All Alexandria City Public Schools are accredited, but some are "accredited with conditions," according to 2022-2023 accreditation listings released by the Virginia Dept. of Education. The same goes for Fairfax County Public Schools.
Alexandria City has 17 schools and centers that are assessed for accreditation, and four of those are accredited with conditions. That means that the school has "one or more school quality indicators at Level Three." (Level Three is considered below state standards.)
The four schools in ACPS that are accredited with conditions are Alexandria City High School, Ferdinand T. Day School, Jefferson-Houston School and William Ramsay School. Of those four, Jefferson-Houston has the most indicators (four) below state standards; the other schools have just one indicator at Level Three.
Fairfax County has 194 schools and centers assessed for accreditation and just two accredited with conditions and three accredited under an alternative accreditation plan. In the Alexandria area, Justice High School (near Seven Corners) and Whitman Middle School in the Fort Hunt area are accredited with conditions, each with one indicator at Level Three. The Fairfax County Adult High School and Bryant High School in the Groveton area are accredited under an alternative plan.
When a school has an indicator at Level Three, the Virginia Dept. of Education requires that the school "undergoes a review conducted by VDOE or under its guidance. School and school division – in consultation with VDOE – develop and implement a corrective action plan as a component of the school's comprehensive, unified, long-range plan."
The full accreditation assessment of all schools statewide is available here.
Accreditation assessments were put on pause for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, 89% of schools statewide have earned full accreditation, according to Dept. of Education data. However, the state's education superintendent is calling into question the accreditation standards themselves.
Her reason: The percentage of schools meeting full accreditation requirements dropped just 3 percent from 2019 to now, despite most schools being closed for nearly a year due to the pandemic and accompanying losses in Standards of Learning test passage.
“These ratings call into question the effectiveness of our accreditation standards in identifying schools where students are struggling to achieve grade-level proficiency,” said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow in a press release accompanying the data. “The number and percentage of schools earning accreditation is almost as high as three years ago, despite significant declines in achievement on Standards of Learning tests in reading, math and science — especially among minority and economically disadvantaged students. Accreditation is one of the primary drivers of state interventions and local efforts to improve outcomes for students, and frankly, the school ratings we are releasing today fail to capture the extent of the crisis facing our schools and students.”
