The Virginia Board of Education voted 8–1 on August 27 to change two of the four summative ratings that Virginia will use to communicate school performance this fall, replacing “Off Track” with “Approaching Expectations,” and “On Track” with “Meets Expectations.” The change will affect the school ratings based on 2025–26 data, which the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) expects to release in October.
The four ratings of schools by the School Performance and Support Framework (SPSF) for this fall will be: Distinguished; Meets Expectations; Approaching Expectations; and Needs Intensive Support.
State Superintendent Jenna Conway and the Board agreed that the “Approaching Expectations” label should be revisited within a year, before the Fall 2027 ratings. The VDOE plans to seek broader feedback—including from families—on alternatives such as “Partially Meets Expectations” or “Needs Support.”
Legislature Directed Review of Labels
The change follows a December 2025 report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) of Virginia’s new accountability system and the subsequent enactment of HB 643. JLARC found the basic structure of the SPSF was sound and an improvement over Virginia’s previous accreditation system. But it also found, among other things, that the performance labels could be clearer. In particular, JLARC noted that “On Track” and “Off Track” were inaccurate as they implied a multi-year trajectory even though the summative rating measures a single school year.
HB 643 required the Board to consider new terminology that would more clearly communicate school performance as part of a continuous scale. It specifically identified “exceeds standard,” “meets standard,” “partially meets standard,” and “does not meet standard” as options for consideration.
Timing Drove Choice for this Fall
The administration’s proposal for “Approaching Expectations” had a practical rationale. Virginia already uses “Approaching Expectations” as part of its Virginia Quality Birth to Five (VQB5) rating system for publicly-funded preschools, Head Starts, child care centers, and family day home programs. In addition, the label “Off Track” had drawn particular criticism from the public school system’s professional constituencies—school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers and their professional association.
Numerous Board members expressed a preference for “Partially Meets Expectations” instead of “Approaching Expectations.” But “Approaching Expectations” had already gone out for public review in June, and there was little time to solicit and weigh a different option before October.
Board member Amber Northern voted against the change, arguing that “Approaching” still suggested a trajectory rather than a snapshot of one year’s performance. Board member Ida McPherson said the word failed to convey urgency for underserved students in struggling schools, especially in an age of artificial intelligence.
Part of Broader Push for Higher Standards
The label proposal had been introduced at the Board’s June meeting, which was dominated by a separate proposal to delay the phase-in of Virginia’s higher English and Math standardized test proficiency thresholds, or cut scores. The Board rejected that delay and kept the existing four-year phase-in.
At the August meeting, the administration provided additional details about its plan to implement higher cut scores according to the existing 4-year phase-in plan. Superintendent Conway expressed a strong commitment to moving forward with this phase-in plan, and higher expectations in general.
Public records show that superintendents at the Virginia Association of School Superintendents’ April conference had pushed VDOE leadership to slow down the scheduled cut score increases—the nation’s lowest English and Math cut scores. That history underscores a recurring tension: the preferences of school system leaders on expectations and transparency do not always match those of families, or match the best interests of the school system.
Looking Beyond Public School Professional Constituencies
Superintendent Conway noted that the Board was voting on “Approaching Expectations” for this fall and indicated that the terminology would be revisited in less than a year. In the meantime, she said VDOE would seek feedback from a broad range of stakeholders, including families, on options for the rating going forward.
That broader outreach matters because public school professionals are only one constituency. Education Trust, a national education civil-rights organization, explicitly recommends that states provide a clear overall summative rating for families to understand how schools are serving students and where groups of underserved. Northern made a similar point: she was unsurprised that “Approaching” polled well with school system groups because it sounds more positive than “Partially Meets Expectations” or “Needs Support.” Their approval, she said, “in no way implies that [the label is] doing the best for kids and families.”
That concern is not unique to Virginia. Jorge Elorza, CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, recently put it bluntly on student outcome transparency: “The people and institutions responsible for telling parents the truth have too often chosen to protect themselves instead.” The result, he argued, can be “a system built to reassure the adults in the room rather than serve the kids in it.”
