For the third year, all 59 public schools in Loudoun County in which students took Virginia standardized tests met the qualifications for full state accreditation.
The school system maintains that status by working with individual students to help them pass the state's Standards of Learning tests, said Sharon D. Ackerman, assistant superintendent for instruction. Test score averages, she said, then take care of themselves.
Remediation work after school, on weekends and during the summer has also helped, as has frequent testing in the lower grades to help teachers determine if students are retaining lessons, Ackerman said.
Achieving state accreditation is separate from achieving "adequate yearly progress" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. In Virginia, both are measured using SOL test results. But the federal law requires schools to meet target pass rates in each of several subgroups of students, including some minority groups, disabled students, poor students and students who are learning English as a second language. The state, by contrast, averages all students' scores on each test at each grade level.
In August, Loudoun was told that seven of its schools did not make adequate yearly progress. Officials were recently told they won appeals of the calculations for two schools, Sterling Middle and Harmony Intermediate, and the two have now made adequate progress.
Still, that leaves five schools that did not make the grade under No Child Left Behind -- Seneca Ridge Middle School, Dominion High School, Heritage High School, Park View High School and Potomac Falls High School. Ackerman said school officials have encountered few questions about the potentially confusing contrast, in part, she thinks, because parents are more comfortable with Virginia's school accreditation system.
"I think, largely, No Child Left Behind is less understood and probably less relevant to parents," she said.
Statewide, 84 percent of Virginia's 1,807 schools achieved a fully accredited rating. Last year, 78 percent of the schools were fully accredited.
This year's state standards were more stringent than last year's for elementary students. A 75 percent pass rate is now required in English, compared with 70 percent in previous years. In addition, science and history scores for third-graders counted in previous years only if they helped boost a school's overall rating; this year, all scores for those third-grade tests were counted, with a target pass rate of 50 percent.
