(The Center Square) — The new year has already brought the Youngkin administration long-anticipated news: The U.S. Department of Education has approved Virginia’s new school performance and support framework.
“We are pleased that this final agreement from the Biden Administration brings certainty to Virginia’s School Performance and Support Framework,” said President of the Virginia State Board of Education Grace Turner Creasey. “The federal approval of the meaningful accountability reforms we have implemented means the new Framework is fully in place and affirms our commitment to high expectations, transparency, and prioritizing resources to those students and schools most in need.”
Work on the new framework began a couple of years ago after Virginia students’ test scores plummeted post-pandemic. Yet, the state’s schools remained accredited (though some were accredited “with conditions”). Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin felt the commonwealth needed to create a system where school performance was tied more closely to student performance.
The previous system and the one Youngkin’s administration inherited included two different programs for school accountability – one state and one federal, according to a press release from the Virginia Department of Education. The programs were “unaligned,” according to the Youngkin administration, complicated and unnecessarily burdensome for schools, as school divisions were “forced… to manage their school performance measures under two separate criteria.” And importantly, that system did not provide a meaningful and clear picture to parents, school leaders or students of which schools were struggling, which excelled and why, according to the administration.
After hosting listening sessions and receiving input from stakeholders across the state, the department completed a new framework that measures accreditation and school performance by separate criteria within “one aligned state and federal system” and makes that information available to the general public on the department’s website.
The department started partially implementing the new framework in the fall of 2024, and in its press release announcing the Biden administration’s approval underscored that a rejection of the framework would have been disruptive to Virginia schools.
“Having received this final federal approval, Virginia educators and families know the expectations set for their public schools and students remain in place and they can continue to work toward those goals without worry of the planning and preparations they have already completed being disregarded,” Creasey said in a statement.
Parents, students, education professionals and communities can learn more about the new framework and access preliminary data on school performance at the department’s Road to Readiness School Performance and Support Framework Resource Hub.
Schools are expected to begin fully implementing the new system in the 2025-2026 school year.