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| State & Local Education News |
Students continue to improve on Virginia’s statewide tests
The Washington Post
August 16, 2016
Passage rates for Virginia’s statewide standardized tests rose again, with 80 percent of students passing reading and math exams this year.
The results of the Standards of Learning (SOL) exams, Virginia’s version of standardized academic testing, were released Tuesday morning. Passage rates in reading and math rose by one percentage point from last year, meaning 11,500 more students passed the math exam and 8,000 more students passed the reading exam.
Steven R. Staples, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, credited the state’s teachers for the rising passage rates.
“The success of these students — many of whom have struggled in the past — reflects great credit on our teachers, especially given Virginia’s rigorous standards and challenging online assessments,” Staples said.
The state uses its own SOL exams — a state-specific way of measuring how well students understand Virginia curriculum requirements — instead of tests aligned with the Common Core State Standards, the national standards embraced by the Obama administration. Virginia has never adopted the Common Core, but Virginia officials have said that the SOL is as, or more, rigorous than the new national standards and tracks the Common Core very closely in many ways.
Standards of Learning pass rates hold steady across Richmond region, state
Richmond Times Dispatch
August 16, 2016
Student performance on state Standards of Learning tests remained relatively flat in the Richmond metro area last year, with slight district-wide increases on some subjects across the board.
The same was true of districts across the state, according to results released Tuesday morning from the Virginia Department of Education. Officials highlighted a one percentage point increase statewide in the number of students who achieved proficiency in reading, mathematics and science assessments.
“A one-point improvement in mathematics means that approximately 11,500 more students met or exceeded the benchmark for proficiency for their grade or course,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Steven R. Staples stated. “In reading, a one-point increase equals approximately 8,000 students, and in science, more than 6,000."
About 80 percent of Virginia public school students passed reading and math assessments, compared to 79 percent during the 2014-2015 academic year. In science, 83 percent of students passed grade-level or end-of-course tests.
Reading, math scores in state testing improve in most Roanoke and New River valley schools
The Roanoke Times
August 16, 2016
Reading scores in most school districts in the Roanoke and New River valleys showed slight increases this year, mirroring results statewide.
With a few exceptions, most local math scores rose higher than the state average, according to 2015-16 test scores released Tuesday by the Virginia Department of Education.
Statewide, reading, math and science scores rose by 1 percentage point compared with the year before. Social studies and writing scores held steady.
Among local districts:
Roanoke's reading scores improved from 72 percent to 73 percent. Its math scores rose from 88 percent to 89 percent.
Roanoke County's reading scores dropped from 88 percent to 86 percent. Its math scores rose from 88 percent to 89 percent.
Montgomery County's reading scores rose from 83 percent to 84 percent. Its math scores rose from 83 percent to 84 percent.
The test scores show how well students performed on end-of-year tests, which are given to students starting in third grade. Student test scores help determine whether a school is accredited or not. Accreditation results will be released in September.
U.Va. rector appoints committee to review $2.2 billion investment fund
Richmond Times-Dispatch
August 15, 2016
University of Virginia Rector William H. Goodwin appointed an ad hoc committee Monday to take “a fresh and objective” look at the school’s disputed $2.2 billion Strategic Investment Fund.
Goodwin asked for a report back by the board of visitors’ September meeting but made clear he believes a second look will vindicate the fund as a model others soon will follow.
The fund, which has drawn the ire of some state lawmakers, will get its first legislative hearing Aug. 26, when the joint subcommittee on the future of higher education is scheduled to meet, the board was told.
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National & Federal Education News
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Bipartisan Panel of State Lawmakers Agree: NCLB Has Failed US Kids
Common Dreams
August 10, 2016
Confirming what many public education advocates have been saying for years, a new report from a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers declares that the United States has little to show for more than a decade of reform efforts inspired by the controversial No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
The report released Tuesday from the National Conference of State Legislatures, No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State (pdf), charges that "[s]tates have found little success" in developing an effective education system. Indeed, the executive summary reads, "Recent reforms have underperformed because of silver bullet strategies and piecemeal approaches."
Touching on key aspects of NCLB such as high-stakes testing, the report explains:
"In an effort to boost achievement for all students, policymakers have tried a number of approaches and passed a number of state and federal laws. These have included increasing funding, reducing class size, enhancing school choice, improving school technology and teacher quality, more testing and tougher test-based accountability. While some policies have had marginal success in some states or districts, success has not been as widespread as policymakers had hoped."
Education Department Experiments With Student Loan Counseling
U.S. News and World Report
August 12, 2016
The Department of Education announced Friday it is launching a pilot program to test the effectiveness of more flexible loan counseling policies on federal student loan borrowers.
The experiment will allow colleges to require, as a condition of receiving federal student loans, loan counseling to students beyond the statutorily required one-time entrance and one-time exit counseling. Department officials hope to test whether requiring additional loan counseling is effective in boosting academic outcomes and helping students manage their debt.
BACK TO SCHOOL: Enrollment up a bit as kids return to school
U.S. News and World Report
August 16, 2016
ENROLLMENT AND COSTS
About 50 million students are expected to attend public elementary and secondary schools this fall. That's up just slightly from the 2015-16 school year, according to the U.S. Education Department. They'll be taught by some 3.1 million school teachers from pre-kindergarten through high school, with an average student-to-teacher ratio of about 16 students to each teacher. Around 249,000 teachers are new hires this school year.
The growth of charter schools is continuing, with enrollment increasing from 800,000 in 2003 to 2.5 million in 2013, according to government figures. Some 40 states and the District of Columbia reported having about 6,400 charter schools.
The U.S. spends about $11,670 per pupil, on average, on public school education.
About 4.8 million students are expected to attend private school this fall, down slightly from the previous school year.
The National Center for Education Statistics estimates that 3.5 million students, both public and private, will graduate from high school at the end of the school year.
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Back-to-School Season
This month, as more than 1.2 million pupils prepare for their first day of a new K-12 school year and more than half a million college students enroll for the fall semester here in Virginia, we know many of you as educators will be working hard during this “back-to-school” season. This week and next we are sharing from our recently released
2016 Back-to-School Facts and Insights publication which contains a range of data that are particularly relevent as students come back to school.
This week we highlight higher education (next week will be a K-12 focus), including related CEPI polling data (mostly from our 2016 Commonwealth Education Poll ) on the relevant topics of campus safety and university performance, providing links to graphics and charts that our team has compiled. We hope this information is helpful to you as educators in understanding public perception of education and in communicating your work back to the public.
Please contact us if you have any questions and we hope you have a great week.
Sincerely,
CEPI
Higher Education Facts and Insights
Compiled here are answers to some baseline questions about higher education in Virginia.
How many students attend college in Virginia?
Assuming that enrollment this fall semester is similar to the most recent year (528,666 students in Fall 2015), Virginia will have more than half a million students earning college credits from Virginia institutions. Enrollment in 2015-16 was down about 5,000 students from 2014-15, when 534,280 students enrolled that fall semester.
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| Fall Headcount Enrollment (2015-16); Data from SCHEV, available at: http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/E2_Report.asp |
- 208,952 students enrolled part-time (or 39.5%); 319,143 full-time.
- 230,090 students reported their gender as male (or 43.5%); 297,879 as female (56.3%); and 697 students did not report a gender.
- 386,600 students registered as in-state (73.1%) while 142,066 were from outside Virginia.
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| Fall Headcount Enrollment (2015-16); Data from SCHEV, available at: http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/E2_Report.asp |
What schools are the largest (by enrollment) in Virginia?
The largest four-year public institution last year was George Mason University at 34,112 students, about 1,500 students more than the second largest, Virginia Tech (32,663).
Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC) dwarfs both of the largest four-year public institutions with an enrollment last fall of 52,078. This made NVCC the largest, by more than 25,000 students, among the two-year public schools.
Liberty University, with its relatively recent significant expansion into online degrees, led private four-year schools (and all schools) with 80,494 students last fall. The next largest is Regent University, with 7,492 students enrolled.
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CEPI Poll Snapshots - Insights on Higher Ed
Drawn from our 2015-16
Commonwealth Education Poll.
(The margin of error for the poll is ± 4.2 percentage points.)
Topic: As parents drop their children off at college campuses in Virginia, are they worried about their safety?
Poll Insights: The 2015-16 Commonwealth Education Poll found that 64% of parents who had a child at college felt that college and university campuses in the commonwealth were safe or very safe. A slightly higher portion (67%) of all adults in Virginia felt the same.
A larger portion of respondents from Northern Virginia said campuses were safe or very safe (75%) than did respondents in South Central, Tidewater and Northwest. In those three regions between 61% and 66% said campuses were safe or very safe.
Expertise on Campus Safety at VCU’s Wilder School
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Christina Mancini, Ph.D., associate professor of Criminal Justice; phone: (804) 828-4223; email:
cnmancini@vcu.edu. Mancini’s current research focuses on policies for reducing campus crime and sexual assault.
Topic: Does the public agree with current policy on reporting campus sexual assaults?
Poll Insights: In the 2015 session of the General Assembly, policymakers invested significant time in crafting new legislation regarding the reporting of sexual assaults on college campuses. The policy adopted required any university employee who becomes aware of a sexual assault accusation to report it to the school’s Title IX investigator as soon as he or she can reasonably do so and also required the university, if it was determined that the safety of the campus is at risk, to report the allegation to the police, even if the victim did not want it reported.
This year’s
Commonwealth Education Poll found that a strong majority (86%) supported the current policy either strongly (58%) or somewhat (28%).
Parents of a Virginia college student were more likely to strongly support the current policy (65%) than were non-parents (55%).
However, the age group most represented on college campuses—those 18 to 34—was the least likely to strongly support the current policy as only 47% provided that response. For comparison, 65% of those 35 to 44, 64% of those 45 to 64 and 62% of those 65 and older strongly supported the current policy.
Expertise on Sexual Assault at VCU’s Wilder School
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Christina Mancini, Ph.D., associate professor of Criminal Justice; phone: (804) 828-4223; email:
cnmancini@vcu.edu. Mancini’s current research focuses on policies for reducing campus crime and sexual assault.
Topic: As parents drop their children off at college campuses in Virginia, do they think their students are gaining the skills that are useful in obtaining a job?
Poll Insights: The
2015-16 Commonwealth Education Poll found that 72% of parents who had a child at college think that college and university campuses in the commonwealth were doing a good job in providing the skills useful in obtaining a job. A slightly lower portion (68%) of all adults in Virginia think the same.
Expertise on Educational Policy at VCU’s Wilder School
Topic: Many businesses near campuses welcome the return of college students to school. What does the general public think about the economic impact of colleges?
Poll Insights: The
2015-16 Commonwealth Education Poll found a clear majority (60%) of respondents think that colleges and universities impacted their local economy “a great deal” or “quite a lot.” Only 33% said “not much” or “not at all.”
Factors of education level and geographic region both showed significant differences in responses. Though a majority in all regions placed the level of impact at a great deal or quite a lot, respondents living in Northern Virginia (at 67%) were more likely to think there was a significant impact, compared to respondents from the West (62%), the Northwest (58%), South Central (57%) and the Tidewater region (55%).
Expertise on Educational Policy at VCU’s Wilder School
(To read the full poll, visit our
website.)
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