Some unfortunate Virginia Department of Education administrator will be tasked with the job of poring through the public responses to proposed rules for granting and denying public-school accreditation. I would pay good money to watch his hair catch on fire when he reads the comments submitted by John Butcher, author of Cranky’s Blog. Here’s how John summarizes the accreditation process:
“VA. Code § 22.1-253.13:3.A provides:
“[The Boar of Education’s] regulations establishing standards for accreditation shall ensure that the accreditation process is transparent and based on objective measurements. …
“The current accreditation process is in wholesale violation of that law:
- The Board increases pass rates at some high schools based on the performance of students who do not attend those schools;
- The Board fails to adjust accreditation scores for a major factor known to affect test scores, poverty, and the Board has abandoned its measure of academic progress, the Student Growth Percentile, that is not affected by poverty;
- The Board’s indifference to misclassification of students as “disabled” and the abuse of relaxed testing procedures for those students continues; and
- The Board’s opaque and byzantine ‘adjustments’ increase accreditation.”
Read the short version of his comments here. Or read the full and unadulterated version here.