The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) awarded Madison High School with the distinguished ranking through the new School Performance and Support Framework. The framework changed how school performance is assessed, placing a greater emphasis on standardized testing results.
The framework was implemented as part of former Governor Glenn Youngkin’s efforts to expand parental involvement and transparency in schools. It attempts to provide and condense data to serve as an accessible school performance reporting tool. The VDOE has published comprehensive information detailing how the framework works and preliminary results from its first year of implementation.
“The Road to Readiness provides transparent, data-driven insights into school performance and delivers targeted resources to those public schools most in need,” former Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera said.
The framework labels schools as distinguished, on track, off track or needs intensive support. Schools aim to accumulate points in a variety of categories to earn higher rankings. At Madison, this entailed focusing on standardized test performance, graduation rates and WINGS participation. When plans for the framework were announced, Principal Liz Calvert implemented a strategy to help students who needed support, securing the distinguished ranking.
“We met with teachers and we designed a support blitz for students prior to state testing.” Calvert said.
Last spring, teachers were asked to identify students who were unlikely to pass critical SOLs and successfully provided remediation for those students during Warhawk Time. Additionally, they provided extra support to students to ensure they earned the scores of pass advanced on their SOLs, as the framework rewards the highest possible results.
“Our teachers did a dynamite job of working with students who they were afraid might not pass or achieve pass advanced,” Calvert said.
Additionally, to ensure continued success Calvert created the Support Block for the 2025-2026 school year. It’s a mandated time in which teachers can request specific students to attend remediation sessions and students can seek help from teachers.
“Support block is a direct extension of the work we did last spring to make sure we’re being proactive in identifying students who need additional support,” Calvert said.
Virginia requires students to graduate high school within four years of entering it, though students with Individualized Education Plans and Multilingual Learners are granted exceptions. To address graduation rates, administrators reached out to students who were close to graduating or at risk of not graduating.
“We contacted all of those students and all of those families and got them support to ensure they would graduate on time,” Calvert said.
Another way Madison earned its distinguished ranking was through the continued success of the WINGS program in which seniors participate in work-based learning opportunities each May. The VDOE credits schools that provide post-secondary education experiences for students, so Madison’s high WINGS participation rate earned recognition.
“We got a lot of points because almost every single one of our seniors participates in Wings,” Calvert said. “If you took that away, we probably wouldn’t hit that distinguished rank.”
To earn the ranking and improve the school’s quality of education, Calvert addressed a range of issues. The administration continues to strive to implement aspects of Fairfax County Public School’s (FCPS) strategic plan and earn the distinguished ranking in future years. The FCPS strategic plan provides many goals for schools.
“My job as the principal is to say what are the initiatives that make sense for our building and which initiatives are the ones we can actually implement with fidelity,” Calvert said.
Department chairs met with administrators to create actionable ways to improve instruction. Now, teachers are asked to share learning targets with students to improve their understanding of the goals of lessons. This is intended to create buy-in and help students consider practical applications of schoolwork. Teachers are evaluated by their success at creating “meaningful learning experiences” and their ability to adapt to each student’s needs.
“Drawing these explicit connections is a high-leverage instructional strategy,” Calvert said.
While the School Performance and Support Framework creates benchmarks for success, individual schools must implement strategies to achieve it.
“The mindsets in our building have always been about supporting and clarity from class to class,” Calvert said. “These ideas guide our work each and every day.”
