by Todd Truitt

In December 2025, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) issued new school report cards for the 2024-25 school year under the new school accountability system.

The school report cards provide an overview of schools’ performance under the new system, as well as summarize such results into 1 of 4 summative ratings: Distinguished; On Track; Off Track; or Needs Intensive Support.

The new system looks at various factors largely prescribed by federal law, such as: academic proficiency and growth for elementary and middle schools; academic proficiency for high schools; chronic absenteeism for all schools; career and college readiness for high schools; and graduation rates for high schools. More information on the scoring system for such ratings are available on the VDOE’s website here.

As stated in the December 2025 (generally positive) report of Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) on the new school accountability system: “the [new system] is an improvement over the prior system…and has design elements that more precisely and comprehensively measure performance than the prior system.” JLARC said no major revisions to the new system are needed, while suggesting various “refinements”. (Matt Hurt of the Comprehensive Instructional Program wrote about some tweaks he would like to see.)

The JLARC report notably found no meaningful relationship between a school’s per-pupil spending and a school’s performance rating under the new system (with the lowest rated schools spending the most on average):

You can find the new school report cards on Virginia School Quality Profiles as noted in the example below:

For a summary of each school district’s schools’ ratings, you can find such scores on the school district’s profile in Virginia School Quality Profiles as noted in the example below:

The new school report cards are only in PDF format as the VDOE is in the process of updating the school report card website over this fiscal year. Until such website is updated, running comparisons of accountability system results requires manual manipulation of such data. Conversely, the ability for people on a state’s portal to easily run comparisons of schools (including by school type, size and demographics) is important from a civil rights perspective, according to the leading education civil rights group The Education Trust.

The VDOE did issue region reports here, with the summary map as follows:

Lastly, as part of the new accountability system, Virginia separated accreditation from accountability like other states. As stated by the VDOE in its latest report on the accreditation system: