Illustration by Victoria Borges
For 20 years, Standards of Learning testing has served as the Virginia Department of Education’s barometer of academic performance in the commonwealth’s public schools. The assessments are praised for pinpointing areas needing improvement, but are widely criticized as being unfairly high stakes and constraining educators with narrowly focused curriculum.
In the mid-1990s, declining SAT scores, unfavorable results on national assessments and several unsuccessful reform attempts led to the birth of the current SOL system. With bipartisan support, lawmakers agreed to pursue more rigorous academic and accreditation standards, according to a Virginia Department of Education history of the SOLs. In 1998, the first round of testing began in elementary and middle schools, and scores were used to establish accreditation standards that defined base knowledge requirements for K-12 students.
“A student, regardless of where he or she lives, would be guaranteed a floor of instruction and an instructional program that meets state expectations in terms of, at a minimum, what students are taught in history, English, science and mathematics,” says Charles Pyle, VDOE spokesman. “That floor didn’t exist prior to the SOL program.”
In 1999, only 6.5% of Virginia public schools met accreditation standards. In a marked turnaround, by 2002, 64% of schools met or exceeded standards. Five years after the beginning of the testing, Virginia’s SAT scores showed an 11-point improvement in math and a seven-point improvement in reading. In 2018, 54% of Virginia high school seniors who took the SAT exceeded the assessment's college-readiness benchmarks in reading, writing and math, compared to 44% of SAT takers nationally.
Testing to identify academic weaknesses and instructional intervention in schools identified as struggling is largely credited for improving academic performance. But some education policy experts say over-testing has led to a decreased focus on critical thinking skills, in addition to cheating scandals and poor teaching practices in schools pressured to increase scores.
As “a snapshot” comparison of academic achievement across school districts, the tests are an effective diagnostic tool, but they become detrimental when scores are a major determinant of school accreditation and eligibility for graduation, unfairly penalizing students and schools, says Jim Livingston, president of the Virginia Education Association and a former Prince William County teacher.
“Unfortunately, with the onset of No Child Left Behind at the federal level, what happened was we began using the SOL testing to label schools, school divisions and teachers as either passing or failing, and the reality is, the tests were never designed to do that,” Livingston says. “Assessments are important. Assessments are part of teaching. But assessments need to guide instruction. They don’t need to be used to attach labels to people or schools.”
In response to criticisms of high-stakes testing and requests from business and professional communities to increase the focus on critical thinking skills for the future workforce, the VDOE has moved to reduce assessments, Pyle says. In 2014, Virginia discontinued five tests at the elementary and middle school levels, reducing the number of tests before high school in core subjects, aside from math, from 34 to 29. Starting for students who entered the ninth grade in 2018, the number of verified credits (earned by passing a course and associated SOL test or an approved alternative test) needed for both an advanced and standard diploma has been reduced to five.
Accreditation is no longer solely dependent on test scores since a 2017 VDOE revision to evaluate elementary and middle school students based on year-to-year test score gains. Other factors, such as absenteeism, graduation and high school dropout rates are also considered. Success in college preparedness will also be factored into ratings in 2021.
Schools are accredited with conditions and receive assistance from the VDOE when they don’t meet all criteria. Accreditation is only denied if the Virginia Board of Education determines “the school and district are not making a good-faith effort to implement the corrective action plan,” Pyle says.
Taking academic improvement into account helps promote equity in education, says Gabriel Reich, a professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education who previously taught in New York City’s Bronx borough.
“If a student in the 10th grade came to you … reading at a fourth-grade reading level, and you focused on literacy all year, and the kid is reading better and able to articulate ideas more clearly, but it’s still not enough to pass the test, you don’t know that happened if you’re still only looking at test scores.”
