by James A. Bacon

Socioeconomic status is not academic destiny.

To be sure, there is a strong correlation between the socioeconomic status of any given school district’s student body and the average level of academic achievement as measured in Virginia by the Standards of Learning (SOL) scores. But correlation is not causation.

Do students in a high-performing district pass the SOLs at high rates because they come from families that make more money… or because they come from families that value educational achievement, which also happens to be correlated with higher incomes? That is a critical question underlying the debate over K-12 education today.

Dickenson and Albemarle Counties make a useful case study. Students in both school districts scored almost identical pass rates on their English SOL exams at the end of the 2023-24 school year.

Dickenson is the poorest locality in Virginia measured by median household income. It is isolated by rugged Appalachian Mountains, accessible to the wider world only through twisting, winding roads. Its economic monoculture based on coal is almost dead. Poverty and near-poverty are endemic. More than three out of five students qualify for free or reduced lunch.

Despite immense socioeconomic disadvantages, Dickenson ranked above average — 50th — among Virginia’s 132 school districts in the percentage of students who passed their English Reading SOLs last year.

Clearly, something other than high socioeconomic status accounted for the success of Dickenson County students.

Whatever the secret sauce was, it likely was not the traditional coalfield culture that has defined far Southwest Virginia for so long. Inhabitants of the region traditionally did not place a premium on educational achievement. For decades, most young men aspired to learn just enough to qualify for a high-paying job in the coal mines. What they needed to learn to make a living, they learned on the job.

Perhaps that outlook is changing as students see education as their ticket out of poverty. But I expect the county’s commendable performance also has a lot to do with the way the schools are run.

It is instructive to compare poverty-ridden Dickenson County with affluent Albemarle County, home to thousands of University of Virginia faculty and staff, whose students scored almost identically — separated by three-hundredths of a percentage point — in their English Reading pass rate last school year. Albemarle’s median household income is almost three times that of Dickenson’s.

Dickenson is part of the Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP), a consortium of mostly rural public-school districts in Virginia that set high expectations and share best practices. The CIP schools focus relentlessly on results and outcomes — what works. Albemarle County Public Schools do not. Rather, the district has given itself over to wokeness (read the particulars in this lawsuit that made it to the state Supreme Court), and educators have struggled to maintain order in the post-COVID classroom.

Compare the metrics:

Median household income:
Albemarle: $90,568
Dickenson: $33,905

Spending per student:
Albemarle: $14,197
Dickenson: $12,794

English reading SOL pass rates (2023-24)
Dickenson:
Basic: 63.08%
Advanced: 11.92%
Total: 75.0%

Albemarle:
Basic: 54.98%
Advanced: 19.99%
Total: 74.97%

Although Dickenson looks better in this comparison, any fair-minded analysis would acknowledge two things. First, the percentage of students who scored “advanced” on their English Reading SOLs was considerably higher in Albemarle than Dickenson — 20% compared to 12%.

Obviously, Albemarle benefits from the fact that many parents are highly educated: 52.3% of Albemarle adults have college degrees, compared to 11.4% of adults in Dickenson. (I expect that the difference in the percentages from prestige universities is even more lopsided.) Albemarle is an outlier, ranking 6th in the state in terms of the percent of students passing English Reading SOLs at an advanced level.

But even for that metric, Dickenson punched way above its weight. It ranked 50th among Virginia’s 132 school districts in the percentage of students who scored advanced.

A second factor that must be acknowledged is that Albemarle has a lot more English learners than Dickenson. Almost 10% of Albemarle students are English Learners compared to almost zero for Dickenson. A lack of fluency in English does put a fraction of Albemarle students at a drawback when taking an English Reading exam.

So, let’s compare manzanas to manzanas by comparing native English speakers only, both economically disadvantaged and not disadvantaged (as defined by the Virginia Department of Education).

Economically disadvantaged (not English Learners)
Dickenson:
Pass basic: 59.97%
Pass advanced: 9.74%

Albemarle:
Pass basic: 49.61%
Pass advanced: 6.38%

Dickenson County schools saw better outcomes across the board for disadvantaged students in English Reading.

Among students who were neither economically disadvantaged nor English Learners:

Dickenson:
Pass basic: 69.58%
Pass advanced: 16.5%

Albemarle:
Pass basic: 61.11%
Pass advanced: 28.17%

For not-disadvantaged students, the total pass rate (basic + advanced) was somewhat higher in Albemarle. In particular, Albemarle out-performed in the percentage of not-disadvantaged students logging advanced scores. So, socioeconomic status does make a difference.

It’s just not destiny.