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Richmond-area schools continued to see slight improvements in students’ Standards of Learning test scores during the 2023-24 school year.
“These results show that Virginia students are beginning to recover from the post-pandemic learning loss they suffered after 2020 and 2021,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons said in a statement. “But the results also show that we must continue to focus every day on helping them catch up to pre-pandemic levels and move ahead.”
The most dramatic improvement for third through eighth graders was the writing SOL, with 28- and 21-percentage-point jumps in Hanover and and Henrico schools, respectively, from the previous school year. The Henrico history test pass rate, however, dropped from 64% in the 2021-22 school year to 53%. Richmond Public Schools, which largely saw 10-percentage-point jumps from the 2021-22 school year, also celebrated the state accreditation of five schools based on scores: Bellevue, Overby-Sheppard and G.H. Reid elementary schools, Dogwood Middle School and Thomas Jefferson High School.
Education officials also noted that the statewide number of chronically absent students — those who attend less than 90% of the school year — fell by 40,974 (16%) over the last school year, resulting in 1,276,522 fewer absent days. Officials also highlighted the difference between chronically absent students and those in good standing: Reading scores had a 19-percentage- point disparity and math scores saw a 26-point difference.
“We are making progress,” Gov. Glenn Youngkin said during an August press conference on the test scores. “We have seen improvement. We have seen the direction change, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
