SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AND SUPPORT FRAMEWORK - King George County Schools
An overview and analysis of how King George schools scored according to the state's new accountability system.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
Overview
The School Quality Profiles for King George County Public Schools should be handled with caution. Parents, educators, and students need to understand the intricacies of the scoring system and not rely on top-line data to draw conclusions about the quality of education in any given school.
All King George County schools are fully accredited. In the new system, accreditation is not related to academic performance, but to compliance with state requirements under the Standards of Accreditation.
Academic performance is now measured by the School Performance and Support Framework, which assigns each school a summative rating of either Distinguished, On Track, Off Track, or Needs Intensive Support. These ratings are based on scores, which in turn are based on points schools receive for three indicators—mastery of academic subjects, growth, and readiness at the elementary and middle school level; and mastery, readiness, and graduation at the high school level.
King George High School earned a Distinguished rating under the new framework, and Potomac Elementary was rated On Track.
King George Middle School was rated Off Track, and King George and Sealston elementary schools were both rated Needs Intensive Support. All three of these schools earned points that would have placed them at a higher rating, but were dropped due to the performance of one or more student subgroups.
In a statement provided to the Advance, superintendent Jesse Boyd said, “Every achievement reflects the hard work, passion, and dedication that our educators bring to the classroom each day. We are incredibly proud of our staff and deeply grateful for their tireless commitment to our students’ success.”
He continued, “As we enter the second semester of the school year, we will use this recently released data to continue to drive instruction and best practices for our students and school community. We acknowledge that there is still important work ahead to ensure all students have the support and opportunities they need to succeed.”
King George High School
King George High School earned 97.4 out of 100 points, placing it in the Distinguished category. It received 44 out of 44.45 points in the Mastery category, which accounts for 50% of a school’s total score under the new framework.
Students earn “mastery index points” based on their performance on the Standards of Learning test for each subject matter. The school’s 2025 rating is based on how the current senior class cohort performed on these assessments over their four years of high school, not on tests taken last school year.
The high school earned 38.5 points out of a possible 38.9 in the Readiness category, which accounts for 35% of the school’s total score and which considers chronic absenteeism, the six-year graduation rate, and how students participate in the 3E—enrollment, employment, enlistment—framework. Students receive 3E points for earning college credit through Advanced Placement or dual enrollment classes, completing work-based learning and career and technical education classes, or scoring well on the military ASVAB test.
Graduation, which reflects the percent of students who graduated within four years of entering high school with an Advanced, Standard, or International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma, was the only category in which King George High School did not come within one-tenth of a percent of earning all possible points. The school earned 14.8 out of 16.67 points in this category.
King George Middle School
The middle school’s total score under the new framework is 81.6, which puts it in the On Track. However, following new methodology, it was designated as a federal Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) school due to the performance of English language learners, which did not meet a threshold set by the Virginia Department of Education.
English learners make up 2.7% of the middle school’s total student population. According to the new framework, about 57% of English learners showed “no progress” in formal assessments—which, as of 2024, are administered after three semesters of English instruction, down from 11 semesters. This translated to the school receiving 4.28 out of 10 points in the Mastery category of English learner progress.
The Mastery category also includes reading performance of all students, for which the middle school received 18.1 out of 20 points; math performance, for which it received 17.52 points out of 20; and science performance, for it received 9.45 out of 10.
Elementary Schools
Potomac Elementary was rated On Track and, with a score of 86.3, is within three percentage points of the Distinguished rating.
King George Elementary earned 79.7 points, placing it in the Off Track category and within one-tenth of a percentage point of being On Track. Sealston Elementary’s score of 77.9 is within three points of an On Track rating. However, both schools were dropped to the Needs Intensive Support category due to being identified as as TSI school because the performance of students with disabilities did not meet VDOE’s identified thresholds.
This is the first school year that the elementary schools and the middle school have been identified as federal TSI schools.
Region 3’s Top 5
The VDOE also produced a list of the Top 5 schools in a number of areas for each of the Superintendent Regions in the state. The schools in the Advance’s readership area, including King George, are part of Region 3, which includes 17 school districts.
The following King George schools earned Top 5 ratings in Region 3:
Potomac Elementary
#4 for Growth in Math
King George Middle
#1 for Advanced Coursework
King George High
#5 Top High School
#2 for Mastery in Reading
Bottom Line
For individual school profiles, visit the Virginia Department of Education page for King George County. Top-line scores are presented below.
Local Obituaries
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