Members of the Mathews School Board received some promising news about literacy among the county’s youngest students as Superintendent of Schools Dr. David S. Daniel reviewed the latest VALLSS assessments at Tuesday’s meeting, which was held in the Mathews High School media center.
VALLSS, or the Virginia Language and Literacy Screening System, is the state-provided language and literacy skills screening tool administered in grades K-3, replacing PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screener) assessment.
According to the most recent results, the county’s K-3 students have demonstrated a steady progression from “high risk” to “moderate risk” and then “low risk.” For instance, at the start of the school year, 60 percent of the division’s kindergarten students were categorized as “high risk,” while that number had dropped to 35.14 percent by the spring.
This was the first year for the more rigorous assessment. “All of those trends are really going in the right direction,” Daniel said. “I...