Arlington Public Schools thanks the Board of Education for this opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed standards. While there are aspects of this proposal that we disagree with, we support the idea of separating accountability from accreditation. Measuring legal compliance is different from measuring the quality of a school’s teaching, and it will be helpful going forward to have those separate measures in place.

However, we have serious concerns about some of the changes to the standards of accountability. The heavy weighting of mastery over growth is far out of line with most other states, and threatens to classify schools based on the students they admit rather than the skills they teach. Additionally, reducing the number of semesters before English Learners (EL) are counted from eleven semesters to three semesters is inconsistent with best practices. While it has been noted that using three semesters is the federal standard and is the one used by many other states, it is important to also note that the federal standard allows for students in their second and third years to be measured based on their growth rather than their mastery. Since most other states do weight growth much more heavily than is done in this proposal, Virginia’s practice of judging fourth semester English Learners based mostly on their performance on exams in a language they are still attempting to learn would differ greatly from other states’ approaches.

We appreciate the desire to ensure that English Learners master the English language as soon as possible and we share in that commitment. But expecting students in their second year of learning English to perform at a level consistent with their native English-speaking peers is unrealistic. We believe that growth should be weighted as much as mastery, and we believe that English Learners should be given eleven semesters before their scores count alongside other students. But if the Board is committed to the proposed approach, then it should at least allow for students in their early years of learning English to be counted based on their growth, which would properly consider the fact that they are still learning the language. This could be done by weighting WIDA scores more heavily and by giving more weight to growth measures relative to mastery measures for EL students.

We agree with the Board’s goal of getting English Learners up to fluency in English as soon as can be done. However, the proposal set forward would unfairly categorize schools with large numbers of EL students as struggling based largely on the students they serve rather than the education they provide. We urge you to reconsider and to find a better way to achieve our shared objectives. Thank you again for your consideration of our feedback.