I am writing in support of the revisions to the Standards of Accreditation regulations for the proposed School Performance and Support Framework. The current accreditation system is not transparently nor accurately tracking school performance. Despite the learning loss in student achievement scores during and post-COVID, the overwhelming majority of Virginia’s schools are nonetheless deemed to be performing at the highest level. Families and communities need an honest and transparent accounting of school performance so that they can advocate for improvements within their schools. I support the Framework’s emphasis on mastery over growth. While growth is important, we need students to actually achieve proficiency, not just journey toward it. I also support giving chronic absenteeism a meaningful weight in the performance measure. In-school time is one of the largest impacts on student achievement. If we want students to progress academically, we need them to be at school. I also strongly support the inclusion of middle school advanced coursework in the performance measure, particularly for math. We want to incentivize schools to challenge students to their fullest potential. Lastly, we need to find ways to increase schools’ accountability for newly arrived English Learners to ensure that they are being well served and are building content knowledge as well as English proficiency. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments and for the excellent work that has been done with the School Performance and Support Framework