by Todd Truitt
In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin was able to flip the education issue on Democrats to pull off a victory. In 2025, Democrats need to reclaim the education issue to flip the Governor’s mansion back. One way of doing that is by supporting the new statewide public school accountability system, which furthers core Democratic values. If Democrats don’t get out ahead of this issue, Republicans will use it as a political issue.
The Current Broken Accountability System in Virginia
The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to have accountability systems in order to “measure and hold schools and districts responsible for raising student achievement for all students, and to prompt and support improvement where necessary.” However, referring to the current failure by many states to live up to their responsibility, a long-time New York Times editorial board member said recently:
The federal government made a disastrous choice a decade ago when it abandoned [a federal] accountability system (known as No Child Left Behind) that required schools to focus intently on helping the lowest-performing students catch up with their peers. Since [ESSA returned accountability systems to states], the already alarming achievement gaps that separate poor and wealthy children have only widened.
The COVID era demonstrated the failure of Virginia’s combined accountability and accreditation system. Virginia had some of the largest drops on the national NAEP exams, with the lowest performing students suffering the most. And yet, with accountability tied to accreditation, nearly the same number of Virginia schools were accredited last year as there were in 2019 (92% of VA schools in 2019-20 vs. 89% in 2022-23). Continue reading