Amherst County educators and school board members spent an extended portion of their October meeting on a presentation about the new Virginia accountability framework and recently approved changes to Standards of Learning (SOL) cut scores, and how the division plans to support students and staff through the transition.

Mister Neighbors of the division’s instructional team told the board the state has separated “accreditation” (compliance and reporting) from “accountability” (student performance) and has instituted a broader 0–100 accountability score that incorporates mastery, growth, readiness and other measures. He said Amherst staff had not yet received the state’s final public summary reports but had used the division’s data and the state’s published framework to produce preliminary, internal calculations to help planning.

Doctor Wells and Mister Neighbors emphasized that the new framework counts “all” students in performance calculations and incorporates multiple measures such as chronic absenteeism, graduation rates, growth and a high-school “readiness” band that includes Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, CTE benchmarks and career/college assessments such as the ASVAB.

Doctor Wells described Board of Education action to change the cut scores for proficiency from the long-standing 400 scale to higher numeric thresholds. For example, in reading, some of the new cut scores cited at the meeting included roughly 444 for early grades and about 479 for some high-school EOC (end-of-course) expectations; math cut scores cited ranged in the mid-440s. The division and the state are also discussing a phased rollout option that would add an “approaching” category between basic and proficient and increase cut scores gradually over four or five years to moderate immediate impacts.

Board members pressed staff about how much the division could compute on its own and what must wait for state calculations. Mister Neighbors said the division could project many pieces but that federal identification (TSI/CSI/ATSI) and some growth calculations depend on comparative statewide data the division does not control.

Using Amherst data and a direct apples-to-apples application of the new cut scores, staff showed sample impacts that would reduce passing percentages considerably in some subjects if applied immediately: reading and math pass rates would fall in several grades under a straight 1:1 shift. However, Neighbors said the overall framework scores would be less sharply affected because the framework allocates credit across more components; he estimated a typical division framework score decline of about five to six points in a straight 1:1 comparison.

Mister Neighbors outlined the division’s instructional response: a menu of supports accessible to school leaders, reconfigured liaison relationships in central office to increase in-school support and targeted technical assistance in literacy, math and science. He said the division had met with building leaders throughout the summer and fall and is trying to ensure supports are flexible and responsive to teacher-identified needs.

Staff warned the board they are “cautiously optimistic” about avoiding federal identification at the TSI/CSI level but said final determinations await the state’s comparative calculations. If federal identification is assigned to any Amherst schools, Neighbors said the division would present plans for additional support to the board.

Wider items linked to the accountability work included a request to form a math textbook review committee. Miss Matheny asked the board for a school-board member to participate in that committee; staff said some currently used textbooks are not on the state-approved list and that a new adoption would improve vertical alignment across grades.

Board members and staff repeatedly stressed that the instructional direction adopted over the summer remains the division’s working plan and that changes to metrics from the state should not alter the division’s stated priorities for consistent instruction and focused supports.