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SOL Winners and Losers

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James A. Bacon
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by James A. Bacon

There are hundreds of ways to slice and dice the recently released Standards of Learning (SOL) data measuring the academic achievement of Virginia’s public school children in the 2021-22 school year. Let’s start with the simplest: which school districts performed the best and which performed the worst?

Here are the 15 top-performing districts as measured by the percentage of students who passed their English SOLs. (Writing, math, science, and history pass rates correlate closely with English, so, to keep the presentation simple, I use the English SOLs as a proxy for academic achievement across the board.)

The list isn’t dominated, as one might suspect, by rich, highly-funded Northern Virginia school districts (Falls Church stands atop the list but it is the only one of the top 15), nor is it dominated by affluent suburban districts. To be sure, York County, Virginia Beach, Roanoke County and Hanover County appear on the list, but they comprise only four of the top 15.

The most striking feature is the number of small town/rural districts from Western and Southwestern Virginia — the City of Lexington, and the counties of Patrick, Botetourt, Wise, Washington, Scott, Highland and Wythe. What does it tell you when poor, under-resourced Appalachian counties out-perform the rest of the state in achieving the goal of ensuring that every student masters the basics?

(My hunch is that Virginia’s Appalachian districts shine less brightly in the percentage of students who pass their SOL tests at an advanced level. But who knows, we might be surprised. I hope to find the time to address that topic in another post.)

Here are the worst performing districts:

The list is overwhelmingly dominated by cities, both large and small, with a handful of poor Southside counties thrown in. In five cities — Richmond and Petersburg being the most notorious — the percentage of students passing the English SOL exams fell below 50%.

This is just a first swipe at the data. It identifies superstar districts, which might be worth emulating, and it identifies problem districts, where the educational system is clearly failing. The COVID pandemic posed a tremendous challenge to every school district, but some have shown more resilience than others. In my next post, I’ll try to identify the districts that have rebounded most quickly from COVID.

Here is a list of all Virginia districts ranked by the percentage pass rate from top to bottom.




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21 responses to “SOL Winners and Losers”

  1. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    Will you also be looking into the extent to which the dates of return to in-person teaching correlate with the level of recovery among the districts?

  2. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    Might be interesting if we knew which ones were remote and which ones in-person but I also strongly suspect the ones at the bottom were that way before the pandemic and just got worse.

    I thank you for a fair and balanced blog post. Good!

    I think your “good” list also proves without question that public schools CAN perform quite well and are far from “failure” as we often get a diet of here in BR followed by the usual inane blather advocating “voucher” schools.

    Fredericksburg City – BTW – has a large number of kids in Section 8 housing. Neither of the two adjacent counties nor rural ones further out have anywhere near that number.

    I suspect many cities are in the same boat.

    All I can say without equivocation is that such performance is terrible and unacceptable especially Fredericksburg which is considered a relatively wealthy city if you believe the composite index number.

  3. Kathleen Smith Avatar
    Kathleen Smith

    Our own Dr. Matt Hurt has been dicing and slicing the data in his consortium and has found some interesting ways to look at this data other than pass rate. I hope he weighs in soon. I think he is on to some interesting findings from the 46 divisions he serves.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      What Region VII is doing IMO is pretty simple but really, really significant.

      Basically it appears that they are establishing standards for teaching economically disadvantaged kids ( the rural version).

      They’re guiding teachers, especially new ones to follow curriculum and teaching standards that are tailored to kids whose parents are not well educated and not financially secure. Those kids don’t learn the same way that kids of educated, economically secure parents learn.

      As JAB suspects and I do too, the region VII kids who are taught this way are not aimed at advanced academics – just enough so they can function in modern society and compete for technical jobs that do not necessarily require a college education.

      It sounds like a modest goal compared to the way that NoVa schools function – to get those kids ready for the better colleges.

      The region VII approach does not preclude kids going to college but it assures that the rest of the kids do graduate with the ability to find a decent job, take care of themselves and their families and not need as many entitlements and with the advent of the Medicaid Expansion – jobs from small businesses that cannot provide health insurance.

      We’re not near so good in providing the urban version of this. Lots of failures.

  4. James C. Sherlock Avatar
    James C. Sherlock

    Now that Richmond teachers can negotiate with the school board, scores will certainly soar. Seriously, the school board has no standards at all. If it did, it would have told the teachers to come back for union recognition when, say, 60% of the kids passed math and English SOLs. Barbershop chatter would have supported that. The school board in Richmond works for the teachers, not vice versa.

    1. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      Now that Richmond teachers can negotiate with the school board, scores will certainly soar.

      You’re really getting the hang of deadpan sarcasm. I like it. Well done.

  5. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    The largest county in Virginia, Pittsylvania, is equal to the richest county in Virginia, Loudoun. Very useful post!

  6. WayneS Avatar
    WayneS

    Will you also be looking into the extent to which the dates of return to in-person teaching correlate with the level of recovery among the districts?

    1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      Last to return was Richmond. They stayed out until fall of 21. Unforgivable.

  7. Stephen Haner Avatar
    Stephen Haner

    On the poor performance list, Harrisonburg really jumps out to me. A university town, and those usually have strong local schools. Lab school goes there, right? Another for Mary Washington in Fredericksburg? (If Larry approves…)

    1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      Charlottesville schools don’t dazzle, especially with all the “help” they get from UVa Ed school. A small district like that should shine if UVA’s Ed school was part of the solution.

    2. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Too many red Solo cups in Harrisonburg…

      1. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        They make ’em in blue too.

    3. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that Montgomery County (the home of Virginia Tech) is a good bit higher on the list than Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg, and that they even outscored Albemarle County, which is immediately adjacent to UVA.

      Couldn’t top Williamsburg, though, so W&M still have an edge. Darn it!

      😉

    4. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      Ditto Fredericksburg and Mary Washington University.

      Equally awful to me that in a town that hosts a University – we have such terrible k-12 SOL scores.

      The city council is currently “embroiled” in how to pay for a new Middle School. The SOLs are not even mentioned.

    5. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that Montgomery County (the home of Virginia Tech) is a good bit higher on the list than Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and Fredericksburg, and that they even outscored Albemarle County, which is immediately adjacent to UVA.

      Couldn’t top Williamsburg, though, so The Tribe still has an edge. Darn it!

      😉

  8. Lefty665 Avatar
    Lefty665

    But I don’t understand. Only 63% of Charlottesville students passed the English SOLs, while Charlottesville has declared that 86% of its students are gifted. With almost 1/4 of their gifted kids not passing SOLs surely heads will be rolling in Charlottesville. It is the gifted kids who pull up the passing rates. If even they are not passing something is profoundly and horribly wrong in Charlottesville. But we knew that already.

    1. Baconator with extra cheese Avatar
      Baconator with extra cheese

      Seemingly those gifts are in subjects for which there is no SOL test.

      1. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        Yeah, and that’s where it leaves the kids, SOLuck.

    2. WayneS Avatar
      WayneS

      But I don’t understand. Only 63% of Charlottesville students passed the English SOLs, while Charlottesville has declared that 86% of its students are gifted.

      I suspect ‘systemic exaggerated sense of self-importance’ is behind the disparity.

      1. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        Last spring Charlottesville was extraordinarily pleased with itself that it had achieved equity in its schools by declaring 86% of its students gifted. (link below)

        Who could have imagined, that triumph of declared equity over nasty old white systemic racism would not translate magically into academic achievement? The SOLs must be systemically racist too. They clearly need equity applied to them.

        Will Charlottesville someday decide to actually teach all its kids to read, write and speak english, or will it continue to be tickled with wokeness run amok by declaring 86% of its students gifted?

        Betcha the kids have a pretty good idea what they don’t know.

        https://dailyprogress.com/news/local/education/86-of-charlottesville-students-in-grades-3-11-are-identified-as-gifted/article_49ff3982-cd5e-11eb-8776-eb3c4344ae73.html

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