SCHOOL PERFORMANCE AND SUPPORT FRAMEWORK - Caroline County Public Schools
An overview and analysis of how Caroline schools scored according to the state's new accountability system.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Overview
The School Quality Profiles for Caroline 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 Caroline 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.
Digging Deeper
In Caroline, Lewis and Clark Elementary and Madison Elementary were rated On Track, and Caroline High School was rated Distinguished.
Caroline Middle School was rated Off Track, though its summative rating of 78.2 points (out of 100) places it within two points of being in the On Track category.
Bowling Green Elementary’s summative score of 74.5 places it in the Off Track category, but it was dropped to the Needs Intensive Support category due to one student subgroup performing below thresholds set by the VDOE as part of the new accountability system.
The new system identifies schools where one or more student subgroups perform below this threshold for Targeted Support and Investment, and drops schools with this identification to a lower category in the framework.
At Bowling Green, the student subgroup that performed below the threshold was students with disabilities. This is a population that has been increasing across the region and the state in recent years. It’s also an area where it is challenging to recruit and retain qualified instructors.
Caroline Middle School received the least percent of possible points (12.7 out of 20) in the Growth category, which accounts for 20% of the total score for middle schools under the new framework. According to the new framework, a little over half of students showed little to no growth in reading achievement and 62% showed little to no growth in math achievement.
However, the system used by the Virginia Department of Education to measure growth has been criticized for using a proprietary calculation that is not made available to educators.
The other categories are Mastery, accounting for 60%, which considers student performance on math, reading, and science assessments and English learner progress; and Readiness, which considers chronic absenteeism and the number of students taking advanced coursework and accounts for 20% of the total score.
The middle school received 46.7 out of 60 possible points for Mastery and 18.7 out of 20 for Readiness.
Caroline High School’s Distinguished rating came in part from how it scored in the Readiness category, where it received 36.3 out of 35 points. “Readiness” at the high school level considers chronic absenteeism, participation in the “3E” (enrollment, employment, enlistment) framework, and the 6-year graduation rate, and accounts for 35% of the school’s total score.
3E points are awarded for students who receive college credit for taking Advanced Placement or dual enrollment courses, participate in work-based learning, earn workforce credentials, or score well on the military ASVAB test.
The high school received 43.1 out of 60 points in the Mastery category, and 13.4 out of 15 points in the Graduation category (which considers the federal four-year graduation rate).
In a press release issued this week, superintendent Sarah Calveric said the division is grateful for all its students and staff and is “especially proud” of Caroline High School’s Distinguished score.
She said the division continues to be focused on growth.
“Although we still have progress to make to ensure every CCPS student and school reaches Virginia’s newly outlined expectations, we remain confident in our team’s expertise, innovation, and unwavering commitment to all Caroline learners,” Calveric said.
Bottom Line
For individual school profiles, visit the Virginia Department of Education page for Caroline County. Top-line scores are presented below.
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