The West Virginia Board of Education heard several reports on student achievement at their meeting Wednesday ranging from state assessment results to chronic absenteeism rates.
At the request of board member Debra Sullivan at last month’s meeting, the board was also updated on the 2023-2024 assessments for West Virginia’s homeschooled students.
Last school year, 57 percent of the homeschooled students presumed to be in grades 3, 5, 8 and 11 submitted assessments by the June 30 deadline. This is an increase from the 37 percent submission rate from previous years.
Michele Blatt, state superintendent of schools, estimated there are around 24,000 students being homeschooled in West Virginia. As she explained, students are “presumed to be” in a grade because families are required to submit very little information.
“When I say we’re not sure about a grade level, it’s because they give an age at one time in that child’s career,” she said. “So, if I enroll a student and I say the child is five, we don’t know anything about that child until we look to see if there’s a third-grade assessment submitted. And of course, that gets trickier as the child gets older and they’re leaving public schools and going into homeschool, and so this data is the best that we have available.”
Submission rates vary significantly from grade level to grade level. Blatt told the board Wednesday that 71 percent of homeschooled third graders have submitted required assessments. She said that number continues to decline until 11th grade, where only 36 percent of required assessments have been submitted for the year.
“Is the concern there, that we’re losing students by the time they get to 11th grade to homeschool for the wrong reasons, because if they were there to be educated and things, we would think that we would see those assessment results,” Blatt said.
Once a child is moved to homeschool, West Virginia code requires the family/guardian to submit an assessment or portfolio of the child’s work by June 30 following their 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grade year.
“The counties have worked to collect this data and thinking about next steps or current steps that we’re dealing with right now, our counties are reaching out to these families that we know need to still continue to submit these assessments,” Blatt said. “Many of them are making phone calls. They’ve sent letters stating that you have not met the requirements of state code. Based on this you have a deadline or a time frame that you need to adhere to to submit this and before they will start filing the petitions against these parents to possibly revoke their home school privileges.”