Monday, June 13th, Governor Mark Mollycoddle will speak at the Communities in Schools of Virginia, Education Policy Luncheon at the Richmond Marriot. The theme of the luncheon is “Ten years into the SOLs, where does Virginia go from here?”
Question is, will the Governor report to the media that Virginia gets barely a passing grade? The Washington Post described a ‘Standards of Learning’ report card in which Virginia gets a D+.
A Report Card With Rare Meaning
That’s not a passing grade for His Excellency, and an uninspiring presidential candidate… Unless, the D+ stands for Howard DEAN, Monica DIXON or Mollycoddle DECEPTION plus.
Parents Across Virginia United to Reform SOLs, recently wrote: “… Essentially, the report card compares the state’s testing results with NAEP results. The further apart those results fall, the lower the grade. For example, in VA, we reported that 70% of our 8th graders were proficient in reading (i.e., they passed the 8th grade reading SOL test). NAEP, a nationally administered test, reported that only 36% of Virginia 8th graders were proficient readers. Additionally, NAEP reports 31% of our 8th graders are proficient in math while Virginia reports that 78% are proficient. While some folks suggest that the NAEP proficiency levels (and the Virginia SOL levels, for that matter) are off base, I think it is pretty apparent that the rising SOL pass rates are not mirrored on the NAEP results, especially reading results. Math results are a little more unclear. While NAEP math results show gains for Virginia (and the nation), they also show that Virginia has excluded higher and higher numbers of kids from NAEP testing and now has one of the highest levels of exclusion (about 10%) in the nation. Excluding students who may test poorly can boost results.
Keep in mind that this report card does not look at actual proficiency rates, only how the proficiency rates on one set of tests (NAEP) compares to another set of tests (SOLs). Of course, we’ve been keeping you informed for several years about how results on SOLs compares to results on other measures. I’ll be updating the website soon on the achievement effects of the SOLs. Suffice it to say that we don’t think other measures of achievement mirror the (adjusted and tweaked) gains on the SOL pass rates.”
NAEP results at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states
For more information about PAVURSOL, visit: http://www.solreform.com/
~ the blue dog
