Tag Archives: SOL

COVID and the Racial Achievement Gap

by James A. Bacon

Two weeks ago, before I so rudely interrupted myself by taking a vacation in North Carolina, I was engaged in an analysis of the latest Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores. As measured by pass rates, Virginia students statewide recovered much, but not all, of the ground they had lost during the disastrous 2020-21 school year of COVID-driven school closures. However, I showed there was considerable variability between school districts. Some some districts rebounded so smartly that pass rates last year (2021-22) exceeded those of the pre-COVID year of 2018-19. Others showed minimal recovery.

Today, I’ll drill into the data to examine the role of economic disadvantage and race. Rather than explore the “Black/White” divide in scores, as is customary among those who wish to perpetuate the idea of “systemic racism,” I present  data using Asians as the benchmark of performance, compared to whom all other groups — Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics most prominently — fall short.

In the table above we can see that 87.6% of students classified as Asian passed their English SOL tests last year, bringing them back to 98.4% of the pre-COVID norm. Whites recovered to a lesser degree, and Hispanics and Blacks an even lesser degree. Comparing the post-COVID year with the pre-COVID year, the racial achievement gap got worse.

It is widely accepted that the shift from in-person to hybrid and remote learning during the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020-21 is largely to blame for the plunge in pass rates across all districts, racial/ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes. However, the variability in performance after everyone returned to school is harder to explain. Continue reading