A new quality rating system for our Schools

Over the last few years, Virginia has been changing the way it evaluates and measures K-12 public education. In the last couple months, you may have heard that the Virginia Department of Education (VDoE) released school ratings under the new accountability system. When talking about how Richmond Public Schools is doing, you may have heard me talk about which of our schools is “accredited” and “not accredited,” but moving forward, VDoE will be using four terms to evaluate school performance: 

• Distinguished 

• On Track

• Off Track

• Needs Intensive Support

While not perfect, the new ratings system DOES give us a better look at how we are performing compared to Divisions regionally. Richmond often faces deeper challenges and gets less support than other school systems in our area. Under the new system, we have a much smaller percentage of schools that are rated ‘needs intensive support’ than our neighbors. That means, relatively speaking, we’re doing a great job of raising the floor for students who have been historically marginalized. 

In the first year of this new accountability system, Richmond Public Schools (RPS) has had:

• five distinguished schools, 

• nine on-track schools, 

• 23 off-track schools, and 

• five schools ‘in need of intensive support.’ 

The ratings are based on a combination of factors, such as:  

• student proficiency, 

• growth on SOLs, 

• chronic absenteeism rates, 

• how well we’re preparing high schools for employment, 

• enlistment, and enrollment in higher education. 

We are so proud of the progress our students and staff are making AND we have more work to do. Here are some things we’re celebrating: 

• The tremendous progress of our high schools! All but one high school is ‘on track’ or distinguished.’ 

• A huge shout-out to the pride of northside John Marshall High School and Thomas Jefferson, our two comprehensive high schools that earned more than 90 points on the new 100-point scale. 

• Another 3rd district school, Richmond Community, along with Open, and Franklin Military Academy all earned more than 100 points, which is possible when students score in the advanced range on the SOLs. 

• Our growth in Reading and Math: Growth accounts for 25 and 20 percent of elementary and middle-school scores, respectively, and our gains over the last three years led to a strong baseline. 

At the same time, the data shows us things to improve: 

• Increasing ‘targeted supports’: Many of our ‘off track’ or ‘needs intensive support’ schools received that designation based on data for just one specific subgroup: We’re committed to working with teachers, students, and families to meet the needs of every child.

• Demonstrating continued growth: When a school is historically under-served, the federal government and the state understandably expect to see growth for multiple years. We have many schools that just need to show growth for one more year to exit their “identified” status. We’re excited to see their progress over the next year, and to see their successes reflected in 2026’s data. 

Just like the old system, even this new system doesn’t perfectly capture the status of our schools and students. I encourage our state leaders to continue implementing suggestions from JLARC. I don’t think it's fair that schools that are making huge strides toward student proficiency — as many of our ‘off track’ schools are doing — should be given a label that implies they’re going in the opposite direction.