Tag Archives: Matt Hurt

by Matt Hurt

Chris Braunlich (Bait and Switch: Reform Reverts to Mo’ Money) brought up many good points about some bills that propose to increase teacher salaries. However, it seems necessary to add some additional context to help flesh out this conversation/debate. It appears that many don’t fully understand the gravity of the situation.

On paper, the teacher vacancy rates seems to have stabilized from 2023 to 2024 rather than increasing as they had in years prior. The data below were obtained from the Staffing and Vacancy Report Build-A-Table on the VDOE website, the dataset for which only dates back to 2022.

Continue reading →

by Matt Hurt

According to the SOL data from the end of the 2022-2023 school year, thirty-four Virginia schools (of three hundred seventy-seven) in the Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP) consortium achieved the highest level (Level I) for all academic indicators the state uses for accreditation. The intended purpose of these performance benchmarks is to ensure we effectively assure success for all students, regardless of subgroup status.  The Level I benchmarks for the academic indicators for school accreditation ratings are listed below.

English Performance

• Overall school combined rate (combination of students who scored proficient or advanced and students who were not proficient but made significant gains towards proficiency) of at least 75%;
• Each subgroup (for which there are at least 30 students in the subgroup enrolled in the school) must also meet the 75% combined rate.  Subgroups used for accreditation purposes are as follows: Asian students, Black students, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, Hispanic students, students with disabilities, White students, and multiracial students.

Math Performance

• Overall school combined rate (combination of students who scored proficient or advanced and students who were not proficient but made significant gains towards proficiency) of at least 70%;
• Each subgroup (for which there are at least 30 students in the subgroup enrolled in the school) must also meet the 70% combined rate.  Subgroups used for accreditation purposes are as follows: Asian students, Black students, economically disadvantaged students, English learners, Hispanic students, students with disabilities, White students, and multiracial students.

Science Performance

• Overall rate of students who scored proficient or advanced of at least 70%.

Once these outcomes were discovered, several of these schools were visited prior to teachers leaving for summer break.  Schools with the highest poverty rates and/or highest minority enrollments were targeted since time only allowed for eight school visits (Bessie Weller Elementary- Staunton City, Highland View Elementary- Bristol City, Saltville Elementary- Smyth County, Sugar Grove Elementary- Smyth County, St. Paul Elementary- Wise County, Tazewell High School- Tazewell County, Tazewell Intermediate School- Tazewell County, Woolwine Elementary- Patrick County).  During these visits, teachers and principals shared the factors that they felt were most significant in their success.  The following narrative is intended to communicate the most common factors for success noted by these dedicated educators.

Continue reading →

by Matt Hurt

In a previous paper (Tales of Student Success in 2023) the successes of four of the top five divisions that realized the greatest improvement in SOL pass rates in 2023 were highlighted. Since then, I was afforded the opportunity to visit Greensville County, the division that realized the greatest improvement in Virginia. During this visit teachers and administrators outlined the aspects in their division which they felt lead to these significant improvements. These stories mirror those in the other divisions previously discussed.

Table 1: Top SOL Pass Rate Improvement Divisions from 2022 and 2023

The educators in Greensville County attributed  their significant improvement in student outcomes to a number of factors. They felt that the increased focus on relationships, expectations, leadership, and focusing on the positives helped them to ensure more success for their students than in the past.

Teachers related that they had invested more heavily in relationships with their students over the last few years. As in some other rural areas, these teachers reported that they were mostly from the county, but may not have lived in the same communities as their students. Through discussion with peers, teachers began to consider that some students live in situations that are significantly different from their middle-class experiences. Some of the teachers were familiar with these situations and shared this perspective with others. Continue reading →

by Matt Hurt

Virginia Standards of Learning test results remained rather flat from 2022 to 2023 (see Table 1).  This occurred despite the fact that many considered the pandemic over.  There were many contributing factors, such as (but certainly not limited to) worsening teacher shortages and continued high rates of chronic absenteeism.  However, among Virginia’s one hundred and thirty-one public school divisions, there were certainly some success stories.

Table 1: Virginia SOL Results for 2022 and 2023

Among Virginia’s public school divisions from 2022 to 2023, overall SOL pass rate differences ranged from 8.94% to -9.19%.  Oftentimes it is also useful to compare division rankings from one year to the next as relative measures of performance tend to control for a number of factors.  The division that earned the greatest pass rate rank increase surpassed the performance of thirty-seven other divisions in 2023, while the division with the greatest decrease declined forty-four positions. Continue reading →

by Matt Hurt

Twenty five years ago, the demand for teaching positions was not sufficient to supply the employment needs of newly-minted teachers. It was common in many divisions for teachers to serve for at least a year or two in an hourly instructional aide position before finally earning the coveted teaching contract. For whatever reasons, the teacher pipeline has dwindled to a trickle, and divisions can no longer be as particular when hiring teachers. If the candidate has a pulse, passes the background check, and has a provisional license (or at least close to it), they’re handed a contract. In far too many instances, divisions cannot find enough folks who meet these basic minimum qualifications to fill all of their vacant positions.

Many prerequisites must be in place to ensure positive student outcomes, not least of which is a teacher in the classroom. As of October 2021, 2.83% of teaching positions in Virginia remained unfilled, according to statistics conveyed to the Board of Education on September 15, 2022. The image below was shown to illustrate how the unfilled teacher positions were distributed throughout the state.

The Virginia Department of Education recently launched a new data tool (Staffing and Vacancy Report Build-A-Table) which allows anyone to view the number of positions as well as the number of positions that were unfilled at the time the data were collected. This tool should prove useful to track this problem over time, as well as to measure the impacts that this problem has on student outcomes.

Based on the statistics provided in the staffing and vacancy dataset as well as the SOL Build-A-Table data from 2022, there was a significant, negative relationship between those statistics. The rate of teacher vacancies accounted for 22% of the variance in SOL pass rates among the divisions in Virginia in 2022. This was greater than the relationships that many folks typically think impact scores the most, such as economically disadvantaged enrollment (18%), black student enrollment (17%), and white student enrollment (19%- positive correlation). Continue reading →

Matt Hurt, director of the Comprehensive Instructional Program coalition of rural school districts, provided detailed feedback on a recent post, “School Districts’ COVID Recovery Varied Widely.” His comments contribute significantly to the discussion of the impact of  COVID school closures in 2020-21 on Standards of Learning test scores in 2021-22, so, I republish them with minor modifications here. — JAB

by Matt Hurt

According to my calculations, 47% of the variance among overall division pass rate differences in 2021 was due to the amount of in-person instruction offered combined with the poverty rate of the division.

When I discussed this with our teachers and administrators, it seemed to explain a lot. The way that they put it, kids of affluent parents tended to have the supports in the home to make sure the kids attended to their work when they were participating in virtual instruction. Kids who live in poverty were much less likely to have anyone standing over them making them do their work. Given this situation, these kids found much more engaging activities in which to invest their time than school work. I suspect that the amount of in-person instruction in 2021 did affect the 2022 outcomes, but I haven’t had the time to calculate that yet. Continue reading →

by Matt Hurt

Much controversy surrounded Superintendent Jillian Balow’s report (Our Commitment to Virginians) in May 2022. While I disagree with a few of the details included in the report, I agree with (and have written about) many of the main concerns that were presented. If we want to have the best educational program in the country, we need to increase expectations and accountability. Luckily, Virginia laid a solid educational foundation in the 1990s which provides the basis which can help us produce the most successful students in the country.  

First, Virginia developed (and continues to update) a set of grade-level standards which ensured a continuum of skill attainment from year to year. These standards were sequenced to build upon prerequisite skills from the prior year, are very well aligned vertically, and the skills expectations in each grade are reasonable for the vast majority of students to master. While some may argue that this system might hold some students back from progressing at a quicker rate, there is nothing in the regulations which states that schools can’t accelerate students through this progression.

Second, Virginia has supplied educators with curricular documents (curriculum frameworks) which fully communicate exactly what students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do. Continue reading →