CHAPTER 649

An Act to require the Board of Education to consider certain changes to its School Performance and Support Framework; report.

[H 643]

Approved April 13, 2026

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. § 1. The Board of Education (the Board) shall consider the following changes to the School Performance and Support Framework (the Framework) adopted by the Board in order to implement the School Accountability standards set forth in Part VIII (8VAC20-132-60 et seq. of the Virginia Administrative Code) of the Virginia Standards of Accreditation:

1. Develop and apply new school performance label terminology that more clearly communicates school performance as part of a continuous scale. In developing such terminology, the Board shall consider labels such as exceeds standard, meets standard, partially meets standard, and does not meet standard or substantially similar descriptive school performance terminology.

2. Amend 8VAC20-132-280 of the Virginia Administrative Code and such other regulations and rules as may be necessary to provide that (i) any school with a federal Comprehensive Support and Improvement designation shall be labeled as a school in the lowest performance category in the Framework, (ii) no school with a federal Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI) designation for one year shall be labeled in the highest performance category in the Framework, and (iii) no school with a federal Additional Targeted Support and Improvement designation or TSI designation for one or more of the same subgroups for two consecutive school years that scores in the second highest performance category in the Framework shall be labeled as a school in either of the two highest performance categories in the Framework.

3. Reduce from 0.75 to 0.5 the points awarded in mastery index calculations for students who score "Fail/Does Not Meet Proficiency" on assessments with three performance levels.

4. Rebalance the weight assigned to growth, at least equally with proficiency, to more fully account for each school's contribution to student learning.

5. Cap the total number of points that a high school is permitted to receive (i) as a whole or (ii) for any individual student pursuant to the 3E Framework established to calculate the readiness indicator for high schools (3E Readiness).

6. Award points for student achievement under the enlistment category of 3E Readiness in a per student amount that is more commensurate with the time and effort required for students to demonstrate achievement in order to earn points in the enrollment and employment categories.

7. Score the English language proficiency (ELP) progress indicator based on a performance index that awards (i) partial credit for students who demonstrate progress but fall short of the growth target and (ii) extra credit for students who demonstrate significant progress above the growth target.

8. Proportionally redistribute the weight for the ELP progress indicator across all other indicators for any school that does not have a sufficient number of enrolled English learner students to include the ELP progress indicator in its summative score.

9. Submit to the federal Department of Education an amendment to its Consolidated State Plan pursuant to the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (P.L. 114-95), to select the exception under § 1111(b)(3)(a)(ii) and, if such amendment is approved, exclude any recently arrived English learner who has been enrolled in a public elementary or middle school for less than 12 months from such school's (i) reading and mathematics proficiency indicator calculations until such student's third year in the school and (ii) reading and mathematics growth indicator calculations until such student's second year in the school.

10. Establish a timeline within which it will, after each change required pursuant to subdivisions 1 through 9 has been implemented, develop and apply new scoring thresholds for assigning school performance labels that are unique to each school level—elementary, middle, and high school—and result in relatively comparable proportions of elementary, middle, and high schools receiving each school performance label.

2. That the Department of Education (the Department) shall develop a comprehensive plan and timeline to facilitate the Board of Education's work to consider and implement changes and improvements to the School Performance and Support Framework, including those changes and improvements described in the first enactment of this act. Such plan and timeline shall also include information regarding how the Department will make preliminary results for each public school for the immediately preceding school year available to each local school division prior to the start of the following school year, including, for each public school in the local school division, the anticipated (i) federal identification status and (ii) preliminary school performance label. Such plan and timeline shall be submitted to the Chairs of the House Committee on Education and the Senate Committee on Education and Health by August 1, 2026.