AHS has been fully accredited under Virginia’s new School Performance and Support Framework (SPSF). In previous years, accreditation only considered standardized test scores, but now, it is more comprehensive and accounts for factors such as attendance, subject mastery and college and career readiness. AHS passed the threshold for all categories, scoring 91/100.
“When you think about the work that we’re doing at Annandale, we have been consistently over the years getting better and better overall,” Principal Shawn DeRose said. “This designation reflects all the hard work that we’ve been doing as a school.”
One of the primary factors contributing to AHS’s distinguished rating is the many support systems available to students, such as PRIDE Time.
“We are one of the few schools that are really able to have that built-in remediation period,” Assessment Coach Meg Anderson said. “When you are assigned a PRIDE Time, it’s because there’s an area that you need additional support in. A lot of schools have what they’ll call a PRIDE Time, but it’s not as intentional as we use it.”
Another major focus of the SPSF is graduation rate, which carries more weight than it did under the accreditation system in the past. Alongside PRIDE Time, AHS has a unique After School Academic Program and Academic Coaching on select Saturdays to extend remediation beyond the school day. Team taught courses also help:
“I think one reason AHS has performed so well is because teachers [are focusing] on really targeting [where] students are struggling [which is strengthened by] the fact that we have two teachers in the classroom,” social studies teacher Willem Hawthorne said.
Hawthorne teaches USVA alongside ESOL teacher Min Ji Kim, whose respective specialized skill sets allow them to better meet their students’ needs.
“One thing that we talked about in professional development was scaffolding. For example, in writing, I give support by providing sentence starters if [students] don’t know where to even begin,” Kim said. “I call in three to four students in small groups and break it down step by step.”
Graduation support for seniors is monitored across the entire school year, as counselors and support coordinators review student data and intervene when necessary, whether that be through double-block in-person classes or online platforms such as Edmentum.
“Everything is as transparent as possible so that nothing comes as a surprise to students or families,” Director of Student Services Erin Crowley said. “I’m looking at the data as a whole to monitor our predicted number of students who will be graduating on time [and] which students we need to support.”
Still, standardized testing remains 50% of the weighting for the accreditation. Accordingly, teachers focus on reinforcing test-taking strategies and mastery of content, especially as recent test changes have seen an increase in difficulty. In addition, biology being the only standardized test for science, whose abundance of technical vocabulary may be difficult for non-native English speakers to grasp. Qualifying multilingual learners are given accommodations such as dictionaries and taught how to use them efficiently.
When the change to SPSF was announced last November, administration assessed the areas in need of improvement in order to receive full designation. This focus fell on the “Readiness Indicators” of enlistment, employment and enrollment, known as the 3Es.
“We have a lot of great people in this building and we knew that we could figure out the solution, but at first it was a lot of understanding the new standards [and] what the state was looking at to make a plan to meet that expectation,” Anderson said.
To improve enlistment, the solution was to increase the availability of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test, for which students earn a medal at graduation upon achieving a passing score. Additionally, there was a push to increase the number of students receiving Career and Technical Education credentialing to help fulfill employment. Finally, dual enrollment (DE)—in partnership with Northern Virginia Community College—was offered in English 12 classes this year and will benefit next year’s score within enrollment. The addition of DE, AP and IB courses aims to increase our score.
The collaboration among teachers and within the administration makes these efforts fruitful, demonstrating a culture of continual improvement.
“[W]e didn’t just meet expectations, we exceeded them. We outperformed predictions, defied stereotypes, and demonstrated what is possible when a community comes together with purpose and commitment,” DeRose said in a message to the community.
