, and is an option similar to that of the reading specialist. This option would link Algebra Readiness Intervention (ARI) initiative to the SOQ by permitting school divisions to hire mathematics specialists as another option to provide the required intervention within the scope of the ARI program, which serves grades 6 to 8. The ARI is another Lottery-funded program that resides outside of the SOQ.

• Recommendation 4: Instruction to English Language Learners (ELL). To supplement the services provided to students identified with Limited English Proficiency (LEP), school divisions should be allowed to use funds from the SOQ Prevention, Intervention, and Remediation account to hire additional ELL teachers to provide instruction. This funding would supplement the instructional services provided by the current SOQ staffing standard of 17 per 1,000 LEP students.

These intermediate SOQ options offer mechanisms that promote flexibility while not requiring any additional state or local funding. The Board intends to request approval and full funding of its staffing requirements beginning in the next biennium.