001morning. It is 9:04 a.m. according to my phone here. Uh I will now call this meeting to order. I'll note that I've approved the remote participation of Mr. Hansen and Miss Ashton under the board's bylaws and uh 2.2-3708.3 2-3708.3B3 of the code of Virginia because their principal residences are more than 60 miles from the meeting location. Before we be begin this morning and get too far into things, I would like to um introduce everyone to our newest board member. Dr. Beth Arian is the newest board member of the board of education. I will pro provide a more formal introduction tomorrow of Dr. Acriman, but I wanted to be sure and introduce her now so that the public is aware of our newest member. Um, I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge um,
002Reynolds Community College for their continued kindness and being wonderful hosts here for us to be meeting in this location this morning. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Paula Pando uh the president of Reynolds Community College who is here with us to just um intro introduce us to the area to the room to the building and for us to be able to provide just the thank you from the depths of our hearts for having us here um for taking us as nomads into your building and um just give you an opportunity to say a few few words this morning. Great. Wonderful. Thank you. I just wish we could have brought some sunshine for you today. Uh welcome to Reynolds Community College. Welcome to all uh who are are tuning in to this meeting. Um I will
003say less about the building and more about uh and when I say more I mean one minute uh about this uniquely American invention that is the community college like jazz, apple pie and baseball. We are uniquely American created on the principle that everyone gets a shot at the middle class. Uh whether it be through the transfer and saving families tens of thousands of dollars to achieve a balora and beyond or whether it's going directly into the workforce. Think of your nurses, your teachers, uh think of your welders and electricians and skilled trades persons. Uh this is the talent that we develop and we are hyper local in our mission. Reynolds serves the greater Richmond region. Uh and that is the city of Richmond and the counties of Gutland, Hanover, Henriiko, Powatan, and Louisa counties, educating
00415,000 students every year. Uh we're incredibly proud of the space that we hold in American higher education. uh more necessary now than perhaps it's ever been because we know that not having a postsecary credential note that I did not say a balora degree a postsecary credential not having one in hand is fasttrack to life in poverty simply speaking you need a credential to get a job that pays a living wage and we're very proud of holding a prominent space uh in higher education with that very clear mission in mind. We're incredibly happy to host all of you here today uh and wish you all um a great meeting uh where we collectively solve some of our most pervasive problems and I believe that at the core of every solution begins with education. Thank you all
005so much. Have a wonderful meeting. We're so happy to host you. Thank you Dr. Panda. We appreciate it. Um, Superintendent Gixson, do you have any opening comments this morning? Not at this time. Okay. Dr. Northern, would you read our motion to go into close session, please, so we consider can consider our lensure cases? Yes. I move that the Virginia Board of Education convene in a closed meeting for the following purposes. discussion or consideration by the board of education of information relating to the denial, suspension, or revocation of teacher licenses subject to the exclusion in subdivision 11 of section 2.2-3705.3 pursuant to section 2.23711A40 of the code of Virginia and consultation with council regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice pursuant to Virginia code section 2.23711 237 111A88 of the Code of Virginia
006and that legal counsel to the Virginia Board of Education and Staff whose presence will aid in the board's consideration of this matter participate in the closed meeting. Is there a second? Miss Kilgore. Yes. Dr. Northern I. Dr. Ari. I. Mr. Hansen. Hi, Miss McFersonson. Hi. Uh, Miss Ashton, is she on? Can't tell. Okay, never mind. Miss Holton, hi. And chair boats eye. All right, we are now in close session. Um, Pursuant to a recorded vote on the motion above and in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-3712 of the code of Virginia requires that the board certified that to the best of each member's knowledge. One, only business matters lawfully exempt from open meeting requirements under this chapter. and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion by which
007the closed meeting was convened were heard, discussed, or considered. Any member who believes there was a departure from these requirements shall so state prior to the vote indicating the substance of the departure that in his or her judgment has taken place. The statement of the departure will be recorded in the minutes. Okay. Miss Kilgore. I Dr. Northern I. Dr. Mr. Arian I Mr. Hansen, Miss McFerson, hi. Miss Holton, I and chair votes I. Okay. Um, so we will move on the two cases that we heard in the case 2025-14. Um, I will entertain a motion to revoke the license of Gloria Jean Jackson. So moved. Second. Um uh Miss Kilgore. Hi. Dr. Northern I. Miss McFersonson. Yes, she did. Miss Holton. Iansen. Hi. Uh Dr. Ari. And chair boats. I Okay. In the case numbered
0082025-13, I'll entertain a motion to deny the license of Charles L. Davis. So moved. Second. Okay. Uh, Miss Kilgore. Hi, Dr. Northern. Hi, Miss McFerson. Hi, Miss Holton. Hi, Mr. Hansen. Um Dr. Acriman I and chair votes eye. Okay. Um we will take about a five minute break to get our um work session PowerPoint presentations in line and then we will proceed in about five minutes. Thank you. are going to return to our work session. We have everybody loaded and ready, I think. Um, and so first thing this morning is item A, ELA and VALA updates. Dr. Wallace. Good morning, President Cesy, members of the board, and Superintendent Gullixson. Um, we are excited to present to you updates today on how ELA English implementation has been going this year, as well as how our Virginia
009Literacy Act implementation is has been going this year and finish up with what our plans are for next year to support our schools and our teachers and our students. Um so today I'm excited to introduce the leader at the state on this work who is Miss Jill Nggeras. Um Jill is here with Dr. Emily Salari, the leader at UVA with the Virginia Literacy Act. So there will be some co-presenting midway. Um Jill is going to kick us off with the English updates. She and her team have been working uh to really get resources out to the field to support the implementation and have lots planned to to provide some supports upcoming to the field. So Jill, thank you. All right. Thank you. Good morning, President Cesy, Superintendent Gullixson, and members of the board. Uh as
010stated, my name is Jill Nogaris, and I serve as the associate director of K12 English and literacy here at the Virginia Department. I am one member though of a team of six and you need to know that I have a phenomenal team of literacy experts who are supporting students K12 here in the Commonwealth. Uh so please know that this is everyone's work represented here and also the collaboration and work of many offices across the agency working together to improve literacy outcomes for our students. All right, here it goes. So just to give you a quick overview, we are going to break this into two kind of different buckets. Uh we have our English language arts uh standards implementation and what's happened since you approved the standards in March of 2024 and then how that also
011works with the Virginia Literacy Act and updates on our first year of implementation for the Virginia Literacy Act. They are two separate things, but they are pieces that are working together to support students K12 and really birth to K to 12. If you're thinking about the Virginia Literacy Act in our VKRP and everything that we are doing to support students um with kindergarten readiness and then expanding Virginia Literacy Act up through 8th grade as we move into the 2526 school year. So, we're going to start with English language arts and look at resource development. what has been created since you approved those standards last March, what resources are available for uh educators, division level leaders, superintendent, principles, um how we are maximizing funding to support student literacy, and that's where you're going to see a
012lot of overlap with other offices and other grants and other work happening within the agency to support literacy. Um we're going to show you some of the communication to the field. We've had a lot of communication to the field. So, we just kind of have it in buckets based on what was looking at ELA and then what is looking at the Virginia Literacy Act. So, we have those broken down uh and then different collaborations that we have with different offices and ongoing work. Then, we'll get into the Virginia Literacy Act. We'll give some of the updates from the department side of things and the work that the department is managing. Uh and then I'll invite Dr. Solari up to tell you about all the fabulous work that her team at VLP is doing to support
013K12 literacy um and make impacts and improvements for all students in the Commonwealth and how that implementation is going um updates on training and data and everything else. And then I'll kind of come back to close things out and talk about what our plans are for the 2526 school year and answer any questions that you may have. Just wanted to start off very quickly and show you that the English and literacy program here at the Virginia Department of Education really does align to Virginia strategic priorities and really looking at priority number one, which is to set and help every learner meet high expectations. And I hope that you see that through all of the examples that we provide today. All right, so kicking us off with English. Have to make your head split in two
014for a little bit. So, this is a timeline of events and supports that have happened since we were together last March. March in 2024, this board adopted and approved the 2024 English standards of learning. And while I can see that the font is incredibly tiny, I hope that you're able to see it where you are at your seats. Um, but this just kind of gives a very brief overview of a lot of the pieces that I'm going to be talking about this morning. Uh, so we improved the standards in March. We used the spring to create resources and webinar supports for our teachers and educators as they planned for the 2425 year which is our first year of implementation. Uh we talked about overview of revisions. We provided a crosswalk so that educators could understand
015the changes and the shifts that we were making in rigor to support student success. We provided understanding the standards documents uh to support teachers who really needed to understand what we meant about each of the standards and the increase in rigor and what the grade level expectations were for each of those standards, but also to support teachers who might be new to a grade level they're supporting or possibly a provisionally licensed teacher or a building sub who is supporting kids this year. So, we wanted to make sure that we got those out immediately to make sure our teachers were prepared to start teaching those standards. Uh, we also provided a comparison guide of the 2026 NAPE reading framework and the alongside the 2024 English standards of learning so that teachers could see where there was
016alignment and what additional shifts might need to occur or where you were seeing those robust ties as we prepare for the 2026 NAPE. In the summer, we hosted regional and literacy and math symposiums, which we'll get into later. So, I'm just going to do a quick uh overview here. We started the secondary textbook adoption process, and we uh supported our colleagues in the office of assessment with their item review committees. Last summer, later in the summer, we worked on instructional guides. uh we piloted those and got feedback across the state to kind of support uh what teachers needed, what they were still thinking they needed, what components were necessary to support implementation. Uh we worked with the Virginia Association of Teachers of English to kind of support English supervisors and then provide general supports. And
017uh in the fall we've wrapped up the textbook process and we did some virtual supports through uh virtual Virginia and offering support at the elementary and secondary level. In the winter we were able to launch our instructional guides and provide webinars to support that. Um and then we started work on the Virginia essentialized standards of learning with our colleagues in the office of assessment uh to support the students who take that VAP assessment. And then this spring, we really honed in on the developing stam skilled readers and building reading stamina strand that we talked about last winter when we looked at Virginia's anchored approach and talked about learning how to read fluently and build background knowledge and vocabulary and how that would look in a classroom. Um, and then we also worked with our partners
018at TNTP to create a walkthrough tool that we'll get into a little bit later to support building principles and instructional leaders as they are supporting literacy instruction in the Commonwealth. Um, and then of course we also supported ourou school divisions with walkthroughs and supports and meetings as necessary. So that kind of gives you a very highlevel timeline which the next few slides will kind of break down a little bit more. I'm not going to read them all to you, but um just wanted you to have the information. All right. So, thinking about resource development, um all of these resources are publicly available on the 2024 standards of learning for English web page. As I said, we have the understanding the standards document that really gets at what each of the standards mean, the depth that
019you need to get at, uh what students need to understand, and how teachers might instructionally approach those things. We also provided grade level side by sides to support our teachers. Um, a lot of times teachers go and they look at the grade level they're responsible for, but we think it's incredibly important for teachers to see where their students are coming from and where they're going next because they have students in each of those situations sitting in their classrooms and we want to make sure that they're getting the supports available. So we made these side by sides um and in grade band even spreading elementary to middle so that four to sixth grade band and then that middle to high the seventh through 9th grade so they can see at the both middle and high school
020level what students were learning at each of their feeder patterns and where they can expect students to be when they get at their schools. We also created um progression charts to show the vertical progression for each of the 10 strands that we have in the English standards of learning. And then of course we spent a lot of time on our instructional guides. Those were released in February. Uh so they are in use right now in schools and they are set up uh to include the progression charts and the vertical alignment and teacher notes. So that is a piece that's from the um that was very welcome in the old curriculum frameworks where the teacher notes about how to approach things. So that is a component we wanted to keep in the instructional guides to support
021educators as they're kind of working through their um instructional guides and the instructional go uh goals for their students. It also has the standards, the understanding the standards and then it has a whole piece that focuses on planning for instruction and integration and how you support the implementation of your HQIM in K5 and how you fold in those other standards to make sure students are getting what they need. We've also included disciplinary connections so that at every grade level you are seeing how to bring in history and science into your classroom and looking at um suggested or re not recommended but certainly sample text lists and text sets that could be used that kind of give you an idea of what's an appropriate gradele text for that grade level that aligns with the content um
022of science and social studies and provides those text sets so that teachers can see what's the appropriate level of rigor for those grade level texts, but also how can we support building background knowledge and knowledge building in English class by utilizing those content area texts. All right. Uh we do have a recorded overview of the standards webinar series that's posted on our site. When we hosted them live, we did have 542 educators uh who attended and we recorded these and we posted them along with the uh scripted deck so that if you didn't want to watch our recording, you could read it instead of reading the morning paper. Um there we go. We've also created that developing skilled readers and building reading stamina webinar series. This to us is very exciting because it really gets
023at all of the essentials of students learning how to read and looking at reading fluency and you looking at text evidence and looking at a variety of genres and how to infer and um it really gets at how to really get deep into a topic to kind of support and anchor all of the literacy learning that's happening in your classroom. And we had 840 teachers in attendance for those webinars. Um, we did also include a feedback form that was helping to guide our next steps so that teachers could let us know um what they what questions they still had after the series was over, what resources would support them as they're kind of getting to the 25 26 year and what supports were necessary as we move on. So, the webinars were recorded and the
024scripted slide decks are posted and we hope to get those recordings out soon. Um, but we did have 120 educators provide feedback after those um, that really are helping us drive what you're going to see at the end of our slide deck today in terms of where we're going next for resource and support development. You all recall that we were here uh, last winter um, to approve our secondary textbooks. So in the fall at the October meeting actually you uh looked at them for first review and at the December meeting we approved the secondary textbooks for English language arts. So that is just a nod to the work that many of you are aware that we have done here. But all of those uh correlation charts and results are posted for school divisions to look
025and consider what they want to adopt as they're thinking about secondary reading and writing in grades 6 through 12. The next slide uh is our walkthrough tool that we have worked on. There are two. There is one that gets at foundational reading and foundational writing skills that's available for K3 and then there's a K12 reading comprehension walkthrough tool. Uh, and this can be used to support building level leaders, literacy coaches, um, division level leaders if they're walking through classrooms as to what you should be seeing if you're using highquality instructional materials and what instructional shifts should be occurring within your classroom. So, it is a rather comprehensive tool. You probably wouldn't see all of that ever in a walkthrough for real. Um, but you could take a piece or a section of that if you
026are exploring things. uh it is being piloted right now by TNTP as part of the comprehensive literacy network. I can say that the English office has also used it during our visits withou school divisions and to guide conversations with those uh and we do plan to have a full statewide roll out in the fall and we will provide supports and webinars and guidance for division and school level leaders. So once those since we're still in the pilot phase, it is not posted, but once we're ready to roll out statewide this fall, all of those resources will be posted and we will be supporting all school divisions as they learn how they can use these walkthrough tools to look at instruction in their classrooms. So that kind of handles resource development since we were here in
027March 2024. Um, we've spent a lot of this year looking at how to maximize funding to support literacy in the state and this is where we start really collaborating with many offices across the agency because this has been an agency priority to support literacy here in the Commonwealth. You are very well aware aware that the uh governor had all in Virginia which provided $418 million to support student achievement and tutoring and combating chronic absenteeism and supporting the Virginia literacy act and learning loss. Uh so that funding provided a lot of supports and materials that school divisions could um request and use to support students who needed these additional potential tutorings and all things sorry this got stuck all things necessary. So in the English office we really look at our use of Lexia and Ignite.
028So those are the tutoring opportunities that are available here. Uh, so the English office has worked with Lexia and meets with Lexia weekly to make sure that our statewide initiative is supporting students and that students are seeing gains. We are in a strange spot in that it is May, so we don't have endofear reports for you quite yet. So that is something we could certainly explore at a future meeting. Um, but it is something that we are constantly talking about. Um so it does provide science of reading based literacy solutions for kids in grades K12 and it's an adaptive blended learning model which means the students have asynchronous online personalized program and then the teachers have resources for face-to-face instruction to support those students. So we participate in an ongoing collaboration with Lexia through the
029weekly meetings with the team. Uh we've also done school site visits to observe power up in multiple middle and high schools to kind of see how that's going. Additionally, uh we do have several school divisions and many students using ignite reading and that is a oneto-one online science of reading based tutoring that closes students decoding gaps through 15minute daily lessons. So we do participate again in ongoing collaboration with them through weekly meetings but then also have done um site visits to observe Ignite in action and again we're getting close to that end of school year where we can really pull those reports but we will be exploring how that is impacted and how everything kind of correlates to student success and how students are improving not only through Ignite and Lexia but how that aligns
030with what's happening with their VAL scores and potentially their so scores as well. But that is ongoing. So that's a stay tuned and we will come back if you decide you want us to. Okay. Uh the other piece that you might be aware of is in September there was a press release announcing a $30 million grant that was given to the Virginia Department of Education from USCD for the comprehensive literacy state development network. Um, so there was information in that press release that shared that we would go we were going to be supporting uh underserved and populations with this. So we do have three different networks going on. There it goes. Um to support our students. So we are currently in year one. So we are just in year one of a five-year grant. Um
031but it has developed three networks that are using the funding in year one. And the English team does provide programmatic support for those three networks. We have just right readers which has 30 schools um to per which funds uh just right reader decodable books that school divisions are able to purchase schools are able to purchase um for those students. We have a students with disabilities learning network that 30 schools are participating in and um you know we have worked with them on the English standards of learning but also looking at how that works with uh student reading plans and IEPs and supporting students with disabilities. And then we have an English learner learning network that's really looking at supporting our EL students and their literacy development as well. So again uh we are still working
032at looking at the evaluation of the effectiveness of these all these 90 schools that are part of this grant uh just are wrapping up their midyear progress monitoring meetings right now we will have an endofear progress uh end of year end of year one um evaluation in August and that's when we will be able to actually evaluate the effectiveness demand and student outcomes kind of tied to those grants. Uh so this is year one. So we will be looking at year two and who we are um supporting kind of moving forward. School divisions will and schools will have the opportunity to reapply for those grants if they are interested and we can hopefully encourage additional schools to participate as well. So that is also upcoming information and I would be remiss if I did not
033say uh that Angela Dr. Angela Birdright is spearheading this work. So hopefully she can give you a far more comprehensive overview once we get to the end of year 1. Additionally, we have another grant that we work on with the office of ESA programs to support elementary school literacy implementation. So this is um available to 20 title one elementary schools across 16 divisions. And these schools were invited to attend the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching Summer Institute last summer along with members of the Virginia Department of Education. Um, and then school teams had two days of follow-up training for teachers at their school about how to implement highquality instructional materials and support for the Virginia Literacy Act. Uh and so the school secured follow-up training from those professional development vendors or a vendor of
034their choice from that grant to kind of support implementation of high-quality instructional materials in elementary school. So, um, the English team, members of the English team have met with each school virtually and one-on-one in February this year to kind of celebrate grant successes, where things were going, and brainstorm any solutions to challenges that they were facing as they started their year 1 implementation of HQIM. Uh, and again, that is still wrapping up. So, we're not quite at the we might be one month too early to give you updates on this. So please know though that that is ongoing work of the department and that really is collaboration across multiple op uh offices here to support then oh wow that jumped like five slides. Hold on. You're probably like good. Oh okay. And now just jump
035back seven. All right. Once I get to it the next one is really just a bunch of links that's just for you to have. I know we have many many Virginia Education Update articles, but these are the ones that align with English language arts specifically so that you don't have to scroll through a whole year. All right, that's really just a placeholder for you. Um, but kind of looks at what has happened since you approved the standards uh in March and then all the way through to where we are for funding for Ignite, Lexia, and Zern for the 2526 academic year. So, if you are just so excited and want to learn more on Saturday morning, feel free to flip to this slide and check out all of those. As referenced in the timeline, we
036did also host summer symposiums uh in collaboration with our math team, which is really, really exciting. It's very rare that you see English and math out together. We are best friends. We're just not often together in the field. And this was an opportunity to bring both of these groups together. We hosted eight regional symposiums across each of the superintendence regions. Uh and so it was really exciting. We partnered with TNTP and were able to provide information on the new English standards of learning and then HQIM implementation as they prepared for year one of VLA. Uh we did also collect feedback and that data was data was used to kind of help us figure out what supports were needed and whether those would needed to be virtual, in person, phone calls, whatever whatever the case may
037be. But it was a train the trainer model and the expectation was that each educator, each school division that was represented there would go back and share their learning with their school divisions. The information also was posted on Canvas so that they could have access to all of the resources. We also I might have even seen a couple of you there got to hang out at the Virginia Association of Secondary School Principles last summer and present a roundt. Um and so really it was just a 15minute rotation where school principles, secondary school principles could come, they could learn about the new resources, um hear about what the implementation was going to be, ask any questions related to uh questions that might come up about either the new standards or what implementation of uh VA grades
0384 through 8 might look like. So it was exciting to have the opportunity to connect and talk with them but also uh to hear what kind of questions they have and what kind of guidance and support we could offer as a result of their wonderings. Additionally, we supported the English office supported um other external groups and external partners over the last year to make sure that everyone haded the support that they needed. Uh we did do a professional development one day with the 21st century grant coordinators and that is through the office of ESA programs. Uh well I'll just there it goes. So we presented to them there were about 150 coordinators present there for that. Um but it really gave them an understanding of how developing oral language was essential to both language comp
039and reading proficiency. We gave them an overview of the 2024 English standards of learning and looked specifically at that communication strand and how they could support students through their 21st century coordinator grant. Um, this is really through the office of ESA program. So, so that was us supporting them in that one. We also got to hop on the Virginia alternative learning technology vital conference which is a really cool multipleday conference. Uh, I know our contact for it is Calypso Gillstrap. I don't know who actually oversees it in totality. It might be Calypso. I'm not sure. Um, but we were really excited to present an overview of the standards at that conference. Um, and then work with teams and let them know kind of what was going on in English and just kind of support them
040through kind of an overwhelming uh bunch of resources that we have and kind of walk them through what each one means and how it works. We also have a partnership uh through the school university resource resource network at William and Mary. So this is the CERN conference that happens and we had two opportunities to present with them. So it was a mixed audience of administrators and teachers at the fall conference uh and that one was on the English standards of learning and there were approximately 80 educators in attendance. And then in spring a conference was hosted in Frederick'sburg again to administrators and teachers and that was on the standards of learning again additionally 80 more it was in a different location so we kind of captured a different audience there. Additionally we did have the
041opportunity to work with the Virginia Association of Teachers of English which is our secondary state uh our state organization and supported them in the fall. uh they offer a convening for all division English literacy coordinators or supervisors uh where they can get together just as a group themselves. So we were able to support and talk to them about the 2024 English standards of learning. We got feedback on the instructional guides. uh they were able to ask a lot of questions and then we did also do a more general session with anybody who attended their fall conference so that they could learn about the shifts in instruction and practices aligned with the 2024 English standards of learning. And then we also worked with our elementary partners which is the Virginia State Literacy Association and in March
042several of us went to Rowanoke to present an overview of the standards. Um there were about a hundred educators and literacy leaders at that conference as well. And we're very excited to say that we were able to connect with and support several of our divisions. Uh we were able to do in-person walkthroughs in March and April this spring, which we're really excited. And then we had individualized feedback reports with best practices, next steps. Uh we looked at the walkthrough tool. We supported them with upcoming planning and instruction, had conversations about how they are approaching instruction next year and what supports and specific supports they might need from our office. Um, and then moving into June, we already have some division level supports in place for several of theou divisions to kind of work with their
043whole central office teams to support um an understanding of evidence-based literacy instruction and English standards of learning and then follow up at the end of the summer once um their their literacy leaders are back and grade level leaders are back and working with new teachers. So, we're very excited about that. Additionally, we support our office of assessment ongoing. Uh, so last summer, we were with them as uh educators looked at the item review committee meetings that happened last July. And at the um at the final day of each of those committees, we were able to present on the English standards of learning, talk to them about the instructional guides, talk to them about upcoming supports they might need, and really help them understand the shifts in rigor from the 2017 to the 2024 English standards
044of learning and how you might see that addressed in an item review. Wow, did it again. Okay, I'm going to go right past your part, Dr. Solari, by accident. Okay, and we are ongoing. We are working with um our office of assessment and the uh University of Oregon on the Virginia essentialized standards of learning. That is the VSAW that we have here. And those are revised academic content standards for students with significant cognitive disabilities who are enrolled in grades three through eight in high school in Virginia. So these are students who uh traditionally take the VAP assessment and looking at what the standards need to be to align as closely to the 2024 English standards of learning as possible. So we worked with the office of assessment and the behavioral research and teaching program at
045the University of Oregon uh along with our office of special populations and our mathematics team to look at reading and math teacher committee so that we could have experts in the field and educators uh support this work. We had six members on each committee. We also worked with our TTAC uh just to make sure that everybody was kind of looking at that at those approaches and where we plan to take the Virginia essentialized standards of learning. That work is still ongoing. It is not complete, but we're very excited that we had the opportunity to kind of bring all of those groups together. And then of course um in support of the instructional guides and instructional guide development in other content areas you'll see if you look at the instructional guides for fine arts and computer
046science you will also see the English um standards of learning addressed within those as well. So thinking about those cross content connections of the standards in other instructional guides. We also um hosted webinars with the coordinator of multilingual learner instruction and we've worked with virtual Virginia to make sure that there are elementary and secondary support sessions that are going. So this is the part of the presentation where now you need to switch your brain over to Virginia Literacy Act which all comes together to support and work together to support student literacy. Um, I'm going to start this part of the presentation just to kind of give you an idea of the parts that the department has been supporting of the Virginia Literacy Act and then it'll switch over to Gohead. Are you sure? Okay. I
047was going to say and then we're going to switch it over to Dr. Emily Solari who is going to share um everything that VP has been doing in this first year of implementation. Um before we move on, if we could just address any questions on the first part of or comments on the first part of this presentation that might um that board members might have. Does anyone have any questions or comments here? Miss Holton. Thank you. Uh thank you Dr. Nggera. Very helpful presentation. You all are been very busy. Um uh am I right in understanding that we are really uh not just on um the literacy act but on all of ELA in year one of a couple years of transition u into the new ELA standards right that we're not expecting the um
048it's not all done yet. Well yes it is done. It is done. So that is why we made sure that we got right into resources and support to make sure the educators would have the overview of revisions and understanding the standards and the instructional guides. I guess I'm not I'm not expressing myself very well here. I'll I'll try again. The we obviously yes the the the new standards ELA standards were in full effect this year but new textbooks won't likely be out in the school divisions until next year. the um um the guides, the instructional guides came out mid year. So, we would not expect to see the full impact of the new standards in our SOS for this year yet. In other words, our we would hope that it would be an ongoing process
049for teachers fully um uh working based on the new standards. So um just to provide her with some additional support here. Um so students u teachers began teaching those standards this year. Yes, we do plan to do updates to the instructional guides. So they'll be kind of done on an annual basis and we'll continue to review with with um stakeholder feedback in particular from some of our sessions that are upcoming um this summer that you know what supports do teachers continue to need? So, those instructional guides would be updated. Um, textbooks, as you know, this board has adopted them. We also have the new HQIM bill that's going to set us on a new path of adoption of additional instructional materials. So, that might be what helps to address your question. We have those. We
050have textbooks adopted already. They were adopted in December, but then well that HQIM will be but if I'm right our our textbook our action adopting textbooks begins the process of the divisions adopting textbooks. So it's unlikely that the textbooks that we approved in December are in the classrooms already. Um probably not, but I do know that boards are adopting them. Um one hobby I Oh, they'll be in effect for next school year. I have seen that they have been um boards, school boards across the state have been adopting textbooks. I know that absolutely fact about me guys, but absolutely they're moving forward. Hopefully, many of them will have new textbooks in place by fall. By the fall, yes, but they didn't this past fall. Uh likely not. Um not from the new list. And then
051the instructional guides, I I appreciate hearing that you're going to update them every year. That's terrific. But the the initials instructional guides for the 2024 ELA standards initially came out in February of 25. In other words, midway through this school year. Yes, ma'am. So, so there's lots of reasons to hope that uh teachers will be even more fully equipped to teach to the ELA standards starting in fall, the the the 2024 ELA standards starting in the fall of 25. Correct. Plus, um, Jill will update you on some additional training opportunities that'll be coming for those teachers to prepare. And and then I just had one other question. I'm sorry, Madam President. May I continue? U the, uh, as we all know, the all-in funding was a one-time funding. It's ending or has in some divisions
052has ended. In some divisions, maybe they've still got one more year. I'm not sure. Um uh and you also referenced a number of grants etc. that are are you uh should we worry about any of the funding for any of those resources that you're providing whether it's going to be available ongoing? So the all-in funding you're correct um they were um divisions were upfronted that money in 2023 um and so they have until 2026 June of 2026 to spend those funds. Some divisions may have spent those funds right out the gate and spent all of them within the first year, year and a half. Some of them I know still have funding because they I get the questions on what can we do to to help support our or to implement those grants. Um and
053so some divisions are planning to continue having those funds through June of 2026 where it will they will all expire at that time. Additionally, the funding that we have to provide the tutoring supports that Jill talked about, um, those funds, we were just granted an appeal from USD to continue those supports for one more year. So, we had not anticipated on being able to support those um tutoring programs this year, but we were able to successfully have an appeal through USCD to be able to use our um late liquidation esser funds to fund those reprograms through the end of next school year. So, those um those are federal dollars that support that implementation, Miss Holton. So, uh so terrific. because I understand it the supports that we've talked about the tutoring supports etc that have
054been so important are going to be available for one more year thereafter it's a question mark thank you superintendent Alexson thank you president Christie and member Holton also wanted to flag the CLSD um grants are five years right yes the CLSD grant is a fiveyear grant and at this moment USCD has told us that that funing is stable. Yes, it is. I said at this moment and so like Jill said, we are planning with the second year implementation. Hopefully all of our first year schools will reapply for funds. But because we're moving into the second year, we kind of have more funds. The first year, you only have about half your funds to spend. The second year, you'll have more funds. So we should be able to fund more schools to support literacy implementation efforts
055across this the commonwealth. Other questions? Miss McFerson, are there 90 schools participating with the CLSD grants? There a link on the website for which schools they are? Yes, ma'am. There's a press release that has um I'm September 2024. Okay. Yeah. Right. I think there's an additional press release that lists the Dr. Northern. My ears perked um when I heard about the text sets and the contentbased approach. I'm trying to figure out where that information is among these resources in the instructional guides. um in each grade level as you're looking at each of the strands, it gives a sample text set that would align with the standards that are discussed in that integration and implementation section. Uh and then cross content connections with history and science uh for elementary because we know that our elementary schools
056have HQIM that they are using. So we really talked about bringing in text sets that really align with history and science so that we weren't interfering with obviously the use of high quality instructional materials in core literacy instruction. So how to bring those in cross-disciplinary Dr. Northern I will take a look. I just um there's actually believe it or not a national organization that's developing new ELA standards um and they're prioritizing that approach. So I just wanted to make sure that I knew how we had integrated that um as as they developed this other set. Thank you. Other questions or comments? I have a few. Okay. I just wanted to wait for everyone. Um so first question on the webinar series that you talked about on slide nine. Do we have any means by which
057we're tracking how those um webinars are being accessed? Like so how many people outside of the the numbers that you have? Are we are we checking data to know, you know, is it just sitting there or is it being used? It so the numbers that I gave you were for when we were utilizing Zoom. So that's who was there in in person that day. Um but our comm's team does have the ability to pull the YouTube links and kind of look and see how many how popular we are. Okay, good. That's what I wanted to know. Yeah. Um the other thing was I just have a question about um slide 15 and 16 where you talked about Lexia and ignite. Um why help me understand why uh 2 only 29 school divisions are using Ignite
058and we've got so many uh using Lexia. So that might lend one to think one system is more successful than the other. Um and that being said, since we're providing this, I assume the department is providing this at no cost to the school division. Um is there a means by which we can talk about like what's the difference there and what are the successes and failures or you know what are we tracking data on how these two opportunities are being used and um how how best we're spending our money. Yes, th those are all talked about in each of our weekly meetings as they're showing us implementation data and how it is being used across different school divisions. So, I have multiple reports that I could definitely send over to you if you would like
059to look at those more in depth. Um, in fact, we were missing Alexia meeting to be with you this morning. I guess my question is where are we getting the best bang for our buck? Okay. um you know, are we based on the numbers here um are we offering something that's really maybe not necessary to be offered because so many school divisions choose one over the others is really my question. Okay. Um, and then I just have to give the team a huge amount of kudos because it's so important for the board to see the amount of interaction you are continuously having with the field in support of everything that the board has laid out. So, um, if I could say anything, it's just we appreciate being looped into that information. It's critical in um
060understanding that our decisions are being implemented and acted on and the field is getting them and getting all the support that they may want and need and and the feedback that you all are requesting from the field post um professional developments and webinars to support them is is really critical and we're I'm I for one am really happy to see all of this information being provided to even though it may be something that we want to sit down uh with our morning coffee on Saturday and go through um that information is still very appreciated. So, thank you so much for that. Absolutely. And thank you for providing us with the opportunity to serve the Commonwealth this way. Um our team, we're 100% nerds and we absolutely love all of this and we love being out
061in the field and supporting teachers however we can. So, we love a good feedback form and it has really helped to determine where we're going next. Um, which I will definitely get into. I don't want to make Dr. Solari sit out in the wings too much longer. Um, so I'll I'll give the quick updates from the department on VA and then I'm going to let her come in and really explain everything to you guys. All right. So, you are very well aware that the Virginia Literacy Act is in partnership between the Virginia Department of Education and Virginia Literacy Partnerships Office at UVA. Uh, so I'm just going to give a couple of updates from the department side of things and then I'm going to turn it over and that's when we get into the really
062exciting slides. So, as you're aware, one component of the Virginia Literacy Act is that each school division must submit a division literacy plan as part of their comprehensive plan. And so last summer, all 131 school divisions did submit these plans and the English team did review and provide feedback to every single division about where they were. Um, we did offer a fall webinar. If you recall, we had not gotten to a place where we had all of the supplemental and intervention lists available. So, they weren't able to address that with their summer submissions. So, in the fall, we were able to host a webinar and kind of give them some guidance. And what we saw were some great things we were seeing across the Commonwealth within the literacy plans that were submitted. And keep in
063mind that all of these are posted on the DE department's website, so they could go look at one anothers if they were interested. Uh we were able to give some highlights, some glows, and some grows and best practices. Um and we did have 195 participants for that webinar. Uh we did also record it and post it so it is available. Uh and then this spring we were able to have a webinar on April 29th where we really focused on the upcoming bianial submission. So if you recall uh we just did a one-year division literacy plan as we were planning for implementation but as school divisions move forward it is a bianial plan and this time they are able to uh designate and identify what supplemental and intervention materials they are using all the way through
064grade 8. So these are due on June 30th of this year and we will be reviewing all of those and providing feedback. Additionally, to kind of streamline the process and support divisions, we are almost in production mode. We're still in test mode of an application in SSWS where school divisions will be able to submit their division literacy plan, receive feedback, and have a whole historical record of any communication back and forth. uh they can update that as often as they want because as you are aware school divisions can update their division literacy plans as early and as often as they like. So that'll be a place where they can do that. Uh and then they will obviously also update their links on their websites which will update over to our website as well. So, we
065had 143 participants uh attend that one and we're very excited about what they're going to hand in and submit at the end of June. Um, we have hosted bi-weekly office hours with in collaboration with Virginia literacy partnerships where we host office hours and school divisions can get on and ask questions of the department and of um Virginia literacy partnerships. This could be questions about training, screening, resources, curriculum, reading specialists, whatever the case may be. We just host these bi-weekly office hours. And typically speaking, we have around a hundred every single time we offer these. Uh we provided sample student reading plans. We worked with our colleagues at the uh Virginia Literacy Partnerships Office to provide sample student reading plans to help schools as they were developing the individual student reading plans. Um we also made
066sure that we put the approved program guides for that K5 supplemental and intervention that I shared wasn't ready uh for the June 30th submission. And then of course the grades six through eight. So, as soon as the board has been approving these materials, we've been making sure that the materials are available on our website. And then the next slide is really going to Oh, wow. See? Oh, shoot. I got right into hers. And those are the exciting ones. Don't look. Back up. Come on. Keep going. All right. Nope. There's one more. We have many, many, many Virginia Education Update articles supporting the Virginia Literacy Act. So, these are all the links. This is for Sunday afternoon. So, ELA Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon, you're going to check out these Virginia Education Update articles which are really
067going to highlight a lot of the work of Virginia Literacy Partnerships and the Department of Education in supporting literacy instruction. Uh, so there are many, many there, but again, it would be hard and complicated to find them all on the Virginia Education Update site. So, they are there for you. And then additionally, we have been providing close to monthly uh literacy act updates that are very lengthy, sometimes 20 pages long that are really looking at supports and all of the different components of the Virginia literacy act. And these are built based off the feedback and questions that are asked during those bi-weekly office hours. So, it is very timely, it is very relevant, and it is responsive to whatever the field is asking. We also hosted in collaboration with our colleagues at Virginia Literacy Partnerships
068two webinars in the fall. One on Virginia Literacy Act and Gifted Education uh and that was also with our office of advanced learning and then one on uh English learners and the Virginia Literacy Act and that was in collaboration with our English language coordinator. So those are also recorded and posted on the site as well. And you can see we had well 246 on one and 261 on the other. We've also been collaborating with our teach office of teacher lensure to update and make the regulatory changes necessary for educator prep programs. Uh and the board reviewed those items in October. So the English office has been supporting that work ongoing as well. And as you are also aware, one component of the Virginia Literacy Act is a clause about a reading specialist micro credential. Um,
069and currently we have that those numbers are probably a little bit off because I think I've I invite maybe seven or eight more each day, but roughly there are around 800 people currently enrolled in the micro credential course um with 168 who have completed it. And this is exciting information and news because this is one way to get additional reading specialists in classrooms, especially as we're going up into middle school for the coming year. Uh it does it's just a fiveyear endorsement. So it does not give you the permanent certification to be a reading specialist, but it is closing a gap and providing supports. And hopefully these people are going to be so excited about the work that they enroll in a certificate or M's program afterwards. Um and then of course we rounded out
070the end of Sep the end of 2024 with our VLA advisory group meetings which again um include VP the um English office and then you know we have an entire page dedicated to this work group and the members of that. So, we hosted those in September and December and kind of worked up um finalizing what that looked like, where we were heading next, and there are about 33 advisory group members for that together. And now, the part you've actually been waiting for. I'm going to turn this over to Dr. Emily Solari to give updates from the Virginia Literacy Partnerships Office. Jill, and thank you everyone. Thanks for having me. It's it's been a while. It's great to see everyone. Um, I doubt this is the part you're waiting for, but here we go. If I
071know how to use this. How do I use this, Jill? Oh, I have to be patient, which I'm actually not really good at. Or, you have to double click. Okay. So I think as everyone is aware um we have a new screening system in Virginia prek to grade three that is currently um active. Um and in addition to having a new screening system we also have a new platform that the system is on called VA connects which will eventually have a lot of have a few different screening systems on it. We were the guinea pig. So the the screening the Virginia um language and literacy screening system was the first one to go on to VA connects. All of our K to3 teachers and administrators um had access to access to it this year and
072they've learned how to use the new system. Um so currently we are running the preK vows and the great grades K to three. PreK vowels will go onto Virginia connects next year. So right now it's on the old platform but it will be integrated next year. Um, this has been a huge project. We started this in 2020 to redo the entire system. If I'm honest, we actually started developing items in 2019 knowing that we really needed to update our screening system in Virginia. Um, but we were funded for the work to totally redo the system in 2020. Um, at the same time that we were funded to do the prek to grade three in English, we were funded to do prek to grade three in Spanish. that will go live next year. So, fall of
0732025, that will go live um for our users across the Commonwealth. And also because of the Virginia literacy acts great and grade 4 to8 a screener for 4 to 8 will go live next year as well. We are still in the process finishing right now actually for data collection on 4 to 8 and um the espanol version and but it will be ready to go live next fall. So, just in a few short months. Okay, what the screening system does for teachers is a couple of things. Is it provides a band of risk for each student at the individual child level? So, high risk, medium risk, and low risk. High-risk kids are the kids that still get the 2.5 hours of supplemental instruction through EIRI. That has been um in Virginia for about, you know,
074for a long time. And so those are the most at risk kids who are funded to get 2.5 hours of supplemental instruction, evidence-based instruction. Moderate risk kids are kids who are not in the highest risk category, but they're still showing some level of risk. And we need to pay attention to those kids. And then the low-risisk kids um are kids who are doing okay. They are still expected to get evidence-based core instruction um because of the Virginia Literacy Act, but they they're they're doing okay in their literacy development. the moderate kids. Um we when when a teacher gets a report from the new screening system, it gives them a band of risk for each individual child and it also gives them an idea of how they're doing on on each subskll or each subtest of
075the assessment and it indicates whether or not they need extra instruction um by subtest. So we call those instructional indicators. So a teacher can take a kid's report and say, "Okay, this kid really needs help in funological awareness or this kid really needs help in letter knowledge or this kids really needs help in decoding." And so they know the targeted skills. That's kind of the beauty of the new system that you're able to do that at the individual child level and plan for instruction. I'm afraid to hit it twice, but I think I might have to. Okay. So, this is sort of hard to see even for me, but I think what we what we do now is we collect data K, first and second grade three times per year. So, beginning, middle, and end
076of year. All kids are required in K to2 to take it three take the assessment three times a year. Um, take the screening system three times a year. In third grade, only kids who are new to the Commonwealth or who screened at high risk in the spring of second grade are required to take it. And so what you can see on these data is that from the mi from the beginning to the middle of this school year, so the first year of implementation of the screening system and VLA for K1 and two between fall and mid year, we had fewer kids in the high-risisk group. So this is good news. This is really good news. It means that teachers are getting the information they need to teach those subsets of skills. Um the band of
077risk is a psychometrically psychometrically derived um standard score. Um, and then the instructional indicator score is just a raw score that teachers can understand how um how well they're doing in each subtest skill. And in third grade, we did not see the same drop, but it's important to know that that population of kids is different. Those kids were already at higher risk at the end of second grade or they were new to the Commonwealth in the in the fall of third grade. Yep. Yep. trying. Oh. Oh, don't jumped forward. Okay, go ahead and ask. There we go. Yes. Yes. So they can see it in the system and then at the school at the classroom level at the school level at the division level we also put these data out publicly. Um so this is
078on the our website and we also provide these same analyses at the division level to each individual division and they get that from us at the end of the testing period. So on the public website it's statewide data. What the division superintendent can get is division level data. That's right. But do they can they also get school and or classroom level? They can dig down into the we have a reporting system. They can dig down into those data. figure out what's working, which classrooms are working. Exactly. For attention. Yep. Excellent. Yes. And teachers can do that at their own classroom level from fall to middle of the year. A reading specialist could do it for the entire school. A superintendent could do it for the entire division or ELA director. They can see the data
079in different different ways. Just a quick reminder to board members, please make sure you turn your mics on and get it close enough to your mouth so that you can be heard. Um, and then also parents can access the data. So there are parent reports that come out of the system that we encourage, we cannot mandate, but we encourage that teachers um share it with parents as well. So and so what parent get it closer to you though so you can be heard? What parents are getting would be the data on their own child? That's right. And do they also see the data on their school or school division or is that all that is not currently publicly released? Thank you. See if it lets me go back to the slides. Oh, now it's going
080the wrong way again. Okay. Okay. The other thing that we have out publicly is a technical manual. Of course, this is important for anyone who's interested in the all of the data and all the psychometrics and everything that's gone into developing the screening system. We want it. We need everyone to know this is a legitimate system. It is reliable. Is it is valid. So that is publicly for anyone. And then as I just mentioned the data reports are out at the state level and we we create those data reports at the close of every data collection window and we have the reports back to 20120 publicly available. So you can track progress over time. Just remember that before this year um it was the PAL screener, not the Val screener. So be careful when making
081comparisons. And I will say there was some um divisions that were a bit uncomfortable in the fall of this year because there were more kindergarteners and first grades um first graders who were identified as at risk and really what we had was a screening system that was collecting the right data. Um and so it wasn't those kids were already in the system. They just we just the data wasn't sensitive enough to ID them last year. Okay, this is also small and I apologize but um 4 to8 timeline. We've been working on the 4 to8 screener since um the VA 4 to8 was passed. We are currently in schools um collecting data that will end this week essentially and we will be ready to go live next year um for 4 to8 and we've made some
082decisions around you know because there is a lot of testing in 4 to8 we are very aware of that and so this will not be implemented as a universal screener like it is K to3 we will assess kids who fail the so because the so tells us um that they're not doing great on um you know reading comprehen comprehension, but we don't necessarily know why. And what the screening system does is it goes as it assesses decoding and fluency and listening comprehension. All those things that we know are required to to be good at reading comprehension so that teachers and reading specialists can then target their instruction so that um kids are scoring better on the so. So it should not be seen as a universal screener. It's more for kids who um we know
083are at higher risk in grades four to eight. And Dr. Lori, um, correct me if I'm wrong, but a parent could see the necessity for this despite the fact that their child may or may not have may not have failed the so. So, if I'm a parent and I'm still questioning whether or not my my child needs intervention, I can make that request. And is that something that if that if that's the case, is that something that we are making sure to communicate? Right. Okay, that's a good question. So, a parent could notice or a teacher could notice as well or a reading specialist that hey, this this this fourth grader didn't, you know, pass the so but is still having some issues in decoding or whatever it may be. So, the assessment's available to
084all four to eighth graders. It's only required for people who fail the so, but we are making the system available to any kid in the Commonwealth 4 to 8. So, it can be requested and it can be used. Okay. Professional development updates. As many of you know, professional development is a huge part of the Virginia Literacy Act and we have been engaging with many, many teachers, reading specialists, administrators, and everyone across the Commonwealth on this. So, um, under the Virginia Literacy Act, every teacher, um, is required to get professional development on evidence-based literacy instruction and scientifically based reading research. Um, but we recognize that there are lots of different groups of teachers across the Commonwealth and there are some that have had this train a little bit of this training. Some have had a ton
085of the training, some have had none. We also have content level teachers. We have, you know, K to3 teachers who need something really different than maybe a fifth grade social studies teacher or a sixth grade social teacher. We've we have created a menu of courses that is that are um targeted to those different groups of teachers and administrators and reading specialists. Um this was a huge lift this year. We've had um 56,000 plus people enrolled in our cabinet courses. Not just people, our educators. Um and as of last week, 31,000 have completed them. So this is a a collaboration between us, the department of education um and also um the coaches that we have out in the field. So they we have the Virginia lyak um funded coaches across the commonwealth and they are helping
086to implement this professional development um handinhand with the reading specialists because you might remember the reading specialists the model was that the reading specialists were trained first. So they got trained last year and now they are helping to implement this training with our teachers along with the coaches and other folks and ELA directors in the divisions. So this really is a partnership and I think what's represented here is something that's unique to Virginia that our my office at UVA we do a lot of research. We have IAS funding still sort we think um we have funding from the US from from the office of special education programs to do research and we're very through this avenue we're really quickly able to translate research findings into practice um along with our colleagues at the department. So
087these are the topics that we have covered um and this is ongoing of course there will be new teachers into the system next year. There will be new reading specialists into the system next year and we have plans to train them. Um we we are already working on our fall plans to get everyone into the professional development programs. Okay. We also have had in-person statewide training for our reading specialists for our elementary um principles. We it was required by the law that elementary principles were trained. However, we had many vice principles and associate principles show up to the training um which was fine. We have we have trained 2,000 elementary over 2,000 elementary reading specialists. Um we have also trained ELA um and special education folks because really when you think about literacy all of
088these people are working on literacy and so we have tried to be as inclusive as we can as the budget permits to train as many people as possible. We also had folks from RTX there. Um and we have uh also began because of the 4 to8 to look to work with our reading specialists who are middle in the middle schools. Okay. As I mentioned before, we also provide coaching support. Um, and we go out to the school divisions and to into into schools to work alongside um our ELA colleagues in the division and our reading specialists to implement the literacy act. And that can be anything from um helping to interpret data from the vow screener to plan instruction to working on the implementation of a new curriculum because as folks are aware um in
089the K to 5 space it was required that by this fall they had they used a curriculum that was off the approved list. So that is a huge lift for teachers. It's a huge lift for administrators. We are asking teachers administrators to do a lot of things different this year and they need support. So part of our role is going out and supporting the implementation as well. We also have ongoing publicly available professional learning series. This this learning series actually started as a result of us changing the screener in 2020. So I you know I said to my team I said look the educators and parents need to know why we're changing the screener. Um and so we need to have a lot of publicly available resources for folks out there. They can go and
090download these um and and have, you know, one pages and webinars and and um stuff linked to the Evans space as to why this is so important. So these can be used these are actually used in Virginia, but they're used in many other states as well. I get we get a lot of feedback on these. Um these packages can be downloaded and they can be used for professional learning community. It has every resource you would need to implement a PD around one of these topics. And we've split them out from pre-K to 3 and 4 to 8 because often there are different things going on in first grade versus seventh grade, right? So we have split them out in that way and we encourage people to use these and they're all evidence-based. And then in
091addition, we have family resources. So, we have um short videos on why the screener had to be was was changed, what it does for your child, how to interpret the data. We have family newsletters. We've created um family literacy nights. So, a school can take a package, an already developed package where they can have a literacy night at a school and all the all the materials that they need are in the package and ready to go. Um we link to the VDE family supports as well. Um and then we also have a collaboration with V Virginia Public Media where we've created um short videos about early literacy development. What does it look like for kids? You know, what can you do in your home to um foster literacy development? And those are all publicly available.
092Okay. And then as we got into implementation, we quickly realized that we need special resources for our administrators. I mean we knew that before but we were so uh concentrating on getting the teacher training up and going. So we have publicly available resources um that you know tells researchers you know administrators want to know give me the one pager on what my teachers are learning in your canvas courses and their professional development. So we created that um we created a special resource on navigating the VA and different things like that. So we are trying as much as we can to be responsive to the field. When we hear from the field, we need this resource, we try and respond and we develop it and we put it out. Okay, this is the part that you
093all are the most familiar with, I would think, because this has come to you many times. So, curriculum review updates. This should be really brief. Okay, so um we have and you all have seen the the approved program guides that are out in the field. Um we have thus far over the last two years um reviewed two a total of 225 programs. That's across core supplemental and intervention programs. That's a lot of programs. It's more than I ever anticipated. I will be honest about that. Um and we have and you all have approved 118. So that's across core, supplemental, and intervention. Um we have 10 programs that are approved for use in core K to 5. We have in intervention K to8 we have 43 programs. In supplemental K to8 we have uh 85 programs.
094Is that right? 65. Sorry. As soon as my vision's going 65. I mean that does not add up to 118. Um so thank you for your collaboration and partnership in that. This has been a big call. You guys This is coming. You're currently partnership. Are there any questions for Dr. Salari? Dr. Northern phenomenal is my first comment. Um we are definitely uh leading the country in some of these initiatives. I think that the um the complaint is often that by the time they get to third grade, it's too late if we haven't assessed how they're doing and then they fail the reading so we didn't intervene quickly enough. So I appreciate all of this effort going in at the K2 levels especially. Um, my questions are, um, one, are these data publicly reported on the
095school report card? Are there plans for that? I get to Miss Holton's questions that they parents can see the data for their own child, but what I'm getting at is that um, I'm all about the transparency um, here. And I feel like um this ties into I'd like to see these schools and divisions get recognition um and incentivize them to continue to do well on these on these things, particularly since they're not part of the quote school performance and support framework as other grades are. They're not. This data is not So, I'm just going to push on that and encourage us to do that. Um, because I feel like again, K2 gets forgotten. They think, "Oh, sh I'm not going to be a third grade teacher." Um, and we are trying to build in some
096transparency and accountability here. And that's what everybody across the whole country is saying that's not being done and why we're seeing the low uh proficiency and reading scores at the third grade level. So this is huge what we're doing and I'd love to see us take the next step in terms of making this publicly uh reportable. And I'd also just encourage us again to do whatever we could on the recognition front um so that schools are recognized for making gains so that it becomes a big deal if you're making progress at K2 just like it's a big deal when you're making progress at grade three through eight. Um you know those these grades are equally or more important. So, um, as we continue to think about, um, how we use these data to make them
097more, uh, publicly available at all to build out, um, an incentive and recognition plan for, uh, for K2, uh, divisions and schools as well. Dr. uh, Northern, are you any other questions? Okay, it's Holton. Well, I'll just echo uh, Dr. Northern uh uh Dr. Solari this the amount of effort that's gone into this yes including as you say we nobody I think anticipated that we'd have that many submissions on the curriculum but you know that this is a really first effort for Virginia not only our first effort to tackle uh literacy so comprehensively but our first effort on any subject matter to have coordinated work uh across the divisions with this much guidance guidance um and um direction from the state but still recognizing local uh authority and independence and it just makes it incredibly
098complicated but incredibly important and and you all have done you and uh your colleagues at UVA have done so much of the heavy lifting in in concert with the department so we're grateful. I have a a few questions. The first is um just kind of what's your um you know here we are at the end of year one of implementation. And obviously we don't have um outcome measures yet and I want to talk about that but uh separately but what's your assessment of what's going especially well compared to where you thought we would be right now and what are your biggest challenges areas for improvement that we should be aware of it was working I I don't know what happened. Thank you to support my process here. Um Um Yeah. So maybe start with some
099bright spots. Um well, first of all, I think we need to acknowledge and I said it once, but I'm going to say it again. We have asked teachers and school leaders to change a lot this year in literacy. I mean, you're asking them to implement new curricula at the same time. They're implementing a brand new screening system at the same time they required to get professional development and it was important that all these things happen at once because you want all these things to tie together, but it is a huge lift. So, I think recognizing our educators is really, really important here, including our reading specialists, including everyone. Um, I think that we've had divisions that have certainly um have have done really well. I mean I I met I was talking to the team
100yesterday, the professional development team about this because they are the ones who see every day what's happening and you know how this is uh how uptake is happening and they could name 10 to 15 school divisions that are um really engaged um really hitting it out of the park as you would say sort of in the implementation. Um and I think it's going to be important for us to highlight that. Um, and it's possible they're missing some, right? There are a lot of school divisions across Virginia. Um, but I think highlighting those as bright spots and and I would encourage some cross division collaboration around this because if you had a year where things are going well, your data is looking good, your implementation is, you know, your teachers are engaged. We don't need to
101gatekeep how that happened. We want that to happen across every school division. Um so it was encouraging for me to see the data from fall to midyear especially in the K to2 space um especially after we had more kids identified at risk in kindergarten um especially in kindergarten in the fall because that was I think um alarming to our educators. Um I our window for data collection for the spring um ends at the end of this month. So we'll be able to see what happened middle to the end of the year. Um and I think that will be really telling and and we are able to drill down of course to the division level and have some conversations with through the coaches and through the department with schools with divisions about how ahead has gone
102for them. So I think having that data is really important. Um you know I think we still have an issue this is a big there's a lot of people in education here. We still have an issue with communicating down to the teacher level. um we provide as much communication as we can, the department does as well, but it does not always get down to the teachers and so and they are the ones doing this day in and day out. Um and that can create confusion and that's unfortunate. Um, and so I think our, you know, we need to really work on our communication plan and being responsive when there is confusion out in the field and making sure we're all giving the same response and, you know, we're put united front in that. Um, because
103our teachers are putting in the work here. Um, and it's it's it's a lot. So, Sultan, that's very helpful. Uh and as you say, yes, not only were teachers getting a lot on this, but they were also at um implementing new math standards and new accountability framework, etc., etc. Our educators and administrators have had a lot on the plate, their plate. So, I appreciate your recognition on that. The 10 to 15 s or more super divisions, um are they would you say, can you characterize them? Are they big and small across e soioeconomic statuses or are they geographically or otherwise without without asking you to name individual? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because we kind of we you talked about it internally and they're from all over. They're both rural and more urban divisions. Um big
104and small. Um yeah. So it's this a pretty diverse group of divisions. So once the final, if I may, once the final data for this year is out, that might be a suggestion to the superintendent that you bring some of these superstars here to educate us. I'll also share their stories with the rest of the state. Uh and that as you say may help um encourage some of that cross division collaboration. Um, one of I have a couple of questions about what are the metrics of success we as a commonwealth should be using for the whole VA initiative and is that these valves numbers that we should be seeing progress on or is it um SOS or what? And I I'll combine my question. what what metrics of success should we be using and when
105should we be starting to see the impact? You're not going to like my answer on this. So, I mean this is a huge change. I think we need some years. I mean the when you look at data at other states who have gone through similar um changes in early literacy. It takes three to five years to see change on national level assessments like the NAPE and maybe even longer and state level assessments like the SOS. Um but I think that but unlike these other states we are unique that we have one screening system K to2 um that every child is mandated to take. So while the other states that have gone through this process before us had screening systems, it wasn't one assessment. And so it was really comparing apples to oranges across school districts
106or divisions. So we so we do have that. So early success I think can be monitored by the screening system. And then eventually you want to see that translate into so performance because that's the outcome variable. Right? When we think about reading development, what is assessed on this reading system are the precursors to reading comprehension and the so is more of a comprehension. Mo all of this the the social phase so is also heavily reading comprehension, right? The science one, but you have to be able to read it um to answer the questions and and understand the content. Um so the long term I think are our SOLS and um NAPE. Um and um if if we if we're continuing the NAPE um and we are that's great. Um and so I think those are
107the long-term ones but I think we're lucky that we have the screening system so we really can figure out K to two what's going on early and then three to eight um what's going on with these most at risk kids right the kids who are failing the so how are they getting better over time. Miss Halton, the um that's very helpful to understand. Maybe a number of years before we see big change. Would we would you anticipate we'd see some uh uh results in SOS as early as this year or is that just not realistic? I think it's not realistic. That's not helpful to understand, especially because you have to think about the population of kids that take the so that's our third graders and up. And so for this year they haven't been going
108to a school for K to2 under the VA. Yeah. So it's a population issue as well as as you know one year of implementation and that year of implementation has been right training. Right. And we also know from data that once kids reach third grade and fourth grade um that um it takes much much longer to intervene on reading skills. We've we've known that for decades. And so it's it's it's more you need more resources to move the needle there. Um Sultan. Yeah. On the vows. Right. On the vows. So that reminds me one suggestion I have for you. That beautiful chart you gave us the high risk, medium risk, low risk. Very instructive. It's almost like you ought to u leave a third grade year off of it since it's not comparable. And I
109did dig into the what you you told us a little bit of why it's not comparable. And then the longer report you gave us, I did click on that and say there are lots of reasons why it's not comparable, but I'm looking at how many high-risisk in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade. Oh my gosh, it it looks like u it communicates the uh um an incorrect impression. Yeah. Until you read the details, right? Yeah. If you have third grade on there, you almost need a big bar, an asterisk, and all that. Um and that um the um that reminds me that with the we we have heard some feedback from the field and this may get to your communication issue but uh particularly with young teachers teaching younger kids the test taking time
110is just so substantial and I and I remember I did know when we were administering the pal using the pals I did have some concept that it was administered one to one right teachers I don't know whether bows that way and how long does it take and I understand why we're doing it three times a year and I understand we're getting incredible information out of that but uh what what can you tell us about the amount of time necessary we we are just you know between the vows and the comparable math assessments and starting at third grade SOS etc we're just taking an awful lot of time for assessment y um can you speak to that a little bit sure I can absolutely speak to that so Um, we anticipated this for this year, especially
111in the fall because it was a brand new assessment and it does when you're giving a new assessment, it takes longer per child. It is a one-on-one assessment um for most of the subtests. Um, and we did things um and we continue. So, the the screening is a living system, right? And we always looking at the data to make sure it's functioning as it should be and that we still we need to give all items that we're giving. So, and what I mean by that is we have made some decisions to make the testing time shorter. So, we can predict like if for example, if a child gets the first three items wrong, it's very unlikely they're going to get any other correct. And so, we have implemented stopping stopping rules. So, that of course
112helps with time. And then the other thing we did is we when we run the analyses around the screener, we look to see which subtests are serving us and which are not. um when we first implement you implement more subtests than you will ever need. That's just the way assessments are developed and then you pull out ones that aren't giving you essential information. And so we are have been going through that process. So it took a while in the fall and it took much less time in the midyear. And one of the reasons why it takes much less time in midyear is because um we're only giving the decoding part of the measure, not the language. The language is only required in the fall and the end of the year and that's because on language
113you would not expect enough growth between fall and mid of midyear for the data to be reliable. So we are making adjustments um as more and more data comes in um to shorten the assessment. I I said this to Michelle this morning said I don't want anyone spending any more time on this than they have to because I want teachers to be teaching the content, right? And I don't want to stress teachers out with assessments. So we are making those adjustments and we are stop rules and getting rid of assessments and items that just aren't serving. And with all that, how long anticipate the assessment taking? Yeah. What's your goal for fall of 25? How long it's going to take? So the honestly the decoding part of it should not be more more than 10
114minutes per child. And once teach once once kids um teachers have given it a few times we are getting feedback into our because because we have a hotline 8 to5 we hear all the complaints the screener so we had a lot of complaints in the fall and we anticipated that and then we're hearing mid year okay this I got this I don't this is going much faster um and then the the language part which is only the fall and the end of the year should take 10 So 20 minutes total in the fall and spring per. Yeah. Yeah. And we're the only screening system that has the language. No other state is collecting screening level language dedicated to which is so it's unique. Um and I think one of the uh maybe surprises or complaints
115or whatever you know frustrations that were coming to teachers was before we were only collecting decoding data and now we're asking them to do something new collect the language but it's collecting that language data is essential for understanding reading comprehension development. Maybe one of the things you and I'm sorry madam president this will be my last at the moment but but uh one of the things you can do in the communications level is communicate to teachers it is our goal yeah to have this take no more than x minutes per child help us get there right and then I will I will also say that um we we have done a lot of surveys of teachers about their experience with the screener and also a bunch of focus groups and um we got a lot
116you know we got a lot of good feedback and we've taken that feedback to sort of change our practice which is really important to the extent that we can because we want to make sure we have a reliable and valid screener, right? Um but we do it after each testing window. And one of the important things we got feedback we got was yes, this took a little bit more time than I thought it was going to, but the data I'm getting from the system is so important to my instruction that it's worth the time. So, um so I think that's important for people to know. It can be a shock. Oh my gosh, we are we're testing a lot. But it gets quicker over time. And also the data is really important for instructional purposes.
117I think we all agree testing just to test is not No. Uh Miss McFerson get high level reliable results from a period of time. So given the fact that it looks like English learners, economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities are struggling or in more the high-risisk category. Is there some type of data collection where we can look at the number of reading specialists, the tutoring that's being provided, the funding that's being provided, so we can see what resources are going to make a difference. Is there some crosswalk maybe we can build as we're going through this? Yeah, you know, it's interesting because um thinking about and I will let my colleagues also answer this because um they know more from the department um side, but we do have the division literacy plan data. Um and there
118is a way in which you can overlay the screening data with the division lupend data of what curriculum they're using what interventions they're using and use that to look at outcomes for different subgroups of kids. We haven't gone down that road but the data is available. Um I don't think it's going to be your call to say are we putting the best resources where the resources need to be and wait three to five years to be able to answer that question. We need this interwalk as you're going along. Right. I think it's it's a really a good point and I do think there are data available for us to get at that earlier. We just have to develop the systems to integrate them. There is collaborate. I just like to make that as a a
119suggestion and that way when we get these reports on this UA partnership, it could include something that talks about what our successes are or where we definely need. Okay, we have a little bit more left in this presentation, but Superintendent Gixson, uh, just on behalf of the team at the department, we're so grateful for the collaboration and partnership with UVA and your team, Dr. Sari, and so we're excited to collaborate on some of these next steps the board highlighted today. And just thank you for all you're doing for our earliest learners, especially to help them be uh, ready for reading. Thank you. and and this is um I think when I think about all the things I do in my day, this partnership is just so amazing and the fact that we're very quickly translating
120research into practice through this partnership um I think that's unique um to Virginia. So, thank you all very much. All right, I'll be really really brief. We're going to get to your Memorial Day coffee look, so don't worry about it. All right, very very briefly putting all of this together, where are we going next as VL and VDOE and a partnership and supporting standards English implementation and VLA. So just a very very brief look um looking at summer as I shared the division literacy plan uh bianial submissions are coming in. So that's going to be happening. Um, we're also going to continue those literacy office hours with VP to kind of support school divisions as they're moving in the 4 to8 space. Um, as I shared earlier, they we are hosting those bi-weekly right now.
121When we move into the summer, they will move to weekly so that we can support divisions and get them be responsive to their needs as they're getting ready for 4 through eight implementation. Um, we are also going to be speaking. I also know VLP will be speaking at the Virginia Association of Elementary School Principles to kind of support. We're also going to share some of the four through eight information in that space and ask them to share with their secondary counterparts so that they have that information and support. Um like I shared earlier we are supporting ourou divisions with some prof dayong professional development sessions and then of course we have some virtual support that we are anticipating looking into the fall again we're going to have webinars and resources that that will cover the
122next few slides. We're going to look at that walkthrough tool implementation and that's really going to look at that core curriculum and how you're using it and how you are engaging students in the work um to really get at those evidence-based literacy instruction practices and supporting divisions and building leaders as they support literacy instruction. Again, once we get through summer, because we know how much is on the plate of schools and school divisions, those office hours will move back to bi-weekly. But if you weren't aware, we do have a VLA inbox where we collect questions all the time anyway and share responses as well. Um, as Dr. Solari shared, we have the VA curriculum review cycle ongoing. Valves for 4 through8 is going to start and then of course we have different collaborative support that
123is ongoing with the office assessment. Uh as we think about upcoming standard setting committees and item review committees and looking at that 2024 standards implementation, uh we're supporting the office of school quality as they're reaching out for technical assistance and supporting divisions and then working with humanities, STEM, and math to provide instructional support in cross-disciplinary literacy practices. So that is all ongoing. The next five slides, this is your coffee on Monday. All right, these are the sessions that we are going to be offering this fall that are in response to requests from the field based on webinars and virtual support and in-person convenings and stakeholder feedback sessions. What do you need? Where are we going? How can we support you this fall? So, this just kind of gives you the menu. Uh we anticipate this
124will come out in a Virginia Education Update article tomorrow. Uh and so schools will have this before they even leave for the summer so that teachers, educators, reading specialists, building leaders, and division level leaders can sign up to attend these webinars. Uh we're going to be looking at foundational skills for foundations for reading, foundations for writing in K2 and in 35 kind of in a three-part series. We're going to look at planning for integration and how you take our 10 strands together. We're going to look at purposeful planning structures and PLC development and how can we capitalize on the strengths of our teachers and reading specialists to kind of support all learners within a school. Uh we're going to look at using data to support foundations for reading and foundations for writing. Really honing in
125on text dependent questions and really looking at text evidence and looking at deep engagement with text because that is so critical in English language arts. Um, we're also going to look at effective student practices for foundational skills. We're going to hit up um intellectual preparation and planning. We're going to offer sessions on writing instruction, not just assigning writing, but actually writing instruction and what that looks like at every grade level and how that supports reading comprehension as well. Um, we're going to look at encoding specifically to kind of support our earliest learners. And then we're going to be looking at analyzing and interpreting data to drive instructional practices. So this is just kind of taking us to December and we will regroup because we will have feedback opportunities and surveys at the end of each
126of these sessions to kind of see what the next steps are that are necessary and where our teachers and leaders want to go next. And so we will plan our spring based on the needs of the field, based on what we're seeing from Val's reports, based on what we're seeing from so results, and we will just kind of go from there. So these are just our next steps for the first half of the school year, but we're really, really excited about that. Excited for the opportunity and hope that you are seeing through this very long presentation that you have all been so patient for kind of a comprehensive wraparound support from all aspects of the agency. many many many um offices within the agency BLP and the department to support literacy instruction. So, thank you
127so much again. Feel free to check those out on Monday morning. And if you have any questions, we appreciate you uh scheduling our weekend out for us. I got you. Just going to make sure that I have no other plans. Um Dr. Northern, cue the broken record. What I'd love to see in the PDU is some focus on how do you develop text sets and how do you drive instruction around a contentrich approach as opposed to a skill-based approach. Absolutely. because I've been talking about this for a couple years now and um I I just I still don't think we've hit it as hard as we can given that what we know about the importance of contentrich instruction and and having kids read all this great enriching exciting text and that we lead with that
128instead of you know develop a five paragraph essay on blah blah blah right um so anyway I feel like teachers don't know how to do that um and I would love to actually see at least some attention given to PD on that especially since I did see a reference to text sets but I didn't see a name of any of the text sets how to group them together how to make sure that text complexity you know builds on each other how how to make sure that the content that we're assigning actually builds on each other as well so there's a lot packed into that approach um that I would love to see someone and maybe um hire someone um that can talk about that particular approach details of all the we are doing that professional
129development. So um because agreed super important and and in particular when we're working with content area teachers around because they do also have to be they have to get training. It's not the same as our ELA teachers but is really what we're looking on is how do you link together content rich instruction with literacy development. So it is a part of the PD that our teachers are getting currently. Okay. Thank you all so much. Um we're going to take about a five minute break now so that just so that you all are aware, we're going to um move to item G because we do have um some people who have planes to catch that we need to move them around a little bit. So, some of these presentations we're going to have to move for
130time purposes. Um, we're going to move to item G when we return. Thank you. Item G, uh, standard setting committee update, please. Good morning, everyone. I know. I'm trying to practice patience. Really, it's not that slow. There we go. Oh my gosh, it is that slow. Okay, good morning. Um, my name is Maryanne Perry and I am a technical adviser to the Virginia Department of Education. Um, I serve on technical advisory committees across the country. I'm with several different states. Um, but I'm not on your technical advisory committee. I've been brought in specifically to work on standard setting. Um, I've been doing standard setting workshops since 1999 was my first one. Um, and I've worked in over 35 states, six countries, four districts, etc., etc. So, and NAPE. Um, so you've heard about standard setting
131first from our two of our TC members. First, Christo Mleski, um, and then Greg Cisac last month. and we're going to try and see if we can keep it a little more standard for you moving forward that I'll just be back and you'll get to know me. Um, at the last meeting you asked for more information on two pieces. One was how we were going to determine reasonable blanges and two more information about how we were picking panelists. So I am here today to give you updates on those two issues. One thing I did want to tell you, I currently live in Kansas City. Um, but I grew up in uh the DC suburbs and I went to school at University of Virginia. So, I this is very dear to my heart to be back
132in the Commonwealth. Um, I said all that. Okay. So, I wanted to to go back and and kind of reorient us about what we're doing and what the um policy is behind what we're working on. Um, this one I'm just going to go ahead and click because there should be several things flying through here and they're not. There we go. This is the um map that shows state cut scores mapped onto the Nate scale. This is the one that has been raising all the concern because you can't see it from your seats, but Virginia is at the very bottom of here in grade four reading. And what that means is not that Virginia students are doing the worst. It means that Virginia has the least rigorous cut score for proficiency in the country. Um, come
133on flying things. At the very top is is Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Um there we go. So that is one of the areas we are looking for is the states that have the most rigorous cut scores. Um the other thing I just want to point out is is what we mean by an honesty gap is that in this particular piece you can see we have the lowest cut score but it doesn't tell you anything about what percentage of kids are meeting it. So to let you know we have on NAPE I believe it's who 32% of students are meeting proficiency in NAPE and 78 on Virginia. So it's that we're getting such different information from a national test than from our state test that that's considered the honesty gap. Okay. So that's what I wanted
134to show you and say this is what we're working to to change is say let's raise the rigor of cut scores in Virginia. raise expectations for students. Uh because I think one of the lessons learned from No Child Left Behind is when we first started 2002 to 2005, raising standards actually did seem to raise achievement. Um gosh, there we go. Okay. So, to raise achievement, I think I went one too far. Um yeah, there we go. All right. So, to raise our our rigors, a couple things we're doing. one you've already done which is adopting more rigorous standards of learning that are college and career ready. So check the other thing we do is we look at our performance level descriptors. So putting into words what does it mean to be basic, proficient, advanced. So
135those always need to be realigned when you update your content standards. But we've also brought in information from those states I mentioned, Rhode Island, um Massachusetts, Maryland, states that do have the more rigorous cut scores. So we brought in those PLLDs as well to look at them and say are there things that we could pull in from these other states that are relevant to Virginia and would help us increase the rigor uh appropriately. And then finally we are looking to u run a strong workshop. So we are identifying these ranges that we're going to say these are reasonable ranges to set the cut scores. And reasonable range means it's around a nate efficiency around a nate basic cut score. um but not exactly. If we wanted to do that exactly, you don't need to run
136a whole committee. Uh any of us psychometricians could just find the cut score on the Virginia test that matches NAPE. Um that's cheap and easy, but does not build confidence in educators um participation in the community and understanding of what we're trying to do and and some really good feedback that I think we need. So, it's just going to be used as a guide. So what I wanted to talk about is these reasonable ranges um on a scale. What we're going to show is the scale is continuous. So what is it 200 to 600? 100 to 600 to 600. Thank you. My muse is back there. um 0 to 600 scale. So we currently set a cut score at um or 100 for proficient. Okay, come on. This is so much easier with a visual.
137There we go. Um so what we're looking at here is we can say how do we set these cut scores so that we are getting this reasonable range. Now what we look at as I said we've got 32% of kids are proficient in NAPE fourth grade reading. So I can look at NAPE fourth grade reading and I can find that point where kids are 32% proficient. One thing about every assessment, NAPE, Virginia, NWA, doesn't matter. Every assessment has what we call standard error of measurement. Means if you take the test over and over and over again, you'll get slightly different scores every time. Um that's just the nature of the game we're in. So, we can use that error and actually put a confidence interval around that initial cut score and say, you know, students
138who were really about at proficiency could be anywhere here on the Virginia scale. And so, we're using that to say this is the reasonable range. So, if I'm moving that scale, you could see I could include more students or I could exclude more students depending on whether I'm going up or down. Next, what I'm doing here with this ordered item booklet is for all of your three through eight assessments. This is a a cat, a computer adaptive test. So, there is no one form of items I can grab. So, we put together pseudo forms where we match the blueprint, but we really try to get a range of items in terms of difficulty. Difficulty as as defined by us psychometricians is simply how many kids answer this item right? Easiest item is the one the
139most kids answer right. The hardest item is the one the most kids get wrong. So that's always going to be a point when we talk through with teachers is they say this item is not that easy. Why is it listed as easy? And we have to talk through well why is it easy? It's a tough concept but maybe the three distractors are so obvious that it's it's an easy item. Um, but we talk through this this ordered item booklet from easy to hard. And within this ordered item booklet, then we can mark sections to say here's where our reasonable ranges will be. So, as panelists are actually walking through this booklet, and they'll be doing this electronically, um, they can see where the reasonable ranges are. Okay. Sure. Miss Holton, thanks. Thanks, Dr. Perry. Uh,
140the item to order booklet uh ordering you said is based on how many students get the question right and that will be based on our 2025 uh assessment administration, the one that's ongoing now or just finishing. Is that right? because we do have new tests based on new standards. If somebody else knows the answer better, feel I'm sorry. I just want to double check because I'm a little a little nervous about misspeaking. But um the ordered item booklet is actually based on our banked values for each item, which means they come from 2024 was the last time they were updated. When we get to the point about what percentage of kids will be in each of these levels, we'll be bringing in 25 2025 data. So, I'm sorry. I don't understand that because the the
141the 20 the 2024 banked assessment questions, we've now added new questions and we've changed questions because our standards are different in 2025. So will how the students do, how many students get questions right this spring uh fold into the ordered item booklet. Yeah. Um we could do that. The problem was the timing. Um we won't have all the data in in time to actually use that to to create the ordered item booklet. So we use the banked scores. So, field test scores for the newer items, banked scores for the old items. We use that to create the ordered item booklet. I don't think we have field test scores from before this year. These test questions weren't created. I'm told we did, so I apologize, but um but yeah, we field tested in 2024 and so
142brand new items are being Can we get the person who knows the answers to these questions? Hi. All of the items in the ordered item books item ordered item set were field test field tested with Virginia students. So we have underlying data for all of those items all the items in the ordered item sets that are based off of real Virginia student data. And when were they when was that done? They would they would have been administered either last year or in previous years. Remember, we had to reign all of the item banks to the new standards. So any item that's being administered this year has been realigned to new standards. And in some cases, we were able to field test some items that would also have that underlying Virginia date. I didn't mean to
143interrupt. We We can come back to this if need be. Thanks. No, these are great questions and I apologize. I'm not as strong on the history of the item bank as I should be. I I meant it to be a quick question. I'll save my other questions to um so this is a a real live example of an ordered item booklet. Um again, this one has what does it say? 62 pages in it, I believe. And so as the as the panelists are going through it, they're going to see white pages and then the pages are going to turn gold. I mean, maybe a different color. I may not have the colors right, but it's going to turn to a different color. When they see gold, they'll know they're going to be in the me
144in the range of this is a somewhere in here is where basic cut score we would like to go. And again, they see more white. Then they'll see blue and know that's approximately where we want proficient. They'll see white, they'll see green, approximately where we want it. So they'll have those cues. Um, and so this is how we are implementing these reasonable ranges are just visually letting our panelists know it's somewhere in here. If you if you think that this is the point in the ordered item booklet where the the um knowledge and skills required by the item matches the knowledge and skills of the next performance level. If that matches within this range, then this is a really good place to place a bookmark. I did that again. Oh my goodness. I swear I
145only kicked twice. Come on. There we go. Okay. So, I do want to just reinforce the task itself, which is to remember that what we're asking every one of our panelists to do is to go through our performance level scriptors and really understand and internalize what it means. What do you need to know and be able to do before I'm willing to call you on the basic level? then what do you know and be a or able to do before I'm willing to call you at the proficient level and then what should you know and be able to do before I can call you advanced. So they've got all these skills everything written out. It has been reviewed by both our instructional and our assessment teams at VDOE. Um these are being used by Pearson
146to actually write items that measure these skills and make these distinctions. So they're looking at these performance level descriptors and then for every item they will go through from that first easiest item in the booklet through the last hardest item in the booklet and say what do I have to know and be able to do to answer this item correctly and then match it to the PLLD and Greg went through an exercise with you last month about how this is really done. But that is the exercise. So as they're going through and they get to this is a bunch of um below basics and basics and now we're switching between below basic and basic. And so I'm seeing that area. We're hopeful that that area will also overlap with the reasonable range. If it does
147not, panelists have permission to put it where they think is the best match between the items and the PLLDS. The big thing on this this task and what we're trying to do is is what's called alignment. We want to align expectations. We've got aligning the SOS, the standards themselves to the test items, aligning them to the performance level description, and we've got to align that cut score to that performance level description. So, what these next two slides are that popped up briefly and I'm going to show you again is is how much how many items folks have um to choose from to get through these reasonable ranges. One thing to keep in mind, I can't remember which one I put first now, but between math and reading, you'll see diff differences. One of the differences
148you'll see is in the number of iting items and how much space there is between the ranges. Um, the reason for that is reading is always associated with a passage. So, items are clustered. So, we can't just pick items that match a nice range of difficulty because then we end up with, well, there's 24 passages you have to read for these 50 items, which is not what the kids have to do. So, we try and bring in passages in their clusters and then spread the items out across the difficulty. So, you end up with a little bit more of a of a clustered booklet. Math, we can they're all discreet items. You can pick one at a time and make sure that they really are There we go. Okay. So, reading is the one that
149is close together. So there you can see though they're broad ranges. So they've got a lot of items to choose through for um basic is yellow or gold. Uh proficient is the blue and advanced is the green. Now there are fewer items at in the green level. So, that is one thing we've just noticed for noted for ourselves is that one of the things we need to put into our to-do list as we're building future assessments is write more rigorous items so that kids up at the upper level of the scale can show us that they have the knowledge and skills up there and they can actually show growth. Um, so you'll see we have much fewer much more many more items that are actually fairly easy and probably do not distinguish among our kids.
150So, we're going to work on on changing that over the next few years, but this is what we have right now. This is a a technical quick question. I was wrong before. Yes, Alton. Am I yellow is the basic, blue is proficient and green is advanced. Yep. And blue proficient is what will constitute passing the so in Virginia. Correct. Thank you. I was right. As the Miss McFersonson, I'm sorry. As the panel is going through the questions categories, is it a majority of the panel members that vote and that majority vote will tell you where they the cut off is? Are you trying to find somewhere in the blue where they say maybe question number 323? Most of the panelists thought that was the cut off point. Correct. So what we'll do is standard setting
151itself almost any standard setting is a combination of individual judgments and group discussion. So the very first round they'll make individual judgments about how which which PLLD each item matches to and then say so I think this is where the cut score would go. Pearson psychometricians crunch all that and bring it back into the room and say let's talk about the items where a lot of you disagreed. These are the items half of you thought was basic, half of thought were proficient. Let's talk about this item. And then we talk about the cut scores and say, "Okay, so right now your cut scores for proficient range between item 26 and 33." So let's talk about items 26 and 33. Why why did some of you put your cut score at 26? Why some at 33?
152Where do you really see that knowledge and skills changing from the basic description to the profession description? And so that's done over three rounds. Independent judgment, talk, do another independent judgment. Good. Um, was that the question point anyway on the reasonable ranges? So, you saw the reasonable ranges are a little smaller for mathematics because we could get um specific targets in there. Other questions on how we're doing reasonable ranges? Dr. Northern, do you still have a question? So, um maybe it's not a question as much as um a concern. So, if these bands for advance are so much more narrower, I'm assuming that we're not going to have the power to identify as many uh kids in this range because we don't have as many items to measure that range. And I guess my my
153concern is that our proficiency index, the way that we set it up, is if you go from proficient to advance, right, you're going to get additional weight for doing that. And I'm concerned that um schools are not going to get that weight if we actually have a poor way of measuring advanced performance. So what I don't have in these slides is the difference between um or the mapping between a cut score on the ordered item booklet to a percentage. So I don't have that information. What I do have again this was the um NAPE advance which I want to say was like four to six% in Virginia. So that's where it mapped to on these items is only four to six% will end up advanced. Um again panelists will have the the flexibility of saying
154I want to put something a little earlier for the reason you gave but this again is how do we map things to the NAPE standard and try and get closer to what the national score looks like. Um, but yes, if if we are finding that kids are topping out, I mean, it shouldn't even if you only have a couple of items that measure advanced, it shouldn't top them out necessarily because you can still answer them correctly. But over the years, we absolutely need to work on writing more advanced items and getting this more evened out, which will be easier to do once we have the cut scores, have the final PLLDS, and can give that to the vendor to write items directly to that level. Thank you. Anything else on reasonable ranges? Because the second
155topic is panelists. So I'm going to go to that next. Yep. Bolton, just so I understand the reasonable ranges the the the goal the guides we are giving the panel participants is to the goal is to realign our so proficiency cut score around NAPE proficiency cut scores. Right. Where it's reasonable. Yeah. Uh and and you described that you correctly cited that on average our our Virginia students um performance on NATE proficiency is around 32% and our SOS is around 78%. So if I'm doing my math right, we are we're if your panelists follow your guidance, we're going to be basically doubling the failure rate on the SOS in Virginia. Is that an a helpful way to understand this? It's a pessimistic way, but yes, I think that is an accurate way to understand it. Okay.
156Thank you. Let me ask a question. If that being the case, is that a really reliable answer though? So if what Miss Holton said that essentially we're going to be saying that that that percentage of kids between 38 and 73, is it is it a is it a statistically accurate way to portray that then I guess we're all going to fail or those kids are all going to fail? Um, you know, it's funny under under no the no child left behind rules which started in 01. We're now in ESSA, but the word failure is a little jarring to me because we talk about below basic, basic, proficient, advanced. Our tests are all on grade level. So, kids who are even right at the basic cut score are answering some items on grade level. Um, you
157know, one of the things we struggle in any kind of workshop where we work with teachers is the word should is well, when you finish third grade, you should know this. And the answer is, well, yes, when you finish every grade, you should have straight A's. But guess what? That doesn't really happen. So, how do we take the knowledge and skills kids are gaining in grade four reading, put it on a continuum, and say, "This is the most advanced, this is proficient, this is basic, this is below basic." Now, in Virginia, you've chosen to call those last two, those lower two levels failing. Um, but these kids are still doing something on grade level. So, I wouldn't say these are F students by any stretch or E depending on which grade scale you use. Um,
158it's just not at the level we want them to be at. And I think as I said earlier when we started No Child Left Behind is we found as we raise the um rigor of the cut score achievement did go up. We did see where we failed is this 100% and what happened when people realized I'll never make a 100% proficiency is the states almost unilaterally went in and started lowering cut scores because that was the only way to get there. And we saw achievement drop after that. Mr. Rotherham. Yeah. And I mean, I guess I will remind us of the no trial left behind experience. The states that were saying we're never going to get to 100. They were at 30. They were at 20. That was such a tomorrow problem. And yet they
159were here saying we can't possibly. And everybody knew the law would be reauthorized. It would be changed those scales. But you had states that had one in five, one in three kids proficient were like, we'll never get to 100. And it was like, can we talk about getting to 50 maybe? And instead, that was the push back. And can we just be on I see the game here. Half the kids are going to fail. That's going to be the headline. We live in a state, and I will remind you this is grade eight math where if you look, and I'd be happy we can we I think we should post this data uh more. When you look at low-income kids in this state, only half of them uh are past basic and the national the
160commissioner of the national center of education statistics and IIEES came and stood before us and said look people can disagree about proficiency. If you are below basic you are fundamentally unprepared for opportunities. That's any of the things we're talking about with the three E that's excuse me that's your ability to have a uh a life of some kind of choices. um half. And so we can sit and we can play these games and so forth or we can say that if we're going to be honest in any meaningful way about how kids are doing and how prepared they are. There's going to be some bad news. We're going to have to figure out how to support and weather it and we're going to have to talk about what we're going to do. But we're not
161going to get anywhere if we continue to say this this game that has been going on for decades now. And not just in Virginia again with the no child behind example of just kicking this off or figuring out what kind of story do we want to tell. The NATE tells us something. It's a it's a it's a nationally representative sample of students. It tells us something we should pay attention to. And I don't know how anybody who purports to care about equity can be, you know, at all comfortable with 14% of black eth graders um at or above proficient. 18% of Hispanic eighth graders at or above proficient. And you can back out from there. Half below basic, half of those kids unprepared on our watch, on the watch of the people who came before
162us. And so we can play these games all day long. And future boards can continue to play them. Or we can say that if we start having standards that are actually meaningful, say where we need to get kids, that there's going to be some bad news. We're going to have to invest in this system. We're going to have to do more to help low performing schools, but we're going to have to actually get serious about that or we can continue to do this. And I'll just close by saying this should not be it should not matter who is sitting uh on the third floor of Patrick Henry. It should not matter who is in the governor's mansion or who was in the legislature. This honesty gap nomenclature we use that was Arie Duncan. He was
163President Obama's Secretary of Education, superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, who a few months ago congratulated us on the direction we're going on accountability and transparency because it's important. So, this should not be a partisan issue or anything else. It should just be a question of what are we actually going to do to move forward. I'm sorry to take so much air time, but we keep having this conversation. I've had two terms on this board where it's always about these questions about what is it going to look like and so forth. We're again, we're at that gut check moment and we're either going to say we're going to do this and we're going to really hope that future boards and future administrations uh you know support uh kids who are who are further from opportunity
164here address this that we actually get really serious about intervening in low performing schools u much more than we have. Um or we can continue to go down this road and it's a it's a bad road um for individuals and it's a bad road for the Commonwealth if we want to maintain be competitive maintain our business climate and so forth. I just hope we can get to the what are we going to do to help kids get there and stop arguing about whether or not we should be honest about where the bar is. Madame President Holton, uh I'm certainly I I I hope we're not playing games. I don't think anybody here is is playing games. I think we're all focused on how to help our students succeed. I'm most excited about things we're doing.
165Uh the Virginia Literacy Act work we heard about earlier that's actually helping students learn better. I'm excited about what we're doing for teacher pay, which I think is going to help us move towards a high-quality teacher in every classroom, which is something that actually helps children learn more on how we measure students and how we assess students. I I think there are are there's room to disagree. And I just want us to be sure that we're clear and that the public's clear. We're not talking about having a measurement where half kids fail. We're actually talking about 68% of kids failing the SOS if uh if they're aligned as as suggested to NAPE uh proficiency. And that's you know that's an approach you can take to assessment and and as we've heard there are division there
166are states that have done that but my point is we then need to look at all the other ways we use SOS that we're not just using them as part of our accountability framework we use them for graduation requirements so one of the big implications we need to consider I would submit as a board is does a student who has mastered ed the basic level of information for their end ofear course but not mastered the complex all the complex information required for high NAPE proficiency should that child be able to graduate and the the the changes we're going through if we don't make other adjustments are going to cause problems for kids graduating a lot of kids and and that question really doesn't go to you Dr. period. That's really how we use these assessments.
167But I think it is important for us to understand. We've asked for modeling and we haven't gotten it. But it's important to understand that if this process standard setting process goes as planned, then the the cut score that determines the who passes and who fails is going to go up such that we're going to go from having 70 78% passed to 32% passed. That's, you know, meaning 68% failing if my math is accurate. I will say that I know this conversation is exactly what the panelists will be having in two weeks is when they're looking at the final results and saying, "Is this what we want? Is this what we mean?" So, that is part of what we will be um documenting for you is how all of these panelists have felt, where they put
168the cut score, how they justified it, what their belief was, and why this was the best place for it. and we'll bring that back to you um to talk about their input qualitatively, not just qualit quantitatively as well to answer some of that because they'll have the same debate um within the guidance that you're giving them. Yeah, I mean as as a technical person, I can set up a standard setting to follow any policy guidance. Policy guidance I've been given is to try and reduce the honesty gap between Virginia assessments and NAPE. So that is what this this is designed to do. Um, and I'm excited with how well I think it's working. I think the one other thing I forgot to say, and I believe member Holton, this came from your suggestion from last
169month. Um, but the idea was, can we show the panelists actual NAPE items? So, they can see are NAPE items all that different from Virginia items. So, during the training, they will actually see what a NATE proficient item looks like in grade four and eight and what a NATE proficient item looks like in grade four and eight reading. So they can look at those, look at the NAPE pls and say, "Here's what we're doing." So we're going to have them actually practice on NATE first and do that little exercise sort of like Greg did with you last month. We'll do it with some NAPE items so they get a feel for it and say, "Is this the level we're looking for before they ever even start working with Virginia items?" I'm president. Mr. Rotherham. Okay.
170While we're on this and we'll get back and I know this is policy, so this is not what you do implement the policy. It's our job to design it. I do think an area where there's some common ground. We are going to have to have conversations. I think Miss Holton is right. These things they extend out into the system in a variety of ways. We need to be thoughtful about that. That's a policy conversation that this board future boards will will need to have. And probably if history is any guide refine no is a constant process of refinement. I would just respectfully submit the only way to really productively have that is to say this is what the standard is. again in our considered judgment. We should all have some humility about um you know
171standard setting is a human process of professional judgment um based on a number of things including we do know these tests matter. These are not abstract things and it's important that parents understand that that how your kid does these things are predictive. How your kid is doing in math in 8th grade is highly predictive. Are they reading um uh in third and fourth grade highly predictive for future success. So these are not sort of arbitrary things. But once we have a have that then it's I think appropriate to make policy judgments on okay as kids move through the system and are doing different things what should that look like? I just don't know how you have any of those conversations have any of the conversations on resources and investment have any of the conversations on
172what we need to do to actually intervene in low performing schools instead of admiring them decade after decade. how you do any of that if you're not being honest about where we are and and leveling with people. And so I look forward to those conversations. I don't think we should be setting any of this uh in stone, but I just don't know how we get there if we are not transparent um about where kids need to be, why, and where we've been falling short on that. Dr. Northern. Yeah, I just have a a comment and then I think a little bit of a technical question. Um my comment is that in just my own um conversations with teachers and educators, they know that the bar has been falling, right? Like they are also frustrated uh
173in terms of kids um sort of not realizing the seeing that the expectations have dropped in some cases and and some of that's been proven, right? We we know that the COVID uh era has ushered in um some lower expectations above and beyond what we had already. Um and and everybody, the whole nation is is struggling with um trying to get these expectations up again um because they were lowered and we didn't have a resetting. Um and we're trying to convince everybody like we need to do the resetting because if we don't, we're damaging kids long term in terms of their likelihood of getting a middle class income, in terms of their likelihood of being able to, you know, support a a family, so on so forth. Um, so I will say that um that
174that is extra important given that we're coming out of the pandemic, this reigning of higher expectations because we can't set the new normal at the lower bar that we set during the pandemic because we were in a pandemic. Um and my other point is just a little technical question I think on your slide uh where you talk about you're assuming that the I'm on slide nine where you say we assume the percentage at basic proficient and advance would change evenly for grades three through eight and the EOC on Yep. Um I'm trying to figure out I understand that that's a an equation right and an assumption you're building into the modeling. Um, but why would we want to make that assumption that the percentage at each of those levels would change evenly for those grade
175levels? So, a couple of reasons and this goes back to um when we're figuring out that confidence interval around um the SC the Virginia scale using the NATE proficiency. We can do it straight on for grades four and eight because we have NATE four and eight tests. We do not have NATE tests in three, five, six, seven and a course. Um so what member northern is asking me about is is we have the data for grade four, we have the data for grade eight. So we have to imputee the data for grades or extract it for three and impute it for grades um four through five through seven. So in this particular case couple of things one is the differences were not huge. If you had 52% in grade four and 18% in grade eight,
176we would have had more talk about how do we decide what should it be for five, six, and seven. In this case, it was really close, like I think two percentage points. So, when we looked at our scale, it really isn't much of a movement. So to move it evenly, um, one of the things we do, and I think you've you've heard about this in previous, uh, meetings, but we do a what we call vertical articulation at the end of a standard setting where we look to see does it make sense the percentage of students proficient from grades three through end of course. And the reason we do that is because it it literally doesn't make sense to say 60% of our kids are proficient in grade three and 20 at grade four and 80
177in grade five and 30 at grade six. Teachers don't understand it. parents don't understand. It just isn't logical. So, having a more smooth transition as our starting assumption um is something we use to to just say we want this to be to be um to make sense. So, we want a parent who says, "My child was just barely proficient in third grade. I'm nervous to see how they're going to do in fourth grade. Will they be a high basic or low proficient?" It shouldn't be the scale that throws them, oh no, they're advanced now or they're below basic. No, it's we want the scale to not be the one thing that's throwing kids back and forth into different ranges. Thank you, Mr. Rotherham. This is also to be clear why we use a range and
178a reasonable range because there we don't want to create some sort of false precision where if you're what's whatever side of you know 50 or 90 or whatever you're on that that it's a it's a range recognizing that there's to be noise. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, there's absolutely noise. The confidence intervals are actually fairly broad. Um, we've looked at it in terms of what if we pick the lowest, what if we pick the highest, what would the percentage look like? It is a pretty decent range. We're not going to go up to the percent proficient we had in the past, but we may also not drop down to 68% failing be somewhere in between that and I think be helpful if you just explain what a confidence interval is. I think there's probably people watching wondering
179like is that you know those are those are words whose plain plain letter meaning and how they're used in this context are pretty different. Yeah. You know I used to be able to talk about this with um current events and I've gotten so old my current events are no longer working. But what I used to say see if this rings a bell with anybody is remember on Men in Black they had that little device we could do a blinky thing and erase someone's memory for the past hour. So, if I could sit you down and have you take a test, give you a blinky thing, have you take the exact same test, give you a blinky thing, take the exact same test, give you a blinky thing, you would not get the exact same score
180every single time. That is what we call measurement of error. Error and measurement. Sorry, got that backwards. Me error and measurement. Um, and we put a confidence interval around that to say this is what you would get. your true score is somewhere between all of these individual scores you got when I kept using the blinky thing on you. Okay, so we're putting the confidence interval saying we think your score is a 400, but it's plus or minus 20 points. Um, and we see this all the time in political polling is probably where it's most familiar to people is because they're sampling people from across the United States, not asking every single voter. They are they are saying we think we've got 50% voting for this guy plus or minus 4%. It's that same idea only
181now we're looking at the items rather than the people. So I think it makes sense to go on to the committee member selection because a lot of what we just talked about came through so clearly in these applications. Um so we have been working through both the educator and the community member applications. Um we put together a very kind of rigorous application for everybody with a lot of open-ended questions. And then we developed a rubric to analyze the open-ended questions and talk about what are we really looking for. And I actually wanted to make sure I wasn't just remembering things from my experience. And I pulled out the literature. And it is we want to pick panelists uh with who understand three things. One is do they know the content. Two is are they familiar
182with the students the population I should say because we use this in lure 2. But do they understand the population that they're working with? and do they understand the consequences of what they're doing? So those are that's what sort of drove the rubric is that people got more points if they demonstrated they had experience in those three areas. Um and with students we would ask about are you familiar have you worked with students um that come from different backgrounds such as lowes. We asked specifically about English learners specifically about students with disabilities and really looked for people who have experience with a wide variety of students. I've got to start remember to push next five minutes before I want to talk. Um, there we go. Okay. So, um, when we were looking at this, one
183really important factor was looking across Virginia. We wanted to make sure we had representation across all eight superintendent regions of Virginia. Um, we know the largest population is up in Northern Virginia, but we didn't want all the uh participants coming from Northern Virginia. So, that was true for both educators and community members. Um, educators, we also gave higher priority to those with more teaching experience. They've been around longer. They've seen these changes. That's going to give them a little more of an edge. Excuse me. Um, and we're setting up the whole thing so that we have about 70% teachers, 30% community members on this panel. And that's going to be my biggest juggling act over the next couple weeks is that we set it up so we invited that, but of course now not everybody
184can come. So, as we're trying to jump those hoops to get this all arranged, we're still working through that. um and community members. We also looked a little bit further to business community, higher ed community, and more general community. We also had some that I hadn't really thought about, but we picked a couple of them. They're great community members. They just didn't necessarily fit one of those categories of parent, higher ed, or business. And that is our um military, police, and firefighting community. We had applications from those communities. Not everybody was a parent, so they didn't count there. But we also looked really strongly at those and some of those were chosen as well. There we go. Um, so again, number one with educators is do you have content content area expertise in the grade
185driven subject you're applying for? So, we did have a few science teachers applying, but we were really focused on reading teachers and math teachers. Um, we also asked them to complete an expert task. And for them, this expert task was to be able to align recognize what an item is measuring. So, can you do the task we're going to ask you to do? Um, do you know what this item is measuring? Can you tell what this what distractors are are likely to be misleading versus the ones that are just throwaway distractors? And we looked at that as well to say how well do they do um on these items. Um, we also asked for an interest statement from everybody. Why do you want to be on this committee? Um, and I'll be honest, we got
186several that were, I want to be on this committee because I think it'll be interesting and may help me. That got a lower priority than I want to be on this committee because I've been teaching grade five mathematics for the past 10 years. I've seen changes in our expectations and I want to go in there and form the next set of expectations. that got a higher priority because they were in to say what can I give to this committee not just what can I learn from the committee community member. Um so again this one was was in some ways easier to distinguish the um knowledge of subject matter because they haven't been teaching. So that's not just a check mark of you want to do grade three reading and you've been teaching grade three reading.
187This is okay. So, what do you know about grade three mathematics or end of course algebra 2? Um, and then questions about what has been your experience with with students at these age with the this level of test taker. Um, and then how do you use these results if at all? What what do they what do they mean to you? And that's how we kind of got out the three things we were looking for for them. Um, so our knowledge of subject matter really can be all over the place. Professors, we often just took a math professor because they know mathematics. Um I was joking with our superintendent that we have an actual rocket scientist on and of course algebra too. So um north of Grman uh employee we have CPAs in mathematics. We have
188a librarian and reading. A lot of people who applied as community members are actually former educators which I found fascinating. Um they've either moved from education to either the workforce or higher ed or they're stopping out of education to have kids. So they're now applying as a parent, but they were a former educator. So I really felt strongly that by the time we went through and and selected the community members, we have a really knowledgeable set of community members. I think they're going to contribute a lot. Um you know, people are worried that well, they just may not know as much about the subject, but I I think this group will. Um and I do want to reinforce that again back when I started in 99, this was normal. every committee I put together had
18930 about a third of participants were community members. Um it's only been in the last 10-15 years we've stopped doing it and I'm honestly not sure there was no policy decision to stop doing it. I think it's just this is harder. It's harder to get the community members to apply. It's harder to get a good representative sample. Um so I'm really excited to see Virginia do this and I was really excited with all the applications we got. I'll show you more in a minute. There we go. Um so where we are now is we have notified everybody that they have been accepted as a panelist and on Monday we did a community member training session where we had I believe 61 of our 79 76 76 community members join that session and we talked through
190what is standard setting, why are you here, how did you get picked, what will you be doing, is there anything you should study between now and then. Um really good attendance, really great questions. I'm even more excited about this group now. So again, um we are now just going full board to get everybody registered to get our um materials and we're going to be doing our first standard setting on June 9th, which will be here before we know it. So here's the number of applications we got. Uh 913 total, 813 total. Could have done that bigger fun. um lot, you know, twice as many educators as community members, but that was good because we picked more than twice as many educators than community members. Let's break it down a little bit more within each of
191those categories. Um so, educators, you can see math and reading. Um how many applied in each level, each grade level? I'll just leave it up there for you to read for a minute. And then for um community members, we divided out looking at the higher uh higher education. Um a lot of our higher education people were folks who focused on teacher training. And the committee member I worked or committees I members I worked with to pick the applicants. Um for them that was interesting but secondary to working directly with students who come out of high school. So a community member who is a community college professor in mathematics who works with kids directly out of high school and helping them with remedial algebra that one we said this is really strong experience that can help
192inform this. Um, so we did accept some teacher training, but we focused a lot on are you working with these kids when they come out of um, high school and I put a quote up there that is too small for me to read from here, but it basically said that this is a person who said, "I see the changes. I was I've been a community college professor and I can see the changes in the quality of the students I'm getting and they don't have the algebra knowledge they need to succeed." And you know during some of this previous administration two administrations ago yeah was back I'm gonna go back a few back when President Bush started No Child Left Behind. Um he would talk about you know the the soft bigotry of low expectations. But
193one of the things we were talking about in terms of community college and remedial courses is remedial courses are high school classes you now have to pay to take and don't get any credit for. We don't want our kids to have to go take remedial. Yes, it's there. Yes, it's meant to be a safety net, but that's not what we want as our goal for our our public education system. Uh, feels like I skipped something there, but oh, this was the next slide is just the list of all of the higher ed institutions that um submitted a person, a member. So quite a few from here, Reynolds Community College. Um, one from the apprentice school. We had our big universities, Virginia, JMU, uh, George Mason, Old Dominion, Virginia Tech. I'm sorry, I went to UVA.
194I always forget Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech. U, they all submitted applications. We even got one from the University of Virginia in Wise uh, uh, campus. So, that one is one that we uh, extended an invitation to because we're always excited to get that region of the state involved. Um business as I said we had several different kinds of business leaders. We had uh people in philanthropy. We have people from North Gman. We have CPAs. Um we had a police officer. We have uh but the police officer again um his application was so intriguing because he's actually the training officer for new recruits. So he sees the applications of everybody applying to be in there and this is a state police and he said straight out the the quality of the applications are going down. I
195want to look at what's happening and what I can do to help because we're having to do too much remediation even in early training to be a police officer. So again, someone who's working with these kids when they leave our public education system. Uh that is his application. I just really liked his quote, so I threw it on there for you to read. Dude, this isn't the right slide deck. Okay, I have a slide to show you how many we actually have from all the regions and the different groups. You have the right one. Oh, good. Okay. Okay. So, we invited 181 educators and 75 community members. Our committee size ranges from 14 to 14 to 18. Um, we went back to the standard setting plan that had been approved by our technical advisory committee
196in Virginia and they said we need a minimum of 12 to 15. We feel like we've got a good solid number that if people drop out, we're still okay. I said, we're watching the numbers every single day as we're getting the RSVPs, but having done this for 25 years, I also know that the morning of we will get a couple of phone calls. It just that just happens. All right, we talked about this. Your Mac. Ah, so the one I skipped then I skipped one that I wanted to talk about. Put it in the middle. Aha. Yes. Couple different things. Yep. The two slides I want to talk about were in the middle. Let's go. the one that's got colorful ven diagrams on it. Thank you. Slide 21. We had a bit of a difficult
197time deciding if someone should be in a one particular category because a lot of people fit more than one category. So I wanted to show it to you in in that way that we had 62 people who applied just as parents. 44% 44 people who applied just as business uh members 45 as just members of higher ed but then we had 16 who said I would be either higher ed or parent and and some of them actually applied in both places. 44 said I'm business I'm also a parent. Um and then we had these others that that again police military didn't really fit some of these but brought in some really good experiences that we wanted to honor. Um so that's what the snapshot looked like of who the community people were. And then the
198next slide is what I was talking about earlier in the distribution across our regions across our state. So the dark blue line is the percentage of our students in each of the regions. So as we all know region four, Northern Virginia is our most populous region, but we did not want to make majority of our panelists from region four. So you can see we did slightly better job spreading it out around the eight regions. Although again, where we have the lowest population is also where we had the fewest applicants. That just happened naturally. Those were the two numbers I wanted to give you. Now I can take questions. There any questions? Miss Holton you. Uh thank you for that bar chart. I think that was helpful. Uh your predecessors the those who presented before you
199at prior meetings suggested that demographic variety uh um representation is also important. Do we have any information on the demographics of these participants, soio, economic, gender, ethnicity? Yeah, what we chose to do was focus on um the communities they represent rather than than their personal demographics. Um and really focus on have you had experience working with kids of different communities? Have you had experience with kids with disabilities? Um so we did not look at that. We didn't even collect the data. So I can't even give you a chart of what it's going to look like. Um I probably can after standard setting, but I can't right now. I will say, however, I was very pleased um at our meeting on Monday, that group is not a monolith. Um male, female, pick a race. It was
200clearly a a good group of of folks from all over the state representing all kinds of communities. Miss Holton, if you can collect that data going forward, I think that would be important. I think it was Dr. Dmaleski, though it might have been Dr. Sizzik. I don't remember. We've heard from a number of folks on this topic, but specifically said that part of the whole point of this exercise is to have community acceptance of the outcome and that demographic representation was important to that. That's we were told that was going to be one of the goals and so I'm hoping that you've gathered that and you can get us the data to see it. Other questions or comments? Just a comment, Madam President. Mr. Rotherham, I just think I mean this is the whole process
201is it's a lot of work and and it's actually all quite interesting and but I just think this um step of including just such a range of people, community members, you highlighted a few things like um you know a state police officer but also higher ed just this this articulation where we're moving this out from being a very insular process to being broader. So hopefully like there'll be conversations about up and down what does it actually mean to prepare students for all these various options that they can pursue after high school. I just think I just want it's it's unusual most it's a place we're differentiated from most states. Um and it's exciting to see it come together and I think pursuant to your previous comment we did get a lot of people who said
202I've seen the standards go down. I one one of our uh panelists is a grandmother now raised her children in the Virginia public schools is now raising her grandmother grandmother grandchildren and in the Virginia public schools and has said I can see the difference between the two generations. So we got that from the applicants. I think they're all very excited to be here and be part of it. Um and and we also got people who are who work in trade schools who said you know there are kids you may say I'm just going to trade school. You still need a minimum amount of mathematics and reading to go into trade schools. So, I think we've got a wide variety of people with different interests. Um, again, representing the entire state and I feel pretty good
203that we're going to have uh a good diversity on all of the pieces we're looking for. Thanks. And just for that, Madam President, I think part of the problem here also is you tell kids you're prepared and then they get out in the world and they discover that they're not. I mean, this is not just a Virginia problem. They're remediating math at Harvard now. Um, and and so there's just a misalignment. And so we I think we we can talk about this in a bunch of different ways, but we shouldn't lose sight of the main thing, which is you want kids to know that what we're telling them and what actually meaningful, saying you can do these things, you're going to be able to actually do them in a way that's going to be recognized
204at whatever your next step is, whether that's in employment, higher ed, in the service, whatever it is. Um and and that's what so I mean I think it's we we can qu pretty quickly talk ourselves in circles about aspects of this but that's the main thing is that kids will know if we tell them that this is meaningful that it actually is and the people who they're going to be working with that are going to be making those determinations whether that's a professor or a trainer for EMS um or somebody in the military the trades will actually value this and I I mean I think I don't want to belabor too much but it's it's a really important step and again does differentiate us um in a in a really good way. Yeah. If I
205can just double down for a second with an anecdote. One of the very first standard settings I did back in the early 2000s was at the state high school exit exam. So you had to pass this exam to graduate high school. Period. And the state asked me to set it up so that there would be one room full of educators and one room full of community members. So again, we looked for people who were hiring straight out of high school. We looked for community college professors that were working with kids straight out of high school. We did the standard setting. got to round three and the educators had set a much lower cut score than the community members. So we decided we brought them all in the room, we showed them results and we said,
206"What do you think?" And what was stuck with me for the last 25 years is the ed one of the educators raised her hand and said, "It's not fair that these kids have worked hard for the last 12 years in school and one test is going to keep them from graduating." and a um business person who hires kids out of high school stood up and said, "What's not fair is you give them a high school diploma and they think they're ready for the world and then I hire them and they can't do the job." And I think that's what it comes down to is what kind of fairness are we looking for? And that is something that our panelists will be debating. I have no doubt. Miss Halton, I just want to correct something I
207said earlier. I did my math wrong. It's actually not doubling the percentage of students that fail the SOS but will triple them because I was looking at the pass rates not the but the fail rates will current failure rate is 22% and that will go up if we align to Nate proficient to 68%. So more madam president Mr. rather hand with respect. We live in a state that has told people that well north of 90% of the schools are doing fine when fewer than one in five black and Hispanic kids in 8th grade are proficient. This is going to be the inevitable result if we don't keep kicking the can down the road. We can go round and round on this again and again whether we're tripling, quadrupling, one in five less than that. And
208we've been telling everybody that almost every school is doing fine. We're either going to have a reckoning for that or we're not. And I mean, we can sit here and we can go back and forth all afternoon. We can do it tomorrow. We can do it at the next meeting. Future boards can do it. But that is where we are. That is the math. And there is no way that we start to be more transparent and honest about where kids are and we don't see a bump. The question should not be about that. It should be what are we going to do for those kids? What are we going to do for those communities? What are we going to do for those families? Those are the kinds of policy conversations that we should be having,
209not trying to square this circle where we've been telling people that almost every school is great when you have these astounding gaps in achievement and this astounding gap overall in terms of what we've been saying is proficient and what what is not. And I'm happy to have that conversation. we can keep having I think it's is much more productive if we start moving to the okay what now in terms of what are we going to do to actually situation not how are we going to continue to measure it or not measure it madam president miss mcferson um I've been listening to both sides of the argument and I think I understand them um you know all of the points are well taken you know the students didn't fail us we failed the students and We
210failed the teachers, the ones that have worked really hard to try to make a difference in a system that had a lot of failures built into it. Um yeah, I think we got to be really concerned about the policies that we develop so that we are not mistreating the students that have already tried to get through this process and because of the fact that there are a lot of moving pieces that weren't working well for them that they're not highly punished at the end and at the same time build a new system that we have confidence in and that's transparent. So that's why I said we might as well roll up our sleeves because I think there's just a tremendous amount of work that has to be done. We've had chronic absenteeism. We've had a
211pandemic. Um we we've got students that are high tech that are engaged in a lot of social media that are now involved in AI and the completion of work. We have all of those factors involved. That's why I think as we go forward and build policy, we need to make sure that we're focused on aligning the resources to the places where we made the greatest mistakes and have the best outcomes we can have and be honest in the whole process. Okay. Um, thank you. All right. Thank you very much. All right. So, we are going to take a lunch break now. Um, and I'm gonna give us 1:45. Is that good or too long? 1:30 or 145? 1:30. Okay, let's do 1:30 then. Thanks. And we are going to begin the afternoon session with an
212update um from our friends at I Teach. And so I am I am excited to welcome here today with us the I teach team uh that consists of Andrew Rosselle, Mo Gaffne and Laura Estess. And so the three of them will be tag teaming this presentation I believe and we are excited um for you all to be here with us today. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Do I miked up? Is that can can people hear me? Is it good? Great. Thank you so much for letting us be here today. Um again my name is Andrew Rosselle. I'm the president of I teach and get the privilege of leading out um our efforts to help divisions around the state. And uh like was mentioned I'm here with Dr. Gaffne and Dr. Estus.
213Uh Dr. Estus is our program director. So she runs kind of the operations and Dr. Gaffne is a partnership director and she works with all our divisions out in the field. And they'll both be helping me tell the story of where I teach has been really over the past two years to give some context of the work we've been doing. There's just a bit of delay. Perfect. There's Yeah, there's I mean we can There we go. Just as a kind of a orientation, what we'll like to do is is um let you know some of the program data uh that we've seen um some context to our partnerships and our CAPE alignment uh that's forthcoming and then things that we've heard from our partners in the field. And we'll end with um some of the
214identified needs or divisions are saying in the field to us to kind of tee those up for maybe a further discussion. Uh but for those who might have not uh been here during our approval uh or or need a refresher, I want to tell you a little bit uh about how our program operates, I won't spend too much time here, but um I teach was created actually by my mom uh 22 years ago in the state of Texas. Uh we currently operate in 17 states across the nation. We've uh been given approval, earned approval uh by each of those departments of ed individually which I think helps provide a context to the work as we look to see which states we feel are uh progressive in their work and how we can steal great things
215from some states implement into other states. Uh it provides us kind of a holistic look at the education landscape having that footprint. uh but our program outline generally uh it's kind of a broad stroke is when someone enrolls in our program they're given asynchronous coursework through the Canvas LMS platform that is what's been accredited uh by CAPE as they look through our curriculum set uh it is asynchronous so individuals can log in and learn at their own pace and it is also instructor supported and graded so we have live practitioners going in looking at all the assignments the essays uh all the different myriad of ways we assess our teachers. Those are done by uh Virginia certified trained teachers um real time uh throughout the coursework. Uh and then we through uh just the way
216HB 2486 established this work is we have a unique way we partner with school districts typically in 16 of their other states um we lead out in all the efforts for field supervision. So we actually uh contract retired teachers and administrators. We calibrate them. We train them and then they go out into the field into the school districts that we partner with. Um however uh Virginia is a unique model in which requires us to partner with our divisions for the in the field supervision. And I would say having seen it work in 16 other states, I'm very pleased with the way Virginia's taken the stance to require those partnerships that I think deepen the story and the collaboration that we have with our divisions. And we'll talk more about that later. But I would say
217from from my perspective, um I think it provides a really progressive look um at the collaboration between division partners and the work that I teach is doing. And so um again kind of to wrap up our overview they have the online courses that they go through with I teach on the canvas platform and then we continue the support through uh partnership collaboration in the classroom uh during uh two semesters in the field. And then the last thing I would say here is we actually accept individuals at multiple points of industry entry but primarily there's two there's those that are seeking provisional and so that's us trying to build a pipeline of new teachers into the field. they don't have a license now. They might be interested in teaching and so we can bring them into
218uh the pipeline and and help train them up, prepare them for their exams and then work with our partners to see if there's a placement for them. The other is taking individuals who are licensed that need to be converted into the full uh license. And so we work with our partners to identify those individuals that are already teaching in the classroom that we then uh can train uh further. The next thing I wanted to talk about is just kind of the landscape and then I'll hand it off to to uh my colleagues for sure. Uh but y'all y'all probably know this, but reported out from our divisions is the the vacancy snapshots and the um where they report the current needs in terms of certification areas. And then reported by uh this board here is
219the unfilled teaching positions of 3157 which represents about 3.4% 4% um vacancy rate right now. And what I wanted to maybe contrast that with is our year-over-year um growth that we've had in the state. And and these are real small numbers. I I uh agree with you. But if you look in the far left, the blue bar represents 2024, the full calendar year 2024, and the green bar represents the calendar year up to date uh for um 2025. I apologize. That is year-to- date over year to date. So, that's not the full year. That's just uh the first five months compared to five months. Um but the first set of columns is our applications. And you'll see that the green bar is just over 2,000 applications that we've had into the IT teach program for
220the first five months of the year. The middle set of columns is our enrollments. And so, we have individuals that apply, they have to submit all their documentation for evaluation, program acceptance, and then they can enroll. That's that middle section. And the enrollments year to date are just over um a thousand individuals enrolled in the program. And then that last column set is individuals that have been put or earned a teaching position. Uh those are our hired individuals. And that bar uh is roughly 400. Uh so what this I think speaks to as I see the data is that we see there's a need for teachers in the state. And I believe that this data shows that given the optionality that it teach provides, we can recruit individuals to fill these vacancies in a meaningful
221way. Uh and with that, I'll turn it over to uh Dr. Estus to talk more about um our placements. Leave it. Perfectly fine. Thank you um Andrew for the introduction and background information. And good afternoon, chairman of the board and board members. Um it's a pleasure to be with you today and speak some more into what we're doing in the state of Virginia. Um as you heard uh the the recap really of the top 10 critical shortage areas that have been identified by the school superintendent and their reporting. What I'd like to point out on this slide is how I teach finishers are filling those top 10 shortages um upon completion of their lensure route with us. And so it's a nice alignment to see that you have a need um and the finishers coming
222out of our program are falling into those categories and addressing those needs. So I apologize. I know it's kind of small. You have it on your screen and I'm sure you're familiar with the the top shortage areas being in elementary and special education, mathematics, middle grades, CTE. Um and we're very proud to see teachers coming in and finishing successfully in those needed areas. Um, additionally we often are asked um especially through uh Abtel I know um has had great interest and played a role in working through you know lure options and the question has come up about where are our finishers or where are our participants across the state and so this slide is meant to speak to that for you um to highlight not the applications and the enrolled as much as our finishers
223and so I think it's great to see um some of the larger DI divisions. You can tell Henriiko has a a huge amount of participation and we're going to speak to their model and why they are so successful a little bit later. Um but then it's kind of fun to see some of the smaller divisions from around the state have finishers and um you know you it just gives you a picture of where the divisions are that are supporting their folks to get them across the finish line. There are many other finishers that are not on this slide, but they are smaller numbers. So about seven or less across the state in some of those other divisions, but these are our top 10 um that we thought you might like to see where they are.
224So this slide is really to uh paint a picture if you will about the type of candidates that we are bringing into the field through I teach through this route. And if uh any of you have been um you know in the classroom or hiring or recruiting at the division level, one of the things that people are often concerned about are teachers passing the teacher exams. Can they pass the teacher exams, the lensure exams? It feels like it can be um high stakes and high pressure sometimes. And personally coming from HR as my most recent um position in the public school setting, I found this to be really fascinating. our candidates coming into I teach um seeking a provisional license to go into teaching are passing uh the teacher exams very successfully and on average
225are 21 points higher uh than what the minimum requirements are. And I personally process those scores and I cannot tell you how exciting it is to see the 190s and the 200s um and the type of candidates that are coming in with those scores from previous work life and career fields and experience. And so it's a testament to their content knowledge um and it matches very well with us helping them uh develop their teacher pedigogy and professional studies. So I think that's exciting data. And then I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Gaffne. Thank you, Dr. Estus. Thank you, board members and superintendent uh for this chance to speak. I get to have the fun job. I get to go out and work with the um school divisions and really support their needs. It's
226impactful work. I've been a lifelong educator in Virginia uh since I graduated from UVA just a few years ago. Uh triple who. So, I I like to share that data, but um really excited about the work we're doing. So we know the practice is a challenge uh to get people into teaching. Some would say it's a barrier. We've seen great success uh with the practice through our support of passage preparation. And so we have a study that was done with uh Texas A&N. It was definitely um an in-house study but they supported the setup. They also supported the work that was done during the study. And in that study, uh, it shows, it was done in Texas, it shows that candidates who went through the passage preparation were almost 80% more likely to pass on
227the first try. That's compelling data. And our school divisions here in Virginia are seeing these same results. Quite honestly, I was a little nervous about the pathway of you have to take the practice before the courses. And so passage prep has really shown that that is is removing that barrier. We have several of our districts because it is going so well uh that they have put a partnership together with passage prep because they want to be able to offer this to people who are not in I teach. So, we're really excited about the work that is happening with passage preparation um and how that is supporting um our teachers. So, I think I pushed the arrow up. Oh, nope. It was I told you I told you, Rob, I'd mess it up. All right. Um
228Yes, please. Thank you, Madam President. just you said so I want to make sure you were saying that that people who how do we know did you pretest I'm just a little confused did you pretest these people on the practice because you're saying they're passing at a much higher rate because of your program but how do we know they're not just candidates who are more likely to pass at a higher rate particularly some of these we've got one or two candidates they probably are like I'm really good at biology so I'm so I I so you were claim I'm I I was just curious what's behind Great question. Great question. So the study that I'm speaking about was done in Texas. It's not a study that's been done here in Virginia. So what Dr. Estus
229shared those 20 points above that is not really connected to passage or at least we don't have evidence of that. To your point, uh we don't have that evidence yet. We want to get it because we are hearing from our division partners. Wow. The the folks who are going through passage are really uh doing very well. they're passing the the practice. And so that's super important. In the study that was done in Texas, um it is the first time someone has taken the practice. So they have that data. It's their first time. To answer a little deeper about a passage prep, they start with a diagnostic test. They give them feedback. They set a study plan. And then they work through modules very similar to I teach. So they're taking a course. They're really focusing
230on understanding. And then they also take practis uh sample questions. They have a huge test bank so they can go in and take as many as they want. If I could interject your question. Yeah, please. In the Texas study just to we had a control group that we compare. Okay. Okay. So, okay. Okay. So, you're comparing. Okay. Thank you. Yes, that was quick. I went long. And in Virginia, just to be clear, you can't just challenge the practice. You have to go through some route whether uh traditional certification program some other alternative route or something like path I for the I teach the way we were approved they have to show their content knowledge by passing the practice yeah Hton thank you uh can you I'm just not understanding what's the connection between the passage
231preparation program and I teach I missed something yes so we offer wraparound supports. We're not just modules for the classes. We know that our candidates have to pass the practice to show their content knowledge other than special education. And so we offer passage preparation as a tool to support them. So they get free access to passage preparation when they're in I teach so that they are more likely to pass the practice. have to pay is included in what they're paying you. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Great questions. Any other questions on passage prep? It's pretty exciting and divisions are really excited about it in Northern Virginia. I was asked back in the fall, November, at the VAS conference from Prince William saying, "Hey, we have a lot of English language learners, a lot of Spanish speakaking uh
232candidates. They can't pass the practice. can you support us? I went back to the president of passage and said, "Hey, any chance this can be in Spanish and other languages?" They have now put it into a 100 different languages, but not the test questions because on the practice, they're going to have to do it in English, but they can learn the content, and we know that's best practice for ELLs. and so they can learn the content in their nativeeaking language and then they have to translate uh and so they're having a better a better opportunity to pass. We don't have data on that yet but I think that could be compelling. So uh passage is responding to the needs of the divisions. All right. I think that was that I I think that uh one
233thing you know is is like I said we get to share a lot of stories and this support uh that is happening with our candidates we're able to hear uh that they get to go into teaching a career they never thought they had and this quote here is uh from Walter. We just thought it would be helpful for you to see. We hear this all the time. Um, and I'm going to share a lot of other examples later, but I just thought it is exciting to see people having the opportunity to pass the practice and giving them the support to do it. Um, I think the only thing I would like to add to round out this topic is that passage preparation is done very thoughtfully with regard to student outcomes. So it is not
234just about passing a test even though that's kind of how it sounds um a little bit but they have framed it so that the uh teachers going through the courses are going to be familiar with the goals and the standards for student outcomes. And so it's framed in that and I think that's a really important element because we want them to understand what their students will need to learn in their content area in which they're so knowledgeable. All right. So, a little bit about advanced studies and accreditation. This one really truly excites me. I I share this all the time. Um, in our feedback, every single candidate that finishes NI Teach completes a feedback survey for us. Um, and one of the questions, well, there's so many there's so many good ones, but one of
235them asked them about, do you intend to stay in education for 5 years? Will you stay for 10 years? What about continuing education? Will you go on? 73% of our teachers say they intend to pursue advanced studies, a master's degree or higher. And I think that this speaks volume to um the role that we can play as an alternate route to lure. We can help bring teachers to the classroom with the teacher pedigogy and background and knowledge that they need to be successful to start their career. Um and once they're there, school systems often support their continuing education financially. um and they're committed to going on and adding to their knowledge and their studies. So, I think that's a great bridge to higher education. Um and it it speaks to the caliber and the desire
236for people to go on and continue to learn. So, that's always exciting to me. I love to share that data. Um we encourage them to think about the universities. Uh we would love to expand and um and feature partnerships with Virginia based institutions. Of course, we have partnerships with American College of Education who has vetted all of our uh coursework and offer some level of credit in uh college uh credits coming into their programs. But we recently um partnered with Regent University and I'll let Dr. um Gaffne talk a little bit more about that. Um but it is something that we feel strongly about supporting them to continue on and make that bridge. Thanks Dr. Estus. Uh some of you recall when you were on the board, when we were initially getting approved, one of
237the concerns was what kind of impact is this going to have on our universities and colleges and we were able to look at the data and say, well, they're not going there anyway, so here's an alternative route to get people into teaching. The question is, is there a way to support our universities on the back end? And I believe we're already showing that answer is yes. uh this data that Dr. Estus just shared uh with more candidates wanting to get a masters, we're seeing that with ACE in conversations as we work at job fairs and information sessions with our divisions engaging in conversations with our other universities. We've said, "Hey, we have a good amount of people who want to get a a a masters. How can we partner with you?" And so the first
238partner that was really interested in this is uh at Regent uh Kurt Creing the dean of education and he said he happened to say that his wife uh is I think a reading specialist and I can't remember she's in the Tidewater region one of the larger schools there but she had said you know we're getting a lot of these I teach candidates and he's like well what are they like and she said well honestly they're already in our schools they're our long-term subs or our aids so they're great and they love the coursework, they love the responsiveness. And so when we were at a job fair, I I met uh Dr. Kiss and I said, "Hey, listen. Why don't we talk about what a partnership could look like?" Because we have people who want to
239get a masters. We can't give a masters. As Dr. Estus said, we want to be that bridge. And so he was all ears. They we met with them several times. They met with our curriculum team. They vetted our courses and they said we can give the most amount of credit 12 hours towards all different uh master options. The one I was really excited about is the opportunity for leadership for developing more principles and so they are partnering with us. We have a meeting Tuesday uh really moving this forward. We've had conversations with several other universities um and they just didn't get on it as quickly, but we want them to. So, we're excited about uh what this is going to look like. And here is the page uh that is on the regent's website that
240shows the partnership. I'm going to share in a little bit a flyer, a paper flyer. I love paper. Sorry, it's my age. Um and so you're going to touch it. Um but it'll show you the different coursework and uh possibilities. So, if you know of any universities who you think would want to partner with us, please have them reach out. That would be uh terrific. Any questions about that? All right. Cape alignment. Thank you, Mo. I wanted to give an update or some context to our CAPE approval. Uh for those who are unaware, CAPE is the preeminent approver and accredititor of teacher prep pathways. Um, most of the universities in Virginia that offer teacher certification, UVA, Virginia State, George Mason, they all have CAPE accreditation. Uh, we sought CAPE accreditation back in 2009 when it
241was first called INCATE. Um, they opened up, they had a change in 2009 that allowed for non-institutes of higher ed to pursue this accreditation. At the time we're the first and for the better part of 15 years the only provider that uh went through the accreditation process and achieved accreditation. As we stand today there are two non-institutes of higher ed that have been approved by CAPE. Uh we were the first uh we were approved in 2010 or 2012 was when their cycle ended and then we had a renewal in 2019. The CAPE approval cycle is seven years. uh it can be up to seven years if you have full approval. We earned the seven-year approval in 2019 which triggers the the cycle to repeat itself in the upcoming years. And so right now we are
242currently under the work we've established a in-house team to do um all the data retrieval and analysis to conduct our self-study that will be uh submitted to CAPE in the spring of 2026. Then we have some back and forth iterations around that data set culminating in a spring 2027 site visit and then uh we're confident that in fall of 2027 we will earn uh the seven-year approval again hopefully with no AFIs uh with that approval. Uh one of the unique aspects of CAPE as it is regarding Virginia is Cape has determined the Virginia data set to be out of scope from our self-study. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what that means, the implications of that. Um first, um what Inscope means from a CAPE perspective is that everyone through our different
243programs go through the same key assessments. And so we have these kind of milestones as you go through the program that are key assessments. If everyone in the population is not taking all the key assessments, it's considered out of scope because they don't have the full trajectory and the longitudinal study to go through all the key assessments. One of our key assessments and the 16 other state operations is the field experience, the post uh the pre and post survey, the impact of student um impact uh system that we do when we're conducting um the supervision oursel because of the rule from the general assembly um we the way it was designed partnerships as I mentioned earlier are in collaborations with divisions. So we do not take the lead on establishing what those key assessments are
244in the field placements. Unfortunately, we just don't have that opportunity the way it was structured. Again, I compliment Virginia for structuring it that way, but it puts in conflict the um the data set as it pertains to inscope versus out of scope of CAPE. And so, the Virginia data set again is not in scope for our self-study. The implications of that is this CAPE is very uh clear that they do not approve programs. They approve approve the provider. So we have call it 17 18 different programs that we operate. Cape is looking to accredit the overall provider. So it's going to take data from Indiana and Texas and Louisiana and then based on all of the different programs roll that up into a Cape accredited provider. I teach will be in fall of 2027 reapproved
245as a Cape accredited provider. um the program of Virginia will not be um in the data set for the provider accreditation. That being said, we've already worked and had many conversations with the Department of Ed of how we are already taking that data set. So when we actually disagregate all the data and you look at the slides and the sheets, there's a tab for every one of our states, all of our programs. We're including Virginia all the same. So all the data that Cape is requesting that we are disagregating, we are doing that full uh measure with all of Virginia data and we will be providing it to the uh CAPE lead at the department of ed so that this is as full transparent as we can so that the data we're working to get
246is being seen by the board, the department, everything else. Um but I just wanted to to clarify as we go through the process um one of the stipulations for our approval was to be a cape accredited provider. we fully maintain and will be continued as a Cape accredited provider. If anything needs to evolve around the supervision uh or if CAPE needs to evolve around what their key assessments are, I think those are conversations we'd love to to engage with. But as we sit now, uh I just wanted to give you an update on where we are in the CAPE process, the Cape cycle, and how it's kind of unique to the Virginia model. Happy to answer any questions that can be confusing. If not, uh, we can continue, um, to hear some of what's happening
247in the field. And I'm going to turn this over to Laura. Yes. Thank you. All right. Again, from the field, I feel like I get the fun things uh to share with you. Um, in addition to collecting teacher feedback from completing their programs, we ask their administrators to rate them um, and give feedback about them being prepared as teachers completing the IT Teach program. Um, as of today, you know, principles are incredibly busy. This is a crazy time of year. It's challenging to get their time and energy and feedback. Um, but I'm happy to report that we're over 25% response rate for our 300 finishers that we have to date since we have been um, implemented in the state of Virginia. And it's really fun to see the comparison of what the teachers feel their
248experience was to prepare them for our classrooms and then their principles also rating them. And I think um no one here would be surprised. Principles are a little bit more conservative. But if you think about uh the key areas where we're asking them to rate themselves, do you feel prepared uh for the classroom? Are you knowledgeable about using uh data to inform your instruction? Are you prepared to work with diverse populations? Um and just it runs the gamut. And the teachers overwhelmingly say, you know, it's eight or nine or higher is what they're rating their preparedness as. And the principles are slightly more conservative between seven and on average eight. And so I think that that does speak volumes to how they feel they're prepared uh coming out of our program. And as we saw
249earlier with continuing education goals, we know they're not done. Um but that's a great start for entering the profession. Now um we often you know we love to triangulate data and have all of the sources that we can to uh buoy the results that we have. Um we had a lot of feedback and input from HR and school leaders at the division level uh prepared for you. I think Dr. Gaffne is going to share some individual uh statements with you towards the end. But we decided at this point to highlight a case study for you. It's incredibly valuable information from Henriiko uh County Public Schools. As one of the largest um participants in this route and the largest number of finishers as you saw earlier, their information is really valuable to us and uh they
250began um with their first year. Uh they decided to focus on secondary only. Um, at that time they only used our pathway. And as some of you may remember, we were working through uh clearing up information and strengthening our special education route, elementary as example. And so they focused in on secondary, and then this year they added in and and folded in more elementary and special education uh participants. And so the data that they have um we actually partnered with them recently to present their model um at the VAS VAS conference. Thank you Dr. Gaffffne. Um and so this is really their work. I'm highlighting their work for them. I feel like this is this is not just I teach work. This is their work. But what they were focused on when they implemented uh
251this route was not just recruiting teachers. they were actually really focused on reducing teacher turnover. Um you know the amount of cost that goes into training um onboarding and getting someone started as a new teacher and when they choose not to stay after a couple of years um it's an incredible loss. And so their focus was on reducing that uh turnover and increasing the teacher rate. And so some of the data that they shared that they were most excited about was um we all experienced a greater um you know exit from education postcoid during COVID and postcoid. And so their data points here were that they are reducing the retention rate or reducing the turnover rate and increasing the number of teachers um that are staying on precoid levels and then continuing to uh increase
252that success. And so they were excited about this. Um I think the other thing that they were really excited about was the number of teachers who were on um provisional license. Um you know that's a huge task to help people clear the hurdle to get their fully renewable license. It's a tall order. And so they were excited to see that they while they had a large number of people uh teaching in the school system on a provisional license that this pathway was clearly helping them uh move to the finish line, finish their uh requirements and be fully licensed. And so it's been a wonderful partnership. I do believe that Dr. Gaffne likes to uh add a few more details. So I'll turn it over to you because I know you want to add. Well, I
253think what what we see is to Andrew's point, we're doing it different in the Commonwealth, and that's not a bad thing. My doctorates in curriculum instruction, I had a student teacher. I had a teacher beside me the whole time I was learning how to become a teacher. Our teachers don't have that. So, the divisions are having to provide them that mentorship and that support. Now, oftentimes the candidates are older, so they're a little more experienced than we were in our early 20s, but Henriiko is what I would consider the model here in Virginia. And you should have seen our room uh at the conference where everybody came to see what they're doing. So they are great about sharing the work out with everyone but basically they provide mentorship uh and they have monthly meetings and
254they offer this ongoing support and they know are these teachers that we can develop or are they not and by looking at that data you can see that they're really having a a great experience with it. Uh we have so many uh and I'm not going to read all of these to you. I'll give you take one and pass it. Uh what you're going to get is 25 uh just letters of support uh from some of our divisions who had time to put a letter together who are passionate about uh what we're doing. The top uh is just a flyer with regents that they're sharing out. Um and so all the rest are just letters of support of the work that we're doing. Dr. Estus and I spend most of our Saturday mornings uh going
255to job fairs across Virginia and we get to hear the stories. I was at Newport News about two weeks ago and a candidate came up to me and she said, "I'm a specialed aid and I really want to be a special ed teacher." She said, "I was on the provisional. I took the one course you need to become a specialed teacher. I took that course, but I couldn't afford to do the rest of them. And I looked at her and I said, "I'm about to make your day." And she said, "Really?" And so I said, "Here's the deal." I said, "First of all, Newport News is going to pay for you to be in this program. So it's not going to cost you another dime. You're already on a provisional. You can be teaching right
256now." So I said, "Kim Hammond, HR super, get over here. I've got a teacher for you." This teacher went Saturday from an aid to Monday to the classroom lead teacher. Do you know what a difference that is in that person's life? How that helps them get in compliance? We have story after story that we get to hear. And it's part of why we jump out of bed at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and race up to Fairfax and Louden and and down to Newport News and Virginia Beach and we meet with these candidates cuz one, they want to see a live person. They want to tell us their stories uh with all the federal layoffs in Northern Virginia. Fairfax had a fair for them and they came and now they have the opportunity to
257become a licensed teacher. Uh we had a a candidate in Arlington who was a department chair there. They had a doctorate in physics and they could not get licensed. So it was their last year. I teach came on, he finished the professional studies courses, passed the practice uh in no time and now is able to remain a licensed teacher. So we have these compelling stories uh story after story and uh Dr. Estus is going to share a little bit more about what we hear from our HR directors on a daily basis. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think um it's it's very common sense. You know, they see this as um a route that's helping them meet their needs in many ways. And then they're uh very transparent with well, we could use you for this
258too. We could really use this. Do you have this? Could you support us with these areas? And so, um, we get emails regularly, phone calls in person when we're out on site. We hear from large and small districts, and we also hear from other institutions, uh, private, uh, p private accredited schools and public day schools. And so, we'll talk a little bit more about those things. Um, but I think it's it's important to recognize that, you know, this route that you all have approved and offered to our school divisions is making a difference. And so much so that they're now back asking, can you can you go do a little more? Can you help us in these ways? And so, um, we have requests from the divisions for elementary add-on endorsement and special education add-on
259endorsement. And so, I know I'll I'll turn it back over to Dr. Gaffne in a second um to add on to this. But what I can tell you is that people often um will choose a pathway and teach and then realize, oh, I really like working with this population and so could I just could I could I just add on, you know, can I take a few more classes and change my license to add that on? And so we get that request. um we're very happy to explore it with you uh and Abtel in looking at how might we meet that need and recognizing the content areas and the time teaching um in order to make those transitions and so that's one of the main asks that we see regularly and I'll I'll let Dr.
260Gaffne speak to the rest of them. Thanks. Just a I mean every day we get asked about early childhood. I mean they just cannot fill this position. So, I know Rob, we've talked a lot about what that can look like. There's certain requirements for that that aren't for other special ed areas that seem to need to be addressed. So, we're excited to hear about that. Uh CTE agriculture is the one. I was at region six meeting on uh Friday of last week and they are like, "We have got to get a teachers. We have people qualified. We have people graduating from Virginia Tech thinking they're going to be able to be an A teacher. They haven't had the professional studies courses. All we need from you is the professional studies courses and for them to
261pass the practice. We know they're qualified. And so there's a lot of frustration uh about that one. We also hear all the time from our public day schools and from private schools. People want to get their license. We know that licensed teachers impact student learning. We know that putting in front of our children a licensed teacher is oftent times going to be more effective in the classroom. And so we hear about this New Horizons. Rob is probably sick of me putting it in his inbox, but they reach out all the time saying, you know, we work with Hampton. They're approved. Can our teachers go through I teach uh Williamsburg? They put it in their letter. They're like, "We have got to get New Horizons able to have their teachers licensed." So, we hear these things
262day in and day out. And so, we do want to support in other areas and our divisions want that as well. So, thank you. Uh, so I get to close us out. I appreciate the 30 minutes or so you gave us. I think I was told 20, so I was took too much time and and I apologize for that. I'd like just to you can read the closing bullets there, but I would say this is I'm extremely proud of Dr. Gaffne and Dr. Exus what they're doing in the U schools. I'm extremely proud of our instructors who labor day in and day out with our students being trained and with our partners who are taking an innovative approach to I think mold and train cultivate great teachers for the sake of students. I have three
263little boys and I take very personally the work that I give teachers every day to do and help educate my boys. So, I take it very personally and and the idea of of being asked to do more um is is kind of a resounding thing, not just in Virginia. I was in Baton Rouge last month and I was talking to Superintendent Kade Brumley and his quote to me was I need you to do more. And I was like, I can you explain what that means more? Um but there's an ask that um I teach continue to help um strive to to improve the teacher education landscape. And I think my maybe proof point of all this happened this morning. I was taking an Uber ride and I haven't even told the ladies here. I was
264taking an Uber ride to meet them for lunch. And my um driver asked what I do for a living. And I get to to with great pride say I hope to train the best teachers for students. And he said that's interesting. I just heard that Chesterfield is getting better teachers these days. And so I was like if I can be a part of that context and that um story being told then it's a good day's work. and I'm proud to be able to stand before you to tell you what work we've done and our commitment to continue doing even better work in the future. So, I appreciate it. Thank you all very much. Are there any questions? Miss Holton, I thank you for that presentation. Uh it's uh terrific to hear the feedback a couple
265of years into your uh work in Virginia. Um the um uh one one specific that we discussed when you all were back before us almost two years ago was the there were gaps that the department had identified in your special ed curriculum in terms of matching aligning with what's required by our regulations and I believe that the department the superintendent then the then superintendent was setting you up to work with I can't cap thank you um on on helping address those gaps. Um, can you update us on your progress on that? So, thank you for that. Uh, proudly, uh, when CEP reviewed our courses, a couple of findings they have and I believe it's on the VDOE website or you had it there for a while. Couple of things they shared about, uh, the review
266was they felt like a lot of the competency areas were in several of the courses. It wasn't just one, but it was in several. And that that is the same as what our professional studies in elementary showed as well. They did recommend two additional courses. Uh and they recommended that we have our language arts course and our math course be part of uh the specialed curriculum. So, we added that in uh having those additional courses. They don't take a practice upfront, but we do have the course that they need to take. But quite honestly to get on a provisional through I teach for special ed is a little more challenging. The traditional pathway it's one course for us it's that course plus an introductory course to online learning and lure how to be a professional
267teacher all of those nuances. And then the other course is our TCVA 5100 that really focuses on school law. It focuses on classroom management. How to design and set up your classroom. how to establish the first 40 days and the rules for your classroom. That is an excellent course. We get such great feedback. So to get on a provisional with special ed, they do need to complete three courses, no practice. They do take the reading practice on the back end just like everybody else does and they do have access to passage preparation to help support that. Yes. So you've implemented the CEP recommendations in full and uh have you gone back to has CEP gone back and done an evaluation confirring uh confirming that they you're you've met their recommendations? So other than they use
268us regularly to have their candidates in it actually was not completed the approval until it'll be one year in January and so they have not gone back and looked again. that that was their recommendations. We implemented it and it's going forward. It does take our elementary and special ed candidates 18 to 24 months to complete the program. So when you look at the data and you say, "Well, not that many people have finished." It's because secondary they can do in a year. But elementary and special ed with the additional courses and our elementary language arts courses all line up with the Virginia Literacy Act. They have science of reading in them. I hear from uh HR directors and curriculum leaders saying, "We love that you all have the Virginia Literacy Act embedded. Our teachers in
269I teach. They understand science of reading. They're implementing that in their classroom. They're also engaging in discussions and professional learning with other faculty members. Madame President, yes. So, so thank you for that very useful information. I'm not competent to judge the curriculum of your special ed programs or anything else really, but uh but uh it it would be lovely if we had CEP or frankly the department staff who who flagged the issues in the first place go back and just put that issue to bed. I'm hearing you say you've met the met all the suggestions from CEP. So it would be lovely if somebody who is competent uh somebody independent who is competent to judge could go ahead and clarify that for us given the issues that were raised back when you all were coming
270through. Go ahead Dr. Acriman. You actually address slightly one of my questions about the reading assessment. I didn't see the data for how they're performing on the reading assessment on your slide nine. I don't know if perhaps you didn't collect that yet or but I was happy to hear you had a preparation for it. Um yes, I'm happy to address that. So as part of the program requirements to enroll and ultimately finish, they must pass their content area practice. So that is the main one that we collect. Um the teaching reading elementary exam is in addition to for elementary folks and for special ed general curriculum K12. So, I honestly did not ask for that data, but I can certainly see if we have it available. Um, I think the trick is they don't have
271to report it to us because it's not part of our lure requirement, but we could certainly consider that uh collecting and having that for you. Um, and if I may, I know um, we don't have the specific information um, Miss Holton that you were asking about in terms of um, updated ratings on how the special ed teachers are doing. But I do have one data point that I did not get to share with you um, which is when you ask the school principles uh, rate how you feel your IT teachers are doing in terms of impacting student achievement, it's an average rating of just over eight out of 10. And so I think that does speak volumes to our finishers including the special education teachers as well. Rob, you might be able to answer this
272question, but would it be just easy enough for there to be I don't know if the IT team submitted a letter to CEP to say we implemented these things um and whether or not there was any response from CEP which would have made hopefully a difference to clarifying what Miss Holton was requesting. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Uh Dr. for Northern. So, um I realize that the program is different in Virginia. Um and that's what I want to talk a little bit a little bit about. I did bring up the study in Texas just because I was curious about it. Um and it does it it's mixed. Obviously, you guys have read it. Um one in four Texas students are being taught by teachers prepared fully online. Was more than I thought.
273I don't know what we are in Virginia. That would be a good statistic to know. Um, students taught by teachers online exhibit comparable levels of achievement to those taught by uncertified teachers, but they underperform compared to students taught by teachers from other preparation pathways and they have a higher turnover rate. So, I guess, you know, I know you guys do your own due diligence and collect your own data, but what are you seeing in Virginia on turnover rates relative to uncertified teachers relative to teachers who are traditionally prepared? Uh that's a a great insightful question, Dr. Northern. Um is that the UT study? Is Okay, so uh a couple things. One, uh the UT study um includes one of the other providers in the state of Texas that is actually I'm sorry, I didn't mean
274to interrupt. It's Texas Tech. It's the Jacob Kirsy. Yep. I've definitely met with Jacob. Um they they include uh one of the other providers in the program that's three times our size that's currently on probation with the state. Um, and so I think that might skew some of the data if if I'm being just candid with you on terms of retention. I think the data point shown earlier within Reicho is since partnering with us over the last two years, we've dropped their attrition by a third um in terms of the teacher turnover. And so anecdotally, sometimes tracking teachers um longitudinally becomes challenging, but what we're seeing in the Virginia partnerships is is great impact on teacher turnover and and keeping teachers in the classroom. And I would say I I can send this to you,
275but um Louisiana Board of Regions did a retention study and we performed at least as well as all other university routes in the state of Louisiana in terms of the three-year and five-year retention. And so I think there's there's other data points that we can look at. Dr. Northern, are you good? And do you have any data on relative to the students performance? We do not have uh concrete impact of student learning data in Virginia. Yeah, but again that the same report from the board of regents um shows our impact of student learning. We actually out uh perform on the compass measurement in Louisiana most of the other um programs in the state of Louisiana. So where there is uh impact in student learning data being each state kind of does it differently and I
276think there's some successes and misses but where we do have the ability to get that information it it is uh pretty positive when looking at our marks. Last question. Does Dr. Northern um Maybe this is a question for the superintendent. Do we collect data on our IT teachers? Like do we know which ones are being prepared from I teach Rob? Okay, that'll be great to do going forward. Awesome. Any other questions or comments? Superintendent Gullixson. Uh, thank you, President Casey. I just want to um reiterate what I've heard from the field um being able to engage with principles and the superintendents who are so um grateful that this is an alternative pathway to get highquality candidates into our classrooms. Um and it has not even been 2 years since you were approved which I think
277is important and member Holton thank you for flagging that. uh July marks that uh vote because that was my first board meeting from the secretary of ed side and so uh I think demand is through the roof. Um I think you had one bold superintendent or a few that first meeting in July of 23 and so this is a testament to the fact that um your program is very high quality. I've heard rave reviews. So we look forward to continuing to look at next steps on the department side and collecting more of that student data to help tell that story of impact. So, thank you for all you're doing. Thank you all so much for being here today. We truly appreciate it. Um, okay. We're going to go to item B. Do our item B
278presenters need time to um and we do have some snacks and other rations over here in the in the room to the left. Um maybe we ought to give it three minutes to get our presentations for item B up. Okay, three minutes, guys. We are jumping back into item B followed by item C and then we will wrap for the day. We will move item D and item F to tomorrow. So um that everybody is aware of that. We will do um item D, item F tomorrow. Um and we're going to put this tomorrow, too. We will um have concluding remarks after item C today. Thank you. It's all you, Dr. Wallace. All right. Well, not all me, it's all my team. So, I am excited again to um bring to you updates. This set
279of updates will be from our history and social sciences team. Um I am really excited to have Dr. Bird Wright with us. She has been leading the history work um in the department and as president Cesy and some others of you know we have been very very deep involved in the instructional guides and providing those to the commonwealth. Um, and we have also started doing some training around those guides. Dr. Bird Wright is going to bring you those updates from the history team and she's also going to tell you about these wonderful booklets that you have in front of you that are being provided through our VA250 program. But this is a very, very special booklet. So, she's going to talk to you about that. And um we had a press we actually had a
280presentation yesterday of the artwork at the cap where families from across the state came and we did a press release on it. So hopefully you're able to check that press release out. Um maybe this evening after you're recuperating from the meeting. Um but without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. bird, right? And she's going to provide you with um an update from our last meeting where we talked about the instructional guides, how they were being developed, and what we were doing with them, and where we're going from from this point forward. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Wallace, and good afternoon, President Cesy, Superintendent Gullixson, and to the board. I am very pleased to be before you today to give you a status update about the release of the history and social
281science instructional guides as well as the professional learning plan for leaders and educators across the Commonwealth. And there's the pause. And now it's back. And now we're back. And so in summary, today you can see the overview of the presentation. I will be reviewing the purpose and the components of the history and social science instructional guides, the timeline of communication and professional learning plan for the field and ongoing feedback and support from our external partners and our division leaders. I first certainly want to acknowledge the tremendous work of our history and social science team that's led by Christa Brown, our history and social science coordinator, as well as our specialist Andrea Emerson, as well as Brandy McCracken. So the work of the history and social science program is aligned to Virginia's strategic priorities, particularly priority
282one to set and help every learner meet high expectations. And so as you can see on the slide before you, we've identified those high lever actions that are denoted in bold that ground the work within the constructs and context of the Virginia's strategic priorities. So to recap the purpose of the history and social science instructional guides, they were approved April 2023. The standards were with expected full implementation to take place beginning the 2526 school year. The history and social science instructional guides, they elevate the previous curriculum frameworks. The components of these guides help to support local curriculum development, the application of history and social science skills and use inquirybased practices that signal the use of information sources, questions, and tasks. You'll see those components come up as we get into that a little bit later
283in this presentation. There is one instructional guide per course or grade level. And the instructional guides were released weekly with on our history and social science web page. The structure of the instructional guides is similar across content areas and familiarity from the previous curriculum frameworks. So in continuation there with the purpose of our instructional guides, one is really to have an increase in rigor and depth and those are the global revisions that you will see within those instructional guides. And I know Jill talked about some light reading. Well, you all are in for a treat because you certainly can take, let me see, I think she said Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So now you got the rest of all of the week of Memorial Week to continue on reading our instructional guides if you have not
284dug into them already. But the global revisions really are there to increase rigor and depth and improve vertical coherence. You'll see that between the grade levels in the courses, the application and connections of concepts and themes within and across grade levels as well as incorporating inquiry based practices and embedding the social science strands into history content including the civics, geography and economic strands. So just to recap, you remember during our March 26 board work session, the timeline of the development of the history and social science instructional guides began soon after the adoption of the 23 history and social science standards of learning. The milestones here are denoted for you to illustrate that development has been underway for 2 years. I also want to get into our feedback loop here with our external partners and division
285leaders. Again, that work is not new. That work started spring of 24 from April to June 2024. And you will see that input and feedback has been provided by over 40 external partners. And I'm just going to name a few. The Virginia Association of Museum Educators, the Virginia Tribal Consortium, and the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater, just to name a few. Surveys were also conducted with various teacher leader groups and were provided to inform and support questions about the instructional guides and the expectations for implementation throughout. The feedback received informed the development of an extensive FAQ document which you can also see on our history and social science web page just above those wonderful instructional guides and that is also found on our web page and supports the implementation and the appropriate use of the
286guides. And I want to stop there just for a moment. It's very important that people understand the appropriate use of the guide for implementation for instructional delivery. And I'll get into that shortly as we talk about those components. I also want to share with you that we have already been engaging in regional professional learning and support. In fact, just yesterday, we had 126, I'll repeat that, 126 division leaders with us to just start to unpack the components of the instructional guides, which was wonderful. We've already started with regional development, particularly just just this week with regions 1 and 8 as well. Throughout the course of the spring into the summer and into the fall, we've been working with our regional history and social science leaders, superintendents, assistant superintendents of instruction to begin to have those
287meetings put in place and on our calendar. And I can tell you, we are chocked full. So, we will get our mileage and our ways will be going over the next several weeks here. I also want to bring your attention to our partnership with Virginia 250. So now you can go ahead and pick up these lovely um booklets that you see before you. We had the awesome experience of working with o about over a hundred students that had submissions to the um expressions of freedom competition. So students had the opportunity to submit either essays, artwork, poetry to talk about what does freedom mean to them. And when I tell you yesterday was such a moving ceremony to honor 11 students. We had eight regional um representation from our superintendent regions. And then we also had
288three overall winners representing from elementary, middle, and high school. But if you just take a gander to go through the booklet, and I certainly won't do this, this is again attached to your light reading with our instructional guides all of next week. But please make sure that you take the time to read those artist statements. In fact, just before coming out here, we had a wonderful testimony from one of our parents who said, and this is from one of our fourth graders, and she said about her daughter, it's very emotional. It's very moving because we've worked with these students, and she said, "My daughter felt so validated and honored just to be recognized." This was a fourth grader. Our um first lady Yncan was also present as well as Carly Fiorina was also there, who's
289the um national chair for America 250. So, we really had the opportunity to um engage with the families, but again, we're working with our external partners and they are providing contributions as well and will be with our external partners and organizations process that we will engage in over the summer as we are gathering additional resources to support our instructional guides. So, please keep this as a keepsake just for you and know how much this work has meant out for the field as well as for our families. We look to have this as an annual event. this is the second time and so we look to continue that tradition moving forward. So for the instructional guide components you will see that we've moved from a static to a dynamic document as well filled with primary sources
290and so you see each of the components that are provided for you the changes and revisions. This section provides a summary and overview of the changes the revisions the additions the deletions and the moved content. And for a complete list of the changes of the standards, we also have an embedded crosswalk that shows the difference between the 2015 standards to the 2023 standards of learning and really delineates with greater specificity the changes for each course. You'll also see there the skills and practice that is the history and social science skills continuum. Again, that's going into framing the thinking around um the themes that are used there for critical thinking to assist in the learning transferability of content and that vertical articulation piece to which I spoke to earlier understanding the standard. This section includes the
291history and social science understandings and the key concepts that assist teachers in planning the standards focus instruction. And then we have our concepts and connections. This section outlines the concepts and the supporting questions that transcend grade levels through the K12 program as appropriate at each grade level. These concepts are big ideas that are interrelated and again support connections to illustrate commonalities and relationships reflecting the content and practices that build within the discipline as well as connect across disciplines. And then you'll also see the last piece there on additional resources. these um areas here and you'll see that um embedded under each standard. Each of those sections will be expanded as we move forward with resources from the history and social science partners and educators as I just referenced a little bit earlier. And after consultation
292and feedback, it's expected that this section will first be updated by January 2026. We already have a work plan in place. We are meeting with our external partners actually June 9th and working with them in person as well as a virtual concurrent session. We have some of those that I just listed previously as external partners but we certainly have quite a few that are going to be working with us to be providing resources but again staying out of the frame of our work of um providing curriculum. So again, they're going to be providing resources to support and then we will begin of course working into um the board approved textbooks and high quality instructional material support of course after um the review of that legislation and how it will impact us um in history and
293social science. So, the release of the instructional guides. Well, you remember we were together March 26th. We provided you with the schedule and I am happy, very happy to report that our instructional guides were released on time to the field with great feedback from the field from superintendent, assistant superintendent, and our teachers. We are excit Oh, certainly you can apply. Thank you, President Casey. and you definitely certainly should be applauded with that. But we are so pleased um that those have gone out to the field. There was a hunger for that and we appreciate um President Cesy, Superintendent Gullixson, but all of your support and helping to ensure that that happened for our team and for our teachers and leaders in the field. Jump in really quickly. You certainly can. Yes, ma'am. Um I'm so
294incredibly proud of these instructional guides. Um, I was a curriculum framework girl and uh I truly believe the crosswalk that is here in every one of these uh instructional guides for history and social science makes the work so much more it's just so clear to teachers. If I had been teaching this particular so and there's no change to that that particular content in that so I don't in that particular standard I don't have to um I don't have to change my instructional practice with regard to that that particular standard. I can move on to the next standard and see okay I've gota I've got to add this here I've got to add that there. that in particular I feel like is so incredibly helpful to the field. Um, you know, I know we had a
295lot of angst over the implementation of these new standards, but the work that the department staff has put in a labor of love is really not exactly saying uh I mean blood, sweat, tears, and all of the other things is really what happened. But um I this is this is something that I am just truly and deeply incredibly proud of uh this work. Um especially because I know it's going to support um you know my friends and colleagues who are still in the classroom teaching this and those who are like Grace this is going to be crazy. You have got so many new standards. No, this is so helpful. This is gamechanging work here. And so I just want to um just double down on my thanks to you all. Thank you so much, President
296Crazy. And I will certainly echo that, you know, with our um feedback that we had yesterday throughout um the webinar that we had with our division leaders. They were typing in the chat. they were calling afterwards just saying, "Oh my goodness, thank you all so much for the ability to have questions that help us to frame our thinking. Skills and practice to help us double down on the content, but then being able to interweave the appropriate skills to ensure that we are in alignment with the rigor and the relevance of what we have going on cognitively for our students. So I believe that this as I'm going to use your word and take it and coin it is a gamecher and we are excited about it. Thank you very much. you've coined it for today.
297Next is our timeline just to let you know. So after we left off together in March and how we're progressing forward. So you can see that timeline there again our um history and social science instructional guides were released to the field as expected. You'll also see um there that we have worked on an evaluation tool to help to vet resources as they are coming in. We're meeting with our external partners as I mentioned already in June and then we will continue our summer of learning events going on throughout the course of this summer and then moving on into the fall. We are making sure that we share that information through all of our multiple means of communication including the Virginia Education um update newsletter as well as our social media platforms to get the word
298out there. We have ongoing professional learning that will take place around inquiry based um learning and instruction beginning in the fall. And then as I said before, we'll have our largescale technical edit with those embedded resources beginning in January. So we're excited about what's coming forth and the communication that's being provided to the field. So our professional learning plan, we've already started and as I've already mentioned that earlier and that is we started in May here with our in-person and virtual regional professional learning events. We started um just yesterday and a little few days before that. But our some of our major work here this week and then they're already preparing. In fact, they're doing some regional training today, the rest of the team and then work heading into tomorrow. But one of the things
299I want to just bring note as you're looking at this particular slide is always our alignment to the strategic priorities of the board and the comprehensive plan that's always articulated to um respective teams so they can understand the why behind the what and the how and how we plan to move forward. And then you'll also see our summer and our fall professional learning. We have some options now going by course. So we're really taking a stance and looking at those grade bands and going with some specificity there. So you'll see when those are going to be offered during um in June and then we'll cycle back around in August so we can make sure we can hit those school divisions that may start a little bit earlier um in the cycle and those that may
300start a little bit later in the cycle there. that's already been communicated to our division leaders through email, through social media, and again through our Virginia education um newsletter. And so we're excited about the responses and they have been quite many to join and be a part of this professional learning opportunity. And then as I said to you all too in the fall, we'll begin with our inquiry based learning and you can see those items there that will be addressed during that time. Again, to close that feedback loop, wanted to make sure that you see the support from our external partners. So, we'll continue to provide and you'll also see when you cycle back one slide, we also do a needs assessment and survey just to understand what are the needs of the field. Really
301keeping our ears to the ground of what folks need to help to design, modify, or to adjust professional learning and how that will move forward with our instructional guides, the resources to inform that as well as the um sideby-side support that we will be giving to school divisions. external partners and organizations will contribute to those standards aligned resources and we'll be using that evaluation tool. We're very excited about that as well. And then we'll continue to incorporate our work with VA250 with their education steering committee who will also be a part and provide some continued impact and support um with those resources as well. So we are excited in history and social science. And with that I believe that I am finished and certainly can stop to take any questions at this time. Are there
302any questions, Miss Holton? Thank you, Dr. Birdright. Uh, I know the field is very grateful for uh these for the instructional guides uh and appreciate the work particularly that um uh Superintendent U Gullixson has done to help expedite the work that you all getting the work that you all have been working on for for so long out to the field. Uh I see in your final slide you made a reference to external partners and a a vetting tool for for u reviewing external content. There's so much good content out there and I just had one comment and then one question and my comment I just wanted to share with my board members. I promised a group I spoke with on on Saturday that I would report back to you all. I had the privilege of
303being part of a Brown v Board of Education commemoration. Uh not the one here in Richmond with all the governors, but I was in um Harrisonburg. Yes, ma'am. And this was a really a student a remarkable studentled initiative from the students in Rockingham County who have an ongoing the teachers there have an ongoing multi-year partnership with um uh the Motton Museum and the folks telling the Prince Edward County Brown Board story. Um but they have over the last couple of years uncovered the story of a judge and ca plaintiffs in um who brought cases from Charlottesville and Warren County to the Harrisonenberg County courthouse. And that judge actually Judge John Paul in 1956 and then again in 58 and 59 issued the earliest orders in Virginia seeking to establish compliance with the Brown v uh
304finding. And these students have gone back and found these plaintiffs and done this incredible professional quality 30 minute long documentary of oral history telling these folks story. Um they have now gotten through the many many hoops they had to jump through to get a a Virginia historic marker um which we unveiled in front of the courthouse on um on Saturday morning. and they've now got an exhibit at the Rockingham County History Museum, rock history. Um, all of this, you know, successions of students have done this as part of their uh civics and history education in high school. It's quite remarkable work. Um, the uh so I promised I would tell I told them I would tell you uh you know, we worry a lot about what's going on in public education these days and what's
305going on with our kids and cell phones, etc. My conclusion from watching these young people at work is the kids are all right. Our future is in good hands. We just have to unleash it and enable it. Um um leading to my question, I I'm concerned that we I think I understand correctly that we don't yet have links in these guides to the incredible material that our museum educators and other external partners have out there. I I am from I've been helping the Virginia Museum of History and Culture celebrate the Virginia 250 through a number of different events I've been to there and uh and I've seen a little glimpse of what they've got ready. You know, they've got lesson plans, they've got slides, they've got activities, they've got things that connect to museum experiences
306all aligned to the SOS and ready to plug into these guides. What is there a problem? Why can't we get that done? And I don't mean just the Museum of History and Culture. I mean all your museum educators, all your partners. It feels like, you know, we've adopted these standards two years ago. I would love to see them yesterday embedded into these guides. Can you help me on this? I'm going to speak to that first because you sound like Secretary Gera. Yes, I know. I I at the 250 events all the time. However, however, what I'm going to tell you is is that um yes, the the main resources that are currently embedded into the standards, a lot of them are very direct primary resources. the secondary resources. If you go and actually look at
307the document, the instructional guide document, it notes at the bottom in each section that highquality instructional materials and other resources are being built out there. And we are in the process and these ya these ladies these beautiful ladies are working hard to put them all together and categorize them appropriately because exactly like you said we have these um these types of opportunities that you spoke about in Harrisonenberg those things come across all the time these documents do have to be and some you know we talked about it being a living continuing work in progress and so um those things are happening Dr. Wallace spoke to it earlier that these guides in every content area are being reviewed on a constant basis to add more to them and upon release that information. When more is added,
308that's going to be communicated to the field via the newsletter that Superintendent Gullixson sends out and then also on their content area websites to say, "Hey, news flash. There is more that's been added here. Please go back and look." But we needed to get the the base level work to the field as soon as possible. So that that crosswalk referencing for teachers on the exact standards and how they needed to be implemented for instructional purposes absolutely had to be in their hands so that they could prepare over the summer for what they had to do in the fall. And so that was the immediiacy of the project. Now, um I don't want to use the word fluff, but those abundant resources that do have the things like the materials that museums and other um you
309know, other opportunities around our very full of history and culture state has to provide to our schools. um they are able to start flooding us with that stuff at the department to say here we have an actual lesson plan from our museum that we do on or that we've now aligned with these new standards that is on standard VUS2 whatever I'm just pulling one out and and so that all of that is being sent to the department and they are using and and looking through those to make sure and the term vetted means means they're going and putting it in the appropriate location. It's not just kind of a throw it up against the wall and here's everything that teachers have to go through themselves. We don't want them to have to do that work.
310And so that's what our teams at the department are doing and um they're continuing it every day. But again, that main document um with at least as many resources as possible based on the timeline that we had that we wanted to commit to the field, it had to get done. And so these ladies, the work is not over. In other words, if I may just have a just clarify it with a follow-up question. I appreciate and I think you're absolutely right that these guidelines focused on what was most urgent and very much appreciate your effort and superintendent Gullixson's effort to I know these the department staff has been working hard hard on this for two years now and that you all push to to enable the to expedite this final step of getting these materials
311they've been working on for so long out to the public. But I also know that they've been working on I suspect they've been working on these uh the how we get the external partners. I I heard them say they've been talking to the museum educators etc. And but then when I hear vetting and a tool etc etc is that going to take another two years or can we get a timeline maybe can we get a timeline for when the guides will be updated with those external partners just as we did you know superintendent Gullixson's timeline that she issued when she came on that got us expeditiously to where we are now. Can we get a timeline for for this next round? It's just too much good material out there to be wasting. Yeah, we we
312do we have a timeline and um you know I'll let Dr. Bird Wright speak to that timeline because she probably has the dates ahead in her head better than I do. But to let you know what the process um you know it was a very detailed process just to get the primary resources linked in to um it was hours and hours and hours of dedicated work over the last six weeks to make sure that we had those quality primary resources in there for teachers so they can just click on something you spoke about Brown versus Board of Education. There are several links linked in there specifically to support that. Um, as an instructional team and with the HQIM bill, we are working on a new rubric much like the textbook adoption rubric, but this is
313specific to highquality instructional materials. That is part of the vetting process that we will use with the already created wonderful resources, but we do have to make sure that they are aligned to our standards if we're going to link them into our documents. And so that is part of that vetting process with our external partners and we've got a training coming up with our external partners, museum partners included, so they can see this rubric. We're piloting it with history because as we we want to you know test it out, make sure it works good and we're continuing on that work like we're already starting the work with HQIM evaluations and then we're continuing that as we roll out through the different content areas according to the the legislation timeline. So it's kind of interconnected with
314all content and then I'll let Dr. Bird Wright talk about the timeline specific to history. Sure. And so um as Dr. Wallace mentioned and and President Casy, we are meeting with our external partners and and organizations beginning June 9th. They are actually going to be trained on this rubric. So they will understand specifically what does it mean when we talk about standards alignment? What does it mean when we talk about accessibility and usability and providing access and opportunities for students so they know um to make sure that we are not um going into some areas that we should not, for example, reenactment of certain things. And so we want to make sure that when we're when they are providing us resource because our name is there. We represent that. We want to make sure that
315it's appropriate and age appropriate um and content appropriate and standard salon. So we're going to be training them and going through that process. They'll be submitting their items through um using the go open hub as well. So a good accessibility there to provide that and we'll be linking that back in. As far as process timeline, we're starting in June. Um, and then we plan to really be in a really good spot between November, December, um, and then we'll be looking to post by January. So soon, um, right into that. So, we'll be working with the partners. We also have some committees of some um division leaders, educators that will also be a part a part of this process too to really give that practical sense the usability to look at it as well and provide
316us feedback not only on the tool that the evaluation tool that's being used for those resources but also to help partner with our external partners. I think that's building capacity and understanding and mutual knowledge about what's really happening on the ground in the classroom and what's happening in the field and how can we marry those two together. And so that work um just as we articulated there into the instructional guides, we plan to be right on schedule as we've communicated and promised to the field. And so we're looking to be able to do that um with our process timeline there. Believe you me, the history team has a time. We can work a timeline. I tell you, we can promise. Any other questions for me? Dr. Northern. This is just a silly question, but um
317let's say you've got 12 museums across the state give you a lesson or resource for Brown versus Board of Education, for instance, and you're trying to embed, I'm assuming, the links on the word Brown versus Board. I mean, what are you doing when you've got more resources than links? So, we're using the go open hub, and that's where we'll be categorizing, as president Cesy spoke to. So at that bottom part where it talks about the um high quality instructional materials, it's actually going to be going out to the hub where it'll be categorized by content. So then so you I saw the oh so you're so you can visualize it and see it. So then when they click on that link, it's going to take them and it's going to be categorized by that standard.
318So when they go out to go open, it'll be VUS.12 and it'll have all the resources that are curated that way, which is why we're also during that training going to be sharing with our external partners about go open and what that's going to look like. So all of that's included in our June training with the vision that I had two years ago for these documents. We are making it coming to life. So the I'm sorry, just a followup. The embedded ones that are already in there, are they going to stay? Yes. Okay. And then the other ones will go on go home. That will be the secondary. And then there will be a link. So there's a section section like so there's the standard and then there's the skills and content you know the
319skills and practice and all of that that's listed and that's where the links are right now. If you can just kind of envision that and at the bottom of that section um is where the additional HQIM and resources will be linked to go open for them to link you to go. So, it's going to be still embedded within the instructional guide itself. So, teachers aren't having to remember, oh, I have to go to go open. It's still going to be linked there and then link out to the hub with the resources. Dr. Northern, so is this happening in other subject areas these resources are linked or is it just history and social studies? So, right now we are linking it mostly with history and and social studies. And the reason is when you look at
320high-quality instructional materials, high-quality instructional materials are readily available primarily, you know, with English K5. We have a lot of them. You saw the list earlier. Um, and then with our math, there's a lot of in high quality instructional materials companies that produce those. History has the least amount of textbooks and high quality instructional materials. um I think maybe you know zero that are aligned to Virginia standards. So that is the the main reason that we need to um get these resources out on the hub. The other content areas and the instructional guides are going to have links where high quality instructional materials aren't embedded. So for example, if we have asked our English K5 core, you know, to follow a core curriculum, we don't want to confuse them with a link out to other resources
321that then confuses their implementation of a valid curriculum. So we have to be cautious in where and what we share within each instructional guide set based on the content. Science is another example. there's like one good highquality instructional material out there for science, right? Um and you know, we're it's just it hasn't been built, right? And then with Virginia, our standards are very specific and particularly in history. That's why there are so few in history because all history standards are different in every state. So, yes. And so, um we'll have some links like computer science for example, you're going to hear from them. their instructional guides are going to have links to some lesson plans and resources and things like that because there isn't a textbook or a high quality instructional material for that. So,
322it's really based on the content. But I appreciate your question. Thank you so much. Thank you all. Really exciting day. So I will remain and we'll transition to our next um group and this is um I'd like to introduce uh Dr. Anne Peterson. She is our director of STEM. So she has the next two presentations on first math and then science. I will after she finishes math kind of do a little precursor to science though. Um but her team Dr. uh Peterson oversees not only math and science but also health PE and drivers education. And I think maybe some of you got to interact with our driver education um staff at the teacher of the year celebration last week. And so they are a huge part. They do a lot of of work in the
323office of STEM and they also support um other content areas and other departments across the agency. So, um, with the math updates, uh, we're going to focus on where we have come from the adoption of the 2023 math standards of learning and look at what we've done thus far and then again looking towards where we're going. We're going to touch on some of the legislation that's been recently passed and what we're doing to support that. And that does cross over into other presentations as well. So, um, without further ado, I will turn it over to Dr. Peterson. So, good afternoon, uh, President Cesy, board members, and Superintendent Gullixson. Um, first of all, I'd like to say I appreciate the banner for the office or the school of STEM right behind me. Well planned. Um, and
324I hate to say I hate coming after Dr. Birdight because she is so dynamic. I will try my best to keep up the momentum. So, we're going to start with the update for mathematics and okay, I was going to say down over um as with everybody else, we're trying to align to board priorities. Um the work of the mathematics team supporting the following board priorities through providing support for strong instruction of the 2023 mathematics standards of learning. This support includes professional development, resources, and technical support to divisions to help meet these priorities for mathematics. Our mathematics team is led by a wonderful mathematics coordinator, Vicky Bohadar, and we have a team of two full-time mathematics specialists, uh, Jessica Brown, Dr. Jessica Brown, and, um, Donna Snyder, who is out in the other side of Virginia
325supporting our divisions. and we are bringing on a full-time secondary mathematics specialist, knock on wood, by the June 10th, we'll hopefully have somebody in place. We also have a part-time person who is actually part-time for our department, Dr. Regina Mitchell, who is working with uh the office of student populations as well. Although they are a smile small team, they're a mighty team that are doing a lot of work. So, first I'd like to introduce some of the things that have occurred since the inception of the um 2023 standards in August of 2023. At that time, we were rolling out resources starting in January every two weeks to support these um the teachers with the implementation of these standards. These resources include exemplarips which are math instructional plans. You will find that the math and science
326team are not very creative because the science instructional plans are called SIPs, the math ones are MIP and the computer science ones are CIPS. So if you reference those, we just aren't creative. Um we also rolled out initially the understanding the standard docs and those were rolled out in January and February of 2024. Um those became embedded into the instructional guides for mathematics. Later on, we had the concepts and connections articulation guide that was rolled out in March of 2024 and the K through3 mathematics achievement sample records that were also rolled out in 2024. Just like with history, we have the instructional guides. Now, the background on the instructional guides is really stemming from public comment and actually uh conversations with the board that elementary teachers have a lot on their plate and they have
327different structures within the different disciplines to support them within instruction. And we tried to brainstorm how can we make things more consistent across those board for those elementary teachers that are teaching a variety of topics. And so cohesiveness and consistency across the instructional guides was one way that we could do that. So our instructional guides are composed of the same sections as the other ones and look very similar to the other ones. Our initial release of the um instructional guides occurred in May 2024. And we're proud to say the updates are going to be coming out May 30th of 2025. Those updates include technical edits that we found when teachers were working with the instructional guides leaders, they needed to massage some things, maybe provide an additional support or we realized there were gaps after
328we actually put them in action. Uh we have the inclusion of the content connections though the content connections originally had connections to science. Um I will say math is the language of science. For those of you that are mathematicians and scientists, you realize that we wanted to make those connections explicit. As an elementary teacher, and my background is high school, you'll find that high school teachers are very conceited, we run the world type of people. Um, I taught AP chemistry, so I'm even worse. Um, but for elementary teachers, they may not have efficacy in one or more content areas. May have majored in history and then coming to teach mathematics. Maybe those connections aren't as visible between math and science or from computer science and mathematics. So, we tried to make those as visible as
329possible. When the computer science standards were updated, we had to update the instructional guides to reflect that. We also included the uh digital learning integration standards and we have updated the documents overall to increase the accessibility of the documents for all of our stakeholders. Another resource provided by the map uh by the state of Virginia is um and through all in Virginia funds is Zern. Zern is an online platform that allows personalization for students to address gaps in their understanding, work towards learning recovery or actually accelerate in certain concepts. Currently 108 divisions use ZR in the state of Virginia and on average and this is based on data from the last four weeks each student is engaging in an average of 45 minutes of work with Zern per week. So this augments their traditional classroom
330instruction and hopefully with careful planning the teacher can look at what is being taught in the classroom and compare it to Zern and use them collaboratively to provide all those supports the students may need. Currently the um as you heard prior the approval for Zern is going to be for the 2025 2026 school years and as of last week we had 95 divisions have responded they will use and continue to use Zern to support their students. So Zern usage you know or math and science we really appreciate a good graph. Um, it's always fun to analyze what happened in January of 2025. And we can guess that any I'm sure you can guess what happened in January of 2025. We had a little bit of snow. So, the D usage dropped dramatically during that time.
331You can kind of see where Christmas break occurred, some fluctuations with spring break, but overall you see that many months we reached a 100,000 students using Zern within those month periods. As you know and switching gears, in the past few months we've been to the board with list of approved textbooks and instructional materials. So we are very excited to get those approved. From our end we have ensured that there are procurement and pricing information for those approved materials on the um VDOE website. We also have included the mathematics review committee correlation reports. So those are available to divisions when divisions start the process of looking at different materials. They can go to those reports and there have been over 130 educators that have worked with us in reviewing those determining where alignment occurs, determining if
332it sufficiently meets those mastery expectations that are reflected in the standards of learning. That is the first step. And I I would hate to say it, we did the easy step. The next steps is going to take several years. And that is actually the divisions, looking at the materials, looking at the correlation documents, figuring out what are the needs of my students, what are the needs of my teachers, and which best fits those needs. And then, as you know, Virginia standards are unique. They are best-in-class standards. However, the textbooks may not be 100% aligned. So they might have to go back and determine where are their gaps in that alignment and provide resources and we will help facilitate that process. This will take seven several years to get rolling and will take significant amounts of
333once it's adopted planning and PD for the teachers and that has to be ongoing PD on how to use those resources effectively. I tend to think of HQIM as a three-legged stool. One leg is the actual materials. One leg is the professional development that is needed to implement those professional or those materials. And the third leg is a principal support and the ongoing feedback on how the implementation occurs. If those three legs are present, then you can have positive student outcomes. So how are we supporting those in the three legs? Well, the first is through stakeholder webinars. We have division support specialists for those division leaders, math instructional coaches that are leading the work in the division. A highlevel look at the mathematics textbook and instructional materials adoption process for parents, for board members, for
334schoolboard members, for teachers, an introduction to HQIM. What is it and how can it support student income or start student outcomes? This will be differentiated based on the sta uh the audience that we have. We're also have developed the mathematics textbook and instructional material implementation tool that is going to be upon final approval of leadership will be available in June and we will have a recording on how that tool is to be used. We will also provide professional development across the state on the use of that tool. The mathematics implementation playbook is with anticipated final approval in June 2025 will mimic that of the VA playbook will provide best practices for implementing mathematics instruction. And then we have the mathematics walkthrough tool. Now when Jill talked this morning, she said that um UVA helped develop
335the literacy walkthrough tool. We don't have a UVA for mathematics, but we do have a group of vetted stakeholders and and one thing we wanted to be very important. Principles are walking into all sorts of different classrooms. We have to have portions of the walkthrough tool that is consistent because good instruction, the topics may change, but good instruction is pretty consistent. What are those things that we value highly that principles should be looking for in the classroom? And we've divided the rubric or the walkthrough tool into three parts. Part one is looking at um like the management looking at student engagement. Part three is looking at the use of resources. The middle part is going to be discipline specific. And that middle part for mathematics is going to focus on the process goals. We worked
336collaboratively. It can't be just one group making this. So we worked across the disciplines to get buyin on the different components so that we can have a consistent document so a principal isn't using this type of walkthrough tool here and that type of walkthrough tool there. We developed it. The next step is let's have principles try it out. You know how much you can develop something and then you put in action you're like oo that was really hard to measure. Um I'm not sure exactly what that looks like. We have to figure out what those kinks are. So we have going to ask um principles to pilot this tool in the fall. We'll get their feedback. We'll revise and then do a state roll out in the spring of 2026. Throughout all of that, professional
337development will be provided. For our pilot programs, we're going to have them do training where they're looking at videos and applying the tool. They'll be able to ask the questions. We will be able to engage. We want to be on site walking through with them, not only to use the tools ourselves, but to see it in action and use that to inform any updates that need to be made. Once that rolls out, we'll also do multiple webinars in January to support principles. Multiple webinars because principles are a little bit busy. That was a little bit of sarcasm. Um, so finding times to get them to meet is is difficult. So we want to make sure that we're available at the time they can meet. So we will offer multiple opportunities in terms of parental engagement
338with mathematics. Parents have been involved in the process all along the way. We had the development of the mathematics standards which was informed and went through the public comment process or the public hearing process, the public comment process. We had stakeholder groups working with the mathematics team to develop the standards. The same thing with the instructional guides. We had parent groups working with us on the instructional guides. They were changed to reflect what are the priorities of leadership, what are the priorities of getting students engaged with mathematics, what are the priorities of parents and that all informed the instructional guides and we will continue to garner parent feedback as well as other stakeholder feedback as we go through and implement these different items. Um, we do have some legislation coming and I'll go through that
339in a minute and it's going to have parent involvement in that as well. So, ongoing professional development, we are currently hosting division leader webinars and these are monthly webinars that we plan to continue through the 2025 2026 school years. They're targeted to inform systems level mathematics leadership. uh we plan to have regional breakout sessions for leaders to connect and collaborate. So those in region 8 who may have similar issues that they are facing, you know, maybe a capacity for mathematics teachers in high level mathematics courses or maybe you know uh issues with the HQIM, maybe using um getting divisions together using utilizing the same HQIM to be able to work with each other, develop resources would be a way to reach those um division needs. And we can do that through these regional or division
340level webinars. The topics so far in March we did using BDOE resources to support strong instruction and mathematics. We have done strengthening and understanding measurement in geometry and probability and statistics. You're wondering why that one that one was actually generated at division leader requests. They said this is something that we are not familiar with. We need support in making sure that these changes to these standards are implemented with fidelity in the classrooms. We are doing in May 2025 the updates to the instructional guides and then um in June in collaboration with the office of advanced learning will be working with the accelerated mathematics pathways for principles. We need professional learning too. So in our principal professional learning, we're going to have professional learning targeted to principles with supporting teachers with mathematics instruction. So what does
341good instruction look like? What should we look for? What are things that you go into a classroom and the kids are all talking together? Is that good practice in mathematics? Yes, they are engaging in discourse. They're talking about mathematics. They're justifying mathematics. Perhaps they're developing models to show their mastery of a concept. So being able to see what that looks like is very important. Um and then webinars on how to support teachers with mathematics textbook and instructional materials and using the mathematics walkthrough tool. All of these we'll offer as I said multiple times but we'll also record them and make them available for principles who are not able to attend. And then again the other stakeholder webinars that introduction to HQIM why do we need it? And I think if we can't answer the why,
342it will not be valued as much. So that is very important at this part of the process. Good professional development is not a oneanddone. Good professional development is sustained. It's having the conversations. It's engaging the stakeholders. It's using real student data. It's taking things back and implementing them in your classroom and then having the discussions afterwards of what worked and what didn't work. So to facilitate that, the mathematics team has developed professional learning modules. And these modules are intended to be taken back to the divisions and be led by either instructional coaches or a principal or a lead teacher to facilitate professional learning communities. These materials include the slide deck, a complete facilitator guide on how to do it. For those that don't want to read about how to do it, but listen to it,
343we have narrated overviews of the PowerPoint so they can do that. We have had division leader webinars on what this web or this module is about and how to implement it and also there are links to additional resources. We currently have six published and again these are based on the needs expressed by the field. So developing a culture of mathematics, how do you provide that culture in the school? How do you develop a vision and make sure that vision is carried out in everything that you do? Looking at the vertical articulation of concepts and that is really going to inform our work as we move towards accelerated coursework or compacting courses. what are those foundational things that I need to have in place to be able to build on because you miss one part of
344that foundation and that's that building's going to crumble. So really taking a close look at that implementing the data cycle. So the data cycle is not just being given numbers and told to manipulate them but having the students ask questions being able to either use data sets that are existing or collect the data themselves. What a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with your science classes, right? To be able to get that data, to be able to visualize that data and make conclusions based on that. Developing formulas to strengthen student understanding, a session on computational fluency or a module on computational fluency and developing number sense through estimation. Estimation I taught as I said I taught chemistry for many years and estimation is something they struggle with particularly well we just put it in the calculator and
345that's what it gave us. Does that even seem feasible if you are so reliant on the calculator and you don't have those estimation skills. You don't know that maybe something you put in the calculator is way off. So that estimation needs to be developed. We're in an era when kids are afraid to be wrong. So, it's easier to rely on the calculator than try to estimate, but it's a very important skill. We have a lot coming up. We have a lot of work underway. Um, there are several legislated items that came out. Um, the first is HB1829, which are add-on endorsements for mathematics teachers. And this was to build up a cadre of expert and informed mathematics teachers at the middle school level to impact or to help with the acceleration. Um, these add-ons are
346a geometry add-on endorsements for K through eight teachers. And then they amended the add-on endorsement requirements for algebra 1. We won't have any impact on that. We can help inform the process, but that will mostly be done by the department of teaching and lenture. HB 2686 requires each school board to develop and adopt a policy that sets forth the criteria for students in grades 5 through 8 to be eligible to enroll in accelerated mathematics. This one's huge. This one allows those students that score in the upper quartile on the so test to be automatically accelerated in mathematics. Now students or parents do have the option to opt out but it does promote those upper quartile students. Now does everybody need to be accelerated? I would say no. I mean every kid comes in with their
347gap with with different opportunities, right? Um, I will say I was I was the youngest person in my class and spatial relations kicked in late. Geometry, I could not take the 2D and make 3D. Not because I didn't understand the concepts because that part of my brain hadn't matured. So, we have to think about each student. What are they bringing? Where are areas where we can accelerate? If it's appropriate, let's do it. Let's figure out what those components are, what those criteria are. we can advise or provide guidance to divisions as they make their policy and determine what's best for their kids. So we are um part of this is the automatic acceleration. It requires each school board to re report um to the department data related to advancements and it requires each school board
348to create policies. We will provide technical assistance documents to support divisions in doing that. The big question is though, if we accelerate in middle school, are there options in high school? If we accelerate and the kids finish all the options by sophomore year, that probably isn't the best thing. And the two-year break will result in gaps when they get into higher ed. So, we're looking at that end, too. And some of the legislation you're going to see will help address that. So, middle school math acceleration grant program. This is actually built into um the budget versus a bill. So if you look at the budget language, the department shall oversee and track math inter instruction, assessment scores, and learning outcomes to identify potential areas of improvement. We do that already. We will keep embedded in
349that type of work. Identify best-paced practices, pro uh evidence-based, proven best practices to improve mathematics instruction. We have embedded those in the instructional guides, but we will continue to do so and continue to address gaps in instruction by or gaps in the instructional guide by adding more best practices as they become available. Um, establish and oversee a framework for the support and implementation of professional development, which is what the team is engaging with right now. And then the big one, administer state funds to school divisions as appropriate. So there are two big grants that are outlined through this legislation. I'm going to go into that in a minute. Um and then we're going to collect data to report to the general assembly annually about the progress. So one of the big things that comes out
350of this we have to we are um legislated to have a mathematics task force and this mathematics task force is composed of specific audiences. We have to have parents. We have to have educators, instructional coaches, school leaders, a school board member. Um, should I have them memorized? Uh, other stakeholders are all going to be part of this stakeh task force group. With that, there are several objectives that are going to be met. They have clear goals that they're going to inform. You know, what does HQIM look like? What does that implementation look like to support work with that? You all have already approved HQIM but maybe providing guidance on how that could be help implemented in schools um as well as other tasks. the funding to ex there is also funding to expand advanced mathematics
351coursework and expand math experts which goes along with we need to make sure that we have those add-on endorsements available to middle school teachers. So in that accelerated mathematics middle school, first of all, my collaboration with office of advanced learning and the Virginia Advisory Council of Advanced Learning has been huge and I'm thankful for the leadership that Amanda Nevitrol has provided through the office of advanced learning. The resources support divisions with this. We are working on resources as we speak. Uh one is the accelerated math pathways a resource technical resource guide for school divisions. They have to have policy in place for the next school year. And so any resource or technical support we can provide, they don't, you know, they are going to take that resource, technical assistant document, massage it, figure out what
352works best for their students and their teachers and determine their path, but we will provide any supports that they need. We're also coming up with sample accelerated math pathways parent resources so that they have communications that they may use and adjust for their parent population. We'll provide professional development on accelerated math pathways and we're going to be presenting at I think almost every conference available this summer to get the word out. We also have the middle school acceleration grant. Whoops. I think I went to a different I'm not touching it anymore. Okay. So, the math implementation it's just moving. Oh, okay. Um, the math implementation grant is going to focus on HQI. So, it's $10 million. It provides it's going to be an award basis. We'll have an application process that will be opening up
353soon. They can um they can purchase HQIM with it. They can develop curriculum that embeds the HQIM with resources to address any gaps. They're um they can look at moving towards more of a competencybased model for mathematics in middle school. They can provide opportunities for developing curriculum that's compacted, which means that if you're accelerating math, first of all, sixth grade math is important, seventh grade math is important, eighth grade math is important. They all provide the foundation for success in high school. But if you accelerate and compact things correctly, you can take that sixth grade content and perhaps half of that seventh grade content and do it in one calendar year. test the kids on the sixth grade content and then the next year do the seventh second half of seventh grade and the eighth
354grade content and have them take the eighth grade so that takes a lot of planning a lot of manipulation. How do I lay out those concepts those vertical concepts in a way that makes sense instructionally and provide those support for teachers so that can be done with that mathematics acceleration grant and I think thank you gentlemen for moving it forward. I think just the last few slides got cop popped off perhaps. Yeah, I think it was just this the last few slides are not in the presentation, but that's fine. Um, the mathematics acceleration grant is a $1 million grant and it allows for two different things. One is allows for students to take virtual courses if advanced middle school coursework is not offered in their middle school. So if the school doesn't have compacted curriculum
355and doesn't have the time to put it together, they have the option of taking it in virtual Virginia. If the school division doesn't have it and they want to download it from p virtual Virginia, they can do that as well. So let's say one teacher is teaching five classes volunteers to teach a sixth class using the com compacted curriculum from Virtual Virginia. Part of that funding can pay for her to teach that sixth course. So it doesn't supplant the money that is used to pay for teachers but maybe provides that opportunity for them to teach an additional course. Um if it's stu if a uh division chooses to use a MOP or some massive online provider or some other vetted program for mathematics they have the opportunity to do that. We're putting guard rails on
356it. We wanted them to be innovative with the different ways that they can address this. The second part is it's great that we have advanced math pathways in middle school. What happens when they get to high school and we don't have the teachers trained in this? So they may choose to send teachers to AP institutes to get them trained to be able to teach those upper level mathematics courses. It may be to send teachers to college to take maybe a probability and statistics course so they can brush up to be able to teach those higher level courses. So those opportunities are there as well. So you have two grants. One is more for the structures and supports to implement highquality instructional materials and to be able to provide that robust curriculum to support the mathematics
357standards. And the second one is to provide opportunities for students through either online platforms or for um training teachers so they can provide and extend those pathways further. That is it. Um, and I know it's a lot to do, but um, what questions do you have for me? Question, Dr. Northern. All right. So, um, awesome, awesome, awesome. Um, I've been following these policies nationally because I do research. Um, and I think one thing we ought to be aware of is in Washington state, they implemented the same policy we're about to implement in 2014. And there's a call to report by Dan Goldber and some other people. They did a difference in differences study, which is very rigorous. Um, and they found, I just brought it up so I could get it right. They found only
35814% of students who qualified for advanced mathematics courses actually enrolled in it. That was a huge opt out from parents, right? And it wasn't a qualitative study, so we don't know what's going on. They were hypothesizing like, is it a capacity issue? Is it that parents don't understand? You know, and I just think that we need to couple this policy because clearly 2014, they've had it in effect for a while and they're still trying to figure out why optouts are so high on the parental end and they're seeing it's disproportionately opt out from students with family from families of color. Um, so that's another like equity issue we're going to have, you know, need to kind of be on the lookout for. So I would just say as we roll this out, we really need
359to have a parental information involvement campaign. I know we've got an office that handles that. Um, but I do think they really need to understand the benefits for their kids of taking part in these advanced courses because, you know, if their kid comes home, I don't want to do that. You know, I mean, we just don't want them throwing in the white flag so easily. Um, so that's my biggest thing. I mean, and when they looked at ELA and social studies, because Washington state actually has these same policies in multiple subject areas, they found that the ELA and social studies kids were uptake the uptake was much higher, but it's just a lot lower in mathematics. And we don't know. And whether that's a capacity issue in districts or whether it's that parents aren't aware
360of the benefits for their kids, we don't know. But I do think that we ought to pay attention to that research um given that they are so far ahead of this thing than we are. I think I think it comes too with efficacy about mathematics for teachers. I mean or for parents. I think so many times you know you you can talk to people and they don't want to say I can't read but very easily say oh I don't do math. I can't do math. I hate math. So I think that is an obstacle. One thing that we're going to try to do is um develop we don't want to say or give divisions pathways because divisions have latitude determine their own pathways but provide sample pathways for divisions and parents. What can this look
361like? What does acceleration mean? And then if we can do a really good job let's turn uh tie in those highpaying wages, high demand jobs either workforce or higher ed. I mean my son did not go to college is workforce and is out earning me. Don't don't even get me started, but saying this going this track, this is the way it could look in high school and these are the opportunities it could bring. I think we're going to have to do a really good job of marketing for both of those reasons. Yep. Looking at the middle school math acceleration grant program, can you tell me again how much is in that? So the acceleration grant program is only only a million dollars. So and and that and I thought that's what you said. So I'm
362just wondering I'm looking under the the goals of that grant program that is labeled middle school math acceleration grant program. So part of the priority is to oversee a mathematics grant program or math curriculum, HQIM competency based mastery support to improve instruction for high need school groups. And so the grant is to prioritize schools identified as offtrack need intensive support and have performance gaps in overall grade level math. So it just there's a dichotomy there. On one hand, you're trying to accelerate math, but yet at the same time, you're trying to provide financial support for programs that are going to assist most in need students, right? And then that's the grant with the million dollars in it. So, I'm just saying, I mean, I think it's really, really good that we focus on advancement, but
363you don't want to leave kids behind. So I just I going forward I'd like to see how that money is spread out and making sure that at least the school divisions are aware of the fact that this grant is not just for acceleration but is also to make sure that we have basic math performance for these schools. Yeah. I think you got the fat math grant and the skinny math grant. So the fat math grant is the 10 million that really can support those structures and particularly address those learning gaps and they're both in the same areas. So it makes it really confusing. The skinny grant, the million-doll grant is more of the acceleration. So I am very happy to see that the 10 million to really provide those, you know, funding for curriculum to
364get the teachers and it just could be to write up. Not a problem. I mean, I'll look at the the grant specifics. I just want Well, we want to do whatever is best to Exactly. I just wanted to point that out. So, the school divisions would know that it's not just for this acceleration because I want them to be aware of wherever the money is that they need to make sure that we bring these students on. Absolutely. And we are also just in the beginning I mean Ann and her team have to look at those funds but okay we're still finalizing what those applications will be and the fullers and the focus areas and priorities for our school district. Mr. Rotherhand I thank you madam president. I just have a comment and it's not like
365a question masquerading as a comment or vice versa. It's a genuine comment like I think this is exciting. I'm excited to see the um the focus on acceleration and also I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets to say we're a little behind here where we wanted to be. Um and so it's really exciting to see the momentum and I'm I'm really pleased when you know when I was reading the deck and you could you could see it and that's also true actually of of the previous presentation. They're not here right now but um uh and it's it's really great to see this kind of momentum and coming into next school year what's going to be on tap. So thank you. Thank you. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Go. Miss Holton. Thank you. I
366have a little question and a big question. Aim. My little question is the uh you know, we we I don't know if you were here when we had our literacy act presentation earlier, but you know, we heard a lot about the vowels and what it's able to tell us about our earliest learners. And I know there is a math equivalent uh the EMAS I think it's called called something like that the math test for u math readiness. Yeah. So it's true. Yeah math readiness and is that just kindergarten unlike the vows it's not K12. Okay. Um um uh but it is at least now it may not have been. It is a beginning of the year and an end of the year assessment for kindergarteners. So, that's a place where we I know you don't
367have UVA as a partner, but I would love to see whatever data you have on who's coming in at what level of risk and how what do we know about them in the fall and what do we know about them in the spring. Um just you know as one piece of the puzzle that we assess how are we doing on math and uh as with literacy if we're not getting those foundations solid in the elementary early grades uh then we're not going to be able to build on it and accelerate in middle school or build in high school. Um so that's my little question. My big question is really, you know, I read this legislation, excuse me, this action embedded in the budget, uh, establishing a math advisory task force, implementing grants, directing the department
368to assess what data you have and what what lessons we can learn from it is, you know, I would love to see this as a first step towards a math literacy act similar to the Virginia Literacy Act I dare dare I I'm reluctant to say that out loud because I know our our division folks are working so hard and it's so challenging to implement the literacy act now. But you know that was I think that act was passed in 22 and now three years later it's really hitting the field. It was even before that. But I I I would love to and I wonder if part of what the legislature had in mind is that to use this uh task force and this grant program as a way to build towards um a math equivalent
369to the Virginia Literacy Act. And as you know, our math scores are not what we want them to be. Our math performance has slipped and and has not rebounded from the pandemic. It was slipping even before. And meanwhile, we have seen other states um again as with the literacy act, some unlikely states. Alabama, I think, is one of the ones that I've seen data suggesting folks are using the evidence to help develop curriculum and professional development in a unified way all around how to teach uh our kids in the most evidence-based ways, and the most successful way, and they're getting results. So I my I guess my big question is is there a way that we can use this it's not a huge amount of money but the million dollars to the department and the
37010 million to the I'm not talking about the acceleration grant now I'm talking about the math part embedded in the in the budget that use all of that 11 million as a stepping stone towards what might eventually become an equivalent to the literacy act and that and the premise of my question is that we need something like that and I don't mean to assume you agree with that but would love to hear your thoughts on that. So actually legislation was introduced and it did not go through and I think people valued that so much that it was introduced in the budget this way. So this is a minute portion of the legislation that was introduced and and it and it's moneywise only a small piece, but that's why I would love to see what's a
371even the 11 million is not a lot of money, but if we could use that in a way that would help inform something that might then grow into a a math literacy act. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt your answer, Mr. Rather. I may be playing the part of Dr. Northern here, she may chime in, but um I I think it would behoove us to absolutely take steps and the legislature take steps to support math instruction, whether that's professional development. There's that you you can see a range of things we could do to help improve math achievement in the state, particularly for kids um who right now are are the lowest achieving. I would be really cautious though to draw the parallel with science of reading. I mean, science of reading was a body of
372research over 50 years old that had just been widely ignored in our sector because of politics because we had decided there was democratic and republican ways to teach reading for some reason. Um, and the science of reading was an effort to undo that. And some of that research is new, but again, a lot of it, I mean, this dates back not just the stuff that like George Bush was doing in Texas, but the stuff that was happening in the 60s. you just don't have that same body of evidence with regard to math. Um, and so I think we want to be really careful about what a uh what a science a math bill I mean I don't even want to fall into the nomenclature of saying that just but what a math bill would or
373would not include. Otherwise, we might inadvertently frustrate teachers. We um could inadvertently codify things that we don't want to codify. In fact, I think we could inadvertently call into question the science of reading because then people would say, "Well, is this and and we've made such progress there as we just heard today and continue to." So, I I would just urge us as a policy matter, support math education. Absolutely. There's a lot that can be done both here and at the agency and also um in the general assembly assembly, but be really careful about this like direct linkage to um uh to science of math. Well, I may I I stand I stand informed by Mr. Roth's comments, but I do think there are states that have made dramatic progress. I do think there is
374evidence out there about what works. It may be not as solid or as comprehensive as the evidence on science reading, but there is evidence about what works on math in teaching basic math skills. And I think that the purpose I think what seems to be embedded in this budget action is let's do use this money to figure out how we can be using those evidence-based solutions in a more comprehensive way. And and I worry that what I've heard here is um I'm not sure you all have a plan to use it that way. I I don't see this as a comprehensive plan to how do we reform how we're teaching math on a compre on a comprehensive basis in Virginia moving us towards better outcomes. And so, you know, I don't even see the assessment.
375Nothing that we've heard here assesses where we are. And so, where are we? Where do we think we need to be? And what's the plan to get from here to there? How can you use this opportunity uh both the money that's coming to the department and the money that's going out through the grants to the field to help inform that conversation even if the outcome wouldn't necessarily be a a science of reading comparable legislation. Yeah, I agree. I think we're working towards, you know, we have the instructional guides which we really were deliberate about adding best practices into. How do we marry that with HQIM? How do we marry that with professional development to create a cohesive vision to really move things forward? And that's what we're working working towards developing with the team. And
376I agree, we need to think, you know, how are we using data to inform this process? How are we messaging it to all the different stakeholders? And this is what we're working on right now. Just remember, we're in the beginning phases. We still have to chat with our agency leadership and you know also really get a good plan for for how those funds are being used. And I don't mean to be being critical. I'm just hoping that we use this opportunity. We hear you. Yeah, we do. More broadly, Madam President, Dr. Northern. So, one piece of lowhanging fruit that I might suggest is the Zern data. We've got 108 districts using DUR Zern, right? That's a lot of kids and I'm sure that Zern is, you know, providing teachers with, you know, skill based evaluations
377of how kids are doing. Um, but that would be a piece that we could evaluate too, right? Like what are we seeing in terms of patterns of kids who are participating at Zern, at what dosage levels? I mean, Zern gets a lot of money, right? and and there has been one evaluation of Zern that said it's um that it's effective, but um we are we're heavy Zern users, right? So, we really ought to be able to answer the question fairly soon whether or not those kids are improving compared to a comparable uh control group um on the skills that and I think once those so scores come out, we'll be able to do some of that looking at the data. Um, let's cross reference the data, figure out, you know, who's using it. If there
378are specific areas in Zern that are being used, let's look at the comparable strand of the mathematics standards and see how that's being done because there's 108 and not all kids use it. We can actually create almost like control groups to compare with and without Zern and be able to do that. Definitely. And and you know, they're math people. They're going to love the data. But for instance, you could use some of this grant money. the some of the criteria for the grant money could be two divisions. Use this to accelerate what you're doing but study it. Yes, definitely. So that's what we're working results that we can translate with Dr. Wallace now. You know, how are we going to build that application to get where we want and the data that we need. So
379it's almost like backward planning. What is the vision we want to get? How do we build this application and the um the parameters of the application so it can get us where we need to go? Definitely. Thank you. Sorry, I got excited. She gets a little excited about talking. Superintendent Gixson. And thank you so much team. And I want to echo um all of our grants now have student outcome based data capturing, analysis, and comparison, not just on this team. Um new norm uh since March. And so we um a sneak peek to my presentation in a little bit, but we also are working on streamlining grants. Um so I'll talk more about that in a little bit, but uh it's a critical component uh for our team and the cross collaboration on not just
380having that data live in someone's inbox or an Excel spreadsheet, but then how are we using it to inform um policy and more practices and future grants out the door. Okay, thank you. So, we're going to transition to science and I just want to do a little brief intro. It's still going to be Dr. Peterson delivering the science. Um, and then she's got a science team member out in the audience as well. Um, so we have also been, as you know, SOS go on a review process of every seven years they're reviewed. We have the 2018 standards of learning for science. As you also know um our typical at that time roll out for standards of learning was usually a c so it's approved in 2018 and then in 2019 would have been like a
381crosswalk year with the first implementation year in 2020. We had this little tiny thing called the pandemic that happened in 2020 that kind of delayed how the standards were going to be implemented fully because kids kind of stopped going to school in March. Um and so um we h shifted things at in the at the time in the field as to when the 2018 standards of learning for K through eight content areas as well as high school biology um chemistry, physics and uh earth science were going to be implemented. So those are the current standards. We did some work with the field and over the last kind of uh beginning that kind of review process and it was really determined that they never got to implement the standards the way that they needed to be
382implemented and there was uh a large there was a review that took place and overwhelmingly we decided and the field decided we like the new the new format that the SOS were laid out in and you know they they have this little green leaf in it. The green leaf indicates this is an activity, a hands-on learning activity for kids. It's really a user-friendly document. From that information, we have determined that we're not going to revise or making recommendations to revise those standards. However, we will be presenting to the board um recommendations for new standards of learning and that's what Dr. Peterson is going to talk to you about today as she does her update. I wanted to just give that base level information because other people when they hear it's really kind of confusing to
383get wrapped in your head like what standards are you talking about? I didn't think we were going to update standards. We're only going to um recommend new standards for those content areas in high school that didn't have standards of learning previously. So these are level two courses. So like your anatomy, your um chemistry 2, you know, something that might be um a higher level meteorology that follows earth science. We will be recommending that those stand those content areas now have full outdrawn standards of learning. We had guidance for teachers and schools previously and Dr. Peterson will talk about that. But I really just wanted to lay the foundation in the background of where we're going with this presentation that it is about totally new standards and we're not updating our con our current 2018 standards
384that exist. Okay. So, just wanted to lay that out and then Dr. Peterson's going to go through her presentation much like she did with the math. Okay. And our sole audience member is Laura Casdorf who is the science coordinator at VDOE. And we are very glad to have her. Her leadership has been outstanding. So again, we aligned to the agency priorities and those are to um implement with fidelity the 2018 standards of learning and to provide guidance on the 2025 science standards of learning once they're approved by the board. There's an additional priority here and that additional priority is to advance safe and healthy schools. As science teachers, as science leaders, we realize that safety in the laboratory classroom is critical. Um, we provide supports to divisions through professional learning, but we also have a
385science repository on virtual Virginia which gives sample chemical hygiene plans which required by OSHA. It gives walkthrough tools. It gives all sorts of different supports so the divisions can ensure the safety of their classroom environments. OSHA very much drives the work of science laboratory just like it does with CTE and some of the other areas and we want to make sure that divisions have support with that. So in this update we're going to talk about as uh Dr. Wallace said what has happened what is the timeline of what has been done and what is coming soon. In the end, we're going to talk about some awards and recognitions because it's always good to hear about excellence in both science and math education. So, in February of 2023, we introduced to the board a timeline for
386the revision and implement uh development of the 2025 standards. When we originally came to the board, it was a two-year timeline. The two-year timeline was because we were had 11 board approved courses that do not have standards. That meant that it was a any division could teach whatever they wanted and we wanted to make sure that there were commonalities in what uh students were provided in terms of science instruction. We also wanted to make sure there was rigor and we wanted to make sure it aligned to those national descriptions that are available for each course. In two June 2003, we met with teacher teams to develop the 2025 standards for those 11 courses. In fall, we had multiple opportunities for stakeholder feedback, primarily higher education feedback um because they are going to really be in
387this these courses feed into higher ed programs. So, we wanted to make sure that the content was accurate and that the um the performance expectations reflected what was appropriate for an upper level high school course. We were also very informed by the AP coursework. We were informed by NAPE. We were informed by other state coursework and we were formed by U syllabi of higher ed institutes in Virginia. In summer of 2024, uh, Miss Casdorf met with teachers again, but this was to address the K through physics standards. At that time, it was we were still working towards revising those standards. So, she met with the teacher committees, developed um got feedback, revised the standards, and then based on decisions and feedback from the field, it was decided that we would maintain the 2018 standards. But
388I tell you what, there was a lot of good work done during those summer committees. So we said, how can we manage that good work? How can we elevate the work they did in a meaningful way? And so we are going to incorporate that work into the instructional guides. So in fall 2025, the final drafts were made and then they decided to integrate into the um instructional guides. So what are those 11 courses? These are the um bio2 courses. So advanced survey of biolog uh biology topics, anatomy and fizz, ecology, genetics, um our chemistry 2 course, earth science, advanced topics, astronomy, geology, oceanography. Um the one course that's kind of an outlier is environmental science. Environmental science can be taken at any grade level um in high school or even 8th grade. It provides it's
389a it's a course that doesn't it goes beyond a lot of the science courses because it's not a peer course. It is really environmental science is a blend of the earth sciences with the biological sciences. Because of that the endorsements are a little different. Both in biology and earth science endorsed teachers can teach that. We did that deliberately. Earth science teachers are hard to come by. So we wanted to make sure that we had teachers to be able to teach the course. So allowed either endorsement. Students can also earn graduation credit in either the earth science or biology discipline through this course. So it provides flexibility for students. And it's also a primary area of interest of you today. And then of course we have the physics too. Now what drove what is in those
390courses are something we call the SCED descriptions. And so you have national descriptions. So each course. So if a student is in environmental science in Galax and they move to Virginia Beach or they move to Texas, the general content of the courses is provided in that description so that it carries over or if it's a student chooses to you know go to college that descriptor goes with them so they college knows the basic content that was in the course. We wanted to make sure that these courses reflect those national guidelines. It also allowed for multiple avenues to for students to engage with science. There's all sorts of different I think we have more alternatives than almost any discipline because there's so many different areas of interest depending on you know your personal interest as well
391as what areas of the state you're in. Now the 2018 standard had a traditional format. that traditional format was focused on content. Um the students expectations or performance expectations were included in the curriculum frameworks. They were not in the standards. The scientific and engineering practices again were in the curriculum frameworks. We use that leaf to indicate that the science the students are engaging with the scientific and engineering practice. In the new format, it we intentionally integrate those SEPs, scientific and engineering practices into the standard themselves so that teachers wouldn't have to go from this document to this document to determine what student mastery looked like. It also reflects the performance expectations as I said of students to demonstrate that mastery content. So what does that look like? Well, first of all, what are the scientific
392and engineering practices? These are the practices that scientists and engineers engage in in the fields but also different things that we have to do in real life. We are constantly analyzing data, evaluating data. We're constantly constructing uh critiquing conclusions. I love the one developing and using models. I think the best model assignment I ever saw was in kindergarten and it was have the child draw a picture. Where does a puddle go? My mom was like, "Where does a puddle go?" But it is an actual really good way to do a preassessment on what do they know about the water cycle? And as they draw that, they can explain the different scientific concepts behind it. And it grows and progresses as they go through um K through 12. So these practices are embedded everywhere we go.
393In the math instructional guides, you saw the skills and practices or the math process goals. And some of these are really similar um because we're very close in construct in science. These are the scientific and engineering practices that were informed by the 2012 framework for science education and are also the basis for the NAPE revised assessment for 2028. So here is an example standard for all of those that really love chemistry 2. You will probably resonate with you. Um as you can see the stem the student will investigate and understand that stays the same from the 2018 standards and it gives the onus of learning to the students. The stem gives the general content that is being taught in that standard and then to demonstrate of demonstrate the um mastery they are to develop and
394use a model to explain changes. So the teacher is not developing and using a model the student develops the model. um make and support and evaluate a claim about classification of reactions as redux or non-redox reactions. These are the things that students in a chemistry 2 class should be able to do to demonstrate mastery of the course. It also helps when you're um selecting HQIM. It helps when you are determining what assessments look like to look at these standards. Now what is also hard and this is something we struggled with with the math HQIM when you elevate things to plan and conduct. Hard to see in a textbook per se really hard to see on an so assessment. Um justify this requires a higher level of student and teacher engagement and it does provide some
395problems. That's what some of the PD we're doing in math is addressing. What does that look like? How are they going to assess this on the so test? How do I see this in HQIM? That's where that leg of the um of uh student performance requires that teacher PD. How do you set up your your classroom system so that you can allow the students to be able to engage in these activities? So, next steps. In June 2025, Miss Casdorf is going to put the announcement in town hall that public hearings are coming up on the 2025 standards of learning. We plan, she plans to present to the board in 2025, the proposed draft standards for those 11 courses. And immediately, we'll open public comment and have public hearings. So, for those of you not planning
396vacation in August, we have some road trips for you. Um, in early 2025, we're going to be going around the state. We're going to take the feedback from both the public hearings and the public comments to revise the standards to be able to submit them to the board for final review in August. With that tight timeline, we are not going to expect implementation to until 2627. That being said, divisions want these. They aren't tested using a traditional standards of learning test. These provide parameters and guidelines for the instruction of these courses that have never been there. So, as a firsttime teacher way too long ago, I was told to teach oceanography. I'm from Colorado. We don't have oceans. I just took a textbook and the night before learned oceanography the night before. I didn't have
397these structures. This will so help teachers in deciding what to do and what those experiences should be. In fact, people keep asking, can you just leak a few drafts out? This is how much this is how much they are wanted. And Laura snap uh smacks my hand every time I do. Um um in terms of current support, and we're going to shift gears. Um, the science team has been working very hard on the instructional guides and I would say a majority of their time has been focused on making sure that information in that instructional guide is as accurate as possible. And I'm going to jump in that structural guide in a minute and you're going to see some amazing stuff that they have done in there. Throughout this year, they have provided division webinar support
398and mainly that VO VDOE safety science webinar that is being used across the state as a way to make sure that regulations are in place for science safety. They have been doing specific division support as requested and they have also been doing presentations at all the science teacher and leader organization meetings. So coming soon the instructional guides. So the standard staying the same and that's on the left. That skills in practice. Notice we got the leaf. We asked we said the leaf's going to appear on every single one of them. Are you sure you want the leaf? And our stakeholders said we love the leaf. The background on the leaf is the only thing we could miniaturaturize to the size of a bullet without losing the integrity of it. So that's why we have a
399leaf. If you look at the um so assessments reports by category or the reports by question there's this limp looking leaf or egg looking thing that is their widget of a leaf because we said the worst thing that can happen is if we say we value this but it's not in the assessments then it won't be done. So our assessment team stepped up found the cheapest widget they could find and made sure that leaf was clearly evident on those so tests. So that leaf will stay. So instead of moving objects have kinetic energy, the students are going to identify objects that have kinetic energy and describe the motion as direct in terms of direction, relative speed, and position. That really ramps up the rigor of that standard and really tells teachers what are they supposed
400to do about moving objects have kinetic energy. when it says friction is a force that opposes motion, have the students plan and conduct an investigation to determine the effect of friction on moving objects. So, let them determine the problem. Let them ask the questions. Let them collect the data. Now, we can't do that for all labs. We have to make sure maybe there's some experiences that precede that to enable them to do that. But we need to have students plan and conduct versus giving them worksheets with the steps and they don't really gain anything from the end. and we have to follow up to make sure that the students understand the science concepts that led to that and the the results of that experiment. So really being drawing it out and having them be explicit
401on what science concepts were involved and what that planning and conducting an investigation was. Now this is the fun part um in the concepts and connection section. Now, the math, you're going to look at the math um instructional guides. You're going to look at the computer science instructional guides. You're going to look at the science. They all look the same. We're very, we're very inline people. And as I said, we have no imagination at all. But in this section, we have common student misconceptions. These are very informed by research. And so, we identified through research the misconception. And then we put in what is the real scientific explanation. I will say one of my colleagues, I'm not going to say which division he's from. He took all my misconceptions documents. We had one for life
402science, for earth sciences, and for physical sciences, and he made them all true false questions and gave it to all of his high school teachers. They failed. They are common misconceptions for a reason. So just identifying it as a misconception won't do it. We have to say this is what it really is and then hopefully provide those experience in the classroom with a common phenomena and for students to experience it and be able to tie that understanding too. Just telling somebody that's a misconception doesn't work. We have to provide those learning experiences that helps them reshape their thinking. We're including the crosscutting concepts. Again, this is informed by the 2012 framework for science education and they built in something called cross cutting concepts. There are six crosscutting concepts. Six overall seven. Sorry, I always leave
403out the computational thinking. Um uh there are seven crosscutting concepts overall and the content can be taught through the lens of any of those crosscutting concepts. However, the science team identified these are two lenses you can teach this standard through and this is why and then those connections. First of all, the one thing that the um a very positive thing about the 2018 curriculum framework was the vertical alignment component. What came before this instruction and what is coming after. So then the teachers knew if I'm going to give a preassessment, they should know this information and if they don't, I know I have to address that gap. Um some teachers like to overte and extend beyond you know where are those parameters what is coming up next and how can I shape that to help
404fit where they're going to next um we also put um the cross content areas as I said mathematics and science are tied computer science all of us use data all of us use algorithmic thinking how are those connections so we tie to those standards specifically we have also integrated the ELA and that took a lot of work because in K through five you have adopted HQIM. So we had to go through the different ones and find areas where we can match so that if you have this HQIM, here's an area where you can have some integration. If you have this HQIM, you can have this area. Um we have also putting in the digital learning integration standards and are currently working on building in WEDA supports. So these are all going to be in the
405instructional guides. Now, if you see an instructional guides and say this is the next American novel, just realize there's a lot in there and it's really powerful stuff. Okay, the timeline for these um they the video team developed draft instructional guides, but we need to make sure they're as accurate as possible. We need to make sure they resonate with what stakeholders need. So, we're finalizing things in the instructional guides. We've had new standards come out. Um, we are just finished up work with WEDA and we still have to implement that in. Laura is going to be rolling them out with different stakeholders to get more feedback and they're currently with the Virginia and math science coalition and they're looking at stuff now. Um, these documents are composed of the same part. We have the understanding
406the standards, the skills and practice concepts and connections. So, it does resonate with the others to support those elementary students that are teaching so many subjects across the board. In terms of professional development, we do have professional de development coming up. Actually, the science team has a whole series of professional developments they hope to offer monthly starting August of 2025. Um, the first one that always rolls out is safety, but hopefully the standards will be adopted and we'll be able to do an introduction to the 2025 science standards of learning webinar and we'll have it differentiated for different stakeholders. parents, this is what they are. This is the opportunities provide and this is how it could potentially lead to different fields or different academic programs. Um you know teachers this is this and these are
407the constructs of the understanding the standard documents that are going to support the work. Uh board members this you know this is what needs to be considered when adding these to your program of studies. In May and June of 2025, we are doing um or are currently doing a supporting implementation of science standards of learning professional learning course series and this is being conducted with um through monies funded by the office of school quality and we had 600 641 people register for the courses. We had 71 slots but we pointed them in another direction. We do have STEM professional learning which is building m discipline mastery through integrated STEM instruction and these are for K through eight teachers. They are occurring this summer. If you'd like to go to any I'd be happy to have
408you. They're face toface. We have uh webinars and it's a true collaboration between the office of STEM the office of educational technology technology and classroom innovation and career and technical education. So all of us came together to provide PD for teachers across the state. Um, we are going to continue that learning through webinars through the four disciplines and integrate STEM topics in the fall as Laura also rolls out the PD for division leaders. And then with science, a lot of our rural divisions do not have science dedicated instructional staff at the division level. So providing teacher supports as well. So teacher PD in the afternoon, division leader PD in the morning. and we're going to be providing ongoing professional development, planning, and support as requested by the Office of School Quality. Last but not least,
409we have a couple awards. We have the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching, and I'm excited to say this year we have five teachers recognized, and we're harsh. They have to be the best. And we we have a team of stakeholders that are educators, prior recipients, people from out in the field that are a part of the evaluation team. And we identified two mathematics teachers, Jennifer Fihan from Faulier and John Mika from Fairfax as our mathematics teacher representatives for Virginia. And the three science representatives are Russ Russell Cole from Massed Nutton Regional Governor School for Integrated Environmental Science and Technology, the longest school name ever. Um Kristen Salonga, a science teacher at Justin High School, and Daryl Smith. As I said, they're going to be coming to the board later. Um and
410you will get to meet them, but they're very exciting, passionate educators, and we are excited to have them as representatives. And the last award is the Virginia Green Ribbon Schools. This award application is insane. It is composed of three peers. The amount of three pillars. The amount of data that must be submitted to be even considered for this ward is um the applications are 20 pages long and they have to compile what is the energy usage in the school. What is you know exactly what are the water saving measures? How is your pest control management? What uh staff resources do you have to support their wellness? What does instruction look like? It is a very extensive application. Um, Belmont Elementary School in Prince William won it this year and Cardinal Ridge Elementary School in LA.
411So, we are very excited to have these schools recognized for such a high level of um commitment to our environment. And that is it for science. What questions do you have? Questions on science? Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, okay. Do we need to take a quick break before we try to finish some things up? Yes. No. Quick break. Yes. Okay. Five minutes. next presentation. Okay, great. So, since most of my team is giving you assignments over the holiday weekend, Calypso is coming in with the AI performant or AI information to help you um read through those, speed through those with uh some some good stuff. Um, so Calypso Gilstrap is over the educational technology and classroom innovation office. They do a lot to integrate. I think you've seen that throughout
412the day, how they integrate in the other content areas. And so she's going to just talk to you today about the computer science, where we're going with th those standards, and then what we've done with artificial intelligence and where we're going. So, um, President Grey, board members, and Superintendent Golixson, I'm here to tell you about our team's diligent work in implementing Executive Order 30 and how our external partners are seeing how Virginia is leading the way in AI strategy for K through 12 education. Let's hope this is Do I have to click here? Which one? Okay. Okay, great. To prepare students for high demand careers while ensuring that they have digital wellness, we have to integrate the technology thoughtfully. Um we also need to make sure that our computer science and digital learning strategies are
413embedded into the curriculum, not like the icing on the cake, but the salt in the cake to enhance um their their technology interactions with real world things. Um today I'm going to talk about our efforts and the impacts being uh rippling around the Commonwealth with um the strategies we've been using this year. Now AI and computer science affect everything. So we feel like it hits most of the priorities of the board and also supports the Virginia Educational Technology Plan which you guys adopted in December of 2023 as part of the board's comprehensive plan. Uh we are going to specifically talk about AI in the area of use which promotes the use of a variety of innovative instructional strategies, practices and resources that are developed with current emerging that's what we're talking about today is emerging
414technology and then making sure that is accessible to all of our students through innovative instructional approaches. So, um, under executive order 30, the VDOE is directed to develop and issue tools, instructional resources, and to help integrate AI into education at all levels. The guidelines for AI integration and education focus on the responsible and effective AI implementation across Virginia schools. In April, the artificial the advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth executive order was signed by President Donald Trump which focuses on embedding AI education within US schools and workforce development programs. As you will see through this presentation, Virginia has already taken a significant steps towards this uh direction. First, we have the Virginia 2020 digital learning integration standards of learning which actually have been adopted in different varieties since 2005. and they establish a strong
415foundation for AI literacy by focusing on key lit key digital literacy competencies. They equip students with essential skills for an evolving world, ensuring that they become ethical, informed and technologically proficient students. They need to be digital citizens, knowledge constructors, empowered learners, creative communicators, global collaborators, innovative designers, and computational thinkers. Those are all skills that we need when we're using technology. In the front matter of the 2024 computer science and English language arts standards, we highlight the importance of AI integration with digital technologies in teaching while while we also address the risks of using technology. Technology has transformed how people read, write, and communicate. And with AI, it's going to be further amplified with this shift. students engage with AIdriven tools and academic integrity is going to become more and more essential. We need to ensure
416that we have responsible users, that they are properly attributing where they get their information, and that they have a critical evaluation when they're looking at AI generated content. Integrating ethical practices into digital literacy prepares students to navigate technology with the accountability while enhancing their learning experiences. However, we have concerns about privacy, security, ethical use and and managing the integrity of those learning processes need to be in pri prioritized. Students must learn to engage with tools thoughtfully and ethically to ensure their responsible utilization is not only in education but also outside of education in their personal lives. the standards of digital learning, computer science, and then also our English language art standards and the rest of the standards we adopt in the future are going to make sure we have a balanced approach to make sure
417technology is integrated thoughtfully and that we are also prioritizing innovation and ethical responsibility. So, our computer science standards establish a strong connection between core computer science concepts and AI. We are the first Commonwealth state in the nation to adopt AI standards in computer science. We were the first state to have computer science standards and now we're the first one to have AI explicitly in them. So in algorithms and programming, students develop computational thinking skills and they learn programming constructs, decision trees, and flowcharts. These are all essential in understanding how AI drives neural networks and mimics human learning behaviors. Comp um computing systems introduces perception automation input output functions and it lets the AI's ability to process and analyze data. Cyber security is about protecting data addressing algorithm bias and pro and promoting ethical usage of
418AI and understanding privacy law user agreements and ethical considerations ensure that students responsibly engage with AI and machine learning applications. The integration of these computer science standards must be used to harness the potential while they're navigating the risks of using technology. So here's an example of a lesson that we might see in a school. So this instructional plan exemplifies an interdisciplinary approach that we want to see connecting computer science, math, and English. So in fifth grade, students would learn about data sets and be introduced to machine learning. In sixth grade, they start curating, creating their own data sets. And by seventh grade, they understand how data sets contribute to computational thinking, helping build machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. So in seventh grade, they would create their own data set by maybe being in a
419PE class and making an individual screen time log. Then in mathematics, they would take that data and study trends, creating neural networks and understanding how the the decisions could be made in that graph. And then in English they could interpret the AI and the data and the ethical use helping them understand when do I use AI, what kind of privacy would I want to have my private data put into the AI machine to be shared. So this is what we want to see happening by integrating computer science digital learning into our other standards. So to prepare our educators for this world where we have integrated computer science and digital learning standards, we have worked with German Community College and we had a um creative revolution workshop with our educators over three months. In the fall
420of 2024, we had 360 educators participate inerson and remote learning sessions gaining insights about AI's theoretical, ethical, and practical aspects. Now, this was a train the trainer model. So those 360 educators then went back to their school divisions. Sorry, uh 560 educators go back to their school divisions and train the teachers in their own schools. Um educators received resources. They compared AI. They were able to get prompting guides and rubrics on how to select AI, how to use it in their classroom. At the end of the show, at the end in March, we had a showcase where we had 70 different educators who took the the um training come back and show us what they learned and what they were doing. Um, our feedback was overwhelming uh with positive things. Like 89% of the people
421said it was an excellent workshop, which if you've ever run a workshop, you know that's a really great statistic. But this was most impressive. 100% of our participants said they want more training. So we know that that's a need that we need to provide for. 85% of our teachers felt comfortable with uh using AI in their classroom after taking the training. So this is one of the projects that our educators uh showcased at the at the um showcase in March and that was basically they showed us how they were using AI to um become more productive. So for instance they were able to automate uh routine tasks, personalized learning for their students, enhance their classroom management and they were able to look at data driven insights based on um their students data. We also worked
422with our leaders um the Virginia Association of School Superintendents in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Education worked with advanced learning partnerships to create um this super awesome innovative way of training our our uh 75 of our Virginia school systems who came together in cabinet level strategic planning meetings. There were four days in which they came together and we worked on understanding what generative AI is, evaluating AI's role in education and then this was probably the most fun part and that was playing with AI and coming up with practical applications on how we would do um things in our schools. Um our superintendent went from 34% to 88% feeling comfortable with integrating AI into schools. After that, um, we also were able to take everything they created and put it into one website. So any
423of our school divisions, if even if they didn't participate, are able to have access to, uh, vendor letters, parent letters, um, policies that they created, procurement guides, those type things. Though both our educator and leadership upskilling in AI, digital literacy and CS allow schools to focus on fostering responsible and purposeful technology use. Digital citizenship programs, clear guidelines, structured integration on techbased learning can help students develop self-regulation and professional etiquette in those digital spaces. When we embrace technology and education, we are creating a workforce that is ready to go to work in a digital world. in this slide. I'm not going to make you watch it. Instead, I have homework for you. Sorry, Dr. Wallace. You guys need to listen to our podcast, Activated Learning. Episode 206 has Louisa County Public Schools and how they're integrating
424AI into their um CTE program. It's super cool. Um, and if you're not listening to the podcast, highly recommend subscribing. That one's a lot more fun than reading um policies or something like that. So alongside with our AI initiatives, we also are supporting the model policy concerning internet safety by providing professional development, assisting school divisions with implementation and maintaining curated internet safety resources, which now include AI related materials on the VDOE web page. You're going to hear more about this tomorrow, but we did specifically seek feedback um when we're revising the policy and making sure we integrate AI into that policy. So as AI continues to evolve, we want to make sure our parents and our guardians really understand the implica implications and also really encourage responsible use of AI. So to advance that that
425goal, VDOE is going to spend the next six months developing resources including videos, interactive tools and printed materials that we can give to school divisions so parents understand how does AI come into school and then how can they help their own child understand what AI is used at home. So specifically related to computer science, we have um all these different things going on here to help our educators be able to implement in a structured system. So we have instruction, data collection, educator assistance. We um are working on getting better at accessibility and technology integration where we're collaborating with those school divisions on how do you best have a CS ready school. Um and then we are uh working really hard with VCU right now to create a common a computing in the commonwealth dashboard where
426we can really see and spotlight those areas where we see computer science being really successful. We also have the advancing computer science education grant last year for the FY25 appropriation. We gave out 1 million 9700,000 to 16 different school divisions. Um if you listen to the podcast you'll hear some of the cool things that we're doing with that Axis grant. We also were able to give out I think um Amanda's going to talk about this more. Um we were able to give out $320,000 to 11 schools to advance AP computer science with that Axis grants money. We also work with partners like CodeVa, the Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Advancing Rural Computer Science Education grantees who they basically take what our dreams are and make them come true. Uh we also have um honored a
427computer science educator of the year. So the day after um our Virginia educator of the year was um honored, we were able to honor our CS champions. These are teachers who are working in regular classrooms and integrating computer science the way we want to see that happen. And then our digital learning program we have driven all over the state uh supporting our ITRTs and school librarians making sure that they are ready to lead the way with professional development with our regular classroom teachers. We also have collaborative relationships. We don't have a consortium ourselves. Instead, we go to the eight regions and visit their collaboratives to make sure we're meeting them where they're at. And we also have developed an ITRT best practices course which also includes how to integrate AI into the classroom. And this
428is my office. Thanks everybody on my office who's doing great work. Um and if I have you guys have any questions or comments, I'm happy to take them or I'll ask chat GPT and he'll get back to you. You're the best. Dr. Norther. All right. I just want to know like the elephant in the room is how are kids we've got 56% of kids in college saying they're using AI to cheat. So obviously the numbers that we're seeing at the high school level are creeping up. So what are we doing around you know kids who are using AI to cheat? So uh as of right now most of our school divisions have blocked chats from a school device. Now, we know that doesn't circumvent all cheating on a personal device, but we know school divisions
429are trying to be more intentional about the way that they are training. But also, that's why the educator training is going to be so important. Um, we're working with school divisions really hard to have those like really clear, acceptable use of when we're allowed to use it, when we're not allowed to use it. Um, we think it's really important for workforce development that we teach kids how to use it, not block them from using it. Um, we know this is kind of different than all other emerging technology. Like parents don't know what AI is, teachers don't know what AI, like we're all kind of learning at the exact same time what it is. Um, that's why we also would say computer science standards are so important because kids are learning to leverage AI instead of
430cheating with AI. So, I guess our our answer is cheating's been happening forever and we need to teach kids why we want to learn things, not why we want to just get the grade to pass things. I do know our teachers are very aware though that kids are cheating using lots of different ways. Um, and that's where rapport relationships with kids are going to be really important because you know it's AI when you read it and you don't hear that kid's voice. And when we give those um highquality questions and critical thinking, computational thinking designed lessons and assessments, then it's harder to cheat because you get to see that work of like they got to pick something they really are interested in. I saw a first draft and I saw them brainstorming and outlining and
431those type things. So that being said, I have a kid in high school and she was using an AI yesterday to come up with interview questions for her AP US history assignment and it was a very thoughtful to watch her prompt engineer like my mom was born in 19 something or other and I want to ask her some questions about history. What would be some good examples? and then it popped out some questions for her and then she was able then to go and use her US history resources to do some more research about 911 and those type things. So it is a collaborator. We just need to teach kids what are the boundaries, the guidelines and when is it not okay to use because we are concerned about them taking personal information dropping that
432like I didn't appreciate that my birthday got put into chat GPT last night. Um but that's okay. So but we but that's again relationships building those kind of things. cheating is definitely not okay and educator training will hopefully and you know student conduct um creating acceptable use policies updating the internet safety policy hopefully those type things will help us have that messaging of when we can use it when we can't use it Mr. Rother. Thank you, Madam President. Um, first of all, Clips, thank you. What a great presentation. And this is exciting. And um, one of the things when you ask uh, if you ask AI which states are leading, it puts Virginia up in the top five. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that, including I'm doing some work with NASBY
433on this, and our executive order is like it is comprehensive. It's a model. Other states want to know what we're doing because people are trying to figure this out. And so, um, uh, it's great. I just want to put a word in for I think, uh, I think AI is great. I think you're what you what you just said a moment ago about we have to make sure kids understand it from an employment standpoint. It it is I think it is going to be more disruptive. You're already starting to see this if you track layoffs and and so forth, it's going to be more disruptive than than it might appear at first glance. May also create other jobs. But we we certainly can't not let kids understand it and know how to use and all
434that. I do think there's two things that are really important that that are not AI specific, but um that that tie it. One is the problem with with the shortcuts on AI is this idea like you you learn by productive struggle. We do hard things, we get good at things, then you go do harder things and so forth. AI just obiates that completely, right? And that's a big problem for how people learn. And so it's be really important that we train our teachers to make sure that they are doing that. And I and we do have this this sort of ethos that kind of bubbled up with 21st century skills and everything else that like oh who needs to like teach content because kids can look it up on Google like that kind of got
435thankfully beaten back but it's coming roaring back now with AI. Who needs content because kids can look it up on on AI. And so if we're teaching this stuff we're wasting everybody's time. We're going to have to push back against that. And that's my second point. like this makes the work we're doing whether it's on HQIM on standards on content it makes it even more important that we really anchor in a knowledger curriculum because AI is great but also it's not hard to make it hallucinate it's not easy to sort of see that if you have a if you're using it for things where you have a trained eye and the only way you have a trained eye is that sort of content knowledge and so I really hope we're going to hear about how
436ultimately this is being sort of integrated across the agency um and it's not like AI is over here and curriculum everything else is over here that we're linking it because I I I think danger lies ahead if we're not really careful. We already have enough of a sort of content problem in general. Um uh that danger lies if we don't really keenly link those. So that's that's just a a push to keep doing what you're doing because I think it's super thoughtful but make sure we're doing it in a really integrated way. Thank you, Madam President. Uh well, Miss McFerson. Thank you. On the AI perspective, you know, given the the president's executive order, I just want to say as we move forward, if you look clearly at AI and workforce development because we're going
437to have all of this equipment that is going to need high level skill training to operate AI equipment. So I'd like to see as we go along how we look at AI and workforce development and you know funding in that area. I also wanted to kind of like your presentation was great. Wanted to give a shout out to the 2025 computer science um winners because we talked about the ones that were in in math and um I'll let you do that because I I just think we got to always promote the people that are doing such a great job. So, we close out. Well, we're hoping in November they will be at the board meeting for Computer Science Week and we will be able to honor them then. Uh, and if you aren't on the
438board, then we still invite you to come back to come to the meeting and celebrate them. Um, so we will and we will make sure they'll also all be on the podcast just to, you know, plug the podcast again. Um, so, but yes, we absolutely have honored them. We have been to their schools and videotaped them and our are but we would love for you to meet them in November. Thank you. Thank you. My team is really good at giving homework assignments to um enhance your prior knowledge. Um our last presentation for you this afternoon is the advanced learning instructional update. I'm really excited about this program or this program update. Amanda Nevatrol is our director of advanced learning. Um this office has had somewhat of a transition over the last few years and um
439just in the past it hasn't um the office itself has not been really in the community of the schools and Amanda has taken this program to a totally another level. um she's out there in the school divisions all of the time working with governor schools and gifted educators and always trying to figure out how she can um reach those and provide support to those gifted directors. Whereas that has been from a division perspective coming from the division recently kind of a underserved group of individuals at the division level. um particularly if you're from a rural school division and your gifted programs might look very different than say a a school division that's in an urban area. Um so I introduce Amanda and really give her kudos. Um her team of two, she and one other
440individual have been doing mammoth work across the state with advanced learning and certainly does connect to other areas that you've heard today. Thank you. President Cesy, board members, and superintendent Gullixson. I'm Amanda Nevetrol, and I'm pleased to be with you today to present an update from the Office of Advanced Learning. I know you've done a lot of listening today. We are a new office and we are super excited to be here. Our office supports division leaders and programs around the Commonwealth that meet the needs of Virginia's advanced learners. Um, I would like to thank Kevin Carr, the specialist with the office of advanced learning for his support with this work. The growth of advanced learners is important and outlined clearly in the board's strategic priorities. Gifted and advanced learners deserve to thrive and experience academic
441growth in a classroom environment where high expectations are prioritized and innovative pathways are crafted and implemented to meet individual needs. Oops. Our office is pleased to have offered professional development for our gifted coordinators this past year in the areas listed on the slide. Most recently, we have been working closely with the math team in the office of STEM to support divisions with the implementation of HB2686, which promotes enrollment in advanced or accelerated math courses for students in grades 5 through 8 through autoenrollment and other means of eligibility. The Code of Virginia requires that all school boards develop, approve, and implement a local plan for the education of the gifted. Every plan is reviewed on a five-year cycle and a technical review process. This school year, our office worked with divisions in regions five and six
442to train over 80 division personnel on the technical review protocol and provide valuable peer feedback to school divisions regarding their gifted education programs. The Code of Virginia also requires that data is collected annually on students referred for gifted education services and students identified for gifted education services in addition to division specific programmatic data. This report is publicly available and currently consists of a static PDF state level report. In collaboration with VDOE's data team, we are excited that this data will be displayed in a build- a table format beginning in fall 2025. This will allow for stakeholders to actively engage with state and division level data in a new way and increase transparency for gifted identification across the state. The Virginia Advisory Committee for Advanced Learning last week to provide feedback on a technical resource document
443that will support divisions in the implementation of HB2686 and a companion family document that will guide parents to understand more about advanced and accelerated math pathways. I would like to thank all members of this committee and especially the chair Mark Levy for prioritizing this important work. We plan to release these resources to the field in parallel with upcoming webinar trainings that will support divisions in the refinement or creation of accelerated math pathways. As we move into the summer and next school year, we are looking forward to further exploration of seat time flexibility for advanced learners, including the potential to pilot innovative ideas in our academic year governor schools, and supporting school divisions and implementation of more rigorous standards in history, English, and mathematics that allow for students to demonstrate competency and proceed on personalized learning
444pathways. We are working closely with content teams as well as the office of accountability to support divisions and acceleration efforts in middle school and math, social studies, and science. One of the highlights during my past two years at the department has been visiting all 19 academic year governor schools and seeing firsthand the learning opportunities that are provided to advanced and gifted learners by the directors and staff of these schools. In collaboration and partnership with the office of educational technology and classroom innovation, the directors of the academic year governor schools and PBS Appalachia, videos promoting the opportunities that each governor school offers are being filmed and curated over a two-year period to be used on VDOE's website and media pages and for school divisions to better communicate these programs to students to ensure alignment to best
445practices for gifted and advanced students. Each academic year governor school receives a full-sight evaluation every six years. In 2024, the guidelines were updated to include standardization for the collection of achievement data, implementation of a stakeholder survey to drive strategic planning, utilization of common interview questions, and a rubric that was updated to reflect alignment with the National Association for Gifted Children's most recent programming standards. Finally, I'm excited to announce there is a proposal for a new academic year governor school on deck for June 2025. The new River Valley Governor's School is an effort between Radford University and five local school divisions to offer an advanced program for students interested in the arts and humanities in Southwest Virginia. Tomorrow I will present an update to the procedures for initiating an academic year governor school to support the
446new river valley governor school planning committee and other future committees in this work. The office of advanced learning coordinates and supports school divisions and offering advanced juniors and seniors the opportunity to apply for and potentially attend one of seven summer residential governor schools. These 637 seats are highly competitive and attract many public, private, and homeschool students from around the Commonwealth. Our office works closely with our partnering universities to select students based on applicant score and graduation year while ensuring a commitment to regional diversity. In summer 2024, our office was pleased to partner with Radford University to offer the medicine and health sciences program after a 5-year hiatus. One of our proudest accomplishments in the past two years is working to update and streamline the application process for increased usability. Changes included moving to a digital
447version of the application, implementing in partnership with Radford University, who hosts our visual and performing arts program, a virtual adjudication process. We also realigned the application to include the addition of a personal narrative and the elimination of unnecessary barriers, including additional testing. To support school divisions in implementing these changes, we added extra supports, including videos and technical support documents on our advanced learning canvas course. In summer 2025, we are looking forward to an additional partnership with PBS Appalachia to produce videos for each of these programs. Similarly, these videos will be available for school division use to advertise this opportunity to students. The office of advanced learning also supports summer regional governor schools as well, which are funded through the general assembly to provide enrichment programs for advanced and gifted students connected to their region. Most
448programs are focused on elementary or middle school students, but several offer opportunities for high school students. Although al although all programs will not operate this summer, we were able to reallocate funding to operating programs to increase opportunities for those students. Our office supports advanced placement international balorate and Cambridge programming across the Commonwealth. I am going to review some highlights from the past year and then share some enrollment data from each of these programs. One highlight included developing the process and procedures for the implementation of the API Cambridge fee reduction program included in the 2024 budget bill. This appropriation provided funding for a reduced exam fee cost for economically disadvantaged students. 40 school divisions applied to receive funding and requests exceeded the appropriated amount, prompting an additional $150,000 in funds for this purpose added in the
4492025 budget bill for fiscal year 26. In December 2024, our office worked with the Office of STEM and Humanities to assist the board in adding additional IB courses to the list of board approved courses for graduation, allowing greater flexibility for IB diploma students and other students wishing to take an IB course and have that course count for graduation. In April 2025, changes were made to the SCED code document to better align the middleear program or my PIIB courses with the international balorate program and this was prompted by both school division request and from the international balorate organization. We are also currently working closely with Chev to improve the transferability of IB credits to Virginia universities. I am also pleased to speak about a collaboration with the office of education technology and classroom innovation to expand
450AP computer science coursework in school divisions using funding from the advancing computer science education appropriation. In total, 14 school divisions applied to receive funding to expand access to AP computer science principles and/or AP computer science. Specific examples of how funding will be utilized is noted on the slide. Here is an overview of advanced placement enrollment and achievement from the past 5 years. Although COVID influenced numbers, AP course enrollment is continuing to rebound and experience growth. Looking from left to right, the number of students enrolled in at least one AP course is displayed, followed by how many courses are being offered. And then on the far right, the percentage of students earning a three or better on an AP exam. Here is an overview of international balariat enrollment and achievement displayed in a similar way. Although
451the department has only one year of IB testing available on this slide. Here we also see a pandemic related dip, but expect a gradual rebound in divisions that choose to offer this program. The Cambridge Advanced International Certificate of Education program offers students an opportunity to earn college credit and currently is only offered in Prince William County. A little over 1,000 students were recorded by B PWCS as being enrolled in an AIC course in school year 2324. No testing data is available currently, but the department is working to gather testing data for future years. Our office works closely with the Office of Career and Technical Education to nominate outstanding Virginia students for the US Presidential Scholars Program, a program started by an executive order in 1964. In April 2025, the 10 semi- finalists from Virginia were
452announced by the US Department of Education. finalists will be named in late May 2025. I'm pleased to share the 10 semi- finalists from Virginia and join the board and superintendent Gullixson in congratulating them on this remarkable achievement. Finally, I am thrilled to continue to support school divisions, including principles, division leaders, and teachers in further engagements this summer and beyond. I really appreciate your time today, and I'm happy to answer any questions. I have a question. Yes. I I would really like for you to come back and talk to us a little bit more in depth about um IB programs across the state. uh specifically how many schools or school divisions are engaging in my uh I know you don't know that off the top of your head but that's um a really interesting angle to
453sort of solving I think a lot of the problems that we talked about today uh specifically in our um reading and our uh our our new VA 4 through8 I I I just think that there can be a lot of fusion there um with my how we address um kind of overcoming some of those barriers in uh ensuring that our students in those middle years are getting to the place that they need to be to be reading and to be kind of making those crosscurricular uh connections that oftent times really do assist in comprehension and um you know I I think to some degree deep in brain development but uh but I do think that that would be an interesting presentation to have you all have you specifically come back and provide us with a
454lot of that um kind of in-depth data and information around the IV program and its use in Virginia specifically since you have seen I'm glad that you you guys are working towards this in enhancing what SEV is accepting and how can we sort of be leaders in that in that realm of of pushing those credentials, those credits to be transferred into our um institutions of higher education. So I appreciate that. Absolutely. Happy to do that. Any other questions or comments? Dr. Northern I am so excited you're here. Um I am just thrilled because we have been, you know, trying to get VCAL going. I think I heard you said VCAL met. We did last Friday. Awesome. And your national experts were fantastic. They were fantastic. Okay, that's good. Um, what I realized as I was
455sitting here earlier is that like the big thing that everybody recommends is using universal screening in K3 with a diagnostic or interim assessment. What do we have in Virginia? We have a diagnostic or interim assessment that we use in K3. So, we could be doing like honestly that's like low hanging fruit. We could be universally screening all of our kids in the early grades, right? to see if there can be identified, right? Because what happens is you guys know this um is that kids don't get identified unless they've got a pushy parent sometimes and a lot of kids who otherwise should be identified um are not being identified. So we want a fair universal screener that goes to all kids period. Um and so I would love I don't know if our national experts brought
456that up or they even know that we already we do we're ahead of the curve on many states with that. Um, so that would be really exciting if we could use like another make another use of that universal screening in in the early grades to identify kids who would otherwise not be identified because we want to get them quick quickly, right? Because again, catching these kids early is so important in terms of de developing their talents. Um, and then the um the subject acceleration is another one that I hope that we can talk about. You know, sometimes we parents are reticent to have their kids skip an entire grade because of de developmental issues or they want their kids to be with kids their own age. Um, but the subject acceleration is another one that's
457really popular among parents because they they know their kid loves math or their kid loves science and and they could be doing the next the next subject in that um in the queue. Um, so those are just two areas that just dawned on me as you were talking and congratulations for getting the committee together and I'm so glad to see the forward momentum here. Thank you. Uh, Miss Holton. Uh, thank you. Just in followup to Dr. Northern's point, uh, Amber, are you saying that the vowels screener? You're asking whether we could explore using the vowels screener for as a in somehow to use it as a gifted education. That's right. It's a universal screener for because um, a lot of states don't have an interim or a diagnostic universal screener at that young of an
458age, right? I mean, it's just literacy. It's not. That's right. It's just literacy. It's an interesting idea that we might might be able to find ways to build on. Um, but my question was going to be uh to slide 11. That's the data on AP participation. And that's uh it's uh my comment first is it's very exciting to see that enrollment in both individual courses by student or by courses uh obviously dipped during the pandemic but in um it was a year delay after the epidemic. So that's a little bit of a mystery but then has rebounded significantly. So it's now well above prepandemic level if I understand that correctly. Yes. That's terrific. Um, and yet I see that the percentage passing at a level three, grade three or below has slipped. So I'm not,
459you know, the math of that is more students taking it, fewer student, smaller percentage passing. Just do you have any thoughts on what's going on there and what we can do about it? Um, well, one thing that comes to mind is really utilizing and expanding um, knowledge and access to some of the tools that College Board offers. In particular, I'm really thinking about AP classroom, which is a digital platform that uh school divisions, teachers, students can access for practice test prep questions, essay prompts, daily videos about the content. And you know, I meet with College Board monthly and we talk about how to ensure that all of our advanced placement teachers, students, division leaders really know about all the tools that College Board has to offer. And I think that's certainly something that we can
460continue to push on because it is a very helpful resource for that. Halton. Um u yeah I think that's a great idea and that prompts one other question which is have we looked at what percentage of kids who are taking the AP courses are taking the exams because obviously you can't get a three or better if you're not taking the exam and there is we've heard some suggestion including from our student advisory board last year that the cost of the AP exams is a barrier for some students. I do think there's been some limited state appropriation to help address that, but I don't think it meets the need. So, do you have any sense of what the need? Is there a g I is is the cost of the exams a barrier that's preventing some
461of these students from passing or do we know? So, I I feel like I heard two questions. The first being I do have access to that data. I don't have it off the top of my head, but looking at how many students are enrolled in AP courses versus how many are taking the AP exam would be certainly something that we could bring back to the board at a later date. Um, you know, this was the first time in Virginia that we had that appropriation to help support um exam fee costs and um we did receive an overwhelming number of responses from school divisions requesting funding that, like I said in the presentation, did exceed the appropriated amount. We're excited to have that additional funding for next year, but um you know, also really want to
462ensure that all of our divisions know about this opportunity and as we communicate that more. I'm curious to see when we put this out in fiscal year 26, what divisions will respond and and what requests will be made. I I I would just suggest that if you can document what the gap is between enrolled in the class and taking the exam and document that you've got more demand, then you can meet with the existing appropriation and especially if you can crosswalk that with demographic data, geographic, socioeconomic, etc. I would bet that would be a you could make a very effective case to the general assembly to expand that appropriation. That would be fantastic. Thank you. Okay, final comment unless Mr. Rotherham has a comment. Go ahead. I actually have a question, Madam President. Is that
463okay? Please. And it's in the traditional form. It's actually it's an it's an interrogative. Okay. Go ahead. Um I actually have two. Uh one is on IB. Do you know if you we um we went to um uh you know we we went and crosswalked at the end of last calendar year um on IB to help kids who were getting that qualify for the advanced studies diplom that have take extra classes. There was then some confusion about that in the IB community and I think some potentially confusing communications. Has that issue been resolved and is there is there clarity? So we have tried in our communications to make it as clear as possible um the kind of the crosswalk between the IB diploma and the advanced studies diploma. Um truthfully a lot of the barriers
464we I think IB communities are feeling is that the standards of accreditation have certain requirements in them that prevent ultimate flexibility for IB diploma candidates and that is something we're we're actively working on within the department. Okay. Thank you. My other question was just are we looking at other there's a a test that I'm not super familiar with but I'm hearing it come up the classical learning test. I think there's a bill in Congress to we'll try to link it to the servicemies and you know I'm again I'm not familiar with it. Um but are we looking at at that or any other any other sort of tests on the horizon that we could see incorporating and and if we did what would be the validation process to make sure it's actually a good assessment
465and is is comparative with things we do now. So, we have um definitely heard about the the classic learning test and it is new to me and new to the department, but we have a meeting with them actually next week to explore a data sharing agreement and we'll certainly ask questions about validity and reliability at that point. Okay, final thing. When when does Vayal meet again? We anticipate the fall. Um, but we do not have a meeting on the books as of yet. Okay. Cuz one thing I really would like for them to talk about is additional screening and repeat testing because a lot of our school divisions are a oneandone. Um, and that's often really effective in the early years. And then just brain development, student development, interest development, all of those things really
466shift and change. And some of those students start to fall off of that track for one reason or the other. And so, um, I'd really like to hear that discussion with those particular experts. I think that'd be great. Absolutely. Thank you. so much. Thank you. Presentation today. Thanks, guys. Okay, so it's 5:30. What is the will? We're going to continue to hammer. Yes. All right. Um, you're up, Mark. It's 5:30. I hope you're caffeinated. Let's go. Item C. So, you ready? All right. Are we ready? Okay. Good afternoon or good early evening board president Crey, Superintendent Gullixson, and board members. Thank you for having us here today. I am Mark Jennings, executive director for the Office of Accountability. Yeah, there's two. We're going to do the first one. You're right on track. And I'm joined
467by my colleague today, Dr. Anthony Williams, the director for the Office of Career and Technical Education. He'll be providing information as we do our second presentation on 3E readiness indicator and highquality work-based learning. First, I'm going to share some updates on the implementation on the school performance and support framework and that is the first slide deck you see there. So, I want to begin with our overall guiding principles for our work. I know the board has seen these. The board helped develop these. Uh as we do webinars and speak to the field, we go back to these because these are uh they help in our work not just for implementation but how we develop uh accountability practices. And you've heard these themes throughout the presentations today. First, we begin with the north star is our
468high expectations for every student. We've been talking about proficiency standards and definitions uh determining standard setting. And so again, that northstar of high expectations that we want to see for all students. Number two, we talk about transparency and access to actual information. And so when we think about data and reporting, uh we talk about internal both external reporting. Again, we want to be very clear with the public about the results, how we're doing, but not only how we're doing, what can you do with that information, what are our next steps. Third, student academic growth and proficiency are both vital measures. Uh, but the system must prioritize getting every student to proficiency or mastery. And so, we've seen that through the framework, the development of the framework. We heard, you know, comments around that today. Uh,
469that helps in the development of our work. Fourth, uh we see the importance again of trust between schools, parents, the community. Again, you see that word transparency, concrete and easy to understand reporting, which I'll I'll talk about later. And then fifth, stakeholder input is critical. And so, as we've gone through this process both in the development, but now in the implementation stage, I'll share with you some of the stakeholder input we have currently and then plans for future stakeholder input as we move to uh future implementation. So this is the uh Virginia school performance support framework. You see on the left side of the presentation on the right is our accreditation system. We've talked quite a bit about bifurcation that earlier in the old system accreditation wrapped many things. It include components from the standards
470of quality components from the standards of accreditation. Also wrapped in there were student performance outcomes. And now we've separated them. And so what you see on the left there is our flowchart of the framework. We've got our models for elementary and middle school. We have our model for high school. Uh that that information flows down to provide a score out of a 100 that gives you a performance category. That same information is used for federal identification. So schools may or may not be identified, but it's a one cohesive system. And then that if they are identified leads to additional funding from uh federal government and support from the office of school quality. That's that OSQ support. So, I want to give some updates. We continue to hold weekly office hours. We held them today. Actually,
471we do them every Wednesday. We've been doing that since November. Uh, we usually have around 80 participants. Uh, it varies. Right now, we're heavy into testing season, so today was a little smaller. Uh, but, uh, they submit questions in advance or they come with live questions and we work with other offices to provide answers. It's a great way for us to see trends across the state. you know what questions they have, where are there still gaps in understanding and how can we be most responsive. Uh in addition to that, we've done dedicated trainings. We've done trainings just for superintendent. We've training for division leaders. We've gone to conferences and organizations. And then we've also reached out to individual divisions well or they've reached out to us to say, can you do a training for our
472schoolboard? Can you do a training for our division leaders? And we've been our calendars are uh getting appointments for the summer to do more of those as they really want to get make sure their administrators and others understand as well. And so this is ongoing work. I do want to highlight for you our road to readiness the school performance support framework resource hub. So when you type in VDOE uh you go there is the first thing you see. There's a link to it and this information has educator supports, family supports, uh superintendent, principal. It takes every indicator we have and helps you unpack it and it says, you know, where might your school be with a performance category. You know, what resources might you use for a needs intensive support school or an offtrack school
473and then helps you dig into the individual indicators. We've worked across the department to develop this as a onestop shop and we'll continue to uh enhance these materials. uh after the board reviews our piece tomorrow, we've already got things lined up to enhance or to make sure the information is updated uh so that people can go and have uh exactly what they need. So I want to talk about some next steps. Uh right now we are developing the reports for our divisions on the school performance support framework. So we're in testing season uh through the different divisions and so what they are accustomed to seeing are preliminary reports and so we're working on those that they could start to see as data is coming in how are they doing. So what will happen is those
474will be released we're probably early June into mid June. We're very clear it's preliminary and we need to be clear about that because our growth data for elementary and middle school is not available until August. And so even to try to get ahead and say well this is exactly how we're doing is very premature because the data we need back from uh our vendor Vivos SAS comes back to us in August. So again it's all going to be preliminary but they could start to see how they're doing. The next wave of reports are student rosters and this allows divisions to drill down to the student level which is very important for this system. This system is very much predicated on the individual student and so divisions can look and see across all indicators how is
475a student doing and then they can build up to student groups into the school and to the division but we want to make sure the data is accurate and that gives them a chance to validate it to check their records against our records and clean things up uh before things are finalized. Next, uh the board I'll be coming back uh throughout the summer. Uh we're working across the department to provide a standards of accreditation a guidance document. And so this takes the standards of accreditation uh you know chapter 132 and walks through the different sections and says you know we want to provide interpretation and have the board's approval on that. And so we'll start bringing pieces of that to you in June, July, and August uh from different offices uh to make sure that
476as divisions look at the standards of accreditation uh if there were changes or if there's needed clarity that you've weighed in and that they have a resource to point to. And then finally, uh we have been reflecting with our stakeholder groups and we're planning for school year 2526. What we'll be doing is we'll be back to the board June, July, August, and probably to September, and we'll be bringing you one uh amendment, amendment nine, but we're going to sprinkle out through those months uh different items for you to consider. So, you know, just like today, you have time to process, ask questions. We also want the public to be engaged. And so, we're going through different conferences and talking about some of the different topics with them. Um, but as far as a final vote
477in putting it all together instead of doing separate amendments and asking USCD to, you know, continuously weigh in, we're going to package them all together under amendment nine. I said to you September purposefully because there's data that comes to us from high schools in August and we want to make sure we have the most data we can have to make the most informed, you know, decisions. And so we're looking at at these items. Um, and so let me list some of them for you. One that we're talking about will be alternative accountability. This is something that we've heard from the field. Uh we've had this previously. Our standards of accreditation speak to this. Because of our unified system, we will need approval from USCD. So we've going to have a stakeholder group over the summer.
478We'll have data from this year. And so we'll use some of the high school data that comes in through August. So that'll be one of the later items. There were other items the board talked about previously as they adopted this that said we want to look at this again. One being JROTC. the board when they voted for enlistment as far as 3e said we we want to still have further conversation and when I get to the second presentation you'll see that that was that came up in public comments about JOTC and so we'll talk about this that this summer as well we also when we adopted our amendment seven to our plan we said we would need to come back to USC with an exit criteria for our federally identified schools we needed the baseline
479data from this year so that'll be another item we talk about throughout the summer we would after the standard settings complete, we will need to do reading and math goals. And so that'll be another item we talk about. Um, and so those are just a few. There are a couple others around growth. Um, some English learner items that we'll be bringing, we have them packaged in a way that we'll bring them to the board. We'll have conversation. the public um will have an opportunity to weigh in, but because also we're doing it in a way that if the public, you know, it's being summer, if they miss an opportunity, they can still speak up later because again, the final votes not until uh probably first review August, final review September. So, we don't we want
480people know in advance and we'll start sharing it in June, but also if people are out or miss something, it's there's no secret surprises. There'll be a chance to speak up later. Um so I wanted to give you that overview now um because the June board meeting is in just a few weeks and then I'll start sharing the plan and sort of uh the items I was just referencing. So at this time I will take questions because I do want to be as clear as we can about where we are now in this part and then we'll move uh which is connected to the 3E readiness indicator and high quality workbased learning. Thank you Mark. Uh uh I've got uh several questions. I wanted to start with helping me understand your timeline. So I understand
481some of the data that will fit in will will go into the accountability framework won't be available until August. Is that what I understood? So the growth data so I mean the timeline is we divisions about mid July authorized their data. They basically have said to us this is verified. It's ready to be processed. Wilson after that. Okay, thanks everyone. We um are having some technical difficulties with the internet here at Reynolds Community College. We are doing our best to hold tight to the connection. Uh but we will do our best. So, Mr. Dr. Jennings, would you like to continue with your presentation? Yes. So, we I was answering some questions about school quality profile and reporting and if the superintendent would like, I would come back to a future board meeting and share updates
482about our development of those reports uh and our plans and sort of the stage of development of that. So, so I'm glad to hear you're meeting with parents and others this summer uh to start this conversation. I guess three points and would love to hear your your thoughts. the the when this is I'm I'm guilty of u often up here saying um our newest member hasn't heard me go back the first time we did this but I'm sort of playing historian here but when we adopted the school quality profile the current rating the former rating system and the school quality profile that went along with it um we we it was at least a of adopting the design for the school quality profile itself and the board was intimately involved in it because it was
483a crucial piece of how we were communicating to parents, students, educators and the public about our rating systems. So it is our you know it is the closest thing we have to to school report cards and division report cards and state report cards. So um so we we it took us a lot of time. I think the product is actually quite rich. Um the amount of information on there as you know we can zero down on u test scores by subject by school by demographic group etc. It's got um enrollment data. It's got career college and career readiness data. It's got learning climate. It's got teacher quality. It's got a wealth of information. Um but it it's a complicated website. So figuring out how to make it more um userfriendly, I think it's I think
484it is well utilized by educators. I don't know that it's that well used by parents. So figuring out how to have that wealth of information there um uh for parents but in an accessible way. I think it's a I think it's a big challenge and frankly I wish we'd start I wish I would have heard the answer that we started on this a year ago because I predict it's going to take a good long while to get it right a and to make sure you don't lose any of that benefit and that you then um enable us to um uh incorporate the new accountability framework into it in a useful fashion. Um and and and I guess the third comment that just ties into that is uh can we add other readiness other information? So
485for instance this morning Dr. Northern asked about that value that rich um valves data we were hearing what it tells us about elementary readiness and as we all know none of that will factor into our accountability framework because that wasn't part of what we adopted last summer but is there at least a way we can connect that information display in whatever report card we do so that's a lot yeah no I'll just respond and say absolutely and that's why again we we're talking about a phase one phase two approach. Phase one, again, you honor, I think, what the public's used to, where they can find the information, especially for this first year, and then build those stakeholder groups, have the conversation with the board, and then phase two, uh, bring a fuller package. And that
486involves just talking to other vendors. Of course, there's finances involved with that. Um, and so going through that whole process. And so we've looked at some redesign already, but again um for this stage of development, like I said, we're thinking honoring what we are now. Uh making changes so they have the information they need, but then also bringing back to the board and saying these are the requirements under the Every Student CC's Act because there are certain things you have to have on your state report card and your school report cards. Uh and then beyond that, what else could we add to help the public? And then you get into visualizations and things like that. Um, but knowing uh when certain information has to be released and sort of what the public is used to,
487that's where for our our conversations right now, like I said, are trying to honor that and make sure that this fall the information is available. We don't want to make it we want to be as clear as we can this fall. We don't want to have them trying to figure out, well, where's that information? And so, like I said, there's there's benefits to the familiarity of this school quality profile. Even if we're not even if we're not going to make dramatic changes simply to add the information about the school the new framework ratings on there that it's a lot of work. Um, and uh, Superintendent Gullixson, this comment may be more to you than to Mark, but that that may I'll be gone by then off my role on the board as of June, but
488I hope you all put this and and Madame President, you all put this on steroids for the board and the department because to get it to even m barely minimal useful information when you're releasing ratings in midepptember, you you've got a long road to go between now and midepptember to in terms of how you're going to share this information with the public and and the whole point of it is communicating to parents I think or a huge part of it is what we've said all along. So we're we're behind the curve and I encourage you all to um work on how to accelerate that work. Um um I have two other areas I wanted to ask about. One is um um a specific question. and understand that the uh department has put out a guide
489to the divisions um about the accountability framework and it says and I pulled it up before and I don't have it in front of me so I apologize but something in the guide says that CSI schools that meaning the schools that have been identified for comprehensive support under the federal accountability framework will automatically be uh treated as needs intensive support schools. Uh and I will tell you frankly when we were adopting this these rating systems we all thought that probably most u uh CSI schools would already end up on the in the needs intensive support category. But I am told that that is not the case. that there are schools out there who are looking at their data and understand that they may well be rated on track or even distinguished u under the new
490rating system but be meet the definition of CSI because of a particular subgroup or or or or groups. Um I don't think our regulations or our pl state plan made any provision for they they did make provision for the TSI schools automatically being downgraded one level but there was no provision for CSI schools automatically going to the bottom rating was there did I miss something and why does the guide say that if not right so the guidance was put out as a version one for to inform the school divisions it's filled with business rules around how the system works uh many many things from the board presentation so to help them understand the calculations and so it was put as a cohesive document um that was again a version one to prepare them for what
491I just shared that what will come before the board this summer it's will be embedded in the guidance document for the stands of accreditation and the board will have to take action on that so yes divisions have seen that but it's not finalized it's something the board will discuss um and then based on the board's review and approval then it would be adopted but the board absolutely could say no to that but so is that version one inaccurate? I mean, because what a school's rating is isn't determined by the guide. It's determined by the regulations that we have adopted. And unless those regulations are amended, we we the board can't even change that. It's in the regs. So, is it inaccurate as to that? And is that something you all are going to fix in
492version two? You're talking about the guidance, the current like technical document, the the particular language in the document that says a CSI school will automatically be bumped down to needs intensive support status. That is in my understanding inaccurate in in conflict with the regulations that this board has adopted. I I as I see it. So my question to you I I think the superintendent told me you were the right person to ask this question of is that is that guide inaccurate in making that statement and if so what are we going to do to fix it? So there's there's two guides. So there's the one the public seen now the divisions have seen the guidance we'll call it technical document to be clear. There's a separate guidance document for the stands of accreditation that the
493board will see and review and approve and that language you're discussing would be in there. as far as what the board adopts, you know, I I can't, you know, speak to that. So, I I hear your question and it will come down to the board's conversation like you're having right now to decide is that an appropriate interpretation of the regulations. The the intent of the the the conversation we're having here is on the federal side, a CSI school, comprehensive support and improvement is the most intensive designation. On our state side, needs intensive support as the most intensive designation. And so, we built a cohesive aligned system. We do have schools that based on their student groups may not fit in the needs intensive support. Their achievement gap is so significant that after three years that
494the federal law requires them to move to CSI status. Currently in Virginia, we have schools we gave them an additional two years. So it's actually five years that that student achievement gap has been so significant. So the intention of this business rule is to say the public needs to be aware that you've got a student group or more that is struggling. so much that if this school is on track or distinguished, uh it it's again a misalignment. Say that federally their CSI, which is recognized under federal law, but on the state side maybe they're on track or whatever the data may be. Now, to be clear, we're not going to change their score. The score will reflect what they have, but the performance category would change. And the purpose of that is to align supports
495so that supports from the federal side and the state side would be aligned and they can get as much support as they can from the department to help them. But if you have a CSI school that is again on the federal side the most severe but on the state side they're let's say on track you your supports are misaligned and I would argue that the public too might be a little misinformed to understand that you have maybe a high performing school but that student group is getting overlooked and like I said that's why federal law requires after three years of interventions if they have not improved then it triggers the CSI and we report that to us or of course you can be comprehensive service right right at the without waiting for three years if
496you if just depending on the criteria but my point is not what's best for those schools and that's an important question but the question is what do our regulations state and our regulations do not make any provision for CSI schools being labeled needs intensive support and I hear you that there's you know support means help but it also means it has consequences and so if a school meets the definition for on track or um uh distinguished according to our regulations. How does the department justify redefining that school as u as a needs intensive support school? You don't have any legal basis for what you're doing in the guide, right? And so I would say then when we bring that to the board, I think that's the conversation to have. And then I would ask our
497department, you know, board regulation team to weigh in on that and maybe even others. I see. Um, so you're you're not the right one to ask this question of. It's the lawyers, in other words. Okay. Well, I'll be gone by then, but I would encourage the board to look at this because our regulations are the guide that the department has put out to the divisions is in direct conflict with our regulations, I submit. And so I'll leave that to you all to parse out later in the summer. Um um u my last question has to do with the discussion we had this morning about the u standard setting and as you heard um we are going to see either double or triple the percent the number of students failing our SOS. Obviously our accountability system
498depends on student pass rates on the SOS. Now obviously the mastery index gives some credit for students at different levels but um I think it's safe to say and we've asked for modeling that we don't have yet and so I will continue my request that we have modeling about what the impact of that reorienting towards NATE proficiency would do to our accountability framework but but I'll ask here today assuming that um we have a vastly higher number of students failing their SOS because of the changes in the grading scale. Uh what will that do to the number of schools rated off track or needs intensive support and what is the department doing to plan for that impact? Excellent question. So I would say that when we consult with the center for assessment around doing modeling,
499they were very clear with us in their guidance that you want the assessment process to play out independently. You don't want to get ahead of your standard setting group and say, "Hey, based on the decisions you're going to make, here's how it impacts the accountability system." And so, you want them to run independently. After those groups have met and they've decided the the reasonable ranges and the proficiency levels, then it would be appropriate for us to come back and say, "Now based on that committee's work outside of us, we can then provide for you projections of the modeling." Then also the board has the flexibility to say now we look at the whole picture and then the board does have under the regulations and under even our state plan can say we want to change
500the percentages we can change the weights. So again the board was very clear about you know where the mastery thresholds were growth etc. But the board can take into consideration where the standard setting is where the proficiency cuts are and then decide if they even want to adjust the weights which would impact the overall score as well. Um we do intend and we will do modeling but like I said our guidance has been from the experts both the center for assessment and then also from our technical advisory committee for Virginia made up of other experts is that you don't want to get ahead of that because we don't want to go into those committees and say hey we've already figured out these are the scores you want to do to sort of manufacture the results
501and so that's why we've not done any modeling to that sort. Um, and I I think personally it's good guidance, but we will after the committees have met be able to provide that to the board and say now based on this, here's what it would do. And then the board can decide on the cut scores. And then, like I said, the board could say, "These are the cut scores. Now, let's maybe revisit some of the weights." And the timing of this is good because again, we're going to have amendment 9 opened. And there provides us some flexibility that we could make those changes under amendment nine. And our our goal here is this. when the school year starts for this fall, schools will be very clear on what the targets are, what's expected of them,
502and they can start a school year without sort of what's it going to be? And so that's why we're trying to package things and have these conversations over the summer, but we want clarity and transparency to start the school year and say this is what the framework is. This is the feedback you provided. Let's start the school year off as as clear as we can with your targets. So I hear you that the right timing is not yet, but the right timing is very soon because if the board is going to have the option to make is going to exercise an option to make any adjustments, it would need to be before that amendment nine goes in in August and September. Absolutely. And so as soon as I mean the cut scores are available, we
503had already planned to take those and tell school divisions this would be the result for you. And so again we can take that data even before you know the board has taken action and provide modeling for them. But then once they're finalized, we want to tell divisions this is would would have been your result. So they have this upcoming school year to plan. But that's why I want to package for you between June, July, August. September really is meant to be final review. Any changes that we're proposing so that school can start and say it's it's closed. The technical guides are closed. Everything's closed. This is what it is and we can have a 2526 school year that's successful and everybody knows this is the target. And my final uh question is actually to superintendent
504and the president instead of you as to the prior question u um superintendent Gullixson you and I had discussed the CSI. I thought we were going to be able to hear an answer today and obviously that's not fair to ask the non- lawyer to address it but can we ask that our lawyers address that question with us and if not this meeting then at the June meeting can we ask that they be directed to uh look at the CSI status question. Can we Is the guide in conflict with the regulations? That's my question. Um I'm sorry. Was that a yes? Yes. Thank you, Mark. Um the CSI situation that she's talking about, how many schools do you think that would impact? Four, I'm sorry, four. Four schools. Four schools. There are four schools currently that
505are on track that are CSI based on their current designation and based on the 23 24 partial modeling. I can't predict for this year's data, but there are four schools that were on track based on that data. Mr. Rotherham, thank you and thank you for that. Uh just a couple of quick observations on this. I think just to frame it. One, I do think this is the way to do it with integrity. I agree with with what you said Mark and I will say you you know those of us who have worked around the country in different places there's often either subtle or explicit pressure to massage the numbers make them look a certain way like perhaps a governor wants to tell a story on the way out of office that like everything's great and
506so you can manufacture and you kind of massage the curve and those conversations and signals happen in different ways. We haven't had any of that. And I think like, you know, I think it's important to acknowledge that we're that we're taking a step forward here as a Commonwealth and doing this. We're trying to do it the right way. And that's going to get lost in the noise and and all that. But I think we have to um I think I think we should acknowledge that it is it is unusual uh noteworthy and it's important for Virginia's kids that we're not being pressured to like tell a good story. We're going to figure out what's going on and then we're going to adjust adjust and go forward. So I I do want to explicitly uh explicitly
507name that. Um, second, again, just cuz we seem to have to keep going through this, we live in a Commonwealth where in 8th grade, 14% of black students are proficient in math. 18% of Hispanic students, 14% of low-income students. Okay? All those numbers, I don't need to tell you all, are under 20, less than one in five. And they don't all go to the same school, right? They're around the Commonwealth. And so any kind of meaningful accountability system here is going to pick up a lot of schools. That has been the problem. We went through the pandemic and then you know we had the largest drops of anywhere in the country and yet our accreditation numbers which at that point were our accountability system barely moved. Right? That's the reason I came back on this
508board. the governor asked me to do it and the reason I said I would be willing to do it is because he recognized that's a system that is simply not working and we need to fix it. Um and so we can go around on this again again but when you look at those kinds of numbers and I can also go through the percentage that are below basic. We can we can just keep doing this to make sure people understand like any meaningful system is going to identify a lot of kids. That's just the math. There are a lot of schools and these kids all don't go to the same ones. they're spread out. We have a lot of room to do better. And that's why third, I really hope at some point we will pivot
509to the support framework and like talking about what are we actually going to do. And I'm very excited to hear we're not going to get to it today when we get to it to hear from Superintendent Gullixson on what we're doing to start to revamp these functions. And I would like to think that we can have a conversation. There are a lot of different views around the Commonwealth on the best way to improve schools and so forth. we can have a robust conversation about that because that's fundamentally what this is about. Not constantly arguing and pushing on measures and all of this. It's once we get it right, it's then what does it actually mean and what are we going to do? And it it we spend an inordinate amount of time on that first
510piece and not a lot of time on the second which is what's going to really matter here and it is important. So thank you madam president. I just wanted to offer that content. Madam President, Miss McFersonson. Yeah, it's I found it extremely interesting too that we would factor in all of that as you're doing the modeling because we had the data showing that the black students were recovering from the pandemic faster than a lot of other students. So we recognize that it is not the the the problems that we're having while we see significant issues in certain ethnic groups financially the distressed neighborhoods that at the same time that all of that's happening they still have an ability to recover faster than some other students. So the drill down, as much drill down as possible
511is going to be important to us to try to figure out what are those factors that are causing us to have so many schools that are going to be in need of intensive support because obviously there are some things that we apparently I think aren't looking at in a more glo global perspective because it's running both ways. And it is important that we be able to tell the public, which we often get criticized for, is that we don't put enough resources in the right places. Are we actually putting the resources in the right places? And what are the trends that we're seeing? So, those are the things that I think we're going to really have to look at to give us a better view as opposed to just the testing data. Excellent point. And I'll
512respond and say with this we have requirements under federal ESSA every student succeeds act to provide reports around student groups. Uh with the framework one of the reports that the public will be able to see is that student group holistically. So you would be able to see a student group are five racial ethnic groups economic disadvantage students with disabilities English learners. If that student group made up the whole school how would they do what is their framework? And I say that because it's not just academics. That would include their absenteeism. that could include advanced coursework, 3E, all these other indicators that we have. And so you get to see a more holistic picture and say if that student group by itself, how is it doing? And you'll see it in comparison to the other student
513groups. I'll say in response to um the previous comments too about our former system, I remember working with some divisions. In the old system, we had um and I won't name certain schools, but we had schools that were CSI, the bottom 5% of the state. And yet on our state accreditation system, on our school quality profile, they were solid green. And I remember meeting with some superintendents and explaining you're in the bottom 5% here and the federal is just being ignored, but there are requirements under federal that they had to do. And there were letters they had to send to the public. And the superintendent and I were talking uh the division superintendent and he's trying to explain that to the parents. I'm going your school is in the bottom 5% chronically underperforming the whole
514school. But he's going but on the state side I'm I'm fine because on the state side they had mass certain things. And so I share that just again this system being aligned and being cohesive. Our goal is that there's that transparency, that clarity because the parents were very happy with that school. Meanwhile, you know, the real data was showing that the students were chronically underperforming. And so that's why some of the rules we mentioned earlier is our our our goal here is to be clear with everyone um about how we're doing. And then I love I love the comments, what supports are available. And so this is where you are. We know where you want to be. Let's help you get you there. and the resource hub and and superintendent Gullixson will share aligning our
515resources as a department to really maximize we have decades of research I heard earlier the comments on science of reading we have decades of research evidence-based interventions we know what works we just need to put those things in place and if it's not working make adaptations Dr. Northern Just two quick things. Um, the DQC, which I'm sure Secretary Guyera is aware of, has been evaluating state report cards for their usability, transparency, and the data that they should be including for seven or eight years now. So, we do have some um benchmarks by which state report cards have been evaluated. Um, and the other thing I would encourage us to do is to involve learning heroes because they've done lots. I know we've worked with them before and we know they've done lots of focus groups
516with parents to ask them like what what features do you want in a report card that's going to tell you the information that you want to see. So, okay. Um, we are at 6:15 and we have a second presentation by Mark. Do you want us everybody want to just kick it till tomorrow? What do we want to do? I want Okay. Can we can we move your second half? Is that okay? Good. Okay. So that being said, tomorrow we're doing the second half, which includes the 3E, the legislative update, seat time, and then superintendent update. So we're punting. No. Okay. Uh so I will entertain a motion to adjurnn for the afternoon. Is there a second? Second. Okay.