by Todd Truitt

I met with Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, this summer over tacos at a restaurant in his district to discuss what’s next with Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) exam reform. VanValkenburg is the Chair of the Senate Public Education Subcommittee and a high school Social Studies teacher in Henrico County.

Whoever wins the Governor’s race in November, the next administration will likely be in charge of a massive 9-figure project to overhaul our assessments consistent with the 2023 work group report on assessments. That work group was convened pursuant to House Bill 585 (which was sponsored in 2022 by VanValkenburg) and conducted by the administration of Governor Glenn Youngkin.

VanValkenburg’s Philosophy on Standardized Testing

VanValkenburg is a fierce defender of standardized testing. He believes that such assessments are crucial to our state education system for the purposes of educating children to their fullest potential and for data reasons, teaching and maintaining high academic standards. In addition, he is a strong supporter of Virginia’s testing requirement for graduation for similar reasons; Virginia is one of six remaining states with such requirement.

As for the criticism standardized tests cause “teaching to the test,” he told me it’s essential that any tests be of high quality and Virginia’s tests largely are not. VanValkenburg said: “no one ever complains about teaching to the AP exam.”

His views on statewide testing are largely in line with the leading education civil rights group, the Education Trust, and empirical evidence on the importance of such testing. For instance, a recent study over nine years following 260,000 students found 8th-grade standardized tests highly predictive of whether children are college and career ready.

SOL Testing Reforms in Effect Next School Year

In January 2025, I wrote about the then-proposed SOL assessment reform bill of VanValkenburg and Delegate Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax. Subsequently, that bill was overwhelmingly passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Glenn Youngkin in May.

The new SOL testing reform law will become effective in the 2026-27 school year. The law has a number of common sense changes, such as: requiring SOL exams be in the final 2 weeks of the school year, thereby increasing instructional time; and scoring on a 100-point scale, making it easier for parents to understand.

One reform that has gotten some push back has been that SOLs will count for at least 10% of a course’s grade for 7th grade and above and act as the final exam. VanValkenburg grew up in New York and said he got the idea from there.

I am a strong supporter of this provision as it will likely reduce grade inflation. Also, one unnoticed part of this provision is that retakes will not count for purposes of the grade but will count for accountability purposes. Together, these two policies push back on the anti-rigor fad of “equitable grading,” which allows for unlimited retakes of tests. Although it has no empirical evidence to actually improve equity, equitable grading has been adopted by numerous Northern Virginia school districts in various forms.

Release of SOL Tests and Local Assessment Reform

Two reforms that will require reenactment this upcoming legislative session concern the release of prior SOL tests and local assessment reform.

Currently, past SOL tests are rarely released, creating roadblocks for schools and teachers to know what to emphasize to students via instruction. If reenacted, the State will be required each year to release the prior year’s SOL tests by the beginning of the following school year. VanValkenburg said this reform will be costly but is necessary for quality instruction.

The new law also improves the quality of local assessments used as an alternative to SOL exams by, among other things, providing more prescriptive guardrails as to the format of these exams and making samples of them subject to state audit.

Local assessments can be used for verified credit for graduation if a student scores slightly below passing on the SOL exam for that course. Local assessments can also be used in Social Studies, which are not required by federal law. I am not a proponent of these Social Studies local assessments because of their lack of objectivity (i.e., graded by employees at that school district).

VanValkenburg said he wanted local assessments regulated more based on his 20 years of experience as a teacher and knowing what some districts are using for local assessments. In particular, he heard of one large Virginia district using a poster project for its middle school Social Studies local assessment. VanValkenburg said the state will soon have its own optional version of local assessments, which will also save localities resources in creating them.

The state has incentivized Social Studies local assessments for years by not updating the SOL exams for new Social Studies standards. VanValkenburg said the current SOL exams for Social Studies are based on the 2008 standards while the Social Studies standards were updated in 2016 and 2023.

VanValkenburg and other Social Studies teachers are advocating for Social Studies exam scores to be factored into Virginia’s accountability system, which I also support. However, an expert on federal accountability law told me that local assessments would likely not meet the statutory requirements of federal school accountability law. Thus, the inclusion of Social Studies into the new Virginia accountability system would only come about as a result of the creation of new Social Studies SOL exams and thereafter doing away with Social Studies local assessments.

VanValkenburg said those exams will only be created as part of the larger SOL exam overhaul.

Funding Delayed for Larger Overhaul and RFP

The Virginia Department of Education estimated last year that the development of a new state assessment system would cost $125 million over 5 years. VanValkenburg’s and Helmer’s original bill proposed starting these expensive improvements this fiscal year.

But for the past 2 years, the Youngkin administration’s proposed budget funded those testing reforms ($40 million and $66 million, respectively) whereas Democrats in the General Assembly removed the funding. This year’s enacted budget instead provides $500,000 for a request for proposal (RFP) and vendor selection process for these testing reforms, which resulted in changes to the VanValkenburg’s and Helmer’s bill before enactment. Both VanValkenburg and the Youngkin administration said the RFP’s prescribed scope of work largely tracks the recommendations set forth in the 2023 work group report.

VanValkenburg said that Democrats removed this funding because these testing reforms need to be handled from a project management perspective by one administration, and not handed off half-way. One administration will own the cost containment, buy-in and accountability for implementing these massive reforms, which will likely not take effect until the 2029-30 or 2030-31 school year.

As for the 5-year implementation period, VanValkenburg cited New York’s botched roll out of new testing in 2014 for Common Core. He stated that, in statewide testing, “when we move fast, we break things.”

The timing of the updates to the assessment system also coincides with the planned implementation of the Youngkin administration’s recently proposed 4- to 5-year phased implementation of raising the SOL proficiency thresholds (cut scores) to be consistent with the nation’s report card, NAEP. The Board of Education will approve the phase-in period in October.

VanValkenburg Tweeted last month:

Todd Truitt is a parent of two school-age children in Arlington County, Virginia and a Democratic education advocate. He is a business transactions attorney.