Governor Glenn Youngkin will leave office with Virginia’s Standards of Learning test results about where he inherited them. New test scores were released Wednesday morning in what was the term-limited Governor’s last chance to deliver on a campaign promise to improve Virginia’s schools in the wake of the pandemic.
“We made the tests harder and yet the student’s performance improved,” Youngkin said of the release of SOL test scores for the 2024-25 school year for 3rd to 8th graders. The state-wide assessment presented Wednesday was a range, with pass rates in English between 66 and 73% and math between 64 and 72%.
Last year's pass rates in the two subjects were 71% and 66%, respectively. The scores remained within the same range since Youngkin took office in 2021.
They remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels.
The governor continued to blame COVID-era school closures, lower standards he said previous administrations set, and an increase in difficulty in the most recent year’s tests.
“The tests are 30 to 40% more challenging, more content, more breadth,” Youngkin said, noting the testing company Pearson, which helps create Virginia's SOL tests, assessed the new tests' difficulty as such.
Radio IQ was unable to confirm such an assessment had occurred.
Anne Holton, the last Democratically appointed member of the Virginia Board of Education, left her seat in June. She said changes were made to last year’s tests, but as part of the normal, seven-year cycle. While that may make the tests more “rigorous,” Holton said, “what I’m hearing about the range of scores would be very disappointing to this administration.”
She also said the scores suggest Virginia students haven’t recovered from pandemic-era learning loss, and while Youngkin blamed tests, Holten blamed Youngkin’s politicization of schools.
“Using cultural issues to divide people has simply distracted from those goals,” she said.
Youngkin leaves office at the end of this year making ongoing school issues the next governor’s problem.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
