Redesigning Virginia schools’ current Accreditation system to identify tiered supports that the Virginia Department of Education will partner with schools to implement, the Framework provides critical performance information by school, grade level, and federally identified student groups such as English Learners, Black Students, and students with disabilities. With four performance categories- Distinguished, On Track, Off Track, Needs Intensive Support- the new Framework clearly states how a school is performing and allows parents, families, and educators to have a better understanding of the successes and challenges present in their children’s schools and clearly see who is growing towards mastery, who is meeting and exceeding grade level targets, and which schools are preparing students to be ready for their next phase of life.  

“The Board has been focused on having a more accurate and clearer accountability system that better reflects the academic performance of Virginia’s schools,” said Virginia Board of Education President Grace Creasey. “Virginia’s parents, communities, and students deserve to know how their schools are performing. The new Framework will help recognize those schools that are meeting and exceeding expectations, and it will help our school divisions better target the significant funding increases provided by Governor Youngkin and the General Assembly towards the schools and student groups in most need of support.” 

“The School Performance and Support Framework advanced by the Board is a major step forward in making sure that every child in Virginia is counted and receives the support they need to achieve their potential,” said Board Member Mashea Ashton. “The current system masks what is happening with our most vulnerable children. This Framework is more inclusive, more transparent, and much more focused on academic performance than the accreditation system it is replacing.  

This vote follows years of work to overhaul the accountability framework to ensure it is transparent and clear. The Board began the revision process conferring with leading experts on school accountability systems and working closely with two national experts to assist the Board through this process. The current Accreditation system is an opaque criteria that makes it difficult for students, families, and educators to understand how students were performing and where the school was struggling. In addition, operational compliance indicators are mixed into students’ academic performance. The current system rates almost all Virginia schools as high performing, with 88% of Virginia schools receiving the highest rating of “Accredited”. The actual results of student performance show wide differences between schools and student performance, and those differences are obscured by the current Accreditation system.  

Following nearly a year of public hearings held across the Commonwealth, with 10 engagements last winter and 20 this spring bringing together more than 1,000 participants to discuss the proposed Framework, as well as multiple rounds of public review of the Framework and additional public comment periods, the School Performance and Support Framework is designed to give parents, school leaders, and communities greater awareness of their schools’ performance, as well as ensure VDOE works closely with school divisions and school principals on targeted tiered support designed to address individual school’s specific improvement needs.  

Throughout the regulatory process, Virginians were strongly in favor of the reforms being made by the Board. For example:  

• Nearly two-thirds of the comments supported the new proposed regulations.  

• 85% of comments supported a continued focus on chronic absenteeism. 

• Nearly 70% of the comments on weighting in the Framework were supportive of a higher weighting for mastery. 

• 60% of the comments were supportive of including English Learners in the Framework results by reducing the number of semesters English Learners are excluded from the current five and a half years to including them after three semesters. 

With the new Framework, schools that are Distinguished will be spotlighted and elevated to share their evidence-based strategies, showing what’s possible regardless of school size, geographic region, or student population. Schools who are struggling will be clearly identified to better receive targeted support and the guidance to meaningfully improve. 

The Framework arrives at a time of unprecedented investment in Virginia K-12 public schools. The most current biennial budget passed by the General Assembly and signed by Governor Youngkin includes an additional $2 billion in new funding for K-12 education above previous years’ budgets.  The budget increased funding for several programs supporting students with specific needs, including students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and lower income students, by $308.2 million over the biennium. With Virginia’s growing English Language Learner population, the budget provided $72.1 million to lower the English Language Learner teacher staffing ratio to help these students advance rapidly. The Governor and General Assembly have also dedicated $418 million to help students recover over the next three years from learning loss due to Virginia’s extended school closures during the pandemic.   

The federal government requires Virginia to identify the lowest 5% of performing schools in the state that need comprehensive support. These schools need intensive support and also receive additional federal monies to support their school improvement efforts. For school divisions with 10 or more schools identified for comprehensive support, or at least 40% of the schools identified for comprehensive or additional targeted support, local school boards will enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the VDOE. The MOU is an agreement between the school division and VDOE to put plans and tiered supports in place to enable students to realize meaningful academic improvement while the public schools remain under the control and operation of their local school board. 

Starting in the 2025/2026 school year, Accreditation status will be reserved only for operational compliance classification.