Anonymous wrote:are SOLs not going to matter anymore? I thought I read somewhere that they're still going to be used for individual teacher evaluation as opposed to school evaluation, but I can't remember if that's only for the bottom 5% of schools or for all of them.
Are SOLs still going to be used as one of the criteria for promotion in high school?

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/news/news_releases/2012/jun29.shtml

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release: June 29, 2012
Contact: Charles Pyle, Director of Communications, (804) 371-2420
Julie C. Grimes, Communications Manager, (804) 225-2775


NCLB Waiver Approved by US Department of Education

Flexibility Plan Does Away with Complex & Unrealistic "AYP" Objectives

Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright announced today that Virginia schools and school divisions will no longer have to meet arbitrary and unrealistic No Child Left Behind (NCLB) benchmarks in reading and mathematics or the federal law’s mandate that all students – regardless of circumstance – achieve grade-level proficiency by 2014. The flexibility is the result of United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s decision today to approve the state Board of Education’s application for a waiver from certain provisions of NCLB.

[...]

The waiver allows the state Board of Education to establish challenging but attainable goals for increasing overall student achievement and the achievement of students in demographic subgroups. Annual benchmarks will be set with the goal of reducing the failure rate in reading and mathematics by 50 percent – overall and of each student subgroup – within six years.

[...]

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) will continue to report – as it has since 1999 under the Standards of Learning (SOL) program – annual school accreditation ratings in September based on overall achievement in English, mathematics, science and history and high school graduation and completion.

Virginia schools and school divisions, however, will no longer receive annual "Adequate Yearly Progress" or AYP ratings. Under the approved waiver, information on schools meeting and not meeting the new, annual federal benchmarks for narrowing proficiency gaps will be reported separately in August. VDOE also will report on low-performing schools identified as "priority" and "focus" schools and recognize high-performing Title I schools as "reward" schools.

[...]

Also under the waiver, school divisions must implement the performance and evaluation standards for teachers and principals approved last year by the Board of Education. The standards require that 40 percent of a teacher’s or principal’s evaluation be based on student academic progress.

School divisions unprepared to implement the new performance standards by the start of the 2012-2013 school year must prepare a corrective action plan describing how the standards will be implemented by the beginning of 2013-2014.

###

There is basically a new set of standards that VA schools will have to meet. The standards even include subgroups, just like NCLB. The main difference is that they not longer have the expectation of ALL subgroups at 100% passing in all subjects by 2014. They still have to show "progress" but most schools will meet this. If they don't meet it, they'll go into "transformation" mode. I think the last report I read said something like 40% of teacher evaluation would be based on test scores, but again, not with the expectation of 100% passing. One of these days, in my spare time (HAH) I thinking I'll go over to the website for VDOE and see if there is a place I can read the new plan.

are SOLs not going to matter anymore? I thought I read somewhere that they're still going to be used for individual teacher evaluation as opposed to school evaluation, but I can't remember if that's only for the bottom 5% of schools or for all of them.
Are SOLs still going to be used as one of the criteria for promotion in high school?