The Virginia Board of Education has recognized five Henrico County schools — Echo Lake Elementary School, Henrico High School, Hermitage High School, Varina High School and Douglas S. Freeman High School — as part of the 2024-25 Exemplar Performance Awards, which honor schools across Virginia that exceed VBOE-established requirements or demonstrate continuous improvement in key academic or school quality areas.
Echo Lake Elementary is one of 92 schools in the state to meet the criteria for the Highest Achievement Award, based on data collected from the 2023-24 school year.
To achieve this, Echo Lake not only exceeded state benchmarks in reading, math and science test scores, but each of its student demographic groups performed at similarly high levels in each of these categories. These groups, which can represent ethnicities, language proficiencies, economic statuses or students with disabilities, vary at each school based on enrollment and are defined by the Virginia Department of Education.
Echo Lake also fell well under the award’s 15% threshold for chronic absenteeism, with only 3.5% of its students being considered chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year.
Henrico, Hermitage, Varina and Freeman high schools were among the 49 state schools to earn Continuous Improvement Awards.
Henrico, Hermitage and Varina were recognized for significant improvements in math and reading scores by certain student groups, resulting in increases of 10-plus percentage points in pass rates by these groups since the 2018-19 school year.
Freeman’s recognition derived from an increase in graduation rate and a decrease in dropout rate, both in yearly changes and the total improvement since 2018-19.
Last year, Rivers Edge Elementary School was given the Highest Achievement Award, while Elizabeth Holladay Elementary earned the Continuous Improvement Award.
More information about the criteria and data used for the Exemplar Awards, as well as a full list of honorees, can be found at https://www.doe.virginia.gov/state-board-data-funding/exemplar-awards.