##VIDEO ID:3QIhrgigz4E## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e Paul to order the work session for the Board of Education this afternoon um Monday December the 2nd so um what I would like to do is open with Dr Coons providing some opening comments please we having a mic problem are we good okay great all right Dr Coons well I just want to start with this um season of gratitude for the Department staff we've had some really um great things happen recently our department has partnered with vas to provide School divisions with um a team of people including a superintendent four days of AI framework planning with national experts 72 School divisions have taken advantage of this opportunity we have also partnered with Mana Community College and other vccs partners to provide 16 halfday PD sessions across all eight regions about teaching with AI for teachers and instructional coaches we believe this is the only Statewide um effort in the country and really want to give a huge shout out to Dr Meers and his team for partnering with VAs on that in partnership with Virginia works the department was awarded a $6 million competitive Grant with the US US Department of Labor to develop and expand registered teacher apprenticeship Pathways and pre-apprenticeship opportunities for future teachers in Virginia our office of human capital solicited Grant proposals from Ed prep teams and local school divisions we received 14 submissions from EPS that's 39% of all EPS that have requested support for 625 teacher apprentices and our goal was to support 170 teacher apprentices so we have a large of Interest with a request of over $1.5 million with a budget of $2.5 million so we're really excited to expand our pipeline work and excited for the interest across the Commonwealth and want to give a huge shout out to Dr Gilstrap and Dr Ry for leading that work want to um talk about our new vqb 5 portal was launched in October with 3,121 site quality profiles for childcare Head Start family child care in school-based preschools this provides parents with a One-Stop shop for health safety and learning information that reflects insights from 28,000 classroom observations 98% of the sites meet expectations with 79 Nation leading exemplars in all program types since the launch there have been 38,000 views of the portal and 850 data downloads of the state data since October in addition The Early Childhood team completed nine inperson deep Dives in October and November throughout the ready regions which Support over 400 leaders in education Educators from Child Care family child care Head Start early childhood special education Community College has higher ed business training and technical assistance and then we had two schools I know we recognized several schools at our last board meeting but we have green Dale Elementary School in Washington County and Belmont Elementary School in Prince William County as our ES EA distinguished School winners that are recognized for exceptional student performance for 2 years and then finally the department received our official late liquidation request approval that allows us to extend our essr funds through March 31st 2026 this will allow Virginia to continue our grow your own our chronic absenteeism dashboard our zern our ignite and Lexia program for school divisions moreover our team um our fin team and our late liquidation Esser team I just want to give them a huge shout out we have probably the best draw down in the country with .2% of draw down funds for Esser left to be spent that is amazing and unheard of so we are almost completely spent on our Sr $3 so just want to shout out the different work from everything from human capital to finance and the great work that our teams are doing at the department thank you Dr um and now we will move to Dr Meyers uh you are starting us off with presentation under item a okay Dr Meyers Dr Armstrong and M okay come on up I'm going to kick off the department team last month we had the opportunity to launch the performance and support framework Hub and this Hub is a One-Stop shop for everything from what is the performance framework that the board voted to approve in August to what's the data behind that what are the supports and really we have partnered shoulder-to-shoulder with our school divisions on how to use data to have transparent dat to have more data available for school leaders and for school division leaders to really understand where they are where they're going and that what they need so I'm very proud of the work we have um accomplished to create the performance support framework Hub this is to wrap around all of the work the board has been doing for over two years and working towards with the framework that was approved in August and September so I'm very excited that we are going to move to that and work through the um framework with our team and I just kind of want to introduce that Dr Armstrong oversees our accountability work at the agency Dr Meers under overseas undeas or Works around spends a whole lot of time with numbers and data and does all of the data work at the agency and our Deputy teaching of learning M Cooper manages all of our support framework so all three of the our cabinet members are going to work today and talk about the performance and support framework hub thank you Dr Coons Madam president and board members good afternoon as you can see on the slide the board's work began in the summer of 2022 prior to the arrival of many of us myself included to the agency and deep design work of the school performance and support framework commenced in the summer of 2023 that was followed by 20 inperson engagements across the Commonwealth over the course of six months in the winter and spring of 23 to 24 Public comment public hearing and board approval of performance categories through early summer of 2024 and the board's ultimate approval in July and August of 2024 of the school performance sport framework standards of rediation and the revised Sate plan the data provided in this table reflects the typical collection of school performance data through September 30th 2024 and represents the number and percentage of of Elementary Middle High and unique configuration schools that would fall under the Border approv performance categories and I will note that unique configuration schools refers to schools that don't typically fit the mold of your K through five elementary 6 through eight middle 9 through 12 high schools we do have across the state K through three schools 7 through 12 k through eight so that is the notation on that column in the table this course includes the board approved performance categories of distinguished on track off track and needs andt of support categories if the 2023 2024 data were integrated into the newly adopted school as and support performance framework the predictive data shared with divisions is intended to support schools as they prepare for the 2025 implementation of the school performance support framework as you can see based on the September 30th final data roughly 2third Elementary and high schools and slightly more than half of our middle schools would be considered distinguished or on track if the school performance sport framework was used to analyze 2324 data there have been questions around how performance level category data has evolved since initial discussions which date back to the spring of 2024 but as a superintendent uh Chad Alderman and high slop have indicated to the board in several occasions uh data was continuing to be collected as it is each year and fed into calculations which has resulted in a more accurate and complete picture performance levels in this simulation moving on this is the what section of the Hub The spsf Hub contains a variety of resources responsive to many of the essential questions decisions and conversations that have transpired in the past several months this includes as you can see here frequently asked questions an overview of the more under the hood components of the framework a detailed description of accountability and accreditation as unique bifurcated systems a timeline of the engagement of the agency board and partners since summer of 2022 and specific documents outlining both Mastery and growth components of the framework these documents can be used by board members superintendents principls anyone uh and is readily available to teach and Empower all members of school communities and to dig in further on a few of these examples the framework overview for example provides clear descriptions of the four performance categories as well as details related to federal identification andou divisions framework Waiting by level is described using clear easy to understand visuals and this resource like all Hub resources intended to be easily understood by anyone teacher parent Community partner whether educ tion is your business or not and can be used to teach and Empower on behalf of Virginia's students the Mastery weight index you see on the right is a great example of this transparent understandable design rather than just provide a table with Mastery performance level weights the resource walks the audience through the calculation step by step and I will pass it to my colleague Dr Myers thank you good afternoon uh members of the board I'm going to talk a little bit about the data toolkit that's part of the Hub um as part of our efforts to ensure School Division Personnel know what data goes into the spsf and how that data interacts and is used to calculate the framework score we have created this toolkit every division has access to every data element that goes into the frame framework and has been trained on how the numerator and denominator works for every indicator and ultimately is added to how it's ultimately added together for an overall framework score as you will see uh we have held 16 Regional superintendent trainings and all we're also holding weekly office hours we are off also holding weekly office hours um and we are doing personal individual meetings we've done over 40 of those and still counting um I have personally answered many emails and sat down down with virtual calls with divisions spending upward of an hour or more um to help them understand exactly where the data are coming from and how they are used to calculate their schools framework scores this level of Outreach is unprecedented compared to years past and will continue and we will continue to do this until everyone's questions are answered as part of the data toolkit in the spsf hub superintendant test and data personnel and principles can take their data they have in ssws um which is our internal system that we use to deliver sensitive data um and they can start plugging these name numbers to get their numerator and denominator for each indicator that is then used to add together for an overall score one of the best parts of this tool is not only will it allow you to understand and calculate your current framework score but it will also allow you to change the numbers to forecast what say for instance 10 more passing reading scores or seven more students meeting growth in math um could mean for your overall score or you could decrease your chronic absenteeism in this um in this tool by 3% and see how that would change the chronic absenteeism indicator as well as the overall score so what I really like about this is school Personnel including principles at the school level can calculate their own scores understand how it all works and even play around with it to see how they could improve their score by just adding to each indicator sorry I didn't Advance the screen there on that um so as you can see also on this data calculation tool as a schools plug in there's there's multiple tools on here this is just an example of one of them but as schools plug in their information they simply add it's it's a pretty simple math equation at that point where they add their index scores together to get a final composite score the other thing that we've add of course before you start plugging these numbers you can use these resources on our tool our data our support data literacy um that's in the toolkit you can use these tools to understand how every indicator is calculated and where that data is coming from the data literacy tools also provide answers to frequently asked questions like what happens to my elel score if I have less than 15 students and the indicator is missing or how is my school calculated if I have a combined school that may include a mix of Elementary and Middle School school grades or middle and high school or even the occasional K12 school that we have in Virginia these tools are great self-help technical assistant tools that can be used along with the dozens and dozens of in-person sessions we have and will continue to do so that every school understands how this framework Works um and that they can be their own stewards of this data and that they can really use their own um understanding to calculate and understand what their overall score is I am now going to turn this over to the deputy superintendent of teaching learning M Cooper who's going to talk about the supports Virginia Learners tab in this Hub good afternoon so Dr Armstrong explained what the accountability system is and the resources to support the framework Dr Myers explained so what does the data mean and I'm here to share now what now what does this mean for educators and families the last three sections you see on the screen in the hub are the most important and they are to empower Educators and families to use the data to drive Improvement for students in classrooms and at home the supporting Virginia educator section provides four roadmaps for Readiness one for superintendent one for principales one for teachers and one for parents and these road maps guide users through steps to unpack the data and reports create or update a plan for improvement and then identify the supports and resources available to improve growth and Proficiency in each school performance component these road maps are a key resource for superintendant to use with their cabinet members to understand division-wide data update their current continuous Improvement plan and what supports may be needed to include in their division plan or school specific supports which I'll walk through in just a moment for their school leaders and principal supervisors principles can use their road map with their school instructional leadership team to understand their site specific data across each school performance component and student group update their school support plan and then select from the resources and opportunities available from vooe to include in that school's plan teach ERS can use their road map to drill down into their own students data to understand growth and proficiency for each student in their class update student specific plans and identify resources from VOE to support their instruction in their classroom and then finally parents also have a road map to understand their child's assessment reports create a plan for helping their own child and then they are directed to the resources they can use to support learning in their home the family supports page is a comprehensive onstop shop for parents to learn more about their child's growth and proficiency and the resources they can use at home to reinforce learning from their child's classroom families can access resources tips and activities to support their child at home in reading math science absenteeism and Readiness and in each of the cont areas materials are organized by grade band making it user friendly for parents the pages also share what parents should expect at each grade band and content area the Milestones they should be looking for or seeing in their child as they achieve and then tools for parent teacher communication to discuss how their child is doing and what support they may need with our child's teachers the educator supports page is a robust Suite of resources for teachers and school leaders at all grade levels and school performance categories aligned to the data toolkit that Dr Meers talked about earlier each category of resources provides Educators with the supports and opportunities organized by need the content area pages of reading math and science focus on standards and curriculum implementation effect effective instructional practices and professional learning our team continues to be responsive to the field by adding supports and resources as we are getting input on the Hub Dr Myers and Dr Armstrong are also providing technical assistance and office hours as they mentioned and we're also adding a button on the Hub for parents and Educators to request any additional supports or resources that they may need we stand ready to support the field in school performance and support and strive for continuous Improvement in all of our schools thank you all very much are there questions I I would like to just tell you guys or and also give you or maybe frame it in a question so it seems like you all have taken quite a bit of time to really think through the specific needs of schools what they might think about as far as questioning the very small specifics about like Dr Myers mentioned about well if I have 15 ESL students what does that do um I'm very appreciative of that thought process that you all have put very very detailed time and effort into um and I can tell by that that you all have been using those office hours have been getting getting feedback on how to continuously improve this process so that again as the board has gone through this entire process it has always been about transparency and how we can best help and support School divisions as they move um to be their very best so um have you all gotten a lot of feedback and made a lot of or at least made some changes to how you're presenting the data or how you're presenting the information for schools up to this point since this has been rolled out um I would say it's definitely been an iterative process along the way um every time I meet with someone I I met with a School Division for about an hour and 10 minutes um late or early last week might have been right before Thanksgiving there um and I will just tell you the feedback I got was just really helpful um we were talking about IB students and how that works and with IB diplomas and it was just really helpful to Think Through uh in the future how to communicate even more succinctly or better on what an IB diploma versus IB tests the the two various tests you can take and how that combos with AP students um it's not really complicated it's just it's something new that people are are getting to understand and so hearing how they received that and how then we can improve the docu that we're putting back out um absolutely that's that's what we're trying to do I actually look at this this as a field test for me right like I I have hundreds of eyes looking at all of this right now um and that's what we want because we want this to be uh really good and we want this to be something that accurately reflects um schools across Virginia so I I I actually the more eyes on it the better is the way I look at it and so yeah we've received a lot of great feedback and um and we'll continue these sessions I think by the time it's said and done um president pry we will have probably met with all 131 School divisions individually uh By the time this is said and done just to give them the the the the time and information and expertise that they need thank you other questions Miss Holton thank you Dr Myers and for all this good work and for sharing it with us today um if you could go back to to I think it's Slide Five the percentages uh page performance levels thanks yeah I know which one you're talking about it just take me a second to get back to that slide here when when we saw this uh earlier iterations of this data this summer and we're making decisions about their framework we were also given modeling data that showed that our higher poverty schools were over represented among the needs intensive support and off track Schools and our wealthier schools were over represented among the distinguished and Onre schools have we done that and now the numbers have changed quite dramatically uh U overall um have you done any new modeling data or is there can we ask that we get new modeling data so as to understand where we that whether this current version of the system is equally demographically skewed yeah I'm sorry were one of you going to okay I'm happy to answer that um so as Dr Armstrong mentioned earlier in his presentation we did see quite a bit more data come in between the spring and early summer um there's lots of data that still comes in through that's why we don't put accreditation out each year until September because all the data has to be finalized so a lot of these changes occurred to that and as you can imagine if you had a school at 79 or 78 and something changed that and moved it up to an 80 um you could have a good number of schools which I suspect we did early in the spring um kind of at that at that threshold level and some changes in data push that over so you can get some you can get changes like what we saw um we are not doing any other modeling right now we have been doing uh considerable amount of um research on the model and making sure that these models are making sense um I will tell you some data I just looked at just recently even um share showed that uh there wasn't a lot of difference between el School stud schools with high El populations and those without high eel populations which was really good to actually see um that kind of data so we are seeing you know more and more things like that um but uh I'm not running any more modeling at this time well that is actually an example of the kind of modeling I'd love to have us see so for instance what you've just described that you've done about El students if we could see that that would be terrific but also I I understand what you're saying about why there was some discrepancy but to point out I mean this discrepancy was quite sharp we were told in August that we were being presented with data based on the 23 24 school year and 60 plus per of our schools were off track or uh need needing intensive support and now that number somehow magically changed to 30 35% are uh in those two categories so almost half a a huge difference um and so it seems to me that that would then behoove us to go back and look at some of those demographic questions to see maybe we've solved the problem of over representation of of poor kids in the more U difficult categories or maybe we haven't and so the the the modeling you say you've just done about El kids I would love to have us see but I would love to have you do the same modeling uh for um economic demographics Dr k i I just want to remind the board that early in the spring Chad and an cautious us around modeling and we use 23 data then we use partial data and they cautioned us each time Chad presented the modeling data saying this was incomplete and want to reiterate what Dr Meer said is we don't present accreditation data until the end of September because that is when schools finalize their data I also want to mention that you asked us to work on a system that creates transparency and identifies need identifies where that is and that was the goal of releasing The Hub releasing the data to make sure our school divisions have the opportunity now to focus on their data focus on what their data is saying and focus on the school division's ability to make changes and impact and that is where the team is focusing based on the board's decision to move forward in August and September so I just want to reiterate what Chad and an said all through the summer that this was early modeling data none of it was complete we did not have finalized data until September 30th well some of that sorry go ahead some of that just some of that just begs the question for why we're rushing this before we have that modeling data I'm may be the only board member that was was involved in a prior round of changes to accreditation and we had all of that kind of modeling Data before we made changes that would lead to my and I and I think that we still have huge transparency issues I do think you it's a huge advance that you've given the divisions the tools to make these calculations now but without explaining what's going on in that black box that made things change so drastically from before and frankly without being more transparent to parents I don't think that this is if anything this is a huge step backwards compared to our School quality profiles for instance that gave parents terrific transparency under the old system but to bring it to a question you I know you've heard from uh uh divisions representing at least a third of our school uh uh school students the the Region 4 divisions have submitted a letter requesting that we delay implementation for a year so as to enable them to make adjustments uh to get resources to the kids that need them the most to make the kind of changes suggesting they can make in the data to make that on the ground to A system that they were not told what the rules were going to be before they started this school year um have you heard that request for delay from other divisions Beyond those region four divisions and if so uh are we considering delaying a year so as to allow the school divisions to implement changes on the ground to help improve their U performance Dr Coons Miss Holton thank you for that question I think you're referring to a letter that had eight School Board presidents I don't believe there were any School Division superintendents that signed that eight out of 131 I just want to correct you said that was about a third of our School Division those those eight divisions represent onethird of the student body of the Commonwealth of Virginia they are the eight largest essentially the nor the northern Virginia divisions in Region 4 include the largest divisions and therefore as their letter points out they represent a third of our students thank you for that clarification that there was a letter from eight Schoolboard presidents that asked for that um you also said that there's less data now than there ever has been before I would um disagree with that statement there is more data and more transparency available on our website for every single stakeholder than has ever been in the past I I I was misunderstood if I said there was less data I did say there's less transparency we have nothing equivalent to the school quality profiles that can allow parents teachers Educators everybody to see easily how their school is doing how their division is doing I I do believe that this whole process started based on us looking at all of those things and determining that it was very difficult for parents to understand that this is more rham I saw Miss Northern if you I would yield and then at some point I'm hoping to say something sure Dr Northern so I have spent a lot of time with this system in between our last meeting and this meeting because I had some questions of my own and was just trying to get to the bottom of things am I on oh sorry um and I would say that um all of my questions were answered uh I had a long meeting with um with Dr Meyers also talked to um Dr Coons about the questions that um that I thought that um you know might have and I would say a few things I learned just for everyone's um edification one is you know some of the data that were missing were the IB and the ASVAB data that have since come in um the other clarification I had was around 3E data um because I was I think reasonable people can disagree on whether kids should be triple counted so in other words if they get you know a point for taking a um an IB or a College Board Test and then they take the ASVAB test and then they do dual enrollment you know they're they're they're going to be triple counted and I thought I don't know about that but then when I talk to Dr Myers he's like it's an an model and we do think that if kids do multiple of these things then they should be rewarded for taking advantage of multiple opportunities now one day districts May figure that out and they may end up gaming the system and at that point we would need to look at that again and we've said all along this is an iterative system and that will you know learn from it as we go and so my point in saying that is that um we are going to make some adjustments along the way we're going to evolve as the system ages you know we're kind of playing with a with a baby here and the baby's going to grow up and we're going to change you know some of the rules around that baby that's a terrible metaphor but you understand what I'm saying um so I think that um and and I came back I said I don't I don't understand this you know how is this C how does the denominator because the do denominator is 100 and that means that everybody's got to get a 100 even if they don't have every single indicator and then that indicator gets a portion to other category sometimes so for instance if they don't have the el el kids some people may disagree some people would say oh we should we should have a total the total should change based on you know how many indicators they have but we don't think that makes sense because then you'd have different numbers that would that would total for the distinguished and distinguished would be a different amount of points for elementary versus middle versus high school so we decide to be uh more transparent and actually have it match up so I would just say that all of these decision rules make sense personally to me now that I've had the time to actually ask every single decision rule that I wanted to know and this is what's been explained to all these divisions um and I'm hoping that they're um you know they're getting their questions answered as we go along so I I will just say that um I do think it's been transparent and these little template things that where districts can go in and add up and see that is a game Cher for districts because it Nails transparency to the wall they there will be no way they can go into this um calculation sheet and have questions because it will very much say well the reason that this is this way is because you don't have enough ELO kids or whatnot um I I've spent the time on it so I feel I feel very confident about that um other thing and just real briefly and I'll wrap it up is I just am incredibly proud of this department um states there are handful of states that have had to take leadership roles at state agencies and most state agencies are not equipped to lead they don't have the talent they don't have the Manpower they don't have the experience and this department has really Rose to the occasion um as a state agency and they have really gone out on front of this and led come up with amazing number of resources and a a short amount of time yes but they're also hold handing each district along with them answering their questions office or so on and so forth um so I just want to say Kudos uh to this uh to this department uh on the role that they've taken as as a leadership and and that it's rare honestly across the country that state agencies are able to to lead in this way this Miss Ashton or do you want to go he's still baking his thoughts good no I'm ready but go ahead go ahead that's a tough act to follow so you go well I was gonna say double double double down um with um Amber said and I think what is most impressive from my perspective is that it has kept all throughout the process every stakeholder um in mind when I look at the toolkit and it says parents Educators um teachers like everyone has a tool here and it's not just the administration or the state board and so again just thank you for your comprehensive work it's not going to be perfect but I do think given superintendents and teachers and parents the tools to begin to really unpack the data is what's going to um exponentially move every kid forward in Virginia and not just some of our Scholars so thank you Andy's ready are you ready sure I will Mr Ram yeah I concur with much of what my colleagues have said I just want to make three quick points first of all first one echoing a lot thank you all um really this is a fantastic model I think we will have to iterate on it and so forth but the degree of transparency the user friendliness it's really fantastic it's the direction we should be going as a commonwealth and providing more data more information and so like the announcement was exciting being able to to the presentation day and being able to use this so that's that's fantastic um uh and very much appreciated second uh just to like ground this again in some data I I have trouble following aspects of this conversation we live in a commonweal by time kids get to e8th grade on the nape about half of our kids are below basic about 51% are at basic or above so below basic again you can argue about the nape levels there is no disagreement that below basic is just not an acceptable place for us to have kids at especially kids we've had uh for so long you're basically unprepared for any of the kinds of opportunities we're talking about in postsecondary whether it's college careers the military so we keep saying well we're going to identify these schools these that that 50% of kids they go to school somewhere in this state right um and so any accountability system that's being honest we're going to identify uh a lot of schools that are underserving these kids and again it's a kind of a gut check moment we can continue to come at this from what do the divisions think what do the divisions want what does it look like or we can come at it from what are the actual results we're getting and what do we need to do to get serious about improving opportunities and outcomes uh for for those kids and we go around on again and again and with respect I get why the divisions want to delay if I were some of those divisions I would want to delay too because disaggregated accountability reveals some uncomfortable things about some of the stories we've been telling and this goes back to No Child Left Behind we tried to disaggregate we couldn't do it we had to always try to stay ahead we're now doing it again we either like step up and confront this and as Leaders get serious then about what are the things we need to do or we just continue to try to figure out what's the story we want to tell what's easier for the adults and so I just um I'm I'm glad we have this I do think it cannot get divorced from this larger uh larger picture which even despite some of the changes we've made over the last decade that lowered standards you know and you can see the results on you know with our where our cut scores line up with other states our state tests tell this too it's not just the NP and so we need to engage with that there's work we have to do that's a separate conversation there's work we have to do there on our own tests but we have to engage with where that D data is or act and and I hope that we can uh as a commonwealth uh come together and act on that and not continue to sort of Kick this can um down the road because it's it's underserving these kids it's been underserving them for a long time and the problem is particularly acute now with what we know about what happened with the pandemic just also what we know about just the importance of education so it's a tremendous opportunity you all have done a small part but really important part in helping um uh present that data so hopefully we can have a conversation across the Commonwealth about that so thank you Miss mcferson and then Dr Bryce I want to thank the staff as well for the immense amount of work that's gone into creating of data um I'd have to agree that we still have a lot of work to do and especially since we recognize that maybe some of the data is going to shift a bit as we continue to go through it I looked at the off track numbers and the needs intensive support numbers and when you combine those numbers for each one of the categories is we still have an instance with elementary schools we still have with elementary schools 365 schools that are in either off track or needs intention support out of 1,11 schools which puts that roughly at about 33% and Middle School we're at 44% between those two categories and High School we're at least at 33% so obviously there's still a lot of work to be done with these school areas so regardless of the fact that we got the raw numbers I'm more concerned about we got that many institutions that are still on a day-to-day basis not quite where we want them to be um I'm hoping that the use of the resources going to help approve these numbers but I agree with Mr Rodham that um at some point we really got to drill down there and figure out where we going to place the resources because we got to get intensive support schools off of that track at least they got to move up two levels to be on on track and off track students got to move up at least a minimum of one whole uh division in order to be on track um I'd like to see everybody in a distinguished category but we are where we are Dr Bryce and Dr um I want to EO my fellow board members and just applaud you all on this work um I think the Hub exceeded my expectations at least and um one of the things I really appreciate is how intuitive it is and that you know for um Educators it's arranged by content area whereas for family it's arranged by grade level looking at the supports page this would have been a total GameChanger as a parent during the pandemic being able to look okay what exactly should my kid be learning right now um especially when school like you know when schools were first closed and there was no online school there was nothing this would have been a dream to have something like this so thank you um I have two questions first is um because I think this information is so rich for parents what is the plan I know you've been doing a ton of work um with school divisions getting this information out what's the plan for getting this information out to parents and making sure that they're aware of it um and you know know how to use it and then my second question is um all of the educator supports um and there are a lot on there uh obviously our teachers don't have more hours in the day now so how can we support teachers in learning about this and implementing it in our classroom can we have um maybe you're already planning on this will there be some like uh incorporation of this stuff in teachers professional development days so they can learn about this during time that's already set aside for them um yeah I'm I'm just wondering about Outreach both to parents and to teachers oh wait one more question the the people who are attending the info sessions are they who is it generally is it um like people from central office or is it superintendents principles teachers all of the above yeah I can answer that one real quickly it's been mostly so far what's known as a d do um also other key leaders school counselors um we've also had uh there have been some principles that have been on we've had uh a lot of superintendant we it was Dr was very intentional from the beginning that this would be from a top you know the the lead the the superintendent knows how needs to know how to calculate this and many of them do um it's pretty impressive how many of them have really dug in and looking at the denominator enumerator of all these indicators so it's been a pretty mixed bag I think um division data personnel and testing coordinators the dots they're the ones that have kind of traditionally done this across the the the state um and so there's there's quite a bit of train the trainer I think going on with that Dr K yeah so I think um as Dr Myer said our first round was really focusing on superintendant and making sure they understood and could use those calculator tools and really had a grasp on their data and so we've shifted and had several principles training I think Andy and I I think we have one another one for Elementary School principles this week and now you're going to hear from learning Heroes this afternoon to talk about our next wave is to really getting information out to parents and families and and doing that and I think once we have a Tipping Point with superintendent and principles they design those professional development days and those support days we can start sitting down with our regional superintendents and moving into those stakeholders so thank you for calling those out Madam president miss Holton uh I have one comment and one question my comment is just to say I think it's unfair to suggest inappropriate motives and not that you all did but I'm challenging my fellow board members I'm sure you didn't mean to suggest inappropriate motives on behalf of these Schoolboard leaders who have asked for delay I am absolutely confident they have asked for delay because they want to do the very best by all of our students and because they want to be able to support their teachers they may see that differently than you but it's not because they want to cover up problems they are in the field every day trying to get the very best education to all of our kids and I have complete confidence in our school division leaders uh that that as to their motivation whether or not they agree with you as to the the mechanics of of how we Implement all of this my one specific question I wanted to ask is uh it has been brought to my attention since we adopted this new system you know we had a major change in how we're how we're evaluating English language Learners and we were told that most of the other states are doing it the way we are now doing it which is aligning the three semesters to the federal requirements but I am it's been brought to my attention that most of the other states also offer native language testing options to students um in uh who's native who are more comfortable taking for instance their math and science tests in Spanish or Arabic whatever they're if they're literate in their native language they're given those options for testing and that that's apparently the case in the majority all those states that are doing it the way we are now transitioning to do it many of them most of them are offering native language testing is that an alternative that we um uh will be able to offer um to our uh English language Learners this year or will we be able to is there anything we can do to expedite it so they can be offered that option next year Dr kin thank you for that question Miss Holton um we did in the RFA process and in the presentation asked for the cost of what it would be to offer math science and social studies in Native languages that will be part of the RFI report when we um have that opportunity and part of the RF considerations for assessments so we can't get I mean that report was due that report was due November 1st we still don't have it it's over a month overdue we can't get an answer to that question in the meanwhile can our students or is that yet another reason for delay if we can't yet offer what other states are offering to their English language students is that yet another reason why we should take the time to get this right Thank you for your question Miss Holton I want to reiterate that was of the budget request that does cost an additional amount to run those Assessments in different languages the RFI report is currently with the attorney general when we get the green light we will submit that it sure seems like we got a lot of reasons to delay and that reminds me I never got an answer I'm sorry to my first question of we know that Schoolboard leaders representing a third of the student body in Virginia have asked that we take more time to get this right have you heard from others School Division leaders superintendents or school board members as part of your feedback suggesting uh that we need more time I will say I heard that um early on before all the data and the trainings had gone out um I don't hear that as much now um I think they've seen it and they recognize that it's here um it's not an area we we've heard a lot of the last several weeks or that we're um really focused on WE we've we've been more intentional on this is the task we have to do and this is what um this is what we hope you we want to help you to understand so I personally have not heard that a lot over the last several weeks whereas I did hear it before all this information was was put out if I may just suggest that everybody do take time to read that letter from the Schoolboard leaders because it's not just it's a it's not just we don't want it's not at all we don't want accountability it's we want good effective accountability and we want to be able to do take steps like give professional development to our teachers which we do before the school year starts mostly to help them adjust to this new system we want to be able to work to have more algebra teachers we want to make accommodations so as to adjust to the new system they're not asking for delay for delay sake um Miss Holton if you did not receive the other school board um members from around the Commonwealth's email I'd be happy to share them with you most of them described I work as very intentional and very important for this time that um while they understand the request for um some of these other school board members across the Commonwealth mainly in Northern Virginia I I think only in Northern Virginia that have made that request um those those um reasons they feel are even more important now because our kids can't wait we just like Mr Ro ham said we have to do what we have to do to get our students prepared for life beyond the walls of our schools I hope and trust the other comments I hope and trust the other comments will be uploaded what I've looked at is what's on our public comment website and I have I have not seen those on our public comment website so hopefully they will be uploaded there I believe we as board members Dr yeah we as board members have received several emails from um school board members uh yeah applauding the the new framework and saying that they don't agree with um the school divisions asking for more time and and that they're they know that it's going to be tough work but they're ready to do it thank you uh Mr Hansen thank you as well I just uh am very grateful for the work and I know the board has um been pushing uh this but just grateful for the work around the Commonwealth that and all the listening and uh adapting that youve made and I would like just to you in terms of casting motives I think some of the terminology that's been used at the last couple of months that the the system has been gained that's uh questioning people's motives or um uh work frankly and I just am very appreciative of the uh thrusted work that's got into this and again the listening that's g into it and also I just uh in terms of delay and I I think Dr Bryce just hit it though that we have tens of thousands of reasons to move forward and those our children the ones that Mr Rotherham talked about earlier the ones that uh already um uh were not proficient in uh math or reading and again have declined significantly and just again a a generation of our students are um uh at risk here and so I think that we owe it to those tens of thousands of students that need to U get to the proficient levels in reading and math and frankly the hundreds of schools up here I don't you know no matter what uh some of the differences of you know might be in perspective we can't can't wait another year and we're going to lose another cohort and tens of thousands of more students so I just really again uh appreciate the terrific work that's gone into this and look forward to moving forward and um and again if we wait for Perfection uh you know we can be here 20 years from now talking about this and we need to move ahead and I think is the baby example that we've had we've got to you know learn to um uh you know Walk and Run and uh this is just an incredible start and we've got to get this push forward our system has to change for the benefit of our students and our families and and frankly for our schools which are you know pillars in the community and so I really look forward to moving this process ahead Mr rham thank you madam president yeah I want to just uh respond to one thing I want to correct the record on one thing I said I said a small part and I did not mean to that this was a small amount of work it was a huge amount of work what I meant was it is a small part of what is going to be a very substantial culture change systems change it is not something that's going to happen with one board one Governor one legislative session if we if we go down this route it it's it's a long-term uh it's long-term process that's what I meant which brings me back to miss Holden I will say I do believe we have in this state a culture of adult politics uh driving a lot of our education decisions that hardly makes us unique you can ask any political scientist uh worth his or her salt that's what you get in Most states that's education politics and it's it's it's not about motives it's just about we spend a lot of time talking about well if we label schools if we what's this going to do what are people all just all kinds of adult and that's not by the way a Democrat thing a republican thing it's just a thing that happens in education because as you'll note there's no little people here I'm not even sure there's anybody representing little people here because we don't have groups like that uh here in the Commonwealth so it's just the thing and so it falls to us to say where do we need to keep our eye what's the North Star and so forth and it it it doesn't make people it's not about good people bad people anything else it's just the way the system works and if we want to be serious about student now comes we have to find ways to augur against that good data and transparency and I will note if if for examples of that when we were doing a combined rate that led to these weird outcomes for schools that have half of kids passing yet it would appear that almost all the kids were passing they were fully accredited no one was coming and saying oh this isn't transparent this isn't this is creating problems nobody was here when we were you know we had to go back and say like what has happened with cut scores and so forth nobody was saying well that's not transparent let's not do that like it's just the way the system works and it falls to this board right now to say we going to sort of continue that or are we going to start to try to build this broader uh culture and and really pay attention uh to outcom so I'd be careful about how we how we frame it I don't think anybody has has bad motives but it's just a thing of how the system works it's a thing of how any large system works and our job is to regulate a a large system and this is uh a small but really important step in that direction all this work comprehensively is a very big thing okay Miss mcferson I think it would be important if we just issue a letter to them asking that they come in for intensive training doesn't matter me whether you know you set up a workshop for the for instance that the principals or the superintendent that wrote the letter but I think the r meets the road so we're going to be asking them to do their part as well and I know that you're doing a lot of it by Outreach but where there is a complaint I think we address it straight on and we say then you need to come in and we need to have an intensive session with your school division to make sure that you understand where the board is or where the policy is and you understand all of the inner workings and then at least we would have done our part as relates to those types of concerns Dr K Dr Mars I think you have met with several Northern Virginia I think you spent several hours with Prince William and a few other school divisions in Northern Virginia is that correct yeah I mean we've had multiple engagements with folks in Northern Virginia um I can think of two or three superintendents off the top of my head that I've had long extensive conversations with um I I don't get a sense from them it's a it's a lack of understanding of what's what's in this system I just I I just there are some out there but not not the folks that we were just speaking of that that's just been my impression but that that's just me right there there may be a lot of misunderstanding that I'm not aware of but mam president Mr Rotherham and then miss Holton I just have a question are we planning to do I mean the superintendent I think that's great and we should obviously provide and you got you all are doing great work and are generally you know very responsive what are we doing on the media though are we going to do any kind of like a media I I know I know there was a media briefing attached to release anything else to make sure they understand what is going on and what is not going on and all of that because that's another audience that's a way I mean we're going to hear later today from about sort of how parents receive information um but one way is obviously the media making sure that they're getting their questions answered uh and so we're getting uh stories that are as accurate as possible that's good feedback thank you just to again if you take a chance to read the letter from the Region 4 uh divisions it's not the the framework that you've rolled out now is helpful these resources are helpful but one of their points is it would have really been helpful to have all that before the school year started so they could have trained people on it so they could have taken steps to uh uh adjust their professional development so they could have taken steps to adjust their uh curric curriculum for instance English language Learners math Etc so that they could have taken steps to try to convince their local uh divisions local authorities to provide more supports mean some of these things cost money to do better by some of our students we need to do extended school year for instance which costs money and they also want are asking for more time for the state to come in with its share of supports and I think I think the governor recognizes and said when he had rolled all this out that he recognized there's going to be a need for more investment in some of these divisions but that money won't come until a year late so the point of the uh waiting is not just delay for the sake of delay but rather let's put the supports in so that the supports coincide and so that we have the modeling data and that so that we're vetting it you know in addition to all the changes we're making here we're making changes to our testing system and we're behind the schedule for for work we should be doing on that as we um uh have discussed amongst ourselves but I'm not sure it's publicly been shared yet we're not going to set new Pass rates because we're we don't have time to get it done in time essentially for this year's test Administration so we're going to use the old Pass rates even though we're have new standards um and new testing elements based on the new standards so there's all kinds of things we're behind on because we've taken on too much all of these changes should have been implemented but well before the school year started so that that school divisions could have a year uh to prepare for them Miss Ashton Madam president I just want to have Clarity or where we are on a discussion I think board members have had a chance to ask staff um provide comment and just would like to check where we are in yeah uh I I don't think that we need to continue to rehash old things um for the purpose of you know having a microphone so um at this time we're going to move to the next it um but I'd like to take a quick 5 minute break please thank you e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e so really excited um to bring the board an item for discussion this is not an item for voting um as everyone knows House Bill 1477 ask the board to work on seat time flexibility so we've had a lot of input and a lot of opportunity from the field to start thinking about where seat time Flex was prior to that legislation and feedback on that space um Dr Armstrong's going to bring to you today what we're hearing some key decision points and thought partnership that we need your help with the board thank you Dr Coons Madam president and board members I would like to as mentioned guide our conversation with this a very early draft of the agencies work to implement the provision of seat time flexibility to Virginia schools per now enacted hp1 1477 today's conversation will inform our plans to provide the board with an item for first review in February again this is an early draft and your feedback and discussion will be critical to our next steps as a reminder hb1 1477 outlines seat time flexibility for options to allow students with time during the school day to complete work based learning opportunities Advanced learning opportunities focused on the five C's Competency Based learning opportunities alternative programs such as dual enrollment courses other instructional time models focused on Project based learning Mastery based learning Andor weekend and evening courses and F year Innovative Advanced and enrichment programs again this is I'll say it again an early draft for your feedback and consideration and preparation for anticipated first review in February and we want to First provide you all with a draft definition defining SE time flexibility will be essential to thoughtful implementation and framing for schools a definition for discussions provided on this slide and I will read it to you it states that sea time flexibility empowers Virginia school divisions to provide all students with personalized and Mastery based learning opportunities based on their individual needs these models prioritize student outcomes and master of academic content over fixed instructional hours allowing students to advance at their own pace participate in Innovative learning experiences and access tailored support while maintaining alignment with Virginia's SOS for K12 this definition would recognize four primary models of seat time flexibility those include alternative hours Mastery based learning project based learning and remote learning these are designed to meet the diverse needs of students and uphold best instructional practices especially for students with disabilities in English Learners while ensuring transparent regular assessment of progress toward SOS the draft noted form which you'll find attached in your agenda has been designed responsive to feedback on the existing waiver processes that feedback has highlighted Clarity and simplicity of the application process potential replication support and sustainability of innovative models management of public comment and oversight at the local Schoolboard level for flexibility flexibility in the scale of the opin individuals which would include individual schools or clusters of schools or even whole divisions and a desire to allow flexibility of iteration without restrictions the board has been provided with the notice form for for review so we can take a moment to review that and dig in a bit the notice form includes three sections a demographic section A Brief narrative on the model and an achievement Focus which will require School leaders to explain how student achievement will occur in Le of the 140 clock hour requirement as we continue to implement seat time flexibility and work with the board and schools to provide support best practice and guidelines will be developed and included to support schools several states that currently serve as national leaders and seat time flexibility including Arizona Utah and North Dakota have been studied to inform our work and will continue to be visited as efforts continue our membership in the launch Innovation cohort includes opportunities as well to thought partner with several states in the space as seat time flexibility will be an important tool breuss to strengthen sustainable career pathways through work-based learning early post-secondary credits earn Le of credentials and our 3E outcomes as mentioned previously we proposed to recognize four primary models of seat time flexibility including alternative hours Mastery based learning project based learning and remote learning and I'll get into those models uh now and provide a few examples under each of those if there aren't any questions so far all right questions yes ma'am Miss Holton just so I understand um uh this the uh concept is that this is going to be local option essentially either divisions Andor a school or a group of schools will apply that is correct and is that contemplated in the statute that it would be that kind of local option yes ma'am and it is there is nothing restricting us from making it so in the statute the idea is to make this less bureaucratically cumbersome uh rather than the existing waiver process so the the one question I would have and maybe you'll get to this later so tell me if you I should wait but if we're doing something that's essentially some divisions are going to step up and essentially pilot this I think that's a great way to learn um and great way to innovate is to Pilot in some divisions the volunteers first uh but are we then are we going to build in the thing we often fail here in Virginia and across the country to do is to build in some study to determine outcomes so that if it's uh if the Innovations are uh successful that we can spread and make sure students all across the Commonwealth get access to those options so are we building in the study component yes you'll see there is a slide a ways down in the presentation that outlines some of what our goals will be around data collection so Dr Armstrong um I I want to yield to Dr Coons in a minute but we are not restricting this to just a pilot we had a number of school divisions that are already that have already implemented similar types of programs alternative programs that actually came to the table and said this is something that we want to help move out into the greater Commonwealth by way of the statute great and so um it's been super successful for them they large divisions and small divisions um I actually met with several of those School divisions and had long conversations about exactly you know what this looks like for them how successful it has been and talk to um a wide array of people in their central office staff and in their building staff um that explain just how critical this is to some of their students that need the opportunities that are available by way of this particular uh opportunity here that we're talking about today so and I'm sorry just I I I use the word pallet wrongly so thank you for helping clarify that I what I the distinction I was looking for is local option versus Statewide um requirements and we may someday want to require that all our divisions offer these options but one way to get there is to study them and show how productive they are and I will say some of the one of the you know main things that we did learn from our division partners that had um that we had conversations with was around how we um articulate the use of a faor or alternative option and because they said that sometimes their school boards or parents may think that they are getting out of uh a a some kind of requirement when that's in fact not the case at all so those were some conversations that I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew we had um you know at different times from which has been the iterative process of getting to where we are with this uh particular presentation Dr K I think in addition and I I believe I sent this out to the board but I can do it again we did um during the pandemic do a personalized learning study called Bridging the Gap and a partnership with William and Mary and did study and find results so happy to share that with the board so we do have a pilot that occurred um post pandemic with Bridging the Gap and personalized learning but I'm happy to share that with the board and this really grows out of that work as well oh no no worries please continue sure and I will add in the not sood distant past having been a a principal and a a fairly High need school if you had given me the opportunity to implement this flexibility in my school and and again you don't know what you don't know and and not having an opportunity and the things that in in retrospect that I could have done that would have made a difference for kids would have been pretty powerful so I'm I'm very excited about this and I'm going to throw a a lot of examples at you but again interrupt at any time so we can dig further own days alternative hours that gives flexibility in timing and scheduling of instruction which includes non-traditional times that could be evenings weekends extended periods beyond the traditional academic or assessment calendar this could also include scheduling courses for completion and fewer than the traditional hours provided students demonstrate their competency Mastery included are two examples for alternative hours if middle and high school schedules are different for example in a school Vision which is a a common occurrence and middle school students are taking a high school credit earth science course at the middle school rather than focus on the consistency in the number of seat time hours between middle and high school coursework Mastery can be determined for both middle and high school through earning of credits on a common assessment uh for CTE in a different example of a student is completing a paid internship for a bulk of the morning that limits their course taking during normal school hours SE time flexibility could expand hours beyond the normal school time I do know that for example for for pharmacy tech there's over 200 required clinical hours to achieve that credential so you know this ties into our work around 3E making sure the students are on sustainable Pathways so this does not exist in isolation it's part of our our larger portfolio around Pathways right now so those are alternative hours I'll move to Mastery based learning this allows students to progress at their own pace and prioritizes learning paths rigorous standards and frequent assessments to ensure deep Mastery of content not uh with the limits of clock hour requirements in high school an example would include providing an advanced mathematics AP course which could set students up for Success when they get to the AP Calculus B andc content students can demonstrate Mastery through formative and diagnostic assessments to demonstrate Mastery prior to getting into that AP course which will again set them up potentially for greater success when they are sitting for the AP exam flexible learning settings can include remote opportunities which was mentioned initially work based learning and apprenticeships partnered with coursework in an alternative setting as well as school within a school learning can provide students uh in small groups with Innovative and personalized learning environments that do not necessarily have to be within the walls of Traditional School building these models prioritize smaller learning communities and give teachers the opportunity to utilize Innovative practice few other examples include what you would find in several divisions including in Louisa County where teachers for tomorrow's students would spend their days on site at a child care center uh involved in work-based learning in the morning and managing the child care center and then could take their traditional courses that are required on the same site without the burden of Transportation back and forth between facilities um School within a school models could be house plans which you see in a lot of schools nowadays that create smaller experiences for students whether those are at risk students trade clusters gifted or career acmis or even Fine Arts Partnerships with local businesses Um this can again instead of having to make choices as a student or a school to to give one opportunity then sacrifice another this will allow us to really combine those models and give students everything they need divisions can also develop Partnerships with local businesses and organizations to apply instruction to coordinated workplace experiences aligned to individual goals giving choice in how to gain credits and satisfy high quality work based learning which includes internships or apprenticeships and Project based learning would engage students in Hands-On inquiry Ren driven projects to address real world problems this emphasizes critical thinking collaboration creativity product development Andor presentations to demonstrate competency Mastery across many subject areas some examples of Project based learning could include students choosing a social issue that affects their local community they can gather data analyze related challenges and potential Solutions and then uh Master computer science and English language arts s sols in the process yearr round learning could include summer school additional learning weeks or high dosage tutoring without the pressure of the regular assessment timeline rather than starting over from the beginning for a student students could be provided with additional time to demonstrate Mastery and ideally get back on track with their classmates rather than being held back and having to start the course over again in August or September um as Dr Armstrong just kind of talked through some of those examples some of those models one of the things that that we need to think about as a board and one of the things we want to bring to the board was the attachment with this which was the notice form and thinking about how we as member Holton mentioned help School divisions think about these things help them think about whether or not they want to do these things so if we could take a minute and pull up the notice form and kind of dig into the notice form and get some feedback now that Dr Armstrong's talked about all the different things whether it's a year-long model where students get three to five additional weeks before they would have to take their SOS to have a summer program and study or it's having a school within a school and them having a fine arts project or as um Dr Armstrong mentioned the Louisa County model where students are on site taking their courses in a Workforce setting all of those are just simple examples of all the different ways and I know we have a lot of expertise on this board whether it's mé stem school or some of the work that um Debbie Kilgore did um in Scott County there are a lot of different expertise on the board we really want to lean into your knowledge and I know um Miss mcferson you've done a lot of work with Workforce we' love your thoughts and engagement on helping us look at this form one of the things that we did hear around the past waiver form as um president Cy said was that the form was hard and that it was cumbersome and it it pulled people away from that so some of the things we heard on this form is making sure the application is clear and simple and as an application more of a notice than a waiver process allow for rep apption so if you want to do a model multiple schools you can click on multiple schools or a cluster of schools you don't have to keep repeating information in that notice and that as um Miss Holton said how do we support the sustainability how do we learn from it how do we study how do we collect the data how do we make public comment and oversight through the local school board the regulatory flexibility than asking teachers or principls to manage all of the processes that go with that and then how do we allow for individ individual schools and then clusters of schools to join and then we want to make sure this is able to be an iterative process and that our schools are able to learn so if we could pull up that notice and talk a little bit through that notice that would be really helpful I apologize it's not embedded in the presentation but no it is the attachment so it's not the the presentation it's attachment one under B so thank yout I was uh looking at it two quick questions one I um appreciated the attendance requirement because that was one thing is like how are you going to track it are kids just going to be sitting home or do they do their work so uh if we could talk a little bit about that if um and then I think one thing I'm wondering about is this a an individual child of school decides it's an individual child needs a program or is it hey we have a group of kids who we want to put in Workforce and so we are kind of creating an alternative path for a group of kids how how do how should we think about it that's why we're here is to talk through this Dr K yeah I think you could do either right you could do this for a cluster of students you could do this for a student you could do this for a cluster of schools so if we look at the Hampton City Schools and the academy model and some of the work they've done around clustering schools to do things differently I think the Innovation field is open and we need our schools to innovate and we need to learn from that but at the same time we want to collect their attendance so their attendance might look different so if I'm having alternative school hours and I go from 11: to 4 I still need to be there during my alternative school hours that are designed in my plan I might not be physically in a seat in room 104c but I need to be able to demonstrate that I've attended and done the work that was outlined in my plan um one last thing the only thing I I do wonder is just about the parental I don't I don't know if I saw anything related to either parental sign off or partnership or something that just ensures that parents know what's going on so they're not kind of surprised like well why did I get that diploma and that kind of thing yeah I think it's in there but it's a good point that it's buried and not clear and elevated so we need toing I think it's in the assurances just as a checklist but bringing that up to Forefront might be really important yeah or on a more practical level where is my kid like now are they at the child care center or are they at the school that's a a valuable point I do think that one of the um some feedback that I heard about this is just that um as as far as the positive goes is that you know sometimes in the apprenticeship category you kids need the they need to be there during those business hours when um you we have plenty of people within the community that are willing to help support um apprenticeships but they can't leave their job to go and sit in a classroom and directly instruct students when they can instruct them in real life situations that are going on in their businesses and so this really gives that opportunity both to get that Hands-On work experience while at the same time completing the required horse work yeah let let me just add I'm I'm really really excited about this I currently have seniors at our first class of seniors right now in my school and all of them want to work and if but because they have seat hour requirements that they have to be in school and we're tracking attendance we're not able to be as Innovative in terms of they could have a workplace experience where they're getting paid but also learning and getting credit for it and so I think that this um flexibility without going too far trying some things um I think it's going to allow for industry and partners to come to the table because uh I mean I I know now high school kids they they want to work and they want to find have meaningful jobs and if schools can partner with um you know certain organizations I think that the sky is the limit so I'm really really excited excited by this and what it could mean for partnership and for kids who who aren't just like learning differently but uh kids who are Advanced we've got kids in dual dual enrollment who are like really should be off to college already but they're they're not quite ready so now they can um continue to advance but also have this work based experience I heard some stat that said you know by the time they get to College they're going to change their career for their major six times well they could change it six times in high school and then actually go into college really knowing what they want to do which I think could be great Dr K and um Miss Ashton that is definitely something we've heard as we've been talking about the 3E writing this framework is we want this flexibility how do we get this flexibility we have seat time hours how do I make algebra fit into algebra so that we can have those great apprenticeships and internships so that was something we've also heard a lot from our Advanced students in Middle School how do I fit this advanced coursework in how do I accelerate based on Mastery or in elementary school I've got a group of kiddos who want this Barts experience how do I create a micro school or a school within a school so we're really excited as well because this is really iterative to what we're hearing in the field and from our families Madam president I love sing outside the box and know for so long we've stayed inside the box and as a former CTE teacher as as uh she alluded to you know I taught career exploration taught all the career courses and for a long time we had it set up not just for seniors but we had it for younger students to do job shattering experiences for half a day took a lot of coordination a lot of businesses as you said wanted kids to you know find out because if they find these things out before their seniors and they do job shadowing maybe they thought this was the career they wanted but then they spent some time doing that it may change their mind in a whole different uh path you know to what they want to do but then you then we would get to where you know if the pendul would swing and then all of a sudden we couldn't let them Miss School Miss seat time to go do the job shadowing so not you know this is not just about uh it is about career exploration but it's also it doesn't have to wait till their seniors to start and I'm I'm happy to see having been on both sides I'm happy to see that we're thinking outside the box again what's best for students and I've had so many seniors as mé pointed out who were ready ready to go but our guidelines said nope you've got to be in the class room all day long you can't leave so um I I know there's law school systems doing some Innovative things I would like to hear from some of those and may maybe that's part of your office plan to um something because we learn from each other right and you know I had a college professor who have quoted many times who said don't recreate the wheel and there's so many things going on in the nation and in the state that other school systems maybe haven't thought of or or haven't seen it implemented in the way it's implemented that would be excited to see you know another school system so I think it's great and I'm excited about it thank you Dr Northern so nobody's more excited than me um but let me point out what happens sometimes okay and and I'd like to just pair this with a request that um to miss kilgore's point that we talked to some other states you know perhaps at our next meeting um there's an organization called knowledge works that's working with North Dakota and Florida and Utah and Arizona and all these states that are doing this work um and for all these reasons you know other states get really excited about it you know the kids need more time to do CTE the graduation requirements get in the way so on so forth um but I just jotted down what I see as four challenges uh one sometimes you don't have high quality instruction and it gets watered down and the high school graduation diploma means even less than it sometimes means so we've got to make sure we've got to plan for high quality instruction two evidence of learning sometimes these kids are trying to demonstrate skills and the testing hasn't caught up with the Mastery so we actually have no way to assess whether they've learned yet so you know you sometimes you've got to have discrete tests that are sort of assess assess a set of skills and that test doesn't exist yet uh third is sometimes public colleges and universities get real confused about how what to do with this like do they do they actually accept these hours or do they not and what kind of guidance do we give our public uh universities and colleges about these types of credits and then there's always the equity and access question that um some of these you know you you do see some districts and kids get less opportunity for these Flex learning opportunities so these are all the challenges that other states have you know worked with um and so I personally wouldn't I mean I feel desperately that we need to hear from knowledge works or or any of these states about have been doing this 5 10 years about how they have tackled these challenges and more Dr Coons yeah we've worked very closely with North Dakota Utah and North Dakota is the one who worked very closely with knowledge Works in Arizona we can put something together I just have a practical question um on the form it shows like you know School cluster as um cluster of schools can that cross division boundaries so could there be schools like city of Charlottesville is surrounded by alal County so alal County students could be Crossing through the city of Charlottesville to get to their work opportunity that you know city of Charlottesville students didn't have access to like you were talking about you know e Equity of opportunity or access we would have to have both local school board partner together to be able to do that so they would have to fill out applications and then design a program together but it's definitely something we can model but we see those existing Partnerships in Regional CT centers and other programs so I think that's something we could definitely pursue Miss mcferson in terms of Designing the plan is it enough that students that Excel well on the Mastery based learning so let's just say I max out all my AP exams ahead of time even before maybe they're giving you know for really really smart does that mean that I just get to go home or can I modify I know can I modify my PL so that I can go and do the internship is it allow some flexibility as you're advancing because obviously I would tell you I finished my exam ready to go home let me go but anyway that's one of the challenges we're trying to solve right now yes Miss Holton uh my questions relate to next steps so I don't know if if Dr Armstrong if he's gonna go back to his slides on next steps that would help me certainly and I do I did bring up the slide that responsive to your question earlier Miss Holton about our data use and what we want to do moving forward um is to take the data that we gain and collect through this experience to determine where students are demonstrating increases and growth in Mastery determine if this is affecting our teacher retention um I think that's a a very interesting question to ponder is what would this do for teacher professionalism and in their autonomy as well evaluate whether SE time Flex increase three Readiness outcomes and then take that and use it to create spotlights and models for other schools and use the data to support scale and spread of these models and for the board we will hope to have a formal uh first review of a formal definition of the notice form as well as a be best practices guidelines and data collection process uh for you all in February Dr Northern yeah just one more comment I mean I think the the part of the definition that makes me Mo most nervous is this project based learning one um that's a phrase we've used a long time in education and it gets kind of bandied about um and I think we definitely need to put some some parameters around what what it means to have a project-based learning assignment I mean because kids do that all the time you know you do a project and you know um so anyway I'm just concerned about that the Mastery based if we can get the Assessments in place the remote learning I think we've got you know a pretty good idea of how that can be measured um alternative hours we even have some mechanism to track that and I can see the the accountability there a little bit um but I think the Project based learning at least in my mind is the trickiest one to have an accountability measure in place but could be wrong about that Miss hton uh as to that point Virginia's been doing a lot of work over a number of years about Project based learning and assessment thereof am I right can can you update us on that I can't personally we're right off the top but we'd be happy to provide that to you at our next meeting that might help uh address Dr northern's question when we come back to this and then my next question is uh as to the process well can you uh tell us what you've done already to engage stakeholders on this and what more is going to happen between now and February sure um I know and Dr Co please add in where I'm missing any pieces here uh it was June I believe when we held uh listening sessions with VP and vaes uh we had a joint session where we June and August June and August um where we engaged them and provided them with legislation got their feedback about what could this do for your division what are the challenges you foresee uh how could this benefit your schools uh we we did it in breakout rooms in these smaller breakout rooms and focus groups got a lot of great feedback from that we anticipate doing the same but expanding I was thinking about our Workforce feedback Group which includes some of our post secondary Representatives that was mentioned as well some of our Workforce Partners um we've been working with them on Career exploration ACP work-based learning I think this would would dovetail nicely with that as well so we'll continue to engage other stakeholders moving forward we got a lot of input so we wanted to get input and ideas from some of our school leaders and our division leaders we've met with superintendant to get a sense of what they wanted to see that's some of the challenges you saw in the deck our goal now is that we have directionality from the board some things you want to see but we want to like hit the field really well now because there's no vote tomorrow it's about taking this feedback now and getting extensive public feedback from that great may I uh on that topic um am I right that what you're going to bring to well in February you're going to ask us is it going to be first and final review in February is that the idea is that the expectation my understanding is it's first review but I'm going to defer to Dr Coons on that of the that may help answer my next question which is uh so I'll go ahead if if you don't mind Dr Coons that um I see that you're going to ask formal approval of best practice as guidelines so I'm right that there's a guidelines document that the legislation mandates and we haven't yet seen a draft of that right right yeah and I don't believe I don't know if it's been mandated by the legislation but we intend to provide that uh to School Division so best practice not not big guidelines but guidance well I'm just looking at the statute and it actually requires that we I thought it required that we by December 1st update our guidelines for graduation requirements essentially on this topic um so and also that we submit a report to the chair of the Committees by November 1st so I think we're already a little behind on the guideline adopt adoption and I would just like to suggest that we get those documents out quickly so that the field can give us feedback in the event that you might be asking us to do final approval in February since essentially already behind on it but we ought to have not just this information you've given us today which is very helpful but we ought to have the actual guideline documents more than five days ahead of our February meeting so that you can get feedback from the field they're going to understand the details of this much better than we will and we'll want to be able to hear from them Dr Coons yeah thank you so much member hton the seat time report was a progress report that was submitted um we'd be happy to take your advice and get guidelines to you early so the the report that was submitted by November due by November 1st went in yes ma'am great if we could get a copy of that I think it would help us too but but that the guideline update that was required by December 1st has not been done is that required is that accurate I'd have to go back and check the legislation that the Board of Ed shall by December 1st 2024 update its guidelines for graduation requirements as to local alternative Pathways to standard units of credit alternatives to 140 clock hour Etc so I think we'll have to go back and check because we did some guideline updating and that might have been part of it mton the rest of it in quite detail spef he sure seems to be talking about what we're doing here so all I'm saying is let's get it done but let's get it done in a methodical fashion such that we all see a draft we and the public and the stakeholders see a draft more than five days ahead of our February meeting so that we can if you're going to ask us for first and final review and if you're not going to ask us for first and final then there's a chance between first and final okay um thank you Dr Armstrong um and I think if there's no other question questions we will move to item C okay I'm still here yes great all right Madame President and board members I'm excited to provide you all with our high quality work-based learning definitions and experiences for your first review and discussion today as you know our work to strengthen our high quality work-based learning model in the Commonwealth is not an isolated or new effort just like the SE time flexibility we just discussed tomorrow you'll be provided with the revised definition of career exploration and academic and career plan guidelines for your approval following my presentation in September the career exploration definition ACP guidelines and today's HQ wbl definitions are all intended to support Virginia's schools and students in their pursuit of sustainable career Pathways and 3E Readiness outcomes we have engaged several key stakeholder groups across the Commonwealth as well as National experts to inform all of our 3E work to give School divisions meaningful concrete and practical support to guide students beginning in elementary school to identify their personal interest understand the meaning of work connect their interest to course taken and post-secondary preparation and engage in meaningful work-based learning experiences to Galvanize their pathway in order to graduate employed enlisted or enrolled in addition as you all know we are participating in the launch uh Innovation uh impact cohort excuse me with other states who we are thought partnering with and one of the pillars of our framework is developing a system of highquality work based learning along with Transitions and postsecondary credits and high wage high demand credentials the board has had several conversations about work-based learning and we're we're again eager to start the discussion today with you all and continue to take this out into the field as I mentioned earlier we have our Workforce feedback Group which has already met on occasions and includes representatives from the workforce local and state businesses and Chambers our postsecondary systems as well and they have uh even in October we discussed uh some of the the Baseline thoughts around work-based learning with them and where they they thought we needed to move forward we have also provided that group with rubrics from other states who have already demonstrated success in this space that includes Indiana Ohio and Tennessee so this discussion is ongoing and I'm excited to just get into this in more detail and get your feedback today from the board today I will will briefly talk through the current high quality work based learning definition and how that relates to our graduation requirements which you'll see is going to be a a distinct conversation between our graduation requirement work-based learning and then our 3E high quality work-based learning we'll get into that in a moment we'll talk about the justification for this new and unique definition for highquality 3E W this work-based learning which we are using the acronym hq3 wbl and then get into what that means in terms of the definition and the the types of experiences that we feel will will qualify as hq3 wbl and we'll end with some initial thoughts about how we'll evaluate those experiences for their inclusion on behalf of our students moving forward the board uh has a responsibility per code to Define high quality work based learning for the purposes oh thank you of graduation requirements the current definition used for this purpose is that highquality work-based learning are School coordinated workplace experiences related to students career goals and or interest integrated with instruction related to the core technical competencies of the CTE course and performed in partnership with local businesses the videoe currently identifies 12 CTE experiences as highquality work-based learning you can see these here we have a good number of students um over 32,000 students who take advantage of all of these different types of opportunities we are not proposing a change to this definition uh or to the way we provide work-based learning credits for graduation requirements but we are proposing that we add a new definition of highquality work based learning that will allow us to incentivize the options that provide the very best career experiences in support of our 3D framework for employment enlistment and enrollment uh essentially a different tier of hqw BL that will integrate into our model why is this important uh we know that for example I referenc our launch Team identified areas of opportunity that can enhance the quality of our work-based learning one is to work to ensure more consistent quality and rigor for students engage in work-based learning across the state I know anecdotally as I I work with leaders from across the field in both CTE and in school divisions that uh there are some divisions where they have created fairly robust work based learning program programs where students are having meaningful on-site apprenticeships internships that we know uh you know from the research and the data that is is more likely to lead to sustainable career Pathways and then there are other divisions that you students are it's exclusively a a maybe a service learning model or job shadowing or it's just a mix of all so we want to work to incentivize the highest quality experiences that are going to best support that transition to enrollment enlistment or employment another area of need is access to the high quality experiences and we know that by tying a new definition and set of criteria for work-based learning to the 3E Readiness framework that should insent increased access through the creation of new opportunities for students that are aligned with rigorous expectations another challenge is recruiting businesses to participate by defining the characteristics of highquality 3E Readiness work-based learning the department will be able to communicate clearly the expectations for business owners as well as a potential return on investment for participation in work-based learning program increase quality and the experience for students improves their skill sets which creates a stronger employee pipeline for Industries across the Commonwealth our goals in creating and connecting this new definition set of criteria to the 3E Readiness framework are to make sure our students have consistently high quality work-based learning experiences that allows them to seamlessly transition to post-secondary Workforce and military service following graduation in align with our 3E Readiness framework which reflects incentivizes work-based learning experiences that support those transitions schools will be able to establish and maintain business partners School relationships that provide students with high quality work-based learning opportunities and businesses again will see a return their investment as wbl opportunities enhance a talent pipeline for them and support a thriving business Community but one thing it's not on here it's a little less tangible is that this really helps develop our relationships among our schools our businesses and our Workforce and in the field when I been out and talking with stakeholders about this a lot of times it's just a lack of knowledge businesses say you know I I want to do this for our schools I'm not sure who to talk to and the schools say I'm not sure how to access our businesses and we know that different parts of the state have different uh key Workforce demand businesses in their region so we know that this can help to Galvanize those efforts across the state our proposed new definition for high quality 3E work-based learning is before you on this slide we will like to consider this to be an experience that is school coordinated within an industry or Business Partnership where sustained employment in a real world setting culminates coursework learning and accelerates the students career goals supporting a seamless transition to employment enlistment and enrollment by providing students with suspend of work over an extended period of time in high wage and in- demand Industries align with students career plans as articulated in the academic career plan resulting in a nationally certified certificate of completion earning of an industry recognized credential Andor post-secondary credit attainment and including mentoring and supervision by industry professionals that intentionally supports students in building Social Capital with value in the labor market and AIDS them in developing the skills and knowledge they need to successfully navigate the world of work I didn't want to read that verba I'm just to underscore the importance of this and and want to get your feedback as well on this definition as it will drive a lot of our work moving forward any comments or questions so far Mr Ran So like these definitions I mean they intuitively make sense but I mean I'm my understanding is that across like I just recently gave a presentation was um knew just enough to be dangerous about some other Workforce data we're Gathering some other stuff that's happening across the Commonwealth is this all aligned with what's happening with what Chev is doing what we're doing with the Department of Labor like what is are are we sure sometimes in the past we've created low because there's been good work happening but it's it hasn't been crosswalked like is this how does this fit into like the broader Workforce strategy Dr KS I I want to just commend um Dr Armstrong for a minute as part of our launch team which is our Statewide team where we meet with other states we are one of the few states that have higher EDS sitting on that team we're also coordinating the secretary's office has several work groups where we coordinate regularly and then um Andy I think you meet weekly with Chev and the Community College to really start to align this and align the thinking around this work because I think that's really important thank you in addition to that Mr rham um you know I I work now to attend the Virginia apprenticeship Council meetings uh with Miss overly from Virginia Works uh as well as representatives in the workforce agency so the short answer is yes it will be and even more importantly it has to be I think for our work-based learning program to be meaningful it it has to align with each of the different entities you just mentioned so we we're definitely going to be pursuing that and have already that's great and and I should have started by saying this is fantastic work and it's exciting and and like as I was learning about some of it that's happening elsewhere it's like the fact that we're starting to have like collect data focus on outcomes coordinate the stuff is is exciting and have long-term dividends so I appreciate it thank you and what's really exciting is that I you're seeing different pieces of this machine building here across different presentations seat time flexibility uh Dr Coons mentioned the work we're doing with the postsecondary organizations with HB 1087 college career ready Virginia dual enrollment um so you know along with several career exploration ACP so everything is is really syncing up really well right now I think we have a great window in which to put all this together Miss hton Sor ducking the sun here best I can um on slad um I this the way I read this slide it says one must meet all three of those qualifications in other words there's an and rather than an Andor after the second one but the way I read the attachment it's Andor and I think you mean Andor we do mean and or yes ma'am and because in other words the if you the middle bullet is already part of our uh College and Career Readiness certificate so you don't mean to say that only if you get uh nationally certified um U credential can you meet the definition uh the high quality 3E wbl definition you can meet it by meeting any of those three bullets yes I'm sorry I'm rereading the bull here but yeah that is correct um it doesn't mean that you have to satisfy every single one of those you have to one of those but we're still again we're here to discuss and really FL out the details and how far we want to go with that but but that is the idea right now thank you um then um my other question as to this U as to this slide is and I do see this uh throughout both documents uh reference to high wage as well as in demand and I get why we're focusing on in demand careers I worry about the focus on only High wage and I'd just like to point out for instance that early childhood education and some of our health care fields are not high- wage fields and yet require s significant training and we need people desperately as we hear from Jenna Conway regularly when we're talking about our early childhood care so they are in B so yes no they're not covered Because unless unless Dr Armstrong helps me understand because these definitions say high wage and high demand so should that be Andor also so if it was Andor I would it would I would be very happy but as is as written if it's high wage and high demand then I worry about the exclusion of folks learning to be early child studying frankly to be Elementary School teachers might not qualify as high demand High wage uh but certainly Early Childhood workers and a number of our Healthcare Fields would not qualify as high wage under the Wei of uh I can't I can't pronounce VOE woi I can't I keep pronouncing woy as WEA uh but woe thank you um criteria I don't think so help me understand how we're GNA accommodate that Dr Armstrong why don't you explain the difference between High wage high demand for the 3E Readiness and then High wage high demand for graduation sure um Dr Myers who think is was still here well we worked extensively several months ago as we were developing our our three uh indicators with VOE the Virginia office for Education economics excuse me vo maintains a very robust dashboard of uh regionally highd demand occupations using that data we we took that and it's not verbatim from Boe because again this is a listed that we developed and we we applied some again like a family sustainable wage to some of the the metrics that were involved in that but um we have taken our list of credentials that we have right now that the board approves each year and have assigned them high wage high demand or high wage or high demand um so either both an Andor model across that now for the three framework as you know the the nature of or or the the character of that credential determines the points you earn uh in the in the framework and so as we look at at work-based learning we're proposing essentially two definitions we still maintain that highquality work-based learning definition for graduation requirements this hq3 ebl definition would we're we're proposing here today um is designed to really incent careers and Pathways to careers in in their region or across the state that are going to to be at least one or the other um and I know I was a roundabout way of explaining that but I think it's a discussion Point um and just making sure we're clarifying all those details and we'll continue to get feedback back about that so I think I heard you say you want so I understand there are two different work-based learning definitions there's one for graduation requirement and then there is a essentially more rigorous narrower category for uh hq3 wbl is that accurate that's correct but I thought I and is the definition of high wage high demand different for those two no no that that would not be different and and honestly right now the the hqw definition as it currently exists doesn't reference High wage high demand or or wage demand in their classifications that's designed for this definition which is associated with the 3A framework so then I'm coming back I'm not sure I'm clear on M mcferson what we're talking is it high wage and or high demand or is it must be high wage and high demand jobs to qualify for hq3 wbl and I will submit MIT to the board that again this is all for conversation today so that's something that we can definitely discuss we haven't made a decision on that we we're going to get feedback about it but I'd be happy to hear everyone's feedback what what the way I read the documents is there were some inconsistency some places seem to say Andor but I read them as saying and primarily and so I would encourage us to think about that and the potential we we do want to incentivize people to go into early childhood education and if that's what hq3 wbl is intended to do is incentivize folks into the careers where we need them to be trained and and uh are in demand then I I would love us to be clear on that okay I'm gonna step back for just like five seconds here I am really overwhelmed by This Acronym yes oh gosh so I mean it's it's really giving me some anxiety I I really need us to go back to the dra drawing board on this there's got to be something better um there's got to be something more succinct uh there's got to be something that is I mean I'm just gonna shut down after HQ so um I just I think we've gota re re rework this whole thing that's the easiest fix we got here we can take care of that I do think to it's a lot of words that can also be quite a bit more more succinct for clarity sake um um and for better understanding across these different silos that we're talking about here um and and it has to be clearer because if not all y'all are going to do is field questions and calls on that so um I I I think that we've got to make sure we're we're crossing those boundaries and getting those things articulated very clearly here um that's just my initial feedback uh I don't know if my other board members have any other feedback to that to that end Dr Northern I'll agree with that um I think just a little bit more from me um I thought that the hq3 thing um was tight and solid and I appreciated that definition um my semic concern comes in sort of two systems we've talked about we don't want bifurcated systems and I get we've got a definition here for graduation a definition for this the more rigorous I get that districts probably are getting a little squeamish if we just take the rug out under their feet with the with the graduation part um I'm wondering though if we can just transition gradually to one system where we just have the hq3 and we say you know in two years or however much time we're going to give you but sooner or later it was all going to be on the hq3 and we're not going to do it tomorrow um because as I look at your table in the attachment when you've got learning about work learning through work and learning for work it's really nice right and I actually think that you can put both systems in the same chart so it doesn't look so bifurcated and in my mind job shadowing Service Learning mentoring is all stuff that could happen in Middle School exploration you know we have CTE Middle School exploration yeah that would be maybe that's becomes you know the middle I mean the first um column which is the elementary middle I don't know what the second column becomes with those other examples and then the third column for the most part seems to me to be your new definition right um so anyway I'm just trying to you know and then maybe if it's in a table like that and they see both systems together and then this is sort of what we're transitioning to because the the H the high school graduation requirements aren't going to go away they're just going to be pushed down right to a lower level where it's more appropriate in the middle school for them to have these experiences um by the time you get to high school you should be doing these more rigorous activities so that's my two cents thank you and Dr Norther and and to Madam president's comments as well I think taking this and maybe making it less words and more visualizations perhaps um we'll make this more crisp for you all in February and rethinking our acronyms not only that I do think that to to Dr northern's point we need to really focus on the rigor of our um work-based learning experiences in high school and take things that are less rigorous um like in many cases the job shadowing and the the service learning um that can all be part of exploration in middle school we are trying to put more of the emphasis on that exploration in Middle School um to give that real time and opportunity uh for those credential credentialing programs and other such programs apprenticeships in the high school years so I think that actually fits best sort of in those two main buckets there um so the less rigorous in the Middle School time frame and the more rigorous more credentialing apprenticeships in High School Miss Holton yeah so I completely agree with not only the acronym I mean it it can be a nickname it doesn't have to be an acronym um um I'm trying so hard to get the vqb one the CH Early Childhood one um so and I also agree concur with Dr Northern and others concern about really having double definitions of work-based learning does not support transparency for parents and stakeholders and so I think our goal ought to be a single definition of work-based learning if you make if you make it clear that on both the high wage high demand issue and the um element the ways to meet workplace learning if you make it clear on both of those that it is Andor rather than and then I don't think the definitions are that far apart and that maybe we can um decree that the new definition uh will be the definition for graduation purposes as well as um uh uh incentive um the re the accountability framework but with a little delayed implementation because we don't want to change graduation requirements for current you know students who've completed what they thought was their work Bas learning requirement under the old scheme ought to be grandfathered in in some sense and we've done that on changes we've we've implemented in the past so implement the new definition but grandfather in current high school students that gives the divisions time to comod thank you and I'm sorry and I'm probably getting ahead of the game and I'm sure you already got plan I'm sitting here thinking about school systems and superintendents and different people in the Schoolboard office of each system who who's going to coordinate who's going I know you have this plan but who who monitors who keeps up with all this you know I'm saying the capacity of of school staff too specific coordinator and I know it's optional right now but like you I'm asking this is while I'm all for it I can imagine wow what a task it would be to and there you're right there are divisions now that have dedicated work-based learning coordinators others that do not probably have that's what I'm also again not being a debie downer I'm all for it but this is what we need to hear problem you know like who's G to Madam president job I would think if if a school system really Embraces it and takes it on board from the job shadowing Middle School level to you know right it's but I just I know you've already thought all this I'm just asking appreciate it Miss Holton uh to miss kilgore's point I totally agree and in the we have had discussions in the past about including um a workas learning coordinator uh in our standards of quality so that the state is helping fund those positions and we the board has not yet adopted that as part of our s soqs and the general assembly has not funded but I do think that to do divisions that are doing this right are locally funding uh you know somebody to be the liaison to the business community and you just can't do it without them um I did have that leads into one more question which is one of the divisions that's doing this right already and and using their their local funding to do it Hampton Dr made reference to the Hampton's one of the uh and so those of you haven't had a chance to visit Hampton I strongly encourage it they're happy to do um take visitors and they're they're really doing it division wide everybody in high school is in a um a pathway um uh and and some of those Pathways include law enforcement and firefighter Etc um and I just see a lot of references here to Industry and business and I would just ask that in the final documentation we clarify that that language includes local service government right so um it's government nonprofit sector should be included in the def it's not just private sector industry and business that were interested in support right thank you have we cut you off uh slightly but that's okay um sorry I just did want to mention to your point Madam president is that what we proposed to be included in the I'm want to use a different term now the enhanced uh next tier of work-based learning are these four experiences apprenticeship clinical experience internship and reimagine school-based Enterprise so we're taking the 12 current experiences and condensing them to four for the purpose of our uh increased rigor work-based learning um and you did mentioned that earlier and I will say too to Dr northern's comment is a lot of the reasoning behind at least for now establishing these two definitions is a nod to concern in the field because again they are Midway through the year graduation requirements it's a much bigger conversation but I do agree we can take this and and put it all under the umbrella of one definition are divisions going to understand what a reimagined school-based Enterprise is I mean I don't but that may be some nomenclature that everybody knows but me but what is that so for example um at the school where I I served as principal we had a bank branch inside the school and the students were Manning as tellers in the bank branch and it was associated with course they were taking in in finance and um so there are schools that that have some type of established Enterprise for students within the building um this is one though I think of all those of those four experiences that will require probably the most education the school divisions because that happens in Pockets but I think it is a valuable experience however we would need to extend some more education on that President conson uh Dr Armstrong am I right on this one you do propose to bring it back to us for final approval in February this is first review and you're going to be asking for final in February this is first review We intend to take your feedback today gather more feedback from the field as well using what we've gathered today and then come back to you all for final review in February so again as with my request on the prior topic if you could get the documentation out the actual document I know we have a draft here but the next iteration out to the field because there are some frankly technical errors in the draft some of those Andor and there's some other technical inconsistencies in the draft and that the field will help you they will fly Speck it for you they will um if you give them time and opportunity certainly and Madam president the last slide is the the next iteration of this work once we establish the definition and aggree on Which experiences will qualify in this higher tier of rigor work-based learning we will develop a rubric to evaluate these experiences as well and we intend to use the following criteria to evaluate that meaningful on job placement accelerate learning options as well as career navigation supports with Al which aligns with the definition you saw earlier but uh we'll need to to Really Work to establish a definition and those experiences first before we go into too much detail on the rubric and I think yes that's it thank you okay uh Mr Gil Strat item D good afternoon uh president crey Dr Coons and members of the board I bring to you today a discussion topic um something that is a opportunity for us going forward I think most of you have heard of nationally board certified teachers and there are incentive awards that we have done for years um we've had some changes uh coming out of this last budgetary season and legislative season that we need to look at and prepare for um there's some changes that we'll need to make to our guidance documents um based on General Assembly adjustments to the budget code and so that's what I'm here to talk about just a little background the fund first and then some discussion of changes in the uh code budget language and then implications um for the background as I mentioned national board certified teacher it's been going along for quite some time in Virginia and Across the Nation the last time we had any guidance changes from the board was 2012 so we've been under the same guidance document from the board for over 13 years and so there's some changes that need to happen in that just based on the change in the budgetary language um the 2012 uh guidance document has some very specific criteria and expectations that will have to be adjusted um but let me go on to the code per second so we can get to the code so in this last General Assembly session there were no changes made in the code but I want to point out a couple things in the code that definitely need to be considered one as you see on that second bullet it refers to public school teachers that obtain the national board certification it does not reference any other group um it will in the budget language when I get to that so though the general assembly had an opportunity to change the code possibly they did not change the code but they did change the budget language but it does impact us when we make our Awards and when we adjust our guidance language um it also refers up there to a nonreverting uh fund so the funds that we have year toe do build possibly if we don't spend them all and have an interest so there is a possibility that one of the um opportunities that we have going forward will not be necessary but we will be providing that information to you before the Fe or at the February board meeting so that you can make a informed decision on what we might do and I will get to what I mean by that so in the previous budget language um this is is what it said it only had this brief amount uh of language that went with the old uh language and it still talked about $5,000 for initial nationally board certified teachers and 2500 for each year thereafter the part and bold is something I definitely want to point out it says the board shall establish procedures for determining amounts of awards if the money and the fund are not sufficient to award each eligible teacher the appropriate award amount and that is a potential going forward uh maybe not this year but in the future years because of the broadening definition of what who and and and what classification can receive the money uh it does talk about that you can issue guidance uh which you have in the past all right prior to this year the uh reference is for classroom teachers and it also had an amount for $ 5,35 th000 for the first year and the same for the second year that has been changed if our new budget language but more than just the amount also some of the definitions and some included groups now we have the current budget language and it does in the first group still include classroom teachers but it also enters in Grants for candidates working so there would be funding uh through the budget that we would provide for those that were attempting to become nationally board certified or if they were renewing in what we call the maintenance of certification Moc so that money was not in the previous budget language um and as you can see up there the amount that was allocated is less it's 37,500 less than in the prev bud previous Bud budget languages and so we have a broader category but a little bit less money it does continue on in the budget language beyond that first paragraph that we had before and it adds a fairly large possible group here it says any public school staff member so in the past if you were a nashley board certified teacher and you went on to be an assistant principal you forfeited your nationally board and you were not able to receive those funds anymore if you were changed from a teacher to a counselor same situation if you went on to uh administration at a central office within a School Division you would forfeit your national board certification bonuses but through this additional language all those people that I just referenced would also be eligible for the national board funding so we're talking principes counselors division staff and we do not have a clear record of how many of those there are because every year we we when the numbers are submitted those are emitted from those numbers so that could potentially raise the amount we also o have what I referred to earlier as the any candidate category and this would be those who are attempting for the first time to become nationally board certified or if they let their national board certification end and they had to go back and renew it there's costs that associated with that and according to the budget language half those costs would be paid on the front end and then half would be paid on the back end um we do not collect that kind of data in the past because we don't have a direct feed with national board they don't let us know who started the assessments and since there was no funding for that the teachers weren't generally reporting that to their school divisions so that was that is one opportunity for change going forward as well I already mentioned this uh it's it's mentioned twice within there the candidate uh reference and the maintenance of certification and then we have there we go then we also have the the date in which divisions would provide us that information divisions would not be able to have provided us that information this year due to the mechanisms in place to record that information we do not have that kind of uh platform designed yet for receiving the information as people are entering the program only uh divisions would only provide us that information on the backside and annually uh verified themselves so talk about implications um first implication the decrease in funding through the new budget it allows for there to be some teachers that would receive the funding and then if once we used up any money we had carried over from our nonreverting funds we would have to make decisions as a board on what we were going to do next the board's current guidelines also would need to be updated because in our current guidelines it refers to any public school staff member in the budget language but it only refers to teachers in our uh guidance it also gives a definition for teachers and they had to work at least 50% in the classroom and it specifically excluded uh administrators from in central office because they were not eligible prior to this budgetary season um there's also a reference to a five-year license in our current language which hasn't been updated to our now 10year licenses that we currently have that's a fairly minor change but that would be a change that we would need nonetheless I've mentioned this already but we do not have the database capacity to collect those that are entering into the system and there's not a way for us to track the title one references in the new budget language that is all normally handled by the divisions as they reported out to us they verify it on their side which is what the last Slide the last bullet point there is in case you were curious about how much some of these things cost cost we've got the initial cost up there for somebody who's getting their national board certification and then their maintenance cost as they're uh trying to add or or extend their time um these would be costs that we would potentially be paying out out of the same fund which we currently do not past year expenditures so you can see at some years we went over the 5, 35,000 some years we did not so this may not issue for us this year and so there may not be a solution needed for that but there could be we once we receive all the data back from the uh divisions we'll have a better understanding of how much money we're talking and with that amount of money we'll come to you with February in February to let you know yes we have enough money to meet this full requirement or no we do not have enough money and we would need to see what the guidance from the board would want us to do uh regardless of whether or not we have money this year or not it would probably be a good idea to put that guidance or those recommendations into our guidance document so that at any time in the future we could adjust go to our regular uh regular scheduled you know uh plan within the guidance document and go and follow those guidance steps I created a couple board options but I just did those so you could kind of get a feel for what that would look like these may not be necessary at all because if we have enough funding we do not have to do that this year but those would be be things that you could consider going forward with the guidance for the guidance document coming out in February and I just gave a little bit of an explanation which you're welcome to have read or read yourself it's not not necessarily something you'd have to go with this is the timeline we're currently working under we're right now with board input and plans we've already started the uh collection window that was started uh about a month ago we do have a second tier of that because the initial collection would be more like our normal collection like we did with just teachers but when we're looking at also those who are candidates we have to do that a different way because there's not a way for the divisions to report that in the same method so that should go out this week and so we should have data we we think we'll have all the data we'll need well before the February deadline any discussion or questions questions for Mr gilra thank you thank you Mr gilr uh the um uh you and I spoke briefly earlier and I asked about told you I was going to ask you about the nonreverting Surplus so as I see it in 20123 2024 we underspent the uh budget by 600,000 corre uh and the prior year by several hundred thousand correct uh do we know no so is there um an accumulated Surplus from those two years the state treasury they are the ones that maintain that and they have not given us a number for that yet there's an interest that changes on a daily basis with that kind of large amount but that'll come out once we have the amount that we'll be requesting normally we only know what we were budgeted and then we go ahead and submit the full like in the years that we went over we submitted the full Bill and they paid the bill based on what we had carried over we will be endeavoring to try to find out how how much room we have so just looking at those annual Appropriations for the last two years uh and the expenditures for the last two years my rough math says we have almost might have almost a million dollars quite possible that we could have that amount we do not know how much we're going to have in extended debt though coming out of the broad so as to that I'm looking there's two ways the new changes potentially increases the expenditure one is accommodating the uh applicants those who are in the process of getting national board and that's something around 108 a year right that the number of people pursuing it was 108 last year uh just doing the math that might add $100,000 maybe a couple hundred thousand if you add in the U those who are doing the renewals Etc but well within the we would still be well within the current appropriation without even dipping into the Surplus so uh am I right about that mostly let me let me just correct one thing the the number you were reiding on how many people get it each year is not the same as the number of people attempting each year so we would be paying on the front side for those attempting whether or not they completed it or not we pay half of it so yes still within within it probably isn't a drastic difference in the amount but there could be a difference there I think the bigger difference could come from the other number this so so my guess and I'm purely speculating here but that the general assembly was contemplating that in that 600,000 or so underspent uh U appropriation from final priv previous years there was enough money to accommodate the uh those attempting to achieve national board certification the bigger problem is what you've helpfully identified as potentially broadening um the uh uh availability of the bonus to administrators counselors Etc non-classroom teachers and I just I have a comment and a question on that and my comment is I wonder if that uh change was intentional or not and just looking at the budget language that you site on page 10 F1 it is the intent of the general assembly that the Department of Education provide bonuses from State funds to classroom teachers so in one place in the budget language it appears to continue to limit the availability of these bonuses to classroom teachers as the statute does and of course we all know that Appropriations language overrides the statute but where one part of the appropriation language seems to say classroom teachers and another part of the appropriation language seems to broaden the definition I wonder if there's any way we could inquire or find out and maybe this is a perspective but you frankly talk to the Appropriations Committee staff as I know you all do regularly to figure out was that an intentional change or not and if it wasn't an intentional change then uh my question would be could an alternative you bring us in February be that we put uh non-classroom teachers on a lower priority so that we fully fund classroom teachers and fully fund applicants those in the process of getting board certification and not fund those who aren't classroom teachers unless and until those two Cate so in other words I'm asking would that third option be worth considering I think that's exactly what why um Mr Gilstrap and the Department's bringing this to us is because we do want that we do need this discussion to happen we want to create um as much consensus as possible within the board to say look we're we want to prioritize and I think Miss consult and us at least having this discussion is helpful because there is that ability to have you bring out you know the piece about well there's the the classroom and we can talk to appropriation staff But ultimately it it does kind of rest with how we want to prioritize and that may be you know the way we end up prioritizing is okay look the intent has always been to support historically has it has always been to support those classroom teachers that are directly impacting instruction who are nationally board certified and then let's move down the prioritization when it comes to whether or not we are flushed with cash to be able to support it or not but I do think that that is certainly I mean that was my thought process um was to to support those classroom teachers prior to sort of moving down the list right and I would just say that so you've presented us two options as you say just to get the conversation started but reduction of all funds awarded I would really encourage us to make that a a last resort we don't want people making less money than they did last year that is a terrible solution and frankly I think the first come first serve means nobody knows what they're getting that's also a terrible solution so I would propose and ask that you bring us back this third option that would honor the general assembly's clear intent as to U app ANS uh uh but also uh honor the statutory preference for classroom teachers uh and and my my my back of the envelope math which is worth precisely nothing would suggest that we have plenty of money to do that if we don't go beyond the classroom teachers and especially if I'm right that we filt up a million dollar Surplus in this account I that's a strong option for us to move towards and and you know exactly the purpose for this discussion Mr rham do you have a I agree I agree on prioritizing classroom teachers I have a more general question it it see we are giving preference to Title One in terms of applicants but we're not giving preference to high poverty schools kind of in any other way in this do we have any flexibility as we consider this because this does seem somewhat disconnected from we're concerned about High poverty schools we want more resources there we're concerned about teacher shortages and then we're sort of spreading this around um I certainly agree with Miss Hol we shouldn't do anything that causes somebody to have a reduction but it seems like going forward we could are there how much flexibility do we have to potentially start to align this more with making sure High poverty sorted subject areas you know shortage geography areas of parts of the state that have a harder time than others do we do we have any flexibility there under the language I would def defer that final answer but I would say what I pointed out at the very beginning and how broad the code was where the code said it is the board's responsibility to decide how to do that so I would say that it does Grant some flexibility there I also say that there's only one section really that addresses the title one and that's with the the new candidates it's not with the current teachers and maybe the theory there is if you're working in a high poverty School give you a bonus for doing that I don't know but there there's got to be a reason that we were not given within the budget language well I think the uh data we've been shown previously suggests that not surprisingly High poverty schools have fewer national board certified teachers than wealthier schools and so clearly the general assembly I would think the intent is to help address that U redress provide some redress for that imbalance feure Recruitment and Retention strategy right I agree and I like that I'm asking could we do more so could we do differentiated bonuses so you get more as a national board teacher in based on some criteria High poverty geography I need like do we have the flexibility to potentially I think that would probably be something that you would have to go back to the drawing board I mean I don't know that that's something that we can you know iterate on the fly right here do think that we need to figure out like is there means by which and you know perhaps there's there further opportunities to to certainly um you know raise those particular issues because I don't disagree that that that's a it's a need yeah I'm not asking you to do on the fly but if it's a work session where they start to see some potentially some options on that because this does this does seem misaligned from our general rust Madam president yeah Mr Hansen I would even suggest going back to the conversation to hours ago on our schools that are need of intensive support are off track this is where we talked about dedicating resources to those this would be a perfect place to start I I would just say that I think that would require unless we're if we're in the unfortunate position of having to cut such that teachers who are currently receiving those bonuses don't get what they've been getting in the past then we could certainly use that criteria where you're are you serving in a high need school as a criteria because we are authorized to award less than the full award but I don't think the statutory or budget language allow us to go current language allow us to go over the 5,000 and the 2500 uh or the the cost for the applicants so if we wanted to go over that would for instance be something that the governor or the legislature could propose to increase beyond the 5,000 for teachers willing to go to our high need schools and you you'll have a much better vision of what this really looks like when we have all that data on how many teachers we have and how much it impacts all the money so in February you'll that's one of the reasons why we wanted to have this so you could have this discussion and get the thoughts already going however if we do want to come back with some more options I think we just need to be clear that we may not be able to pay out stiens until after board action in February when do we usually pay them out it's usually right after the new year so where we'd be about a month behind well we don't meet until late February so teachers who are used to getting uh their bonus in early January are not going to get it until early March now that's that's quite possible yes well how can we help address that can we authorize you today to do uh award the the narrower category you know in other words if we if if we give you discretion in certain categories because I hate to see people losing something they've had that would be why don't we why don't we just it would have to be an action taken tomorrow in our business meeting we could just say um the board will release the classroom teacher funds today and then additional categorization will be worked on and decided in February something if we bu consensus added agenda item tomorrow to authorize really three tiers to to do the the the the traditional uh classroom teachers 5, 2500 as a first tier if funds permit as of January 1st you can go ahead and push that out the door without waiting for further authorization from us and number two if funds permit including taking in advantage of any surplus from prior years to pay out the folks who are in the process of earning their certification and then not to authorize anything beyond that until you come back to us in maybe that's the way to do it that's perfect it it it's a terrible shame to have people expect they're getting something and then and that they've gotten in every prior year yeah especially you know given when the legislator's intent was clearly to expand not to contract yeah yeah okay anything else on this item we'll get the team working on a new um I have no issue with this I would love for us though especially if there's going to be additional funds to also start to think about what are some options where we could prioritize again areas and and not just spread this like peanut butter but to the exent we have new money targeted at at areas that we I think collectively the board is concerned about and we may need to look to determine whether or not the policy is allowed uh Mr Hansen I would even suggest a little Caution in terms of additional funds I think think that there may be other vehicles and better vehicles to incentivize and reward teachers than this program so I I just want to be a little cautious that we're trying to build upon something here that I I think there might be better venues to really recognize teachers yeah because let's not forget not every excellent teacher has has a national board certification so um all right thank you appreciate it all right we're going to take a quick like three minute break before we start our next presentation give our learning heroes team a chance to get everything up and ready e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e we are on item e now and we would like to continue our national expert Series today with um learning Heroes and I would like to introduce our two speakers bib hubard is the founder and president of learning Heroes the leading research nonprofit studying parent mindsets in the US as it relates to their child's education bib came to this work having served the Clinton Administration both at the labor department and in the white house she found her love for education and specifically family engagement working for the CEO of Scholastic before leading governor napalitano postc initiative as the chair of the national Governor's Association immediately prior to founding learning Heroes 10 years ago bib was in leadership At The Gates Foundation focused on both k12 and highered it was in this role that she was inspired to create a nonprofit solely focused on parents she is a Virginia native and the proud mom of two boys who attend Alexandria City public schools Cindy Williams is the co-founder of learning hero and the CEO of Waypoint education Partners she served in the George W Bush Administration both in the White House during nclb and then leading Communications for the US Department of Education prior to working in the white house she served in leadership on Capitol Hill worked alongside Richard with worin worin I can't speak worin worldwide as the chief of staff to Elizabeth Dole she and bib met working at The Gates Foundation in Communications and advocacy roles Cindy recently served as chair of the Washington State Charter commission during her time 20 years is a Virginia resident her oldest son was the Grateful recipient of an excellent Early Intervention Program at Arlington Public Schools so welcome to both of you and we are so thankful for you being here today to present to us thank you so much uh thank you all for having us and I want to especially thank Dr Coons for your incredible partnership uh and addressing the important role that families play and advancing both student and school Success so thank you so much and we also want to acknowledge um secretary gadera in inviting us to be able to present to you today I know she's not here but we're also grateful for her partnership as well so let's get started for those of you who may not be familiar with learning Heroes as president said we're uh 10 years old and our mission is pretty simple to strengthen the relationship between homes and schools to advance student learning and well-being and we do our work H there we go um in deep partnership everything we do has a collective action orientation so this is just a few of our incredible Partners who we are super humbled to have on this slide we work across the education ecosystem to be able to touch down through the multiple Dimensions that families um touch down across education they they sit at the center so we have this opportunity to work collaboratively in many different ways and everything we do is anchored in research so you're going to hear a lot about this uh this afternoon um we have over our 10 years conducted we're now at more than 20 National surveys um deep deep qualitative sessions across the country most most of our uh um research is conducted in both English and Spanish we focus on low-income families um families of color and uh we also survey teachers principls guidance counselors students so and it informs everything that we do we are very evidence-based so with that I'm going to talk a little bit about just sort of parent context some um parent mindsets that I think are important as we to set the stage and go a little bit deeper so literally in 2016 we revealed this um this data point nine out of 10 parents regardless of race income and education level believe their child's uh at or above grade level in reading and math and I'm sad to report that as of this summer it is still nine out of 10 parents regardless of race income or education level believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math because as of all of you know we do not have nine out of 10 students who are uh performing at grade level in reading and math and so for us this is was a Clarion call in 2016 to understand why why is this perception there and there are many reasons but the primary reason is because you know almost 80% of parents report that their children are bringing home all bees or above and for a parent that good grade equals grade level Mastery so if you have a fourth grade parent whose child in Reading is bringing home as's or B's that fourth grade parent automatically assumes hey my fourth grader is reading at a fourth grade level because they're getting all A's or B's we we don't typically let parents know that that's not what that means that means that that child is turning in their homework they're asking good questions they're working really hard they are performing well for their grade level of reading which could be a first second or third grade level reading uh and so there is sort of this um thing that happens where grades are masking for parents what's really happening um with their students achievement so I'm going to turn this over to Cindy to talk a little bit about what keeps parents up at night and this is important as you think about that 90% stat I can keep clicking can you click sure so we call this a worry battery it's something we've been doing really for the last 10 years Gallup partnered with us most recently and they were blown away by what we found so you assume that academics are going to be on this list but as you guys can see you know your child's math skills and your child's reading skills are at the very bottom so we start with impact of social media on your child your child experiencing stress for anxiety emotional well-being then getting to paying the bills so you know as parents we worry like that's just part of our job but isn't it interesting the things that they worry about before it's actually paying the bills but you know your assumption going into this this exercise is usually that the math and the reading skills are going to rank higher but the purpose of learning Heroes really is to flip this grid so what happens when a parent knows that their child isn't on grade level is that the worry battery actually flips they worry differently so when you look at this once you say to a parent you are a parent whose child is below grade level in math and then you ask them to go back to that where in stack rank it again you'll see that math skills interestingly even much more so than reading end up at the very top of that list then you go to impact of social media on your child your child be on track with the academic expectations for their grade bumps way up your child gaining the knowledge and skills needed to be ready for college bumps way up so um so I just I would say that part of this this demand side of the equation that you're trying to create I don't know about you guys but when we were The Gates Foundation we kept feeling like we're just pushing the boulder uphill like why are people not screaming in the streets why are they not Furious that their child isn't getting their reading and the math um instruction that they deserve or that their school is not performing better and at the end of the day it's because they're not worried until we ask them to be worried until we give them super straight up information that is clear and easy to understand that says your child is behind but once you do parents worry is like this really powerful for force that we're just not capturing they will worry differently and then they will make very different decisions about their child's time and about the options that they have in front of them and so we have a lot more that we've learned about that but you know it's hard to understand learning Heroes without knowing that sort our North Star is this nine out of 10 and our hope is really in this concept that we're leaving parents and all that they can bring to the table on the field and then if we can tell them the truth they can actually worry differently so that's our aha this is our many slot yeah and just to sort of um bring this to life and this is a really difficult slide to read so apologies but the key takeaway is we asked okay so for the parents who know that their child is below grade level on math we saw that they worry differently so how do they what actions are they taking are they taking different actions as they're engaging with their teachers and the answer is yes so when all parents are talking to their child's teachers right thankfully you can see you know 88% of all parents are asking getting a general update on their child's progress um but if you when you start to scrutinize this list of actions very specifically those who know that their child's not performing in math are asking more academic related questions they're partnering with their teacher in slightly different ways how C you know should I be concerned you know subjects that my child is doing well in what are you are you concerned about my child's academic progress so they're asking more specific questions around their child's academics which is is part of our um our goal how do we get parents and teachers to partner up around helping students succeed and not just asking which is typically given the structure that teachers are provided and parents are provided around the parent teacher conference you have 10 to 15 minutes um if you're lucky uh to to find out how your child is doing so you get the basic question of how's my child the teacher says oh your child is great all of these important things but you don't really get a chance to dig in necessarily on the academic piece because parents don't even know to ask the question because their child is getting a b and they think they're okay and when we ask teachers they also um aren't trained to to engage with families and we'll show that slide in just a moment back to Cindy so when we first started this work we encountered a fair amount of bias and we've done work across across the US um not deeply in all 50 states but certainly deeply in 25 of them and so I guess we just always feel like it's really important to say that black parents care the most about knowing if their child is below grade level and then second to that is Hispanic parents and then white parents and so we know this this data is hard to communicate and teachers say it's really hard and and we acknowledge that but we also feel like it's worth it to do the work particularly given the parents who are asking for it the most oh this is my favorite slide able jump in here too so um so basically parents have something they think they know right my kid is fine um I feel great about my child you know my child's got an A in English and a b in math and she an excellent student and so when your job is okay how do we push up against that thing that the parent believes they actually know and you want in a best case scenario for parents to self-realize oh wait a minute that's not true and so the way you can do that is with two contradictory pieces of information so the way we like to say this is two contradictory pieces of information help parents rethink that thing they thought they knew and so that's why the so is so important but more importantly communicating it effectively is so important because it becomes one of the things so parents are pretty agnostic about the two pieces of contradictory information it can be map it can be growth data it can be so it can be your school accountability rating but if you can give them two things that are really different than that aamb they'll start to flip and so uh as you you can see here the numbers are pretty dramatic and in a polling situation that's almost unheard of which is why we kept having to do it over and over again to sort of double check ourselves but to me this is the most hopeful P piece of information we can bring you today is you guys are doing such an amazing job of putting so much data out there in front of parents over the next couple of years and if it is clearly communicated to parents with a lot of context you'll start to flip them they'll have their own aha moment that my gosh I need to be doing things differently my kids's not where I thought they were and um as we dig in further um the teacher side of this also is an important part of the picture so we know grades can be misleading um and we know that parents can do the math they are very responsive to different forms of data in terms of understanding where their child is and other you know we have so much data that we can't share but one of the other uh questions that we asked in a national survey um 89% of parents one of the most important things for them to get from their schools commun Communications from their schools is knowing how their child is achieving like it's essential for me to know where my kid is even if it's not good news like parents obviously can handle it they want to know and teachers want to tell them so the how is the really hard part so you can see here we ask teachers you know how easy is it to do these to have different kinds of conversations with families and many say it is not easy to communicate difficult information to families we know that it is fear-based we also have quantitative data from teachers that say I'm afraid I'm not going to be believed and I'm afraid I'm not I'm going to be blamed and it's not an expectation for me to unpack this data with families so School leaders play a an essential role in setting the conditions creating the policies the practices giving teachers the time the tools the support to be able to engage with families this is not easy work building relationships um but it does pay dividends and it is happening across the country in many ways and we're again just humbled and excited to be able to partner with Virginia and the data that you're providing to families um and supporting teachers to be able to then engage with families around um helping support students succeed so just sort of Shifting Gears a bit one of our strategies to address the data that you've just seen you know parents may not have a complete and holistic understanding of how their child is progressing teachers may be struggling with how to tell and share different kinds of data with families so we decided to launch what we call go beyond grades a parent action and awareness campaign we launched it uh in 20 the spring of 2023 in six different cities and then we went back in 2024 and we launched it here in Taran County in Texas and again in New York City and what we did was we took two data points you can see the 96% of Taran County parents think their child reads at grade level we did that research and per the um the star report which is the Texas so 52% of students in Taran County are reading at grade level and we did this billboard we did these Billboards in New York City Washington DC Boston Sacramento uh you know Houston all across the country and what we found was super exciting and when we did post um evaluation of this campaign among parents the parents who remembered seeing this billboard and again parents can do the math they see the data we're twice as likely to take actions that we we support which is talking to your teacher at the end of the school year how did my child do what should I do this summer to help support them they were twice as likely to enroll their child in summer learning so they took the actions twice as likely if they saw this billboard in other social media and importantly and along the lines why we think it was so successful is as part of the broader campaign in add I to the power of the data it's the power of Storytelling so we lifted up parent stories um around this part the power of partnering with teachers so we're just going to show a quick video um of Sharita Jones and her daughter Cristiana um as a as just a one small way that we um are are lifting up different parent voices which we think is a huge contributor to the success of these local campaigns so I think someone's going to help us play the video there you go thank you what's the first letter say what's the first letter that turns two words into one word Sharita Jones is a Hands-On mom she felt her daughter Cristiana was doing well in her last school especially after all the time away from the classroom during the pandemic Chana was a great student in class not Behavior problem at all I thought that she was doing great from a last report C but when her daughter Cristiana moved to a new school she learned her good report cards had not been telling the full story it was extremely surprising to found out that she was on a lower reading label didn't than what I thought she was the new school's assessments showed the 9-year-old was actually three bra levels behind he the rest true so what's the word exact actually good grades can be deceiving Maya Martin kadan is the founder and executive director of parents amplifying voices in education what we actually know is that many kids are not on grade level and that grades are often times reflecting things that are not just about academics the reflecting Behavior attendance participation in fact there's a dramatic disconnect with parents when looking at their own kids on how much academic learning has suffered since the end of the pandemic nationally nine out of 10 parents regardless of race income or geography believe their child is at or above grade level but just 26% of eighth graders are proficient in math and only 29% are proficient in Reading parents were just doing their best to make sure that kids were able to access school as it was but that doesn't mean it was what it should be that will will so what should parents do parents need to First just ask questions of their child's teacher they need to ask what grade level their children were reading on what level math their children were doing and then ask what you can do at home with your child in order to support them and what additional programs they might need access to to extend their learning through summer programs I would say to parents to not be afraid to ask for help having that shared power between me and a teacher is a wonderful feeling Jones is now working with christiana's teacher to understand where she needs help and she's seeking learning opportunities outside of school for this summer The Good mixture of both summer camp and summer education at the same time I love Solutions parents understand that the school day is not just 8 to 4 it's 247 all the time seven days a week because that's really when kids are learning and applying their learning that they have in the classroom to the real world there have never been more resources available than right now to help kids get back on track I wish I knew sooner about Chris's education then I would have been able to do other things to help I'm glad that I'm finding out now because it is still time to be able to fix everything there's no sign of his of this ending oh I didn't see that to learn more about how you can help your child this summer check out gobeyond grades. org that is just one video one you know sherita's story I could watch it again and again um shar's phenomenal mom as most moms are and so she um went and got Hooked on Phonics for Christian uh initially because she wasn't sure you know how to help her at home and that's how she learned how to read so she went on to Amazon and got Hooked on Phonics um and Cristiana is on this amazing path and so we lift up these stories of families all across the country and I and families see themselves in these stories and know that they're not alone that this often is in their gut um but when they see another mom sharing what what they did and that there is a way to partner up with your teacher um it's it's really powerful so we're continuing to get um interest in these go beyond grades campaigns and are excited by the results that we're receiving so now we can now that you've seen sort of the big National picture I think we're going to go into some of the work that's happening in Virginia and I'm Jour it over Cindy thank you I'll also say um commissioner Morra in Texas asked to to do a series of focus groups across the state around tutoring why parents weren't taking them up on the tutoring that was being offered as a part of their bill HB 4545 and almost universally what the parents said to us is we are so glad that tutoring is happening for all those kids that need it but my kid doesn't need it and so we couldn't find a parent that actually thought their child needed the tutoring and so it just goes to show we can create all of the things um to support parents whether it's the tutoring or the after school programming or the extended day but until parents know it's their kid that needs it the takeup rate is just not going to be there and so with that in mind Dr Coons asked us to go listen to Virginia parents so we went and listened to Virginia parents and then we went and did in-depth interviews with principes and in both situations we were really focused on the so student score report and worked with um Dr Coons and her team to figure out sort of a protocol for these conversations to really go deep and figure out how what is the value proposition of the so to the parent and to the principle and so there are a lot of things we've learned and we had a million quotes but we brought you just a couple um but I just wanted to bring four opportunities to your attention in both of these sets of research for you to just sort of have in the back of your mind one is something I can't remember our acronym from earlier today the hw3 blah blah blah so I'm going to give you another one which is the S DBQ it is so hard to say as a matter of fact I can't say it unless I'm staring at it but the student detail by question so you guys pay for Pearson to give you by student the questions that the student didn't get right which is the thing the parent most wants to see on planet Earth so we were working with the state of Texas on Long a longin learn War campaign where we had two million parents on the portal it's one of the funnest things Bib and I ever did um because we were able to create a state portal there which I know is not something you guys are able to do with all of the local control that's in place but we got two million parents on the portal and where they spent all of their time sometimes up to seven minutes was looking at the questions their kids got wrong and it had two really profound impacts one was oh my gosh I now know how to help my kid because I've seen the question they couldn't get right and I can take that question my teacher and I can I can have a plan which is the second thing they want most in the world um but the other thing was they no longer didn't like the test they looked at the questions their kids didn't get right and said I actually want my kids to know how to answer those questions and there's so much cynicism in the system right now against all public institutions that they just assume it's all in a black box and it's all being done to them and I think what is so amazing about what you guys are doing is the transparency thing is just huge I mean y'all are opening it all up I mean when I look at the work that Dr Coons and her teams have done to like really Define words like growth and proficiency where you have to use them and then take all the complex words out of everything where you don't I think the you know you guys are doing everything you can but this student detail by question if there's a way to remarket that is like here's the stuff your kid didn't get right um and to to make it front and center on the score report you already done so much to make that score report much more user friendly for parents but I do think there are some additional things that could be done and just take credit for the fact that you have this because it it demystifies the test um you know this but just in case you need another data point telling you parents want it sooner and what what actually just angers them is they don't get it in time to talk to the teacher that they've had all year long so if they were fortunate enough to build a relationship with the teacher they don't get to ask that same person what they can do over the summer to enroll in summer school or they don't have the continuity to the next year and so to the extent that I know you you guys have such strong relationships with your division leads but if there's a way to make something that's more of a gut check and not a plus or minus three with your psychometrician available more quickly uh it's a great way to have a win with parents um parents really want to talk to their teacher when they see the gaps in the SOS so the ones that take the time just to really look at it the number one thing they want to do is go talk to the teacher about what they've seen so again that just argues for having it happen in the same school year with the teacher that they know and in the year in which the kid was supposed to learn the thing that's on the test so it makes common sense I know you guys have spent a lot of time talking about it this just reinforces it with one more data point and then we saw as we see in actually every state that so much work still needs to be done to help parents understand the value proposition of the so so again for us the value proposition is that they get another data point that double checks the grade right when those two things are inconsistent it gives you something to really go ask where it's most effective is when you can put those things in combination in a dashboard so if somebody can see their so next to their grades next to a map or a Dibble or a lexile we call that payer like multiple measures in combination that don't make sense are the greatest way ever for parents to really know that they don't have an accurate picture so to the extent that you can do that right now everything is given to a parent in isolation in a different time frame right so you get your grades and in the middle of the summer you get your s sols and then you might get a map diagnostic at the beginning of the year and that's asking a lot for a parent to take those individual pieces and put them side by side but to the extent that we as a system can start to bring them together right now and we do a lot of work in Texas um but I will say in Texas what they are doing is they've figured out how to put their store report on the portal where parents check homework and that's actually super cool it basically brings together like the power schools and all the different vendors and says how do we put these two data points together so that parents are constantly being reminded yall are doing so much work to make the so really actionable for parents but you also don't have control over how and when they see it it feels like it's very much um division by division around some of the timing and the predictability of it so there might be some ways that you can create some predictability that don't feel like an overstep um if there are no questions there I'll move to the second group which is principles we should have a contest for what to call the sbq on principles they asked for more support in analyzing School wide Trends so that feels like data literacy like help us just better understand all of the stuff that's coming our way um so they also what we really heard is how much they respect what you think they really want to know what the State Department of Education thinks they are looking for more guidance you definitely have their trust those relationships that you've built to the division level and then on down feel really solid um the level and the timing of the disaggregated data for principles varied widely so they knew others that got it much earlier and others that got it much later so they were looking for some predictability around that and obviously nobody wants to be last so whoever got it soonest that's when they want to get it but I think establishing some Norms around that is something that principles would feel was very supportive for them in their work um they brought up that they have no way to train teachers on how to have conversations about data with parents so they're looking for that PD and what bib would say in the work that she's LED with the training across the country is is principles need it too so they may not have self-realized that in our conversations with us but you need the principal to have the teachers back so even though the teacher is the one that has to sit down with the parent the principal really also needs to know and understand just like he's an he or she is an instructional coach how do they also support that conversation but um one of our favorite quotes is you know there's nothing they've seen yet like a toolbox or a toolkit of resources to provide parents we have a lot of stuff that's fun around learning and unlearning and then they're looking for help explaining the value proposition of the S sols I would say y'all have come a long way on that one in the last two years and there probably a lot of resources that are already available that they just haven't seen yet you have so many one pagers you have so many sets of definitions there's so many things out there and I think maybe just working more closely with the division leaders to make sure that they as one of my friends says the water's getting to the end of the row um so that is that sort of we had a ton of things that we learn but those were sort of the four sort of that felt consistent across anything else on those I do think that that's something we can learn from though truly because um you know we went from a time where there really wasn't anything available right like it was a look you guys go you do your own thing you're your own School Division you figure it out and we're in a time now where we're almost over I mean and I think the pandemic sort of shifted us into a we've got to overload with information because or overc communicate as far as you what we're doing um from the state level from the Department from the board um and and we have to really be intentional about how we are highlighting the information that's really important animportant around specific things and so despite the fact that we do have all of these resources which I think are wonderful and um certainly fitting if people are out there looking for them or if people are going to use them and so driving the the attention to those specific pieces you know maybe there's something that we want to do I know in your newsletter that you sent out a spotlight did you know we have this resource on the doe website that can help you do X Y or Z that might be want to you know we want to do like a spotlight type thing um from time to time just so that we make sure we're making people aware of of the resources that are available I also think we've do such inroads with VA ESP and VP those are our elementary school and our Secondary School principles I think this is really good feedback for us to find ways to do more lunch and learns more opportunities for our principal to have um data literacy and how to have these conversations so really appreciate the feedback absolutely and parents trust information they see on their school website the most so you guys have really modeled how to effectively communicate some of this really complex work but I do think you know how do you get it from the division leader to the school website because they're not coming straight to the State website they're coming here by default they're coming here because they can't get it anywhere else and so to the extent that we can some in some every state does it differently in New Hampshire we got on the phone with every soup in New Hampshire like and just sold them on the data like we've done a lot of different marketing techniques with different um State structures but to the extent that that literally they see you as modeling best practice on how to do it but then they pick it up and put it down in the place that parents actually are because most parents are too scared to go to a state of education website and when they do they don't know how to get their user ID so I mean it's a long process to get the information from where you are to where they are but it's it's worth spending some time probably on the distribution I also think that we can't forget that so many of our principles so many of our building level leaders have been our teachers in the classroom yeah you know and if they didn't learn in that capacity how to use data to drive their instruction to interpret for parents on how to help their students then only I mean it's it's only logical right that the principal who was the teacher you know doesn't know how to do that so I think that that is something certainly that we we can work on and video with some of these new big things you're putting out I mean the resource Hub is fantastic I mean I even saw there's a parent version of the Readiness road map so but but we've asked principles in other locations you know do a three minute on this for your for your student population and for your parents and forcing them them to do those sorts of things forces them to get conversent so there are some tricks around some of that that could be helpful but the base the Baseline of information is there um so excited about the new performance framework can only imagine how much work that has been but really you have done a great job of avoiding words that are that that we we spend countless hours trying to avoid shame and blame like that's never Our intention for anything we do we try to be as straightforward as possible one of the words that has originated from our listening sessions for years has been on track parents literally say I just want to know if my kids on track I just want to know if they're meeting expectations that's all I want to know and so you know on track here feels really strong and solid based on the research that we've done over the years and um I just think yall have done a fantastic job with these performance categories um they need to know why you've decided to to to tear these schools and so being super overt and overc communicating that the schools that are in this needs intensive support category are off track are getting something for it like the reason they don't don't assume they think that's why you did it because they don't so the prevailing Assumption of parents in the United States is that the schools that do the worst get the least amount of money that is the working assumption and so it takes a lot of work for them to know that the opposite of that is true takes a very intentional communication effort um and then you've already done this but really overe explaining the clear weights for Mastery growth and Readiness even if they don't completely understand it what they appreciate is the transparency it's the same way with resources you might provide 10 resources they might not use any of them but it totally changes whatever they're looking at from a document that feels like a setup to a document that feels like a resource right so if they don't see any way that they can help then when they look at that document they think this was just done to me when there's something they can do then they actually really think the document's helpful so the concrete details even if they don't understand them all the tonality around that of respect and of transparency is just um is totally worth it and feel like you guys are are doing that um Bridging the Gap you know this this particular effort I know was focused on learning loss the piece that we wanted to bring to your attention was just this comprehensive training to teachers on how to communicate with parents and students that's an area where we would love to partner I'd love for bib to share more about what we're doing across the country on that but that's where I feel like you've already identified it as a need and being a leader on that would would take you a long way um and then this idea of academic growth over time y'all worked really hard to Define growth I know that the Viva system is coming out as soon as February we'd love to help you have the charts and graphs on that Viva system not look like this thing we screen screenshotted up there so I think making that work familyfriendly is is going to be hard but what we know is parents want to see a trajectory that line going up or that line going down is hugely important to them so the idea that they would get growth they would get on track they would get right direction they would get sort of this very simple way in which to understand how their kid is doing is is amazing um and uh and unprecedented I think in the amount of information you're going to give a parent but uh providing some context around that before the parent actually sees it so the other piece of advice we would just give from work we've done across the country and Dr saw us do this in Tennessee before you're telling something to a parent that's hard they need to understand it so whe it's like changing the cut scores or that's adopting Common Core which happens to be two levels above where you are or whatever that is they can receive the information and understand it before it has their child's name on it so those windows before you actually tell the parent are hugely opportunistic because they can hear it until they know it's their kid and then it gets harder because you're defensive and that's just human nature so whatever can be done in front of these big giant changes that you're making to socialize the changes in advance we would just love to support you in the doing of that I'm going to pass over to bib to talk about the parent teacher planning tool maybe some of the training so we we've talked a lot about um parents and how we can support parents uh in advocating for their children but there's also the teacher side and how do we support teachers in this very very challenging work and so um one of our many tools we we create a lot of tools for teachers to be able to engage with families in in affirming ways and so we have a parent teacher planning tool which you know granted is not the best fancy name but it is what it is and we have versions for parents and we have versions for teachers um so that they can come together and understand unpack the data in really simple ways and then put together a learning plan so it has been we we created it from the ground up with teachers and with parents and based on Behavioral Science so there's a lot of science and research that goes into this very simple three-step parent teacher planning tool so we have some for the beginning of the year we have a version for the end of the year and it is just a language road map to help again facilitate that relationship in a non um heated way that just helps parents and teachers come together around the the learning needs of their child so uh you know Virginia has taken um taken it and sort of customized it and tailored it for Virginia parents and Virginia teachers and it's being used um all across the country in lots of different settings and we found it to be really effective um as just a way to sort of bridge that home and school environment and it can happen online it can happen in person um there are lots of different U mechanisms to to be able to have this conversation that we think is really important oops so this is just uh showing you all the great stuff we've had the privilege of doing with you and this is just the beginning but uh just wanting you to see that learning Heroes and uh Dr Coons and her staff and have been we've all been working very closely together to try to simplify to take all the Jon out to meet parents where they are with the information they can use and so these were just some visuals to show you that this work is very much um in progress but you guys keep making such big and huge decisions that there's clearly a lot of work still to do uh and then we wanted to just uh open it up for an interactive conversation around other things you see here some of the things that we've been working on um but would love to to hear more from you guys on what you feel like would be advantageous we have mounds of research everything from kids with special needs to after school program like you name it there's so much we could have talked about today so it' be great just to know what other things might be helpful and B why don't you come up and join me particularly if you have research questions questions anyone Mr Hansen thank you very much for this this um was very helpful I remember going back to some time at the Department of Education 30 years ago and we called a lot of this the like wob beggon effect but um U so this is obviously been around for a long time but um I just kind of keep coming back I really appreciate this last piece about parents I um you know got six grown children now but back in the 90s and early 2000s um you know we talked a lot in about SS it was a cultural priority in our system at the time and um and so I I may be uh not as engaged because now it's with grandchildren versus children but I feel like for you know um uh many families though that the communication with their teacher and with the school they're just still is a a barrier um that is cultural it's um and I just am wondering if there's some things that you've learned in your data and your research that are you know real life ways that can tear those barriers down um and I do view that some of the it's just cultural I feel like the teachers are so busy just teaching their children every day diagnosing what's going on then to add that level of complexity on communicating with the parents um you know I just have I've sometimes like to compare this to the medical field that when you you know get a biopsy you're going to get those results back in three or four days and you want the doctor or his assistant or her assistant to call you and let you know so that you can obviously start whatever interventions you may or may not need with that and I just and I've worked I was a CEO of a company called Scantron and we tried to come up this was 15 years ago with these reporting tools that would be almost in instantaneous for parents to be able to go on and see you know an instant portal and kind of a report card if you will but very real and transparent and I just feel like we've had a you know thousand companies investing billions of dollars in this type of thing and and to really get it to a point where parents can have real-time data real time to understand so they're not waiting you know for each quarter or even worse each year to understand the interventions that their students might need but I just feel like there's still just such an in innate of system barrier for communication with parents and especially those that need it the most um and I just I'm sure you see this all around the country but just any thoughts on um you know how we can really make some real progress in uh really opening up the communication lines in real time of to really help those parents understand what their children our [Music] meeting yeah thank you so much for that question there are a lot of ways um to address these these barriers that have sidelined parents outside of the school building and I think it starts with pre-service um right now teachers in training have no there's no curriculum on how to engage with families at all um there are groups out there that we're partnering with that are working on that um we've talked with the you know UVA and Department you know the education um College we've we've talked with University of Michigan we've talked with many you know esteemed um colleges of Education all across the country and it just does not exist so I think we need to start there because it is relationship building I mean we are humans and you we cannot AI our way out of this there are technology tools that are super helpful so there is remind and there is talking points and there are lots of tools Power School canvas and they are incredibly helpful but in there's no replacing that relationship and we see and and we're doing a study right now in partnership with tnp to understand um the role of strong family engagement what it how it you know what are the outcomes and not just for achievement but for the holistic School attendance achievement teacher retention satisfaction so as we think about retaining teachers as we think about stabilizing enrollment in our Public Schools I think it you know relationships really matter so when Cindy did you know the I think it was the slide before the Dear Virginia parents letter you know we have a dear teacher letter that is like Mad Libs for those of us who remember Mad Libs right so it's here's what my child loves here's what my child doesn't like here here's where they struggle here's where my my family comes from this is what who we are culturally so that that teacher has a sense at the beginning of the year who that family is the assets that they bring in and we have a similar teach letter for teachers to send home to parents here's who I am here's what I prioritize um there are home visits there are lots of strategies that are that can be put into place again School leaders play a role like it's really hard to have a good school with without a good school leader they have to have the vision to see that parent families engaging families is an instructional strategy how do you want to improve your outcomes think about families as part of your instructional strategy these are not carnivals science nights those are lovely important but not sufficient and so there are policies practices budgeting that has to be put into place again to give the teachers the time the tools the training to be able to do it I mean one anecdote there's Brandon pikney he's a Baltimore um City principal every Friday he sits with his teachers and and says okay tell me what your family's need they it's a full expectation that once a week they go through and he knows what every family needs in that school and then they work to address those needs and his his outcomes and his scores in Baltimore city are the evidence like this community um is is thriving in in a setting that's really challenging so I think there are ways to do it um if we if you prioritize it and bring that intentionality around it Miss Holton thank you this is really thank you we really appreciate your terrific presentation if you can go back to the slide with the key findings and opport unities for parents yeah U and I don't know frankly how much of this question is to you and how much Dr Coons may be able to help fill in but I'll ask it to you first the this the student detail by question and particularly parents need the so score sooner um and need to be able to talk to the what the third category kind of goes with the sooner need to be able to talk to the teachers to understand what to do that's just seems like it's been a perennial problem here in Virginia cross administrations um so my question to you is who what states are doing this well and what are they what are we missing that they're doing how come we haven't been able to get this right below these many I mean I will say this Administration identified this as an issue when this Administration started three years ago and yet I'm not maybe maybe we're doing things that I'm not yet aware of but what do we need to do to get there who what models can we look to how do we get how do we can I jump on real quick before you finish that question because I think it's always been an issue of like as you all discussed it parents can go in and see the question and how their child answered it wrongly correct and I think it's always been an issue of test Bank questions has it not well I don't I mean I just want to hear even if it's if it's test Bank what are other states doing that we're not what whatever the problem is how some who's getting it right and how can how do how can we understand what we're doing compared to what they're doing I'm just going to compare Tennessee to Virginia Tennessee had an immediate once you take the test you're done so it was much easier but if you're in retake mode and you have an opportunity to retake an opportunity to retake we don't get some of those scores till July because of the retake window so there there is some challenges based on just the testing window and capacity that we have in statute here that is a difference from Tennessee but but don't we get the I mean you don't take you don't do a retake unless you failed so the school knows who failed because that's who they're offering a retake to you can't close the testing window to run the the score reports yeah but I mean they have to close the window at least at the school level because they don't know who to offer the retake to until they have some data on who passed the first round so so in other words the retake would be a great opportunity we're identifying students who need to be offered an opportunity to retake how do we engage with parents there so retake is really unique to you guys I mean I appreciate Dr Coon's raising that because we did hear that from the principles that it makes the whole process messy with respect to the timing and how many students need it and how many don't and then you've got parents who know and parents that don't know and it also sounds like and and Dr Co will correct me if I'm wrong on this but it also depends on the division that you're in so you know I I look a little bit to like smarter balanced right where they have like 13 states that they work with and so they have a lot of variety across it you can get that data right away I mean the state always wants to sit on it and quote clean it but this the the real time impact is the school gets it at the same time and then the schools are able to share that with their teachers immediately so I think a conversation maybe with with the smarter balance team just around learnings around that because they have a 13-state Consortium we've seen them sort of figure this out and um I sat with my teacher and my principal in Washington state immediately after the test because they were able to pull it up so um again there are not necessarily perfect protocols around it I think a lot of states are struggling with this I mean everybody's trying to get it out the door before the end of the school year and um and usually it's not the school that slows that process down it's at the administration level where they want to double check a couple of things and they're worried about being perfect and as opposed to being good enough president Cy's point about the uh test bank has always been a perennial issue here in Virginia and one of the problems there I think is that we do do our own test you know Virginia we're unique um we always like to think of ourselves as unique so we're not part of a Consortium like Smarter Balance Etc so we got to create our own test bank and we got to fund our own test bank and we don't um so I don't know how we I mean it seems to me that those suggestions up here from parents are crucial and really should be our one of our very top priorities but given that we're not in a Consortium given that we have test Bank issues ETC we we haven't found a way to address it the only other thing I will say is when we've talked to parents about this as a part of a project we did for smarter balanced actually years ago um parents didn't care if they saw the actual question they just wanted to see a question like the question their child didn't get right they're just trying to figure out is it adding and subtracting fractions like what is it so to the extent that you can use the same proxy questions every year parents are not parents are not looking for like this is the one but the what is it that they don't know so there may be some workarounds there I think Smarter Balance than others have used to not actually release items but to have a set of proxies for each question and use them literally every year than thank you um thank you for this presentation and for this work this is um you know as somebody whose kids were in school during the pandemic um if if there was one silver lining it was that I think a lot of parents eyes were opened to maybe what they didn't know you know like what they didn't know about how their kids were doing um I think that there as Bill mentioned some you know real hurdles here one of which is um that that during the pandemic we kind of became complacent about this so I was told you know yes your child is behind but everybody's behind and so your child's on grade level now basically and I think we we need to come back from that and we need to really say like no it's it's not enough to just compare to other kids who also suffered learning loss during the pandemic but you know this is where your child ought to be and that that is tough to say to parents and as a parent it's tough to hear it um another barrier that I see is and you mentioned this the just you know people don't love the so and I get it like no teacher wants to teach to a test no parent wants their child taught to a test and so I think there's a an issue of messaging there that we need to get right and tell people like no we don't you know this this doesn't paint the whole picture of your child but this is a tool we use along with grades to see how they're doing so I think we need to get that messaging right and I appreciate what you're doing here to that end um you mentioned that Texas has on like the parent portal um all of this information and here I don't really see parents using anything like that until middle school you know other people correct me if I'm wrong but I know like parents start using schooo a lot in Middle School to track their kids homework assignments and so I wonder how we could relay information to parents before Middle School um like on some sort of dashboard I just don't know that parents use anything like that for that point and um also from like K through third seems to be kind of No Man's Land for like how parents see there there aren't SOS um and there's there is so much variation and like when a child would learn to read and so teachers are constantly reassuring parents like it's okay that your child doesn't know how to read yet a lot of kids don't but it just seems like um K through third is where we most need to catch kids who aren't learning to read Because if they're not reading proficiently by fourth grade they're on a pretty bad trajectory and so I wonder if you've found um in other states a good way to catch kids in that in that window and relay it to parents so um you made me think of something I should have actually also shared with member Hansen actually Arkansas is struggling with this right now they're rolling out uh A literacy screener for the first time ever and again you know the the time to talk about a new literacy screener that could say some things you don't want to hear is before your child gets their scores so they're they're in the process of really struggling with this I think the states that are learning in real time are the ones that are putting these literacy screeners in place because we really haven't communicated um and and Dr Coons may know more about this because Tennessee has done some great work here but it's that's the learning that's the Learning Community right now is is people who are who are putting the screeners out and giving parents an assessment score before third grade and it is like totally Green Space we know that parents are more hopeful the earlier you can get them and a An Early Education parent shows up dramatically different than a High School parent who's sometimes given up or feels like they're doing their job if they do disengage so if you the earlier you can get them in a parent teacher relationship as a norm it is I mean you know we call it low hanging fruit but like it it is the best way to go after it but I think we can look into some of the literacy screener work that's being done we're doing some of it but it's real time so we don't know yet like sort of how how it's going to land but Dr Coons you did some of this in Tennessee yeah our number one way to get to parents was Facebook and then having Facebook retweeted for our k3s we did free books for families during covid free PBS lessons we pushed everything out for early early grade parents through Facebook and was crazy we sold out of free literacy books and screeners and things in 3 days on Facebook so Facebook was the fastest way to communicate because then a school could just like and reshare and repost and repost so not that that's necessarily the direction we want to go but that was the most effective way um post pandemic in Tennessee and there's just one other example on the advocacy side so I mentioned the go beyond grades campaign so the city of St Louis an advocacy organization within the um it's called um opportunity trust there is a state law in Missouri where every parent needs is is like legally obligated to know if their child is reading at a third grade level by third grade but nobody knows about it so they use the go beond grades campaign as a marketing tool to make sure parents knew that there this law was in place and gave them the language to be able to ask their teachers and then we also so again created teacher materials for how to have these conversations with parents because we know it is difficult so we did the sort of the both and but that's just another example of of an organization that was like oh hey this is an important thing for parents to know that this is actually something they should they're like legally entitled to know Miss hton so uh the literacy screener that's a great idea because I think I'm right and Dr KS can help me remember this specifics but I think we now require the literacy screener three times a year throughout the early grades and uh that is gives the teacher knowledge early on uh beginning of the school year middle of the school year and end of the school year on where their child is but I don't remember Dr  is there a parent yes so the parent must get that literac so a parent really is getting something from the school B and middle year as a former Mimi when my grandson was in second grade last year in Virginia we got it three times and I sat down with my daughter and we walked through it yes so and is that true was that in your school division or is that a Statewide requirement that's a Statewide requirement now with BS so all School parents are getting an opportunity to know where their child is on literacy and that presumably tells them whether they're on grade level or not fall January and spring in all the early grades yes presumably however school has to push that out who has to push it out school so do do we require them to push it out or is that optional it's probably in parent teacher conferences right it's required to be pushed out there's no monitoring well maybe monitoring it is something we want to do so um I think it was one of the things that I highlighted a while ago and I know we probably need to wrap up our discussion today for everyone but um I do think it's really really critical I mean look we can we can do all the screeners in the world a teacher can see where a child is we can send a piece of paper home to tell a parent where a child is but if a parent doesn't understand what that report is saying about their child or how to help their child move to where they need to be it's really useless and so um you know maybe this kind of gets to to my question how can you guys as learning Heroes maybe help us with that yeah um we have seen um it's really hard to translate complex data for teachers to families and ways that they can take action against them so I really appreciate the question we've been training teachers all across the country at different altitudes um on on ways to do this both um you know through video and through um train the trainers so lots of different so asynchronously Statewide in California we have four modules that walk teachers through how to build relationships with families build that trust and then explain the data in context for that that family so they know what actions they can take um it's on the um uh tools for teachers platforms Statewide free um in California and then we've done other models again where we'll we worked in Highline in Washington state where we trained uh teacher trainers and worked with their assessment leads so this is really important you to just work with the family engagement side of the division and not work with in collaboration with the assessment teams is that that's when the magic happens yes so that's really important and that's what we did in Highline we've also been in several other districts in California working deeply with a Charter network in Minneapolis to do very customized to deep teacher coaching so each setting um there are tools that you can sort of universally give that help give teachers some basic understanding and context but then we also do that deeper work at a district level to make sure whatever wherever that district is because districts are in different places schools are in different places um so we we very much customize and tailor it uh to to help support those teachers and having those conversations unpacking the data but first they have to understand the data themselves right and then they can translate it so that is the work that we do thank you I would just add we want to continue to come alongside Dr Coons and her team like the score report has come such a long way you will not see the word vertical scale score and that sounds common sense but that was a battle right like and you guys won the battle because parents when they see vertical scal score what they say to us is they're intentionally trying to make sure I don't understand what I'm looking at like that cism against public institutions come in and they think you did it to them on purpose but you know so part of this is just sharing that nobody in the system is actually trying to do that to parents on purpose so part of this too is just sharing what we know like we can come in as a third party with the research and say if you want to meet parents where they are with information they can use we have to talk about it like this if you want to confuse them and have them think that that's intentional you can hang on to these words you love but the margin of error cannot be bigger than the name of the student on the score report right like and so psychometricians have um all the best intentions around the purity of their report but in the communicating of it you can lose a parent so we really try to say like have the information for parents be for parents by Design not something that's tweaked that was for the administrator or the division leader or the state site and I feel like you guys are starting to really do that is create things for parents by Design and have a different grain size against them and Most states what we see the Fatal flaw is they create one document and then when they need a parent document they just put the word parent on it we can we just go a little deeper on that because that to me is I mean I'm I I think doing more trainings for teachers would be great I think that's all like I'm I'm all in on all of that but also I'm not ready to give up on the demand side so like extend your like what like what else should we be doing in terms of engaging parents to gain this information out there to them we're coming up on another round of nape results here soon obviously so results are an annual thing here like CR critique us more and as as president czy sort of invited you Al like what are things you could you could do like what do we don't have an opportunity trust in Virginia we don't have an organization like that so like what are other things you know this is the equivalent of that organization here so what else could we be doing to engage uh and increase that demand side I mean you're already moving in this direction but a One-Stop shop for parents in instead of a go fetch is is hugely important so whether that's the parent resource Hub or whatever that looks like having a one stop that's easy to navigate you guys have so many things but having them all in one place that then school districts and schools agree to put on the parents click here red circle for more information right um you know having expecting them to go find what they need just doesn't happen in the course of their busy day and then this is going to sound silly but it's worth saying making it mobile friendly you know most Department of Ed just don't go that extra step of making sure it's mobile friendly and that it's easy to use on your phone and so I think youall have so many of the pieces and parts there but creating we've done a lot of what we call Family portals um New Mexico is my favorite with the big balloons on it you know you can customize it for your state but family portals um allow parents to just click on four or five different things and have an FAQ and then actually even better in the thing I was going to mention to you um Hansen is you know small video clips like BB was talking about that easily explain something in the voice of the principal or a teacher or one of you guys that says here's the why we did this allows you to be you on you and not them on you so you know here's why we change this and and having that quick two or three minute video that can go out on social can totally change a parent perspective so I would say really use use digital media content um where you've recruited leaders that are um that are camera ready in their ability to communicate there are probably a lot of things you could do that would help parents understand what you're doing better I one other suggestion I mean even if it's not a go beyond grade Statewide campaign storytelling is really compelling for families so if there is a way to lift up different stories of Virginia families all across the states and teachers and model what that looks like this is how you come together I was struggling I mean if you look at Sharita you know she was very vulnerable and sharing her story about Cristiana it was hugely impactful and again we've done that in Taran County we've done that in New York City we could certainly do that in Virginia but the power of Storytelling to get that demand and give parents the sort of permission to um go with their gut is another potential tool that you could deploy just I hate very briefly we are going to lose the space in five minutes I can do it in 30 seconds I just want to encourage you the you all great work and Dr Coons to not miss the opportunity to do this kind of work on our literacy screen because it gets to K through three and it gets to fall winter spring so tell us whether these parents are getting those reports and understanding it and help us help them understand thank you all so so so much we appreciate it thank you did you want okay um thank you everybody I know we have to um we'll have to carry on tomorrow so we will see you at nine o'clock tomorrow morning and our work session is now adjourned e for