The Virginia Board of Education last week prescribed new Standards of Quality for the commonwealth’s public schools. The Standards of Quality describe the foundational instructional programs and support services all schools must provide and drive approximately 85 percent of state funding for local school divisions.
The proposed new standards are aligned with the board’s goals of promoting educational equity, supporting educator recruitment and retention, and helping students and schools achieve the board’s graduation and accreditation requirements.
The prescribed SOQs, which are subject to revision by the General Assembly, consolidate several existing state programs that support struggling schools and students in poverty into a single, expanded funding stream known informally as the equity fund within the SOQ.
Equity fund distributions would be based on the percentage of students eligible for free meals and would provide an additional $131.9 million in state funding f...