Study: Virginia ranks low in school performance data transparency
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Virginia is among the majority of states failing to provide accessible, pre-pandemic school performance data, per a new study released this month.
Why it matters: Gov. Youngkin's administration has made addressing student learning loss a priority, but pre-COVID data being difficult to find makes it challenging to compare it with where students are today.
The big picture: Virginia, along with roughly a dozen other states, got a "C" from Arizona State University's Center on Reinventing Public Education, which developed a grading system to judge state websites.
- These sites are federally mandated state report cards showing where students are making progress and where they're struggling.
The reasoning: Reviewers said it was hard to find trends on Virginia's site before 2020-21 for math growth, social studies and English learner proficiency.
- Data also appears under "accreditation" and "assessment," which reviewers said made it unclear which to refer to.
- Though math performance, science, graduation rates and chronic absenteeism were easily found, per the study.
Yes, but: "Learning needs" dashboards do exist dating to 2015-16, but on the separate Virginia Department of Education site.
- It looks at SOL pass rates for history, math, reading, science and writing statewide, by district and school names.
- The dashboards also include data by race and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, English learners and students with disabilities.
- Some data goes back to 1998 via Excel sheets or PDFs.
VDOE spokesperson Todd Reid told Axios that the new accreditation system, which would likely label most schools as "off track," will allow communities to more clearly see how their schools are performing.
- He added that the state isn't currently able to consolidate both websites to have pre-COVID data in one place, but it's looking at options that "enhance" the information already available.
- It's unclear if there are plans to translate the website like Idaho, Illinois and Oklahoma — who were among the five that CRPE's study said had "great" website usability — already do.
- But Reid told Axios the site could be translated via tools like Google Translate and said the VDOE will translate PDFs, like this one, depending on interest.