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Proposed Standards of Quality Changes and Their Fiscal Impact

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sherlockj
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by James C. Sherlock

Dan Gecker, President, VBOE – picture credit: VBOE

This essay will present the changes proposed to Virginia public school Standards of Quality proposed by the Board of Education and put forward in identical School Equity and Staffing Act bills in the General Assembly.  

They represent very significant change.

I have annotated each change in law in that bill with its estimated FY 2021 fiscal impact on the state budget. 

You will note that localities will have to provide matching funds based upon the current based on each division’s local composite index. The actual fiscal impact to local school divisions is indeterminate at this time.

The two identical bills being vetted in this session are:

  • HB1929 (Aird).  Current status: Reported from Education 21-Y 1-N. In Appropriations.
  • SB1257 (McLellan) Current Status: Referred to Committee on Education and Health; assigned Public Education subcommittee

The bills are based on the Dec 1, 2020 recommendations by the Board of Education. That document can be consulted for background on the recommendations. Dan Gecker (pictured), the Board President, ran for the state senate in 2015 as a Democrat and lost a close race to Glen Sturtevant.

Each provision is annotated below with the state budget implications as estimated by the Department of Education and provided in the Department of Planning and Budget 2021 Fiscal Impact Statement for this legislation. A budget amendment will be necessary.

From that fiscal impact statement: 

Based on HB1800/SB1100 as introduced for the 2021 General Assembly Session, the Department of Education estimates an additional state cost of $462.3 million in the first year to implement the provisions of this bill.

I have to assume that that cost will go up. The VDOE is unlikely to  have estimated the cost of a full year of a system fully operational with these changes implemented when they know that it will start very slowly due to significant transition challenges (see OBSERVATIONS below).

Those challenges include:

Local school divisions would have to provide the local share required to match any additional state funds based on each division’s local composite index. The actual fiscal impact to local school divisions is indeterminate at this time.

proposed Changes to current law

§ 22.1-253.13:1. Standard 1. Instructional programs supporting the Standards of Learning and other educational objectives. 

Changes are:

  • Establish within the Department of Education a unit to facilitate the development of relationships between school divisions and business communities to ensure all high school students will have access to meaningful work experiences such as internships, externships and other work-based learning experiences. +$1,231,677
  • Establish within the Department of Education a unit to develop and implement a statewide mentorship program to support all new principals and principals of schools not meeting the standards established by the Board. +$1,237,677

§ 22.1-253.13:2. Standard 2. Instructional, administrative, and support personnel

The Standards of Quality re-prescribed by the Board of Education on September 17, 2020, include the following changes to Standard 2:

Equity Fund + $61,904,984

Consolidating the At-Risk Add On and Prevention, Intervention, and Remediation funds into a single Equity Fund within the SOQ, which consolidates and expands the At-Risk Add On and Prevention, Intervention, and Remediation funds to distribute resources based on the division-wide free lunch rate.  School divisions would use the funds to (1) provide for additional instructional or specialized student support positions; (2) support programs for students who are educationally at-risk or need prevention, intervention, and remediation; or (3) provide targeted compensation adjustments to assist in recruiting and retaining experienced teachers in high poverty schools.

Equitable distribution of teachers (fiscal impact not separately estimated)

Requiring school boards to equitably distribute experienced, effective teachers and other personnel among all of its schools, avoiding creating concentrations of ineffective teachers in certain schools.

Teacher Leader / Teacher Mentor +$111,370,068

Establishing a new Teacher Leader program, and expanding the existing Teacher Mentor program, whereby additional compensation and additional time is provided during the instructional day for locally-designated staff to serve in leadership and mentorship program roles. 

Teacher leaders support all teachers through peer-level leadership, observation, consultation, and coordination of mentorship programs and professional development. 

Teacher mentors (i) assist new teachers with a successful transition into the teaching profession and (ii) ensure adequate supports are in place for new teachers.  

To support these programs and roles, school boards shall provide full-time equivalent positions based upon the following ratios:

  • One position for every 15 first, second, and third year teachers, or fraction thereof; and 
  • One position for every 50 teachers with four or more years of experience.

School boards shall not utilize these positions to fill teaching positions, or to serve school administrator functions, such as coordination of student discipline or testing.

Instructional staff filling these full-time equivalent positions shall be provided a compensation adjustment of at least 20 percent of the state-recognized statewide prevailing salary.

Every teacher with less than three years of teaching experience shall be assigned a teacher mentor for their first three years of teaching. Such teachers shall be provided one hour of release time from classroom instruction per week to collaborate with their teacher mentor.

K-3 Class Size Reduction (fiscal impact not separately estimated) 

Moving the K-3 Class Size Reduction program into the Standards of Quality, and incorporate flexibility to allow larger class sizes for experienced teachers that are provided compensation adjustments (supplemental pay adjustments).  

The new class size reduction maximum ratios are numerator – percentages of students eligible for federal free lunch; denominator – number of licensed instructional personnel.  The new standards range from 

  • 19 to one in schools with 30 percent or more of students identified as eligible for federal free lunch with no class being larger than 24 students; to
  • 14 to one in schools with 75 percent or more of students identified as eligible for federal free lunch with no class being larger than 19 students; with steps in between.

More English Learner Teachers +$19,679,785

Amending (increasing) the staffing requirements for English Learner teachers to lower the ratio of English language learner students to teachers and differentiate the distribution of positions based upon the proficiency level of students in each school division, while maintaining local flexibility in deploying those positions. 

Early Reading Initiative – More Reading Specialists +$37,912,383

Provides reading specialists positions for students in grades K-5, based upon the number of students failing third-grade Standards of Learning reading assessments, shifting the Early Reading Intervention Program into the SOQ.

Specialized student support personnel +$96,014,831

Create a new staffing category for “specialized student support personnel” in the SOQ, effectively removing the school nurse, school social worker, and school psychologist position from the SOQ support position category, with a ratio of four such staff members for every 1,000 students. For the purposes of this subsection, specialized student support positions and other licensed health and behavioral positions may either be employed by the school division or provided through contracted services.

Principals, APs and Counselors

Providing 

  • one full time principal in every school. +$7,537,923
  • one full time assistant principal for every 400 (currently 900) students. $74,347,126
  • one full time school counselor for every 250 students (currently one per 375 in elementary, one per 325 in middle and one per 300 in high schools). $51,062,624

§ 22.1-253.13:5. Standard 5. Quality of classroom instruction and educational leadership.

Change – Fiscal impact not separately estimated:

The Board of Education shall establish, and school boards shall provide, teacher leadership and mentorship programs utilizing specially trained public school teachers. The Board shall issue guidelines for teacher leadership and mentorship programs and shall set criteria for beginning and experienced teacher participation, including self-referral, and the qualifications and training of teacher leaders and teacher mentors. Such guidelines shall provide that the programs be administered by local school boards, with the assistance of a local advisory committee made up of teachers, principals, and supervisors.

observations

I am generally in support of many of the ideas in these twin bills, but I see at least three challenges in addition to state funding requirements. 

  • Should the bills be signed into law, filling all of these additional professional positions will challenge every school district, but especially rural districts;
  • The teacher leaders and mentors will come from the ranks of the most experienced classroom teachers, creating a void that is by definition hard to fill; and
  • The local funding match is a wildcard.   

I have no idea whether this legislation will pass and be signed into law this year, but I expect it is coming sooner or later.

I look forward to the analysis of these proposed changes by our readers, especially active and retired school personnel.

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Comments

17 responses to “Proposed Standards of Quality Changes and Their Fiscal Impact”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” Requiring school boards to equitably distribute experienced, effective teachers and other personnel among all of its schools, avoiding creating concentrations of ineffective teachers in certain schools.”

    interesting wording … “concentrations of ineffective teachers”…

    I would have expected perhaps “inexperienced”… but do we really have actual existing teachers designated as “ineffective” and if so, why are they still employed?

    1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      It rhymed.

    2. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      Excellent point. Any teacher they consider ineffective should be terminated.

      I know this is not directly on topic but where “inefficient” teachers are concerned, I’d be okay with inexperienced teachers who are struggling being given a chance to improve before being terminated. However, I’d want these teachers to be assigned a specific plan for improvement, with well defined, quantifiable goals.

      I suspect we in Virginia will be going in the opposite direction, though. If Virginia’s teachers are granted the right to unionize, then I think within ten years it will be almost impossible to get rid of a bad teacher for anything less than conviction of a violent felony.

  2. James Wyatt Whitehead V Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead V

    Small school districts are going to struggle. Take Mecklenburg County for example. Over 50% of the school funding is from the state. The local economy cannot support the SOQs as they currently stand. How are cash strapped localities going to find the means to match the state?

    The mentor program is already in place. Redundant.

    Some places will struggle to find a student/business partnership. In Rappahannock County you have the industry of cattle, corn, hay, and vineyards.

    The Equity Fund is too small. 61 million is not going to put much of a dent into this cause.

    The equitable distribution of teachers plan will only work if hazardous duty pay is included for the teachers moving to the challenging schools.

    Reducing class sizes for all K-3 classes would be better than just some of the classes.

    Adding the English as a second language teachers. Great idea. They are priceless educators who are overworked and have a tall mountain to climb. Same for the reading specialists.

    Adding nurses, guidance counselors, and psychologists. The wealthy school districts already have done this. Help the low budget districts fill this important need.

    Adding administrators? Save the money for something else. Most of them clog up the drain or get in the way.

    Some good ideas but with a big price tag and even bigger promises. Sort of like the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

  3. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    re: ” Requiring school boards to equitably distribute experienced, effective teachers and other personnel among all of its schools, avoiding creating concentrations of ineffective teachers in certain schools.”

    Good luck on actually implementing this. It will be a battle royale and good teachers forced into lower performing schools will leave and go to a system where that won’t happen to them.

    Some schools are in poor neighborhoods with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged kids , much tougher teaching environments than schools in moderate or high income neighborhoods.

    As such, veteran teachers or teachers known for success , will tend to gravitate to the schools where they can teach kids that are more motivated and frankly, want to learn and easier to teach than schools with harder-to-teach kids and career risks for failure.

    At the tougher schools , it’s a much harder job and harder to fill teaching positions at those schools and often where newbies right out of college are sent.

    Even a district like Henrico which has dozens of highly regarded schools with high academic performance, they have a dozen or two really chronically poorly performing schools that seem not to improve and often schools where successful/highly effective teachers want no part of – a losing battle that could easily harm their career especially if the principle or higher ups are looking for scapecoats..

    Human nature. I agree with James, you’re gonna have to give pay incentives and career protections, stricter discipline, to convince good veteran teachers to willingly go to those schools.

    1. Matt Hurt Avatar
      Matt Hurt

      Larry, you are making THE point on this topic.

      Just so that everyone understands some of the basis for this, the latest federal update to No Child Left Behind, the Every Student Succeeds Act, requires school divisions to report how equitably resources (funds) are distributed among all schools in the division. I think the state is just getting in line with that.

      As Jim mentioned in the article, divisions have a hard time staffing most positions currently- there’s just not enough pre-service teachers in our teacher prep pipeline. Another compounding problem is with teacher retention. This doesn’t seem to be as big of a problem in Southwest, but is in other places. I have known of many teachers who happen to live within reasonable driving distance of several school divisions, and they periodically transition themselves to greener pastures. Given we have an employee’s market, many of these folks will find a better offer elsewhere if they are assigned to a tough school.

      I know everything likes to denigrate the teaching profession by talking about how they have all the time off, but keep in mind they’re not paid for that time off. Also, there is a ton of crap that teachers have to put up with, and unless you’ve been in their shoes, you’ll never understand.

      The idea of equitable distribution of funding throughout school divisions sounds like a good idea if you say it really fast and don’t think about it, but it has the great potential to exacerbate existing challenges. Remember, our government (especially the federal government, but the state has evidenced this skill as well) is really good at screwing up steel balls with rubber mallets (especially when venturing into powers not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution in the case of the Feds). Just because legislation is developed and enacted with good intentions does not mean that it cannot (and probably will not) come with many unintended, negative consequences.

      1. James Wyatt Whitehead V Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead V

        Right on the money Mr. Hurt. The rewards and frustration equation is way out of balance now. Richmond is doing little to make this better. The long term impacts of attrition and retention will be transformative in it’s own way. Once a school loses a teacher you cannot get them back and often times the replacement is less than satisfactory. Robert E. Lee had this problem defending Petersburg. If you want to geek out on this data here is an excellent study from UVA on the problem pre pandemic. I can only imagine how teacher retention is going to be shaped during our great national “Reset”.
        https://curry.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/epw/Teacher_Retention_PPT_Slides2.pdf

      2. Matt Adams Avatar
        Matt Adams

        As the son of a tech ed teacher I can concur with your statement and that the wood, steel, equipment and other resources either purchased with the department budget (or donated) weren’t unloaded by the the custodians. I spent many a summer day doing those very tasks with him and helping him with project ideas.

  4. SuburbanWoman Avatar
    SuburbanWoman

    How about firing ineffective teachers? Seems like a better idea.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Well.. you’d have to be able to define what is an “ineffective teacher” in fairly precise words, no?

    2. James Wyatt Whitehead V Avatar
      James Wyatt Whitehead V

      The trouble with that is there are no replacements available. We are stuck with what we have.

  5. SuburbanWoman Avatar
    SuburbanWoman

    All the teacher leadership mandates will do is increase the central office and make the bureaucracy a bigger beast.

  6. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    Many members of the central staff in the larger school districts, including Fairfax County, have teaching experience. A few years ago, FCPS was short about 200 teachers. The system offered staff with teaching experience the request to return to schools to teach for the school year, retaining their salary if higher than a teacher’s pay and the right to return to their same job the next year. Based on conversations I had with several teachers, not a single staff member accepted the offer. So much for caring about kids.

    Then let’s look at the staff’s performance. It failed to update software for three years, which, in turn, caused a delay in online education for as much as six weeks. The staff failed to protect personal information, which was hacked. The superintendent knowingly violated state regulations that require the use of standardized tests for admission to a Governor’s School. Educrats provide damn little value to the education of kids.

  7. Labeling “ineffective teachers” in Virginia | Bacon's Rebellion

    […] last post about new legislative attempts at reforming public education led to a very appropriate discussion […]

  8. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    These bills are basically retreads of attempts to expand the Standards of Quality in the last General Session.

    Let me go back over some recent history. In the fall of 2019, the Board of Education proposed significant expansion and revision of the Standards of Quality. The price tag was close to $1 billion. The Governor did not include most of the recommendations in the2020-2022 budget bill introduced last year. Despite having lots of money, the General Assembly did not adopt the BOE recommendations. Apparently, the BOE is trying again. Most of the provisions set out in these two bills were in the package presented by the BOE in the fall of 2019. My analysis and comments on that package can be found here: https://www.baconsrebellion.com/soq-examination/

    The Governor did not include those expansions in his budget recommendations for this year. If the Democratic majority in the General Assembly did not go along with the BOE proposals last year, I see no reason for it to change its mind this year.

    The Richmond Times-Dispatch characterized the bills as an attempt “to require the state to meet the obligations that the State Board of Education formally prescribed 15 months ago for Virginia to provide a quality education for students K-12.” The late Sen. Hunter Andrews would have a good time with that language. Early in my career as staff to the legislature, I attended a meeting in which he educated the audience by pointing out that the Constitution gives the General Assembly the last word on the Standards of Quality, not the Board of Education. The exact constitutional language is: “Standards of quality for the several school divisions shall be determined and prescribed from time to time by the Board of Education, subject to revision only by the General Assembly.” To paraphrase the Senator, “The Standards of Quality are what the General Assembly says they are.”

    For McClellan, this bill is part of her campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor.

    1. sherlockj Avatar
      sherlockj

      Concur, but I think it is useful for the broader readership to understand the proposals. Some have merit – the mentor ship program is particularly interesting, it is a feature of the best charter schools.

      1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        I agree with you regarding the mentorship program. The state already provides funding for mentoring. Here is the current budget language:

        “This appropriation includes $1,000,000 the first year and $1,000,000 the second year from the Lottery Proceeds Fund to be paid to local school divisions for statewide Mentor Teacher Programs to assist pre-service teachers and beginning teachers to make a successful transitioninto full-time teaching.”

        I had two objections to the proposal last year and also this year. The first objection was to the expanded concept. Here is what I said, which is still applicable:

        “Teacher Leader and Teacher Mentor Programs–$102.1 million state funding; $84.3 million in local contribution. Establishes a new Teacher Leader program and expands existing Teacher Mentor program. Currently, $1.0 million is appropriated for teacher mentors. This proposal would mandate staffing ratios for teacher leaders and mentors. “Teacher leaders” would “support their peers by coordinating mentorship programs and professional development, and consulting and observing teachers.”

        My two cents: Mentors are probably a valuable resource for new teachers, especially for the first year and should be compensated for the additional time spent on this assignment. “Teacher leaders” sounds like more educational bureaucracy. In another proposal, the BOE wants additional assistant principals. Couldn’t “coordinating mentorship programs and professional development and consulting and observing teachers” be a part of the job of those assistant principals?

        My second objection concerned the BOE’s proposal to move this program and other categorical programs from being funded separately and “baking” them into the SOQ, whereby they would be increased automatically every two years.

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