As a resident of southwest Virginia, a parent, and a concerned educator, I oppose the revised accreditation and accountability plan.  The new accountability system discriminates strongly against rural schools where we are often challenged to find math and science teachers even for basic courses, much less advanced ones.   Many of our middle schools are unable to offer the advanced courses that would count towards credit.  If the new system resulted in new funding and support for schools that faced challenges, it conceivably would have some benefit.  However the only purpose of the new plan seems to be to disparage our hard-working teachers, staff, and students.  Creating artificial standards designed to document Virginia schools as failing (the department’s own analysis suggests 70% of Virginia schools would be classified as off-track or in need of support), after the current administration vetoed bills that would have worked to improve our schools, is disingenuous.  This could have severe effects on communities looking to attract employees or businesses, when in the past our public education system has always been a selling point.    

This also creates significant challenges for students who are not native speakers of English and for schools that serve a high proportion of English language learners.  To expect that students newly learning a language would have proficiency enough to have comparable exam scores in other subjects with less than two years in the school system is unrealistic.   The VBOE should be arguing for resources to support these students, not setting them up to fail.

The fact that most of the “public” support for these efforts comes from organizations well-known for their efforts to divert taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into the pockets of private companies seems to be a good indicator of the primary purpose of this attack on public schools.  Please use your positions to support our students and school staff in productive ways, not to needlessly disparage them.