In October, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) released its School Performance and Support Framework (SPSF) rating for every school in the state, and western Albemarle’s schools once again showed strong results. Brownsville, Ivy, and Murray Elementary schools along with Henley Middle were all rated in the (highest) “Distinguished” category under the state’s grading system that assigns points for various levels of student achievement. Western Albemarle High and Crozet Elementary rated as “Meets Expectations” (the new name for the second highest category).
A host of changes are planned or in progress for the SPSF rating system. The framework was designed and put in place by the state board over the past several years under the prior administration, and new board members appointed earlier this year by the Governor’s office have moved to put their stamp on it. As a first step, the VDOE replaced the names of two of the rating categories with more abstract monikers, replacing last year’s On Track with “Meets Expectations,” and Off Track with “Approaching Expectations.” The state board said that the old terms “implied an inaccurate trajectory” and that the term Off Track was stigmatizing. None of Albemarle’s schools fell into the fourth (lowest) “Needs Improvement” camp.
Growth mindset
The SPSF rating is a combination of points schools earn through “mastery” of grade-level material (driven by Standards of Learning [SOL] pass rates), “growth” in student knowledge over the school year, and “readiness” for the next level as evidenced by attendance, advanced coursework and graduation rates. Some of the board’s changes, such as a new “growth calculation, have resulted in less-than-useful comparisons between last year and this year’s results. While growth last year was measured as a student’s improvement as compared to a statistical prediction based on their past performance, this year it was calculated as the student’s movement along a range of levels of content mastery called a value table.
Under the new system, schools can earn “growth” points not only when students move to a higher level such as from basic to proficient, but also when already-proficient students stay right where they are. The VDOE acknowledged the tradeoff—while the value tables are easier to explain to families, they’re more closely associated with mastery as they reward how well students were already performing.
The weighting of the various SPSF components had been a past point of emphasis among state board members who argued that prioritizing mastery better prepared students for graduation and life, and was consistent with division goals of reducing achievement gaps. Now the board is considering changing the growth proportion substantially next year, so that it is equally weighted with mastery. For example, in elementary schools it would mean a change from a weighting of 65% mastery/25% growth in the SPSF score, to 45% for each next year.
Federal support
Another complicating factor in understanding school ratings is a federal system of financial support for under-performing schools called Targeted Support & Improvement (TSI). This system is based on “subgroups” of students with as few as 15 members in a school, such as those with disabilities or economic disadvantage and groups based on race or ethnicity. Each year the state sets thresholds for SPSF performance for these subgroups, and if a school has any group that performs below the thresholds, that school is automatically dropped down one level in the SPSF ratings and receives federal TSI support funding. The intent is to prevent an otherwise high-performing school from hiding or ignoring problems within small subgroups…