Governor Glenn Youngkin said he was pleased with Virginia’s 2023-24 SOL results at a press event Tuesday. After years of post-pandemic declines, data showed a slight increase in test scores in most school divisions.
Youngkin praised his All In initiative, funded by over $400 million dollars in state funds, as the driving force behind Virginia’s slight increases in SOL scores.
“I’m pleased with the substantial increases in many school divisions and the reality is we had some school divisions that didn’t have increases and a lot of them didn’t get up and running very quickly,” he told the press after numbers were released.
Among Youngkin’s points of success are 70% of school divisions showing improvement in their reading SOLs, and 75% improving in Math. All numbers were taken from the data sets released by Virginia’s Department of Education. There were generally small increases in most of the state’s larger school systems, including Richmond, Norfolk, Roanoke and Charlottesville.
“RPS is on the rise, and these scores are the proof,” said Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said in a statement. “The pandemic had a devastating impact on learning, but our teachers and students are resilient — and they’re showing what’s possible when we make the right investments, use the best evidence-based practices, and keep the bar high.”
One outlier among the new numbers is Fairfax County where test scores in the writing SOL dropped from 78% passing in the 21-22 school year to 28% in 23-24.
A spokesperson for Fairfax County Public schools said the numbers reflect changes in how the county issues tests, with the writing test being optional and only 110 out of thousands of students choosing to take it in the last year.
“More than 18,000 students took state board-approved substitute exams in 2023-24 with pass rates at 96% or above for writing,” FCPS spokesperson Steven Brasley told Radio IQ.
According to Virginia DOE data, Fairfax County saw modest increases alongside the rest of the state in math and science.
State Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg, himself a social studies teacher in Henrico County, said he's long been aware of such testing discrepancies.
“The real issue here is we have to bring clarity to how we test students in Virginia," he told Radio IQ, arguing a test is meaningless if only 110 students are taking it. "We need a process that makes the data useful,”
VanValkenburg said he’s currently working with the Youngkin administration and legislators to address the issue.
Still, slight increases weren’t enough for Delegate Sam Rasoul, chair of the House education committee. He said marginal results reflect a lack of funding for state schools.
“What’s clear is there’s more investments that need to be made,” Rasoul told Radio IQ. We had several good initiatives that were passed, some that were confusingly vetoed by the governor.”
Among legislation that Youngkin vetoed was an effort Rasoul said would have codified several changes targeting underperforming students. It passed with bipartisan support, almost unanimously in the Senate. But Youngkin said concerns about the state’s existing funding model for public schools would have to be addressed before he’d agree to such changes.
“The Commonwealth needs an effective K-12 funding formula that should account for the specific needs of the students and, ultimately, the school divisions,” Youngkin said in his veto statement. “This approach should allow school divisions to optimize budgets and personalize learning experiences.”
Youngkin also said Virginia is winning the fight against absenteeism in the wake of dramatic fall offs in student attendance during and after the pandemic. The governor said chronic absenteeism in Virginia’s K through 12 schools dropped to 3 points from the year before.
Success stories on the absenteeism front included Brunswick County where Superintendent Kristy Somerville-Midgette said a data driven approach and direct contact with students and families helped stem the tide of absenteeism and meet all state set benchmarks.
“We were able to employ a student community family liaison,” Somerville-Midgette told Radio IQ. “He’s been instrumental in working with the families and making those connections.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
