The following is an online extra accompanying the “Evolving Assessment” article in our October 2019 "What Makes a Great High School?" issue (heading to newsstands soon), looking at the Standards of Learning tests two decades after they were implemented.
Emma Clark, a former Richmond Public Schools educator who now teaches in Chesterfield County, speaks during a 2018 education forum in Henrico County. (Photo by Jay Paul)
Donald Trump’s presidential win presented what could have been a teaching moment and lengthy discussion about American politics for the eighth grade civics class of former Richmond Public Schools teacher Emma Clark. Instead, a mention of the change in administration served to highlight gaps in Virginia standardized tests due to outdated information, Clark says.
She says Virginia Standards of Learning requirements dictated she instruct the class that candidates with moderate platforms are more likely to win elections, despite her students coming “to the obvious conclusion” that the popularity of Trump on the political right and Bernie Sanders on the left was contradictory to that lesson.
“We’re always learning new things about history. Occasionally, we’re learning that we were wrong about things,” Clark says. “So, occasionally, the standards have teachers teaching stuff that is factually incorrect.”
Limited class time and the state’s specific list of required eighth grade civics knowledge prevented her from discussing the national trends leading to the electoral shift, she says.
“I had [to say,] 'That’s a really insightful point, and I would love to discuss why those candidates have appeal right now … but what I have to tell you is, first off, make sure you circle the answer that says "moderate" on the test, even though it’s not true,' ” she adds.
To keep up with changing knowledge, the tests are revised on a seven-year cycle in which the questions are created by educational vendors and vetted by teachers, says Charles Pyle, a Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) spokesman.
Still, recurring incidents of SOL tests lagging behind revised scientific, historical and political knowledge is one in a litany of criticisms by educators and parents, who also say the assessments constrain curriculum, cause undue anxiety and don’t accurately reflect student progress.
As Virginia marks two decades since the establishment of accreditation standards based on scores from the first round of SOL testing in 1997, a growing contingent of parents have chosen to refuse to have their children participate in the assessments. A similar trend exists nationally, as parents protest the proliferation of standardized testing by joining the “opt-out” movement, which calls on families to abstain from testing, advocates that stakes be lowered on assessments and promotes alternative approaches to determine academic progress.
What the Law Requires
In some states, opting out of testing has ignited tension between parents, school divisions and state departments of education, and federal policy surrounding standardized test refusal is murky. The Every Student Succeeds Act, a series of Obama administration educational mandates replacing the No Child Left Behind Act, says parents are allowed to withhold students from standardized testing. But the policy also calls for states to take action to increase the number of test takers if over 5% of their students opt out.
The U.S. Department of Education warned 11 states in 2016 that their opt-out rates exceeded 5%. In New York, the epicenter of the opt-out movement, 18% of students didn’t sit for the state’s battery of standardized tests in 2018.
Historically, Virginia has had low, but growing, opt-out rates. In the 2018-19 academic year, students opted out of 10,117 tests, compared to 3,672 three years earlier. During the same year, Richmond students opted out of 206 tests, compared to 1,645 in Chesterfield County, 758 in Henrico County and 140 in Hanover County.
Collectively, Virginia students take more than 2.5 million SOL tests annually. Continued increases in opting out could skew information regarding which students may need academic interventions, Pyle says. “If you don’t have data, you really have nothing to inform any effort to improve teaching and learning.”
To keep Virginia schools well within the federal government’s 95% test-taking benchmark, the General Assembly passed legislation in 2016 that allows up to 5% of a school’s testing students to be opted out before their testing refusals count against the federally required 95%.
A student opting out of an SOL test does not count against a school in determining state accreditation, Pyle says; however, an accreditation rating could be affected by not including tests of students who likely would have passed. "The opt out does not count as a fail, but you have one less passing test in the numerator."
Accreditation is also overall less dependent on test scores after a 2017 VDOE school accreditation revision to evaluate elementary and middle school students based on year-to-year test score improvements. Other factors such as absenteeism at all grade levels and graduation and dropout rates at the high school level are also considered. Schools are accredited with conditions and receive assistance from the VDOE when they don’t meet all criteria, including passing test scores.
The stakes of opting out of SOL testing are higher at the high school level, when test scores affect graduation, than at the elementary and middle school levels.
The Case for Opting Out
Clark, who now teaches English at Falling Creek Middle School in Chesterfield County, says high-stakes testing pushes educators to focus remediation efforts outside of regular classroom instruction on students who are on the cusp of passing the exams, instead of more academically challenged students. This prioritization of remediation efforts leaves behind children who really need the extra help, Clark says. She bases her assertion on teaching experiences before a state policy shift away from accreditation being solely determined by test scores.
“You're telling teachers to just write [failing students] off like they don’t matter because they’re not going to pass the test,” she says.
The tests also have the weakness of assessing students only at one point in time, instead of continually throughout the academic year, which would better indicate growth, says Del. Jeff Bourne, D-Henrico, a member of the education committee in the Virginia House of Delegates.
“We’ve got to … develop a way to assess students on an ongoing basis rather than a specific point and a specific time late in the school year,” Bourne says. “[Focus] on the holistic experience that a student has had throughout the school year … rather than sort of the performance of that day.”
He adds that recent reductions in the number of required assessments and the consideration of other factors for accreditation are an improvement.
High-stakes testing also pressures teachers and administrators to cheat, says Gabriel Reich, a policy expert and professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education, as proven by the cheating ring uncovered at Richmond’s G.W. Carver Elementary School in 2018. Lifting the guise of artificial scores revealed that the school is academically behind the school division and state.
Victoria Carll, a founder of the organization RVA Opt Out, says high-stakes standardized testing doesn’t take students’ learning differences into account. Carll teaches Spanish for Richmond Public Schools and opted her daughter, who is now in high school, out of the tests during her third grade year.
“We’re constantly being told to differentiate instruction, but we’re not allowed to differentiate assessments,” Carll says. “If you have a student who has spoken English for 11 months who is taking the same exam as a student who has been an English speaker their whole life … how is it a fair assessment?”
Drawbacks of Opting Out
Opponents of opting out say standardized testing is necessary to identify educational gaps between school districts, and between white and minority students, and to make instructional improvements. At the elementary level, this has been demonstrated by three years of declines in reading scores for African American and Hispanic students, Pyle says.
“Without that information at either the state or local level, you don’t have that spotlight shining on a need to be addressed to improve the outcomes for our students,” Pyle says.
Typically, after test revisions, scores across subjects will dip, but the downward trend is a particular concern because elementary school reading assessments are near the seven-year renewal cycle.
“These tests are not new,” Pyle says.
In 2017-18, 78% of Virginia public school students passed the Standards of Learning reading tests and 76% passed the writing tests. But African American students scored 10 points lower across all subject areas, and 15 percentage points lower in writing.
Standardized testing is key to providing consistent instruction quality across school districts that vary by income level and racial composition, Pyle says.
Many opt-out advocates also acknowledge that when standardized testing is used to give a snapshot of achievement across districts, it can encourage education reform. Problems ensue when test scores determine graduation, school accreditation and penalties for teachers, opt-out advocates say.
Changing accreditation standards to account for academic growth instead of depending solely on content mastery, and reducing the number of required tests, is the legislature’s and VDOE’s response to calls for lower testing stakes. The accreditation reforms also acknowledge how racial and economic inequalities affect education.
“The VDOE is including growth in the accreditation equation, and that’s important because there certainly is a correlation between poverty and performance on state tests,” Pyle says. “The VDOE wants to provide credit to schools for the progress that students are making, and that previously went unrecognized under the old accreditation system.”
Although SOL testing is a mainstay of Virginia’s education system, demands from teachers and parents for testing reform, as well as pressure from the opt-out movement, could continue to drive changes in test content, delivery and impact for years to come.
