by John Butcher

The excellent Jim Bacon recently posted two discussions (here and here) of a recent decline in the ranking of TJ (aka, Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology). The excellent Dick Hall-Sizemore has penned a rejoinder.

Jim points out declines from 2019 (i.e. pre-pandemic) to 2024 in math and science SOL pass rates; and the change in percentage of Asian-American students; and the decrease in TJ’s US News ranking; and changes in the Advanced pass rates of math and science SOLs. He relates those to the 2021 change in admissions standards. Dick argues that the US News ranking change is based on data that pre-dated the change in admission standards. He does not address the other changes.

The SOL data on the VDOE Web site paint a complicated and interesting picture.

Notes: the 2021 (“2020-2021” in the database) testing was voluntary so that year’s data probably are not reliable measures. The “Pass/Advanced” descriptor indicates a score at or above 500 on the 600 point scale; “Pass/Proficient” indicates a score above the minimum level of 400. The change in admission scoring at TJ first took effect with the 2021-2022 entering class. We would expect any effect of that change to show first in the ‘22 data, and to increase in each of the next three years.

The Big Three for accreditation are reading, math, and science. Let’s start with reading.

This reversal of the Advanced and Proficient rates is counterintuitive: the general effect of the pandemic was the lowering of scores and, thus, pass rates. Also, see below. Yet here we see the higher-scoring “Advanced” population increasing at TJ from 59.14% in ‘19 to 94.53% in ‘22.

One potential explanation: the VBOE relaxed the scoring on the reading tests in ‘21. That generally reduced the post-pandemic decrease in the reading scores, compared to other subjects. For example, compare the state averages for reading and math:

In light of that, the large increase in the Advanced count at TJ is a surprise. But the scoring change is the only obvious explanation and, for sure, the TJ pass rates don’t otherwise look much like the state averages. 

Whatever the reason for that increase, the three most recent data points then show one small and one large decrease in the size of the Advanced group at TJ. We also see, for the first time in the decade, TJ students flunking the reading test: one in ‘22, seven in ‘23, but back to none in ‘24.

These data are consistent with a post-‘21 decline in performance at TJ.

Well, how about math?

Here, contra the reading data, the post-pandemic change is, as we might expect, a (large) decrease in the Advanced count.

As to post-‘22 changes, the advanced numbers bounced from 50 to 53.13 and then slid to 52.1. That’s a 2-year increase of 2.1%. Failures, again for the first times in this decade, are one in ‘22, four in ‘23, and one again in ‘24.

The scores are inconsistent with a general recent decrease in performance while, again, the failures argue for a decrease.

The last of the Big Three is science.

That looks a lot like the math graph except the Advanced rate rose 4.2 points from ‘22 to ‘23 and then dropped 12.56 points from ‘23 to ‘24, for a net ‘22-‘24 decrease of 8.36 points. As well, there were six failures in ‘22 and two in ‘24. Looks like more support of the recent decline hypothesis.

Turning to the two subjects that are not part of the accountability equation, we first have H&SS:

The 2024 data are missing. The pandemic effect is about what we might expect. The single datum since ‘22 is a 23.13 point decrease. That is coupled with one failure in ‘22 and seven in ‘23; but note the one-student failures in ‘14 and ‘17.

In sum, an abbreviated argument for recent decline.

Last, the writing data.

The ‘21 Advanced datum would be a surprise if we could believe it.

In sum, the Advanced/Proficient data at TJ showed major changes after the pandemic. With the exceptions of the net 2.1 point math increase from ‘22 to ‘24 and the 4.2 point increase in science from ‘22 to ‘23 (but followed by a 12.56 point decrease the next year), the post-pandemic Advanced percentages declined, consistent with Jim’s hypothesis.   The 2022-24 failure rates in the accreditation subjects are a new phenomenon at TJ. They do not tell us whether the cause was pandemic residuum or admissions changes but they are mostly consistent with the latter.

There is room to debate whether a decline in performance at TJ is a reasonable price for the changes in admission standards.

An important (and much less debatable) question is whether the TJ students continue to perform at their best. These data cannot answer that question.

John Butcher is a retired attorney living in the Richmond area. This column has been reprinted with permission from Cranky’s Blog.