Virginia Board of Education Meeting Summary: August 26-27, 2026

The Virginia Board of Education met on August 26-27, 2026, at Reynolds Community College. The full meeting agenda and materials are available on the August 2026 meeting webpage.

Work Session

During the work session on Wednesday, the Board received presentations on results from the Standards of Learning Testing from the School Year 2025-2026 and the School Performance and Support Framework ("SPSF") plan timeline. The SPSF timeline continues the Board's work to incorporate and align December 2025 JLARC recommendations, legislative mandates, and recommendations from the Commonwealth Listening Tour.

Final Approvals

At the Thursday meeting, the Board approved a series of changes to the SPSF for the results to be released in fall 2026 based on 2025-2026 data. Most notably, the Board voted to replace the performance category labels "Off Track" and "On Track" with "Approaching Expectations" and "Meets Expectations," use annual data to calculate Mastery rather than a cohort-based measure, reallocate the English Learner ("EL") Progress indicator's weight proportionally across other indicators when a school does not have a sufficient number of EL students to produce a valid score, and permit EL students to forgo Reading testing in their first year in U.S. schools.

The Board also approved the following items:

Preparing for September

In September, the Board will consider new Local Alternative Assessments (LAAs) Guidance on final review. The new guidance will implement significant legislative revisions that categorize LAAs as mandatory or permissive, expand the use of permissive LAAs to new subjects and courses, and outline specific requirements for LAA content, scoring, and administration.

The Board meets again on September 23-24, 2026, at Reynolds Community College.

The Board of Education accepts public comment on all matters related to public education at any time through the Board of Education Comment Form. Comments submitted will be collected and shared with Board members as part of the materials for the next scheduled business meeting.