12 Henrico schools federally identified as needing more support for at-risk students
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Five additional Henrico schools have been listed by the Virginia Department of Education for 2023-2024 as federally identified for needing more support for certain student groups.
Brookland Middle, Cashell Donahoe Elementary, Harold Macon Ratcliffe Elementary, Jacob L. Adams Elementary, and L. Douglas Wilder Middle have been added this school year to the VDOE’s list of Henrico schools at which at-risk students are struggling. The seven Henrico schools listed for 2022-2023 were listed again this year: Elko Middle, Fair Oaks Elementary, Fairfield Middle, Glen Lea Elementary, Highland Springs Elementary, John Rolfe Middle, and Laburnum Elementary.
(Click here to view information released by the VDOE on Henrico’s federally-identified schools.)
Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the VDOE must use a federally-approved process each year to identify schools where the entire student body or certain student groups have low performances on reading and math assessments, high rates of chronic absenteeism, and where English Learners struggle to improve on proficiency exams. Federally-identified schools will then be allocated Title I School Improvement funds by the state.
Among the 12 Henrico schools identified under the act, three schools – Fair Oaks Elementary, Glen Lea Elementary, and Highland Springs Elementary – were designated as needing “comprehensive support,” meaning that these schools were among the lowest 5% in academic performance among Title I schools in Virginia for 2022-2023.
The other nine schools were identified as needing “targeted support” or “additional targeted support,” as certain student groups in these schools such as Black or White students or students with disabilities demonstrated low pass rates and little improvement on state assessments.
Students’ performance on Virginia’s Standards of Learning assessments in reading and math factor into schools’ federal identification as needing support. Last school year, only 35% of students at Highland Springs Elementary passed their reading SOLs while only 27% passed math SOLs. Similarly, Glen Lea Elementary had a pass rate of 48% in reading and 34% in math, while Fair Oaks Elementary had a pass rate of 42% in reading and only 24% in math.
Other schools witnessed certain student groups perform poorly on SOL tests compared to the rest of the student population. At Fairfield Middle, only 18% of students with disabilities passed reading and math SOLs. At Laburnum Elementary, the pass rate among students with disabilities was only 5% for reading and math.
The 12 schools also had high rates of chronic absenteeism, with several schools reporting that almost a third of the student population was chronically absent.
The VDOE will provide all 247 of the state’s federally-identified schools with academic, staffing professional development, and school climate support from the Office of School Quality. Only 112 schools in Virginia were federally-identified as needing support last year.
The increase is most likely due to the state Board of Education’s efforts since 2022 to raise expectations for performance in reading and math and to include measures of schools’ learning loss and chronic absenteeism when identifying schools that need support, according to VBOE President Grace Turner Creasey.
“We knew that increasing expectations and confronting chronic absenteeism head-on would yield some not-so-comfortable information about the state of some of our schools,” she said. “But to best serve every student and every school in the Commonwealth, we must first identify struggling schools and then provide targeted supports to get every school and student back on track for success.”
So far, the VDOE has not allocated any new funds to the identified Henrico schools but will make supports available to all schools “immediately,” according to the VDOE’s Feb. 23 press release.
Several intervention tactics have already been identified for the seven Henrico schools that were also listed last year, such as individualized interventions in vocabulary, phonological awareness, comprehension, and decoding for reading and explicit instruction focused on problem solving, word problems, and visual representation of mathematical concepts for math.
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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.
