APS leaders seek delay in change of Va. school-accountability rules
Rather than a frontal assault against it, Arlington School Board members may try to win a delay in implementation of the state's new school-accountability regimen .
School leaders plan to ask the General Assembly to intervene and postpone the Virginia Department of Education's new School Performance and Support Framework , a two-pronged evaluation and ranking system that is replacing the previous accreditation process.
The switch, Arlington school leaders and some others from across the Commonwealth believe, is premature and not ready for prime time.
"We need to slow down the process — our staff, our schools, our teachers have enough on their plate," said School Board member Bethany Sutton.
She was speaking at the Board's Oct. 29 meeting , when members added the request for delay to their 2025 General Assembly wish list . The request calls for the new framework to be fully implemented in two years' time, during the 2026-27 school year.
School Board members said the new framework, rolled out statewide at the start of the school year, is incomplete and will give an inaccurate perception of student achievement and progress.
"I just hope that our legislators ... will understand that and advocate," School Board member David Priddy said.
But the view of local school leaders is not how those who approved the new framework see the situation.
Virginia Board of Education member Mashea Ashton, an appointee of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, is among those saying it is the old system, not the new one, that has been the problem.
The accreditation system in place for years "masks what is happening with our most vulnerable children," Ashton said when the state policy was adopted in late August.
"This framework is more inclusive, more transparent and much more focused on academic performance than the accreditation system it is replacing," Ashton said.
Arlington school leaders, however, believe that the new rules place too much emphasis on overall achievement at the expense of whether students are advancing toward mastery, and that school systems won't have time to address its components.
The School Board's full position:
The Arlington School Board supports delaying the full implementation of the new School Performance and Support Framework until School Year 2026-27. The Board of Education adopted the Framework only recently, and well after school divisions planned, budgeted, and staffed for the current school year. One-quarter of the 2024-25 school year has already passed, and many of the Framework's measures have not yet been fully defined. Additionally, the Commonwealth has yet to identify the types of support it will provide to schools in need of improvement and secure the necessary related funding.
School leaders in neighboring Fairfax County, the largest school district in the Commonwealth, also have voiced concerns about the new policy.
One of the apparent dealbreakers for local school leaders is the likelihood that far more schools statewide will be tagged as needing improvement under the new system than had been the case under the old.
Under the past accreditation system, nearly nine in 10 schools received the highest rating — "fully accredited."
All but two of Arlington's public schools currently are rated as fully accredited under the old system. Those accredited but with conditions are Wakefield High School (owing to high levels of chronic absenteeism) and Carlin Springs Elementary School (deficiencies on standardized tests in science).
The new system will put schools into one of four categories based: "Distinguished"; "On Track"; "Off Track"; and "Intensive Support." Schools in the bottom two tiers will receive additional support, while those at the top will be used as "models of best practices from which others learn," state education officials say.
Under the new, four-level report card, perhaps 60% of schools will be reported as needing improvement, according to some estimates.
During a discussion at the Oct. 29 meeting, the school system's legislative director, Steven Marku, suggested that an all-out battle to overturn the new rules was less likely to win support in the General Assembly than an effort to delay them.
"I think that is where a lot of energy and attention is going to be," he said.
As part of their 2025 legislative package, Board members also approved language calling on state officials to offer standardized tests in multiple languages . Such a move, they say, will aid students who are learning English and may have mastered the material but are at a disadvantage because Standards of Learning tests are not in their native language.
Nearly 90 different home languages are represented in Arlington, according to school officials. Top ones include Spanish (58% of all homes where a language other than English is spoken), Amharic (5%), Arabic (5%), Mongolian (5%) and Bengali (2%).
The full package was adopted on a 5-0 vote.
