OPINION: Finally, A Law to Help Teachers!
The Virginia Literacy Act added layers of requirements that take still more time from teachers already stretched thin. HB568 would strengthen the VLA while reducing teacher workloads.
By Matt Hurt
GUEST COMMENTATOR
This year HB568 was introduced in the general assembly. The bill aims to reduce the amount of work required by educators to comply with the Virginia Literacy Act by leveraging technology. If enacted, this law would significantly reduce the time teachers and reading specialists spend on paperwork, allowing them to devote more time to helping students learn to read.
The Virginia Literacy Act (VLA) has many requirements related to reading instruction in grades Kindergarten through eight, with different expectations across grade bands. This article focuses on the requirements for students in grades Kindergarten through three; however, HB568 would be beneficial across all grades.
Among other requirements, the VLA mandates that student reading be assessed using the VALLSS assessment. In Kindergarten through third grade, this assessment functions as a screener to identify students who may be struggling readers. Students who are identified as “high risk” based on VALLSS results are required to have a reading plan. The goals and objectives to be written in each student’s plan must be derived directly from VALLSS data and address the specific reading weakness for each student.
During the 2023–2024 school year, a group of reading specialists and division literacy leaders from our consortium met to address the daunting task of creating and managing the large number of reading plans anticipated under the VLA. Over several months, the group researched commercially available solutions to help manage this workload. While a few options were identified, they were ultimately found to be insufficient.
A smaller group of these educators continued to meet and eventually decided that we needed to build our own technology solution to meet the requirements of the VLA. They developed a detailed document outlining functional expectations for such a system. Several divisions in the consortium endorsed the idea and agreed to fund its development. A programmer was hired to bring the educators’ vision to life, resulting in a program later named the “VLA Tracker”.
The VLA Tracker was designed to automate approximately ninety to ninety-five percent of the reading plan. Division technology staff would install the program on the network behind the firewall to ensure sensitive student data is not stored on the Internet. Teacher, student, and VALLSS data are uploaded to enable automated reading plan generation. The system also includes a progress-monitoring feature that tracks student progress toward reading goals and objectives.
By fall 2024, the VLA was expected to be fully implemented in all Virginia public school divisions. Based on the first VALLSS administration that fall, more than one-third of students were identified as requiring a reading plan. A tremendous amount of time and effort was expended statewide to create these plans—unfortunately, before the VLA Tracker was ready for use.
By December 2024, the VLA Tracker pilot was released to participating divisions. Feedback was collected and iterative improvements were made throughout the spring semester. The final version of the program was made available over the summer of 2025. By the fall of 2025, nearly forty divisions across the state had implemented the tool.
According to all reports, the VLA Tracker has significantly reduced the time required to create, organize, and store student reading plans. Development is ongoing, with plans to add new features next year, including integration of state-approved reading progress monitoring assessments whose data would automatically populate student progress reports.
The VLA Tracker is not without limitations. First, because the consortium lacks the capacity to secure data over the internet, the program must be installed behind division firewalls. As a result, teachers must access the system from school rather than from home. Second, divisions must currently populate data in two separate systems: VA Connects (the state VALLSS assessment platform) and the VLA Tracker.
This is where HB568 comes into the picture. As written, the bill appears to require the Virginia Department of Education to incorporate functionality similar to the VLA Tracker directly into the VA Connects platform. This would be an ideal outcome: divisions would no longer need to maintain separate systems, teachers could access information from home (where much of their work already occurs), and data would only need to be entered once. Even more beneficial would be direct data integration between VA Connects and division student information systems, similar to integrations already in use with other educational applications.
Currently HB568 is continued to the 2027 General Assembly. While it would be preferable to begin this work immediately, delaying implementation may be the more prudent course. This additional time allows the Virginia Department of Education to gather more feedback through its VLA advisory committee (composed of educators and other stakeholders) and to further refine system requirements. Ideally, this process will result in more informed, effective legislation when the bill is reconsidered.
Matt Hurt is director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program
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Thanks for this info Matt!