Description
With this brief elucidation about strengthening virginias workforce a blueprint for pre k 12 education.
A Report Submitted on Behalf of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Subcommittee on K-12 Education
The Honorable James W. Dyke, Chairman
Senior Advisor, McGuireWoods Consulting
Former Virginia Secretary of Education
Ms. Amy M. Atkinson
Executive Director, Virginia Commission on Youth
Dr. Deborah M. DiCroce
President/CEO, Hampton Roads Community Foundation
Dr. Kristina Doubet
Associate Professor, James Madison University
The Honorable Laura W. Fornash
Government Relations, The University of Virginia
Ms. Amanda Gibson
Assistant Principal, Salem City Schools
Ms. Christine Kennedy
Interim President, Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce
Mr. Keith Martin
VP of Public Policy, Virginia Chamber of Commerce
Mr. Tayloe Negus
Principal, Mercer
Ms. Jennie O’Holleran
Deputy Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Virginia
Ms. Generra J. Peck
Vice President, McGuireWoods Consulting
Mr. Andrew J. Rotherham
Co-Founder, Bellwether Education Partners
The Honorable Javaid E. Siddiqi
Director, The Hunt Institute
The Honorable William C. Wampler, Jr.
Executive Director, The New College Insitute
Ms. Joan E. Wodiska
Member, Virginia Board of Education
Strengthening Virginia’s Workforce:
A BLUEPRINT for Pre K-12 Education
Friday, December 5, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Letter from The Subcomittee Chair .................................................................................... 1
Subcommittee Work and Structure ..................................................................................... 2
Workgroup One: Business Involvement ............................................................................. 3
Workgroup Two: Teacher Quality ...................................................................................... 6
Workgroup Three: School Improvement ............................................................................ 8
Workgroup Four: Systemic Reform.................................................................................. 12
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LETTER FROM THE SUBCOMITTEE CHAIR
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I write today with great enthusiasm on behalf of our K-12 subcommittee to offer a series of
recommendations aimed at strengthening Virginia’s workforce pipeline. The business community is a
consumer of the workforce produced by the education system. Virginia’s business leaders must be
involved in how the workforce is trained and prepared. Our committee was created to develop an action
plan for how to implement the K-12 concepts of the Virginia Chamber’s BLURPRINT initiative. Our
charge was to provide specific action items and not to produce an academic policy paper. This initial
report sets forth recommendations for actions that can be taken now to help the education system
enhance its preparation of graduates that are workforce ready and globally competitive.
I wish to acknowledge the leadership and support of Barry DuVal, President and CEO, of the Virginia
Chamber of Commerce and Keith Martin, Vice President of Public Policy and Counsel. The Virginia
Chamber of Commerce is positioned to lead an unprecedented renewed investment and commitment to
education and workforce preparation. I also wish to recognize the leadership of our committee. Through
their tireless work, we are able to present commonsense, results-oriented recommendations that believe
two things to be true: education is the great equalizer and workforce development is the game-changer
for Virginia’s business and economic future. I especially want to acknowledge the outstanding
assistance of my colleague Generra Peck who helped guide the Committee’s work.
Our report is the first step in the Virginia Chamber’s efforts to implement the K-12 components of the
BLUEPRINT. The Chamber will continue to advocate for these and other recommendations as well as
serve as an active and involved resource for local chambers, businesses and regional alliances
committed to making a difference in the education of graduates who are globally competitive.
Friends, please join me in an ongoing conversation about the opportunity to help the Commonwealth
better prepare its future workforce in a manner that makes Virginia a national leader and a state that
maximizes its economic development efforts. If we can all agree that every child is deserving of a great
education and that every child can learn, we will accomplish great things for our businesses, our
Commonwealth and our nation.
In short: To be globally competitive, Virginia businesses must make education reform and workforce
preparation a participatory sport.
Sincerely,
James W. Dyke
Chairman
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SUBCOMMITTEE WORK AND STRUCTURE
From August 2014 through December 2014 the subcommittee convened several times to consider items
most pressing in Pre K-12 education at the state, local and leadership level. Chairman Dyke charged the
group with presenting creative and results-oriented ideas that would produce the greatest improvements
to Virginia’s Pre K-12 education system.
The K-12 Education Subcommittee divided its work into four distinct topic areas: (1) Business
Involvement; (2) Teacher Quality; (3) School Improvement; and (4) Systemic Reform. Under the
leadership of a workgroup leader, each policy group convened and assembled a series of
recommendations that will help guide Virginia’s business and community leaders to support results-
oriented action in Virginia’s Public Schools.
This report encapsulates some of the best ideas in K-12 education. It is however, only one step forward
and just the beginning of the conversation. We look forward to an ongoing dialogue about education
and workforce preparation in the Commonwealth. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce welcomes and
seeks to help lead a robust debate that brings K-12 education to the top of our Commonwealth’s
agenda.
Friends, K- 12 education is THE game-changer not only for our citizens but for our economic
development success.
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WORKGROUP ONE: BUSINESS INVOLVEMENT
The business involvement workgroup is chaired by former president of Tidewater Community College
and current president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation Dr. Deborah DiCroce.
The workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. Increasing Leadership Capacity at the Local Level: Virginia’s local school board officials
provide critical public service to our communities. In many cases, local officials are charged
with running what equates to a multi-million dollar enterprise with very high stakes – the high
quality education of children. Virginia businesses and organizations, including local chambers
of commerce, should:
a. Establish a K-12 Education Liaison to local school divisions;
Partnership Opportunity: The K-12 Education Liaison could work to host
annually an award celebration for Teacher of the Year, New Teacher of
the Year and Staff Person of the Year.
b. Host annually a board strategic planning session facilitated alongside business and
community leaders;
c. Work with school leaders to provide management and leadership training for school
board members, principals and superintendents. Consistent with the Virginia School
Boards Association report, we support their call for additional training for school
divisions that have challenged schools in their district;
d. Leverage management expertise held across Virginia’s business community. Virginia’s
executives and managers are skilled at managing personnel and performance without
using standardized tests. We should identify lessons that can be translated to the
education sector;
e. Partner with school leaders so that education at every level is preparing students with
skills that industry needs;
Best Practice Opportunity: The New College Institute in Martinsville,
Virginia blends workforce training, degree programs and higher
education partnerships to support the region’s economic development
strategy (link).
f. Develop a strategy to encourage qualified individuals to run for or be appointed to local
school boards; and
g. Host regular school board candidate forums with parents, teachers, fellow business
leaders and others to bring attention to the election and appointment process. In
addition, host regular forums with local school boards to discuss current education
issues and progress toward enhanced workforce preparation.
Best Practice Opportunity: The Petersburg Chamber of Commerce hosted
a candidate forum in the Fall of 2014.
II. Create a System for Investing in Schools: Virginia’s business community should be investing
financially in local school divisions. Virginia’s business leaders should enter into a coordinated
priorities conversation with local school officials. Virginia’s business community should:
a. Host annually with their local school system a philanthropic priorities conversation in
which top school needs are identified and business leaders commit to helping school
leaders achieve financial and non-financial resource needs.
Best Practice Opportunity: The ROTEC Foundation in Roanoke provides
financial support for local CTE program needs such as workforce
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certification costs, uniforms and other matters that support CTE
students.
b. Partner with school divisions to form school division foundations that can serve to
support local schools through a highly accountable and community-based organization;
and
Best Practice Opportunity: The Fairfax County Education Foundation is a
partnership with the local Fairfax Chamber.
c. Support mentorship programs by encouraging employers and actions to help mentor
individual students;
Best Practice Opportunity: Roanoke’s Gear Up Program.
d. Partner with school divisions to ensure school volunteer needs are fully met and
executed.
Best Practice Opportunity: Partners In Education is a joint venture
between Lynchburg City Schools and the Lynchburg Regional Chamber
of Commerce. Officially started on September 3, 1990, this program has
been designed to create links between the school division and area
businesses. In the 20-year history of the program, Lynchburg City
Schools has partnered with over 250 area businesses, organizations, and
institutions (link).
III. Support STEM-H and Career and Technical Education: Virginia’s STEM-H and Career
and Technical Education (CTE) programs offer students a pathway to be career-ready at
graduation. Opportunities include dual enrollment, job shadowing apprenticeship and first-rate
technical experience in our public school divisions. Virginia’s business community should:
a. Proactively discuss jobs skills needs with school divisions and CTE instructors and
form an advisory committee of business leaders, community college officials and local
school leaders to assure that local school curriculum can be aligned to the skills needed
to be career-ready;
Best Practice Opportunity: Roanoke Technical Education Center (link).
b. Adopt apprenticeship models that result in credential attainment;
c. Recognize and reward business partnerships that promote and enhance CTE education;
Partnership Opportunity: The Virginia Career Education Foundation’s
(VCEF) Governor’s CTE Exemplary Standards Ward Program (link).
d. Convene and participate in ongoing strategy conversations with local community
colleges, higher education and public school divisions to better enable schools to
produce credentialed, work-ready graduates; and
e. Provide access to trained workers for job shadow and mentorship programs;
Best Practice Opportunity: The Bedford Area and Lynchburg Regional
Chambers' "Work Ready" program fosters partnerships with local school
divisions. The partnership allows businesses to host a high school senior
for an internship after six weeks of classroom-based instruction on the
soft skills needed for the 21st Century workforce.
f. Support creation of online access to information about apprenticeships and other
workforce preparation activities similar to the online use of the VA Education Wizard
used by the Virginia Community College Systems; and
g. Support efforts to increase the number of students enrolled in programs that produce
graduates proficient in STEM-H and other skills needed to fill the jobs already
forecasted, whether they require degrees or credentials. Support should be provided to
efforts that have a strategic focus on getting more girls and minorities involved in
STEM-H early in the education process.
Best Practice Opportunity: Northern Virginia’s sySTEMic Solutions
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program links higher education, businesses and local chambers of
commerce to grow the STEM-H workforce pipeline (link).
Best Practice Opportunity: Governor's Health Sciences Academies are
programs designed to expand options for students’ health science
literacy and other critical knowledge, skills, and credentials that will
prepare them for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skills careers in
Virginia. Each academy is a partnership among school divisions,
postsecondary institutions and business and industry (link).
IV. Grow Entrepreneurship: Virginia’s future entrepreneurs are in schools across our
Commonwealth today. Virginia’s business leaders should:
a. Advocate for and support the creation of a Governor’s School for Entrepreneurship;
b. Support local chamber of commerce efforts to bring the Young Entrepreneurs
Academy (YEA!) to their regions;
Partnership Opportunity: Young Entrepreneurs Academy (link).
c. Engage organizations such as GEN Z that seek to create unique experiences that expose
today’s college bound high school students to the career options of tomorrow;
Partnership Opportunity: GEN Z (link)
d. Support financial and economic literacy efforts aimed at helping students prepare to
make sound and informed financial decisions and understand the complexity of the
global economy;
Partnership Opportunity: Virginia Council on Economic Education (link).
e. Partner with school divisions to examine ways to feature entrepreneurship on career
days and other career-focused programming; and
f. Coordinate job shadow days that feature entrepreneurs in action.
V. Get Involved: The Virginia Chamber of Commerce should lead efforts to create a Virginia
Business Pre K-12 Council. Similar to the great success seen by the Virginia Business Higher
Education Council, business must actively advocate for a Pre K-12 education system that
produces quality graduates who are prepared for the workforce and life in a globally
competitive world. One component of the Council’s mission should be to advocate for funding
reinvestment in Pre K – 12 education. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce should serve as the
primary convener and leadership agent.
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WORKGROUP TWO: TEACHER QUALITY
The teacher quality workgroup is chaired by associate professor at James Madison University, Dr.
Kristina Doubet.
Teacher quality is the most important factor in ensuring student success. Any discussion about
improving the performance of our education system must start with teachers in the classrooms. They
are on the front line and they are the most important factor for success. Virginia’s business community
should support local and state action to enhance teacher preparation, improve teacher induction,
increase teacher professional development and improve the teacher evaluation process.
We must also recognize that teaching is one of the noblest professions. Teachers are heroes and deserve
the professionalism, standards, rewards and recognition that accompany our greatest professions. The
workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations
I. Enhanced Teacher Preparation: Teacher Preparation Programs should focus on providing
teaching candidates with relevant, research-based, inquiry-driven pedagogy. This should
include Assessment FOR Learning, adjusting instruction in response to information on student
learning (i.e., Differentiation), and improving methods for meeting the needs of diverse
learners. Virginia’s business community should support teacher preparation programs that:
a. Require candidates to focus on student growth in all field placements;
b. Encourage innovation/risk taking (student teacher evaluation instruments should reflect
this);
c. Require graduate level preparation complete with master’s thesis focused on exploring
the effects of candidate teaching methods on student learning; and
d. Increase – as much as possible – candidates’ time in schools.
Best Practice Opportunity: The Professional Development School model
offers much promise for increasing candidates’ time in schools (link).
II. Improve Teacher Induction: Many professions value induction into the profession equal to
the education itself. Teachers should be treated with the same high degree of professionalism.
Virginia’s business leaders should support a system that:
a. Assigns Mentor Teachers (“mentors” in a true sense – same grade and/or content area;
time built in for meeting to share instructional issues and to problem solve);
b. Provides frequent observation of and feedback to new teachers (by administrator and
mentor and/or other master teachers);
c. Provides opportunities for new teachers to observe/debrief with mentor and/or other
master teachers;
d. Reduces load/preps/extra-curricular responsibilities during first year; and
e. Strategically place new teachers in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) with
master/mentor teachers and teachers with whom they can collaborate and innovate.
III. Increase Teacher Professional Development: Professional development is a tool used in
many professions to enable professionals to improve their trade and remain familiar with best
practices. Virginia’s business community should support and increase access to quality
professional development by supporting programs that:
a. Utilize Professional Learning Community (PLC) or Coaching models. PLCs should
revolve around collecting and responding to evidence of student learning from
authentic assessment measures;
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b. Build devoted common planning time into teachers’ schedules (weekly and PD days)
i. Time to meet with Professional Learning Communities,
ii. Time to observe and be observed by colleagues,
iii. Time for collaboration between general and special educators
c. Provide opportunity for teachers to propose alternate teaching methods and veer from
pacing guides if they can show evidence they address required standards;
d. Adopt Professional Development School model – especially in localities where
universities adjoin struggling school systems, e.g., Petersburg and Virginia State
University; and
e. Encourage the creation of Inter-school Collaborations to support schools to share, learn
and safely discuss with one another issues facing the profession and strategies for
success. The “exceeding schools and school leaders” could be paired with the bottom
25-30% of schools in the state.
IV. Improve the Teacher Evaluation and Reward System: Teachers should participate as leaders
investing in and developing the evaluation and reward system. Virginia business leaders should
support school divisions that:
a. Focus on evidence of student growth as demonstrated though a multitude of authentic
methods (NOT simply Value Added standardized test scores);
b. Focus on Assessment FOR Learning and include teacher reflection as key component
of teacher evaluation;
c. Encourage and support innovation in methods of instruction and assessment (teacher
evaluation instruments should reflect this);
d. Support the proposed evaluation plan with focused Professional Development and PLC
focus;
e. Build a system of career ladders for teachers;
f. Ensure that proper pay incentives and differentiated pay models are available for
teachers; and
g. Train evaluators (e.g., administrators) in evaluation tools/implementation
Best Practice Opportunity: Study Salem District and National Board
Certification processes as models.
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WORKGROUP THREE: SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Former Virginia Board of Education member Andy Rotherham chairs the school improvement
workgroup.
1
Virginia is fortunate to be recognized as a top state for public education. Unfortunately, we have not
been able to ensure a high quality education for every child in Virginia. The data is clear: a significant
achievement gap exists in the Commonwealth. The National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) is a national measure of student achievement. The 2013 NAEP scores demonstrated that forty-
seven percent of white Virginia eighth graders achieved proficient or advanced mathematics scores on
the 2013 NAEP, as did fifteen percent of black eighth graders, twenty-five percent of Hispanic eighth
graders, and sixty-four percent of Asians. These results are clear that more can and should be done to
eliminate the achievement gap and improve achievement across the Commonwealth. It is important to
note the achievement gap is not limited to Virginia, it is a national crisis.
What can be done in tandem to immediately help parents and students?
Virginia can no longer tolerate failing schools, we must move aggressively to turn them around so that
every Virginia student receives a high quality education as required by the Virginia Constitution. These
students only get one chance at getting a great education and their time cannot be spent in a failing
school.
Virginia should fill the leadership gap created by federal policy and develop a state policy framework,
culture and system to (1) accelerate, scale or share excellence, (2) reward performance, (3) prevent
slippage in achievement, and (4) truly support and partner with struggling school divisions.
Consider this: As in most states, Virginia schools can be divided into four quartiles related to student
academic performance (exceeding, meeting, below, or failing). At present, no rewards, bonuses,
incentives exist for a school exceeding state academic benchmarks. Likewise, if a school meets
academic benchmarks, nothing is provided, offered, or extended from the Commonwealth. Even more
alarming, if a school is slipping, faltering or struggling, no support, technical assistance, professional
development, or any support or assistance is provided until the school fails. It is only once a school or
school divisions fail – multiple years in a row – is any support is offered or available by the federal
government or state.
Why wait for multi-year failure? Failure isn’t an option for children. No school or school division
should be “allowed” to fail before support, assistance, or partnerships can be offered. Moreover, it’s
time to shift our focus from “managing failure” to “supporting success and provide rewards” for all
schools.
Unfortunately, the evidence is clear, in Virginia and elsewhere, that not all low-performing schools
make full turnaround, so we must take steps to provide parents more options.
The workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. School Turnaround: The research on school turnarounds (defined as schools that undergo a
turnaround intervention but continue to serve the same student population) is not encouraging.
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The subcommittee chairman and workgroup chairman have worked to promote public charter schools for several
years.
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The $3.5 billion federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program has produced highly uneven
results and only the most robust turnaround strategies seem to have much effect. State
turnaround efforts are equally mixed, especially in the most acutely struggling schools.
a. Provide funds for schools that are accredited with warning year 2 to provide extended
learning time (ELT) – can be spring break, summer session, winter session, or Saturday
session – this process will require a written plan for use of time;
b. Support the creation of a “Best Practices” division at the Virginia Department of
Education (VDOE) to house innovative local best practices, offer yearly awards for
exceptional school performance and recognition by the Governor, and showcase local
leadership so that others may learn and benefit from that knowledge. VDOE should
host free statewide virtual learning opportunities to highlight and share these local
exemplars;
c. Create a reading teacher bonus for reading specialists that accept hard to staff school
assignments;
d. Support increased Virginia Board of Education enforcement power for local school
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for low-performing schools;
e. Strengthen Virginia Board of Education partnership with challenged schools. The
Virginia School Board Association (VSBA) can and should play an active role in this
strategy;
f. Support discretionary funding for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to
provide incentives for innovative programs at challenged schools;
g. Provide the state superintendent with more authority in supporting our schools denied
accreditation specifically in the areas of personnel and instructional program choice;
h. Develop Human Capital Strategy”
i. Virginia should develop a cadre of leaders that can be deployed in challenged
environment.
Best Practice Opportunity: The University of Virginia’s Darden-
Curry partnership (link).
ii. Virginia should build out leadership capacity – from classroom, school, to
division.
Partnership Opportunity: New Leaders (link).
i. Compel school divisions to implement turnaround partners’ model with fidelity. Too
often the relationship is never fully realized which impacts the outcomes on students;
j. Publicly recognize schools that exceed minimum state academic standards with special
recognition and provide a yearly financial reward for this outstanding hard work; and
k. Revisit the state takeover model after reviewing the state’s accountability system. We
need to reward growth but also be prepared to react when growth does not occur.
II. Providing Immediate Options to Parents: The evidence from Virginia and around the
country makes clear that a turnaround strategy, while essential, is insufficient to ensure that all
children are in high-quality schools. In tandem with its turnaround efforts Virginia should
become aggressive about creating high-quality new schools within the Commonwealth’s public
education system. The most promising path to do this is through public charter schooling.
Nationally public charter school performance remains mixed but better authorizing practices
and non-renewals for low-performing schools is improving aggregate performance. CREDO
summarizes current performance this way: “In the aggregate, both reading and math results in
charter schools show improvement compared to the results reported in [earlier national
CREDO studies]. The analysis of the pooled 27 states shows that charter schools now advance
the learning gains of their students more than traditional public schools in reading.
Improvement is seen in the academic growth of charter students in math since 2009, to the
extent that learning gains are now similar to those of students in traditional public schools.”
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These averages, however, obscure the more important evidence about the potential of this
strategy. Localized charter performance varies with public charter schools in some states and
cities – for instance New Jersey, Massachusetts, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,
and Los Angeles – substantially outperform comparable schools. In Los Angeles the effect
sizes are equivalent to 50 days of additional reading instruction and 79 days of additional math
instruction. The effects are less elsewhere but also substantial. CREDO tells us that in Boston,
“on average, charter students in Massachusetts gain an additional one and a half months of
learning in reading over their TPS counterparts. In math, the advantage for charter students is
about two and a half months of additional learning in one school year. Charter students in
Boston gain an additional 12 months in reading and 13 months in math per school year
compared to their TPS counterparts.” In other words, public charter schools are providing a
cost-effective extended learning time strategy while also creating better quality options for
students. Overall the research is quite clear that a new school – in a high-quality authorizing
environment – is a higher odds play for success than any turnaround strategy. Policy leaders
must be clear eyed about the evidence: Public charter schools will not eliminate the need to
help improve struggling schools but can add options on a faster timeline while also
empowering parents. In that way public charter schools also help expand customization within
public education and broaden political support for public schools. Virginia already has some
choice schools (Thomas Jefferson, H.B. Woodlawn, Governor’s Schools) but they are few and
far between and they are oversubscribed. Virginia’s education establishment does not yet have
a culture that supports genuinely empowering parents with real and dynamic choices.
Virginia’s business leaders should support:
a. An Amendment to Virginia’s Constitution that would allow for state authorization of
public charter schools;
b. Encourage and support local school board officials to become more familiar with the
benefits public charter schools can bring to Virginia’s public school portfolio and urge
that they actively consider approval of public charter schools especially for systems
that have low performing schools; and
c. Lead a discussion on how to provide students and parents with more options and
choices for obtaining a high quality education.
III. Increase Transparency: Virginia’s leaders often cite the fact that we have few failing schools
as a reason why reforms common elsewhere are not needed in Virginia. Yet, if you dig deeper
it becomes clear that while we have few schools designated as failing, many Virginia students
are not getting the education they deserve and one that prepares them for opportunities after
high school. One way to address this disconnect is to increase transparency about educational
outputs as well as inputs. We should seek to engage parents in as straightforward a manner as
possible. Presently, it is too difficult for parents to get data about school performance in
Virginia in aggregate and disaggregate form by racial and ethnic subgroups. These data are
reported in school report cards but in a format more accessible for policy analysts than parents.
School divisions also vary in their efforts to inform parents about this data and make it easily
accessible to them. As importantly, it is nearly impossible for parents to get relevant contextual
data (for instance what it actually means for a student to pass or be advanced on an SOL, what
sort of outcomes performance is aligned with, and in some cases specific issues around school
accreditation). Research explicitly linking transparency with education improvement is scant
but two pieces of contextual evidence matter. First, in general it’s widely accepted that more
information and greater transparency improves decision-making, accountability and innovation.
Second, studies, most recently a series of surveys by the journal Education Next show that the
public is frequently misinformed on key educational issues including performance, spending,
and major aspects of policy. Virginia school divisions vary in their commitment to transparency
but in general few best practices are in evidence. One school division, for example, sent
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multiple communications to parents about school accreditation progress this fall without
informing parents specifically which two schools had missed accreditation. Parents were
literally left to comb through school report cards school by school to discover this vital piece of
information. Virginia’s business leaders should support:
a. The State Board of Education to examine and improve school and school division
report cards to improve reporting including requiring that NAEP data and other
national benchmarks including college-going, SAT and ACT performance, and similar
measures be included as well as a comparison point and that parents receive
information about the SOL their child is taking, specific passing requirements, and how
that factors into school accreditation decisions. Report cards could also include
information about teacher evaluation (in aggregate not by individual teacher), per-pupil
spending, and other basic measures of school operations and performance to better
inform parents about their child’s education and their public schools more generally.
The State Board of Education should also take steps to ensure timely, accurate, and
clear communication to parents about school performance and to ensure this
information is provided to all parents regardless of their access to technology;
b. Virginia should do more to link student and teacher data records to enable better
evaluation of performance trends and more research into teacher quality in the
Commonwealth. In addition to linking student and teacher data the Virginia
Department of Education should conduct roster verifications to ensure these data are
accurate, conduct webinars or other trainings for researchers seeking to use this data,
and ensure consistent reporting about data requirements – for instance assessment
exclusion policies for students;
c. The state should create a website that specifically reports performance data in a way
that is more accessible for parents and explains the policy requirements undergirding
the results, similar to the website that now exists for graduation rates but with even
greater breakdowns to ensure that the information is usable for non-specialists; and
d. Virginia should specifically increase transparency requirements for schools that are not
meeting accreditation or federal benchmarks to improve reporting about the reasons for
the shortfalls and transparency about the steps being taken to remediate. This
information should be provided to all parents in a format that does not rely solely on
technology.
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WORKGROUP FOUR: SYSTEMIC REFORM
The systemic reform workgroup is chaired by former Virginia Secretary of Education Javaid Siddiqi.
Virginia, although ranked highly in the United States, is not competing against the World’s developed
nations in terms of educational outcomes. As we compete against the world for job-creating businesses,
we need to double-down on improving educational outcomes and increasing achievement. The
workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. Invest in Technology: Virginia will only be able to prepare our students for the future if we are
invested and connected to technology, both as a mechanism of increasing access to knowledge
via digital learning, but also in terms of connectivity to the world. Virginia’s business leaders
should support work to:
a. Ensure all schools have access to high-speed internet by 2020;
b. Revaluate state technology grants used to build online testing capacity toward
infrastructure needs. Now that Virginia has built out the infrastructure to assess all
students online, we should redirect those dollars to increase 1:1 initiatives;
Best Practice Opportunity: Chesterfield County Public Schools 1:1
Learning Framework (link).
Best Practice Opportunity: Horry County Schools Personalized Digital
Learning Initiative (link).
c. Incentivize regional collaboration to increase online instruction;
d. Support efforts to increase education technology and entrepreneurial disruption in
education;
Partnership Opportunity: The University of Virginia’s Curry School of
Education recently formed the Jefferson Education Accelerator. The
Education Accelerator has been established in direct response to the
urgent need for education innovation to drive reform. This limited liability
company located in Charlottesville, will provide a market-oriented portal
for linking solutions with capital, partnerships, and organizational
capacity to move to scale (link).
e. Encourage school leadership to explore partnership opportunities with higher education
officials who have reported significant online curriculum that could be deployed in our
Pre K-12 system;
f. Support virtual and blended learning models. Such an effort will require the business
community to commence a dialogue among players in the virtual learning arena to
resolve outstanding issues that have slowed down full use of available learning
technologies in our education programs; and
g. Encourage thinking about access beyond the confines of a school.
Partnership Opportunity: DreamWakers (link).
II. Increase Transitional Support from the Classroom to the Classroom: Teacher preparation
programs should increase their support of teachers upon leaving the classroom. Virginia’s
business leaders can look to best practices including:
a. Support further investment in College Lab programs;
Best Practice Opportunity: Buford Middle School is the first public school
in the Commonwealth Engineering Design Academies, a laboratory
school partnership with the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering
and Applied Science and Curry School of Education. The project – the
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first of its kind – pairs University of Virginia professors with local public
school teachers and students (link).
b. Cultivate and expand the Old Dominion University’s Monarch Teach program;
Best Practice Opportunity: ODU’s MonarchTeach program (link).
c. Support Virginia Commonwealth University’s Teacher Residency program and the
launch of Teach For American in Virginia;
Best Practice Opportunity: VCU’s Teacher Residency (link).
Partnership Opportunity: Teach For America (link).
d. Ensure university participation in the standards and assessment development work; and
e. Support efforts to better align pre-K to K-12 to community colleges to four year
institutions of higher education to lifelong learning courses that focus on collaboration
that provides all students with access to learning environments that provide skills
needed to be productive members of the workforce.
III. Invest in Early Childhood Education: Research is clear that early childhood education
increases a child’s chance of success dramatically. The best long-term investment we can make
is in early childhood education. The business community can be most helpful by convening and
leading a coordinated effort to bring together all the key players to develop a game plan for
making quality early childhood education services available to every child. Collectively, we
must take action to produce better data on what works and how we can spend limited tax
dollars better. Virginia must do a better job of investing in early childhood education.
Virginia’s business leaders should support and lead:
a. Efforts to convene the myriad of stakeholders who care for and advocate for early
childhood education;
b. Authorize unused VPI funds to increase seats in other divisions;
c. Incentivize school divisions to leverage VPI funds to increase participation;
d. Increase state leadership in order to improve cohesion with individual and
organizations;
e. Examine the viability of social impact bonds (Pay for Success) to scale best practices
and successful models of deploying early childhood education;
Best Practice Opportunity: ReadyNation’s Pay for Success (PFS) model
(link).
f. Implement a statewide comprehensive kindergarten assessment led by the University of
Virginia in collaboration with the VDOE that defines the readiness gap (Virginia’s
entering kindergartners’ readiness skills), tracks readiness across domain areas,
longitudinally tracks the progress of students through third grade, reports annually and
determines strategic data-driven investments to address the gap; and
g. Conduct a one-year JLARC study to analyze all state and federal funding expenditures
and outcomes on progress supporting children prenatal to age five to help facilitate
decision-making on supporting local early childhood education.
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doc_520572574.pdf
With this brief elucidation about strengthening virginias workforce a blueprint for pre k 12 education.
A Report Submitted on Behalf of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Subcommittee on K-12 Education
The Honorable James W. Dyke, Chairman
Senior Advisor, McGuireWoods Consulting
Former Virginia Secretary of Education
Ms. Amy M. Atkinson
Executive Director, Virginia Commission on Youth
Dr. Deborah M. DiCroce
President/CEO, Hampton Roads Community Foundation
Dr. Kristina Doubet
Associate Professor, James Madison University
The Honorable Laura W. Fornash
Government Relations, The University of Virginia
Ms. Amanda Gibson
Assistant Principal, Salem City Schools
Ms. Christine Kennedy
Interim President, Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce
Mr. Keith Martin
VP of Public Policy, Virginia Chamber of Commerce
Mr. Tayloe Negus
Principal, Mercer
Ms. Jennie O’Holleran
Deputy Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Virginia
Ms. Generra J. Peck
Vice President, McGuireWoods Consulting
Mr. Andrew J. Rotherham
Co-Founder, Bellwether Education Partners
The Honorable Javaid E. Siddiqi
Director, The Hunt Institute
The Honorable William C. Wampler, Jr.
Executive Director, The New College Insitute
Ms. Joan E. Wodiska
Member, Virginia Board of Education
Strengthening Virginia’s Workforce:
A BLUEPRINT for Pre K-12 Education
Friday, December 5, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Letter from The Subcomittee Chair .................................................................................... 1
Subcommittee Work and Structure ..................................................................................... 2
Workgroup One: Business Involvement ............................................................................. 3
Workgroup Two: Teacher Quality ...................................................................................... 6
Workgroup Three: School Improvement ............................................................................ 8
Workgroup Four: Systemic Reform.................................................................................. 12
1
LETTER FROM THE SUBCOMITTEE CHAIR
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
I write today with great enthusiasm on behalf of our K-12 subcommittee to offer a series of
recommendations aimed at strengthening Virginia’s workforce pipeline. The business community is a
consumer of the workforce produced by the education system. Virginia’s business leaders must be
involved in how the workforce is trained and prepared. Our committee was created to develop an action
plan for how to implement the K-12 concepts of the Virginia Chamber’s BLURPRINT initiative. Our
charge was to provide specific action items and not to produce an academic policy paper. This initial
report sets forth recommendations for actions that can be taken now to help the education system
enhance its preparation of graduates that are workforce ready and globally competitive.
I wish to acknowledge the leadership and support of Barry DuVal, President and CEO, of the Virginia
Chamber of Commerce and Keith Martin, Vice President of Public Policy and Counsel. The Virginia
Chamber of Commerce is positioned to lead an unprecedented renewed investment and commitment to
education and workforce preparation. I also wish to recognize the leadership of our committee. Through
their tireless work, we are able to present commonsense, results-oriented recommendations that believe
two things to be true: education is the great equalizer and workforce development is the game-changer
for Virginia’s business and economic future. I especially want to acknowledge the outstanding
assistance of my colleague Generra Peck who helped guide the Committee’s work.
Our report is the first step in the Virginia Chamber’s efforts to implement the K-12 components of the
BLUEPRINT. The Chamber will continue to advocate for these and other recommendations as well as
serve as an active and involved resource for local chambers, businesses and regional alliances
committed to making a difference in the education of graduates who are globally competitive.
Friends, please join me in an ongoing conversation about the opportunity to help the Commonwealth
better prepare its future workforce in a manner that makes Virginia a national leader and a state that
maximizes its economic development efforts. If we can all agree that every child is deserving of a great
education and that every child can learn, we will accomplish great things for our businesses, our
Commonwealth and our nation.
In short: To be globally competitive, Virginia businesses must make education reform and workforce
preparation a participatory sport.
Sincerely,
James W. Dyke
Chairman
2
SUBCOMMITTEE WORK AND STRUCTURE
From August 2014 through December 2014 the subcommittee convened several times to consider items
most pressing in Pre K-12 education at the state, local and leadership level. Chairman Dyke charged the
group with presenting creative and results-oriented ideas that would produce the greatest improvements
to Virginia’s Pre K-12 education system.
The K-12 Education Subcommittee divided its work into four distinct topic areas: (1) Business
Involvement; (2) Teacher Quality; (3) School Improvement; and (4) Systemic Reform. Under the
leadership of a workgroup leader, each policy group convened and assembled a series of
recommendations that will help guide Virginia’s business and community leaders to support results-
oriented action in Virginia’s Public Schools.
This report encapsulates some of the best ideas in K-12 education. It is however, only one step forward
and just the beginning of the conversation. We look forward to an ongoing dialogue about education
and workforce preparation in the Commonwealth. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce welcomes and
seeks to help lead a robust debate that brings K-12 education to the top of our Commonwealth’s
agenda.
Friends, K- 12 education is THE game-changer not only for our citizens but for our economic
development success.
3
WORKGROUP ONE: BUSINESS INVOLVEMENT
The business involvement workgroup is chaired by former president of Tidewater Community College
and current president and CEO of the Hampton Roads Community Foundation Dr. Deborah DiCroce.
The workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. Increasing Leadership Capacity at the Local Level: Virginia’s local school board officials
provide critical public service to our communities. In many cases, local officials are charged
with running what equates to a multi-million dollar enterprise with very high stakes – the high
quality education of children. Virginia businesses and organizations, including local chambers
of commerce, should:
a. Establish a K-12 Education Liaison to local school divisions;
Partnership Opportunity: The K-12 Education Liaison could work to host
annually an award celebration for Teacher of the Year, New Teacher of
the Year and Staff Person of the Year.
b. Host annually a board strategic planning session facilitated alongside business and
community leaders;
c. Work with school leaders to provide management and leadership training for school
board members, principals and superintendents. Consistent with the Virginia School
Boards Association report, we support their call for additional training for school
divisions that have challenged schools in their district;
d. Leverage management expertise held across Virginia’s business community. Virginia’s
executives and managers are skilled at managing personnel and performance without
using standardized tests. We should identify lessons that can be translated to the
education sector;
e. Partner with school leaders so that education at every level is preparing students with
skills that industry needs;
Best Practice Opportunity: The New College Institute in Martinsville,
Virginia blends workforce training, degree programs and higher
education partnerships to support the region’s economic development
strategy (link).
f. Develop a strategy to encourage qualified individuals to run for or be appointed to local
school boards; and
g. Host regular school board candidate forums with parents, teachers, fellow business
leaders and others to bring attention to the election and appointment process. In
addition, host regular forums with local school boards to discuss current education
issues and progress toward enhanced workforce preparation.
Best Practice Opportunity: The Petersburg Chamber of Commerce hosted
a candidate forum in the Fall of 2014.
II. Create a System for Investing in Schools: Virginia’s business community should be investing
financially in local school divisions. Virginia’s business leaders should enter into a coordinated
priorities conversation with local school officials. Virginia’s business community should:
a. Host annually with their local school system a philanthropic priorities conversation in
which top school needs are identified and business leaders commit to helping school
leaders achieve financial and non-financial resource needs.
Best Practice Opportunity: The ROTEC Foundation in Roanoke provides
financial support for local CTE program needs such as workforce
4
certification costs, uniforms and other matters that support CTE
students.
b. Partner with school divisions to form school division foundations that can serve to
support local schools through a highly accountable and community-based organization;
and
Best Practice Opportunity: The Fairfax County Education Foundation is a
partnership with the local Fairfax Chamber.
c. Support mentorship programs by encouraging employers and actions to help mentor
individual students;
Best Practice Opportunity: Roanoke’s Gear Up Program.
d. Partner with school divisions to ensure school volunteer needs are fully met and
executed.
Best Practice Opportunity: Partners In Education is a joint venture
between Lynchburg City Schools and the Lynchburg Regional Chamber
of Commerce. Officially started on September 3, 1990, this program has
been designed to create links between the school division and area
businesses. In the 20-year history of the program, Lynchburg City
Schools has partnered with over 250 area businesses, organizations, and
institutions (link).
III. Support STEM-H and Career and Technical Education: Virginia’s STEM-H and Career
and Technical Education (CTE) programs offer students a pathway to be career-ready at
graduation. Opportunities include dual enrollment, job shadowing apprenticeship and first-rate
technical experience in our public school divisions. Virginia’s business community should:
a. Proactively discuss jobs skills needs with school divisions and CTE instructors and
form an advisory committee of business leaders, community college officials and local
school leaders to assure that local school curriculum can be aligned to the skills needed
to be career-ready;
Best Practice Opportunity: Roanoke Technical Education Center (link).
b. Adopt apprenticeship models that result in credential attainment;
c. Recognize and reward business partnerships that promote and enhance CTE education;
Partnership Opportunity: The Virginia Career Education Foundation’s
(VCEF) Governor’s CTE Exemplary Standards Ward Program (link).
d. Convene and participate in ongoing strategy conversations with local community
colleges, higher education and public school divisions to better enable schools to
produce credentialed, work-ready graduates; and
e. Provide access to trained workers for job shadow and mentorship programs;
Best Practice Opportunity: The Bedford Area and Lynchburg Regional
Chambers' "Work Ready" program fosters partnerships with local school
divisions. The partnership allows businesses to host a high school senior
for an internship after six weeks of classroom-based instruction on the
soft skills needed for the 21st Century workforce.
f. Support creation of online access to information about apprenticeships and other
workforce preparation activities similar to the online use of the VA Education Wizard
used by the Virginia Community College Systems; and
g. Support efforts to increase the number of students enrolled in programs that produce
graduates proficient in STEM-H and other skills needed to fill the jobs already
forecasted, whether they require degrees or credentials. Support should be provided to
efforts that have a strategic focus on getting more girls and minorities involved in
STEM-H early in the education process.
Best Practice Opportunity: Northern Virginia’s sySTEMic Solutions
5
program links higher education, businesses and local chambers of
commerce to grow the STEM-H workforce pipeline (link).
Best Practice Opportunity: Governor's Health Sciences Academies are
programs designed to expand options for students’ health science
literacy and other critical knowledge, skills, and credentials that will
prepare them for high-demand, high-wage, and high-skills careers in
Virginia. Each academy is a partnership among school divisions,
postsecondary institutions and business and industry (link).
IV. Grow Entrepreneurship: Virginia’s future entrepreneurs are in schools across our
Commonwealth today. Virginia’s business leaders should:
a. Advocate for and support the creation of a Governor’s School for Entrepreneurship;
b. Support local chamber of commerce efforts to bring the Young Entrepreneurs
Academy (YEA!) to their regions;
Partnership Opportunity: Young Entrepreneurs Academy (link).
c. Engage organizations such as GEN Z that seek to create unique experiences that expose
today’s college bound high school students to the career options of tomorrow;
Partnership Opportunity: GEN Z (link)
d. Support financial and economic literacy efforts aimed at helping students prepare to
make sound and informed financial decisions and understand the complexity of the
global economy;
Partnership Opportunity: Virginia Council on Economic Education (link).
e. Partner with school divisions to examine ways to feature entrepreneurship on career
days and other career-focused programming; and
f. Coordinate job shadow days that feature entrepreneurs in action.
V. Get Involved: The Virginia Chamber of Commerce should lead efforts to create a Virginia
Business Pre K-12 Council. Similar to the great success seen by the Virginia Business Higher
Education Council, business must actively advocate for a Pre K-12 education system that
produces quality graduates who are prepared for the workforce and life in a globally
competitive world. One component of the Council’s mission should be to advocate for funding
reinvestment in Pre K – 12 education. The Virginia Chamber of Commerce should serve as the
primary convener and leadership agent.
6
WORKGROUP TWO: TEACHER QUALITY
The teacher quality workgroup is chaired by associate professor at James Madison University, Dr.
Kristina Doubet.
Teacher quality is the most important factor in ensuring student success. Any discussion about
improving the performance of our education system must start with teachers in the classrooms. They
are on the front line and they are the most important factor for success. Virginia’s business community
should support local and state action to enhance teacher preparation, improve teacher induction,
increase teacher professional development and improve the teacher evaluation process.
We must also recognize that teaching is one of the noblest professions. Teachers are heroes and deserve
the professionalism, standards, rewards and recognition that accompany our greatest professions. The
workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations
I. Enhanced Teacher Preparation: Teacher Preparation Programs should focus on providing
teaching candidates with relevant, research-based, inquiry-driven pedagogy. This should
include Assessment FOR Learning, adjusting instruction in response to information on student
learning (i.e., Differentiation), and improving methods for meeting the needs of diverse
learners. Virginia’s business community should support teacher preparation programs that:
a. Require candidates to focus on student growth in all field placements;
b. Encourage innovation/risk taking (student teacher evaluation instruments should reflect
this);
c. Require graduate level preparation complete with master’s thesis focused on exploring
the effects of candidate teaching methods on student learning; and
d. Increase – as much as possible – candidates’ time in schools.
Best Practice Opportunity: The Professional Development School model
offers much promise for increasing candidates’ time in schools (link).
II. Improve Teacher Induction: Many professions value induction into the profession equal to
the education itself. Teachers should be treated with the same high degree of professionalism.
Virginia’s business leaders should support a system that:
a. Assigns Mentor Teachers (“mentors” in a true sense – same grade and/or content area;
time built in for meeting to share instructional issues and to problem solve);
b. Provides frequent observation of and feedback to new teachers (by administrator and
mentor and/or other master teachers);
c. Provides opportunities for new teachers to observe/debrief with mentor and/or other
master teachers;
d. Reduces load/preps/extra-curricular responsibilities during first year; and
e. Strategically place new teachers in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) with
master/mentor teachers and teachers with whom they can collaborate and innovate.
III. Increase Teacher Professional Development: Professional development is a tool used in
many professions to enable professionals to improve their trade and remain familiar with best
practices. Virginia’s business community should support and increase access to quality
professional development by supporting programs that:
a. Utilize Professional Learning Community (PLC) or Coaching models. PLCs should
revolve around collecting and responding to evidence of student learning from
authentic assessment measures;
7
b. Build devoted common planning time into teachers’ schedules (weekly and PD days)
i. Time to meet with Professional Learning Communities,
ii. Time to observe and be observed by colleagues,
iii. Time for collaboration between general and special educators
c. Provide opportunity for teachers to propose alternate teaching methods and veer from
pacing guides if they can show evidence they address required standards;
d. Adopt Professional Development School model – especially in localities where
universities adjoin struggling school systems, e.g., Petersburg and Virginia State
University; and
e. Encourage the creation of Inter-school Collaborations to support schools to share, learn
and safely discuss with one another issues facing the profession and strategies for
success. The “exceeding schools and school leaders” could be paired with the bottom
25-30% of schools in the state.
IV. Improve the Teacher Evaluation and Reward System: Teachers should participate as leaders
investing in and developing the evaluation and reward system. Virginia business leaders should
support school divisions that:
a. Focus on evidence of student growth as demonstrated though a multitude of authentic
methods (NOT simply Value Added standardized test scores);
b. Focus on Assessment FOR Learning and include teacher reflection as key component
of teacher evaluation;
c. Encourage and support innovation in methods of instruction and assessment (teacher
evaluation instruments should reflect this);
d. Support the proposed evaluation plan with focused Professional Development and PLC
focus;
e. Build a system of career ladders for teachers;
f. Ensure that proper pay incentives and differentiated pay models are available for
teachers; and
g. Train evaluators (e.g., administrators) in evaluation tools/implementation
Best Practice Opportunity: Study Salem District and National Board
Certification processes as models.
8
WORKGROUP THREE: SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
Former Virginia Board of Education member Andy Rotherham chairs the school improvement
workgroup.
1
Virginia is fortunate to be recognized as a top state for public education. Unfortunately, we have not
been able to ensure a high quality education for every child in Virginia. The data is clear: a significant
achievement gap exists in the Commonwealth. The National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP) is a national measure of student achievement. The 2013 NAEP scores demonstrated that forty-
seven percent of white Virginia eighth graders achieved proficient or advanced mathematics scores on
the 2013 NAEP, as did fifteen percent of black eighth graders, twenty-five percent of Hispanic eighth
graders, and sixty-four percent of Asians. These results are clear that more can and should be done to
eliminate the achievement gap and improve achievement across the Commonwealth. It is important to
note the achievement gap is not limited to Virginia, it is a national crisis.
What can be done in tandem to immediately help parents and students?
Virginia can no longer tolerate failing schools, we must move aggressively to turn them around so that
every Virginia student receives a high quality education as required by the Virginia Constitution. These
students only get one chance at getting a great education and their time cannot be spent in a failing
school.
Virginia should fill the leadership gap created by federal policy and develop a state policy framework,
culture and system to (1) accelerate, scale or share excellence, (2) reward performance, (3) prevent
slippage in achievement, and (4) truly support and partner with struggling school divisions.
Consider this: As in most states, Virginia schools can be divided into four quartiles related to student
academic performance (exceeding, meeting, below, or failing). At present, no rewards, bonuses,
incentives exist for a school exceeding state academic benchmarks. Likewise, if a school meets
academic benchmarks, nothing is provided, offered, or extended from the Commonwealth. Even more
alarming, if a school is slipping, faltering or struggling, no support, technical assistance, professional
development, or any support or assistance is provided until the school fails. It is only once a school or
school divisions fail – multiple years in a row – is any support is offered or available by the federal
government or state.
Why wait for multi-year failure? Failure isn’t an option for children. No school or school division
should be “allowed” to fail before support, assistance, or partnerships can be offered. Moreover, it’s
time to shift our focus from “managing failure” to “supporting success and provide rewards” for all
schools.
Unfortunately, the evidence is clear, in Virginia and elsewhere, that not all low-performing schools
make full turnaround, so we must take steps to provide parents more options.
The workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. School Turnaround: The research on school turnarounds (defined as schools that undergo a
turnaround intervention but continue to serve the same student population) is not encouraging.
1
The subcommittee chairman and workgroup chairman have worked to promote public charter schools for several
years.
9
The $3.5 billion federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program has produced highly uneven
results and only the most robust turnaround strategies seem to have much effect. State
turnaround efforts are equally mixed, especially in the most acutely struggling schools.
a. Provide funds for schools that are accredited with warning year 2 to provide extended
learning time (ELT) – can be spring break, summer session, winter session, or Saturday
session – this process will require a written plan for use of time;
b. Support the creation of a “Best Practices” division at the Virginia Department of
Education (VDOE) to house innovative local best practices, offer yearly awards for
exceptional school performance and recognition by the Governor, and showcase local
leadership so that others may learn and benefit from that knowledge. VDOE should
host free statewide virtual learning opportunities to highlight and share these local
exemplars;
c. Create a reading teacher bonus for reading specialists that accept hard to staff school
assignments;
d. Support increased Virginia Board of Education enforcement power for local school
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for low-performing schools;
e. Strengthen Virginia Board of Education partnership with challenged schools. The
Virginia School Board Association (VSBA) can and should play an active role in this
strategy;
f. Support discretionary funding for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to
provide incentives for innovative programs at challenged schools;
g. Provide the state superintendent with more authority in supporting our schools denied
accreditation specifically in the areas of personnel and instructional program choice;
h. Develop Human Capital Strategy”
i. Virginia should develop a cadre of leaders that can be deployed in challenged
environment.
Best Practice Opportunity: The University of Virginia’s Darden-
Curry partnership (link).
ii. Virginia should build out leadership capacity – from classroom, school, to
division.
Partnership Opportunity: New Leaders (link).
i. Compel school divisions to implement turnaround partners’ model with fidelity. Too
often the relationship is never fully realized which impacts the outcomes on students;
j. Publicly recognize schools that exceed minimum state academic standards with special
recognition and provide a yearly financial reward for this outstanding hard work; and
k. Revisit the state takeover model after reviewing the state’s accountability system. We
need to reward growth but also be prepared to react when growth does not occur.
II. Providing Immediate Options to Parents: The evidence from Virginia and around the
country makes clear that a turnaround strategy, while essential, is insufficient to ensure that all
children are in high-quality schools. In tandem with its turnaround efforts Virginia should
become aggressive about creating high-quality new schools within the Commonwealth’s public
education system. The most promising path to do this is through public charter schooling.
Nationally public charter school performance remains mixed but better authorizing practices
and non-renewals for low-performing schools is improving aggregate performance. CREDO
summarizes current performance this way: “In the aggregate, both reading and math results in
charter schools show improvement compared to the results reported in [earlier national
CREDO studies]. The analysis of the pooled 27 states shows that charter schools now advance
the learning gains of their students more than traditional public schools in reading.
Improvement is seen in the academic growth of charter students in math since 2009, to the
extent that learning gains are now similar to those of students in traditional public schools.”
10
These averages, however, obscure the more important evidence about the potential of this
strategy. Localized charter performance varies with public charter schools in some states and
cities – for instance New Jersey, Massachusetts, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C.,
and Los Angeles – substantially outperform comparable schools. In Los Angeles the effect
sizes are equivalent to 50 days of additional reading instruction and 79 days of additional math
instruction. The effects are less elsewhere but also substantial. CREDO tells us that in Boston,
“on average, charter students in Massachusetts gain an additional one and a half months of
learning in reading over their TPS counterparts. In math, the advantage for charter students is
about two and a half months of additional learning in one school year. Charter students in
Boston gain an additional 12 months in reading and 13 months in math per school year
compared to their TPS counterparts.” In other words, public charter schools are providing a
cost-effective extended learning time strategy while also creating better quality options for
students. Overall the research is quite clear that a new school – in a high-quality authorizing
environment – is a higher odds play for success than any turnaround strategy. Policy leaders
must be clear eyed about the evidence: Public charter schools will not eliminate the need to
help improve struggling schools but can add options on a faster timeline while also
empowering parents. In that way public charter schools also help expand customization within
public education and broaden political support for public schools. Virginia already has some
choice schools (Thomas Jefferson, H.B. Woodlawn, Governor’s Schools) but they are few and
far between and they are oversubscribed. Virginia’s education establishment does not yet have
a culture that supports genuinely empowering parents with real and dynamic choices.
Virginia’s business leaders should support:
a. An Amendment to Virginia’s Constitution that would allow for state authorization of
public charter schools;
b. Encourage and support local school board officials to become more familiar with the
benefits public charter schools can bring to Virginia’s public school portfolio and urge
that they actively consider approval of public charter schools especially for systems
that have low performing schools; and
c. Lead a discussion on how to provide students and parents with more options and
choices for obtaining a high quality education.
III. Increase Transparency: Virginia’s leaders often cite the fact that we have few failing schools
as a reason why reforms common elsewhere are not needed in Virginia. Yet, if you dig deeper
it becomes clear that while we have few schools designated as failing, many Virginia students
are not getting the education they deserve and one that prepares them for opportunities after
high school. One way to address this disconnect is to increase transparency about educational
outputs as well as inputs. We should seek to engage parents in as straightforward a manner as
possible. Presently, it is too difficult for parents to get data about school performance in
Virginia in aggregate and disaggregate form by racial and ethnic subgroups. These data are
reported in school report cards but in a format more accessible for policy analysts than parents.
School divisions also vary in their efforts to inform parents about this data and make it easily
accessible to them. As importantly, it is nearly impossible for parents to get relevant contextual
data (for instance what it actually means for a student to pass or be advanced on an SOL, what
sort of outcomes performance is aligned with, and in some cases specific issues around school
accreditation). Research explicitly linking transparency with education improvement is scant
but two pieces of contextual evidence matter. First, in general it’s widely accepted that more
information and greater transparency improves decision-making, accountability and innovation.
Second, studies, most recently a series of surveys by the journal Education Next show that the
public is frequently misinformed on key educational issues including performance, spending,
and major aspects of policy. Virginia school divisions vary in their commitment to transparency
but in general few best practices are in evidence. One school division, for example, sent
11
multiple communications to parents about school accreditation progress this fall without
informing parents specifically which two schools had missed accreditation. Parents were
literally left to comb through school report cards school by school to discover this vital piece of
information. Virginia’s business leaders should support:
a. The State Board of Education to examine and improve school and school division
report cards to improve reporting including requiring that NAEP data and other
national benchmarks including college-going, SAT and ACT performance, and similar
measures be included as well as a comparison point and that parents receive
information about the SOL their child is taking, specific passing requirements, and how
that factors into school accreditation decisions. Report cards could also include
information about teacher evaluation (in aggregate not by individual teacher), per-pupil
spending, and other basic measures of school operations and performance to better
inform parents about their child’s education and their public schools more generally.
The State Board of Education should also take steps to ensure timely, accurate, and
clear communication to parents about school performance and to ensure this
information is provided to all parents regardless of their access to technology;
b. Virginia should do more to link student and teacher data records to enable better
evaluation of performance trends and more research into teacher quality in the
Commonwealth. In addition to linking student and teacher data the Virginia
Department of Education should conduct roster verifications to ensure these data are
accurate, conduct webinars or other trainings for researchers seeking to use this data,
and ensure consistent reporting about data requirements – for instance assessment
exclusion policies for students;
c. The state should create a website that specifically reports performance data in a way
that is more accessible for parents and explains the policy requirements undergirding
the results, similar to the website that now exists for graduation rates but with even
greater breakdowns to ensure that the information is usable for non-specialists; and
d. Virginia should specifically increase transparency requirements for schools that are not
meeting accreditation or federal benchmarks to improve reporting about the reasons for
the shortfalls and transparency about the steps being taken to remediate. This
information should be provided to all parents in a format that does not rely solely on
technology.
12
WORKGROUP FOUR: SYSTEMIC REFORM
The systemic reform workgroup is chaired by former Virginia Secretary of Education Javaid Siddiqi.
Virginia, although ranked highly in the United States, is not competing against the World’s developed
nations in terms of educational outcomes. As we compete against the world for job-creating businesses,
we need to double-down on improving educational outcomes and increasing achievement. The
workgroup is pleased to submit the following recommendations:
I. Invest in Technology: Virginia will only be able to prepare our students for the future if we are
invested and connected to technology, both as a mechanism of increasing access to knowledge
via digital learning, but also in terms of connectivity to the world. Virginia’s business leaders
should support work to:
a. Ensure all schools have access to high-speed internet by 2020;
b. Revaluate state technology grants used to build online testing capacity toward
infrastructure needs. Now that Virginia has built out the infrastructure to assess all
students online, we should redirect those dollars to increase 1:1 initiatives;
Best Practice Opportunity: Chesterfield County Public Schools 1:1
Learning Framework (link).
Best Practice Opportunity: Horry County Schools Personalized Digital
Learning Initiative (link).
c. Incentivize regional collaboration to increase online instruction;
d. Support efforts to increase education technology and entrepreneurial disruption in
education;
Partnership Opportunity: The University of Virginia’s Curry School of
Education recently formed the Jefferson Education Accelerator. The
Education Accelerator has been established in direct response to the
urgent need for education innovation to drive reform. This limited liability
company located in Charlottesville, will provide a market-oriented portal
for linking solutions with capital, partnerships, and organizational
capacity to move to scale (link).
e. Encourage school leadership to explore partnership opportunities with higher education
officials who have reported significant online curriculum that could be deployed in our
Pre K-12 system;
f. Support virtual and blended learning models. Such an effort will require the business
community to commence a dialogue among players in the virtual learning arena to
resolve outstanding issues that have slowed down full use of available learning
technologies in our education programs; and
g. Encourage thinking about access beyond the confines of a school.
Partnership Opportunity: DreamWakers (link).
II. Increase Transitional Support from the Classroom to the Classroom: Teacher preparation
programs should increase their support of teachers upon leaving the classroom. Virginia’s
business leaders can look to best practices including:
a. Support further investment in College Lab programs;
Best Practice Opportunity: Buford Middle School is the first public school
in the Commonwealth Engineering Design Academies, a laboratory
school partnership with the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering
and Applied Science and Curry School of Education. The project – the
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first of its kind – pairs University of Virginia professors with local public
school teachers and students (link).
b. Cultivate and expand the Old Dominion University’s Monarch Teach program;
Best Practice Opportunity: ODU’s MonarchTeach program (link).
c. Support Virginia Commonwealth University’s Teacher Residency program and the
launch of Teach For American in Virginia;
Best Practice Opportunity: VCU’s Teacher Residency (link).
Partnership Opportunity: Teach For America (link).
d. Ensure university participation in the standards and assessment development work; and
e. Support efforts to better align pre-K to K-12 to community colleges to four year
institutions of higher education to lifelong learning courses that focus on collaboration
that provides all students with access to learning environments that provide skills
needed to be productive members of the workforce.
III. Invest in Early Childhood Education: Research is clear that early childhood education
increases a child’s chance of success dramatically. The best long-term investment we can make
is in early childhood education. The business community can be most helpful by convening and
leading a coordinated effort to bring together all the key players to develop a game plan for
making quality early childhood education services available to every child. Collectively, we
must take action to produce better data on what works and how we can spend limited tax
dollars better. Virginia must do a better job of investing in early childhood education.
Virginia’s business leaders should support and lead:
a. Efforts to convene the myriad of stakeholders who care for and advocate for early
childhood education;
b. Authorize unused VPI funds to increase seats in other divisions;
c. Incentivize school divisions to leverage VPI funds to increase participation;
d. Increase state leadership in order to improve cohesion with individual and
organizations;
e. Examine the viability of social impact bonds (Pay for Success) to scale best practices
and successful models of deploying early childhood education;
Best Practice Opportunity: ReadyNation’s Pay for Success (PFS) model
(link).
f. Implement a statewide comprehensive kindergarten assessment led by the University of
Virginia in collaboration with the VDOE that defines the readiness gap (Virginia’s
entering kindergartners’ readiness skills), tracks readiness across domain areas,
longitudinally tracks the progress of students through third grade, reports annually and
determines strategic data-driven investments to address the gap; and
g. Conduct a one-year JLARC study to analyze all state and federal funding expenditures
and outcomes on progress supporting children prenatal to age five to help facilitate
decision-making on supporting local early childhood education.
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