Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Virginia gets a D+ (i.e., deception plus)

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by

James A. Bacon
in

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

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  1. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Regarding:

    “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.”

    How does this comment even begin to make sense?

    The SOL was put in place by George Allen.

    Everyone recognizes your contempt for Mark Warner but how can you possibly lay this at his feet?

    What is taking place is just what people like Mickey VanDerwerker and Lowell Fulk were trying to warn about before Warner even took office.

  2. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    It’s easy as ABC… Lets do the dumb math together:

    A) Howard DEAN + Mollycoddle = Dueling banjo’s without southern accents

    B) Monica DIXON + Mollycoddle = Presidential inspirations through better fundraising

    C) Standards of Learning DECEPTION + Mollycoddle = Educational failures, political posturing

    How about those apples, more to the point…

    Does 26th District House of Delegate candidate and Valley PAVURSOL (c. 2001) member Lowell Fulk agree or disagree with the educational assessment? Since the Governor’s PAC dropped 10K in Lowell’s campaign bank account last week.

    ‘Nuff said.

    ~ the blue dog

  3. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Steven,
    Your last post doesn’t make any sense. Instead of trying to be cute and coy and witty, why don’t you just say what you mean?

  4. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    Gosh Tom — that’s no fun!

    But seriously…

    First off, Gov. Warner has touted the SOLs as a success during his four year term. That’s a political spin — Everybody knows it. On Monday, Gov. Warner will play spin master again.

    Secondly, Lowell Fulk is a nice guy and there’s no way he is gonna criticize the Governor after that contribution windfall. He’s counting on his support.

    That’s all.

  5. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Okay, thanks Steven. Is Warner touting the SOLs as a success, or that VA schools are being successful with the SOLs? I believe there is a great distinction to be made between the two.

  6. criticallythinking Avatar
    criticallythinking

    Tom, I’m not sure what the difference would be. What would the point be of being “successful” with the SOLs, if the SOLs themselves have now fallen flat.

    Is it possible that, in order to avoid the “train wreck” which was supposed to come last year, and which would have branded Warner a failure in education, that pressure was brought to weaken the SOLs such that that wreck could be avoided?

    OK, maybe that is a bit Machevelian. But it is clear that Warner used last year’s “success” in graduation to his political gain. From the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, October 18, 2004:

    The results “exceeded our highest expectations,” Warner said at a news conference. State figures show 72,115 out of 76,495 seniors earned their diplomas this year, down from 95.2 percent last year, and the same percentage as in 2002.

    “A number of years back, there had been predictions that 2004 was going to be a year of the train wreck,” he said, “that we were going to have a huge number of students not graduate from high school because they don’t pass their SOLs.”

    But those predictions proved wrong “because the Class of 2004 rose to the challenge,” Warner said.

    So, did the students “rise” to the challenge, or did something “lower”. The NAEP results could suggest the latter.

    An alternative explanation could be that Virginia just isn’t spending time on the NAEP because they are too busy training for the SOLs, which are the tests that matter for now. Whether you believe in a standardized test for performance, or not, surely we can all agree that having two COMPETING sets of tests in one state is a very bad thing?

    Charles R.

  7. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    At Sorensen today (a joint PLP/CLP session), a Gilmore appointee made a pretty compelling case that a) governors have virtually no power over SOL performance or, for that matter, education and b) that the SOLs are working, by which I mean only that scores are steadily improving.

    Both were news to me, so I share them here.

  8. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Charles R. or “critically thinking”:
    Your question: “What would the point be of being “successful” with the SOLs, if the SOLs themselves have now fallen flat?”
    is precisely on the money, and what VanDerwerker and Fulk argued for years. The question I posed regarding whether the claim that VA has been successful in succeeding on the SOLs, or whether the SOLs have been successful is very important because our state has indeed been focusing on helping students pass the SOL tests in order to graduate, in order for the schools to be accredited, in order for the superintendents and principals and teachers to keep their jobs, and in order for localities to have some say over how the districts operate…
    If someone wants to make the claim that VA school divisions have been successful in dealing with the SOL then they can do so with some justifiable sense of accomplishment. Almost a decade of very hard and concentrated work by all involved at most levels and several billion dollars of taxpayer money have gone into this experiment in accountability. Virginia’s educators and parents and schoolchildren should be congratulated for adapting and finding success in dealing with artificial demands put in place by politicians. Virginia’s school children are passing the tests… Mission accomplished? Not so fast-depends on the mission/question.
    Now for the second (part of the) question:
    Have the SOL been successful?
    Here is where VanDerwerker and Fulk have been almost fortune tellers. Have the SOL improved student performance on anything other than criteria based standardized multiple choice tests?
    The NAEP and SAT can provide some benchmark comparisons. But only some… Because they are simply other (only somewhat similar) tests.
    Some questions to ask our politician friends who have so promoted test based accountability:

    George Allen, “This program will provide a cost neutral way to improve public education.”
    Has it?…

    George Allen, “This program will prepare our children for the jobs of the 21st century.”
    Has it?…

    Algebra and Geometry test scores have gone up, so have personal bankruptcies. How can you explain this phenomenon?

    Mr. /Ms. Politician, you say that the number of seniors receiving a verified diploma hasn’t changed or has only been reduced slightly. How does the number of seniors who graduate compare to the number of students who started high school with them as freshmen?
    Second part of this question:
    What has become of those students who started high school as freshmen, but then didn’t continue to their senior year? Did they simply disappear?

    This is precisely why people like VanDerwerker and Fulk are so needed.
    I’ll write more a bit later. This is a great discussion-and much needed. Thank you Mr. Steven Sisson for getting it started! Perhaps you could focus a bluedog series on just this topic and VanDerwerker and Fulk’s involvement.

    Ah’ll be back…

    Oh yes, Waldo. Of course someone from the Gilmore administration would make the case that, “governors have virtually no power over SOL performance or, for that matter, education and b) that the SOLs are working.”

    What they failed to share with you however is that this statement only applies to governors like Jim Gilmore who washed his hands of any responsibility.
    Gilmore deserves an entire post about his “efforts” toward education…

  9. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    “An alternative explanation could be that Virginia just isn’t spending time on the NAEP because they are too busy training for the SOLs, which are the tests that matter for now. Whether you believe in a standardized test for performance, or not, surely we can all agree that having two COMPETING sets of tests in one state is a very bad thing?”

    Charles R.

    Charles, again you are dead on. The SOL aren’t called “high stakes tests” for nothing.

  10. Laszlo Avatar
    Laszlo

    Read comments by Mark Emblidge in todays RTD.

  11. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Lazlo,
    Could you paste the link?
    Thanks

  12. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Found it!

  13. Laszlo Avatar
    Laszlo

    Tom,

    Thanks. I’m sorry I could not provide it to you, but glad you found it. Well stated I think.

    Laszlo

  14. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    Tom: That’s a great idea. I might draft a series of columns on the SOLs and local house races. Perhaps, interviews with local teacher associations as well 😉

    Personally, I would opt for the federal NCLB instead of the state SOLs.

    I still owe you and others a death tax column. It’s in the works.

    ~ the blue dog

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Blue Dog –

    You DO know that the federal NCLB doesn’t have any specific learning standards at all, right?

    And that under NCLB a new child to this country who speaks NO English has just 3 years to become completely proficient at the level of a native born child according to the testing requirements?

    And that under NCLB a school that has only one group of one grade level as not sufficiently proficient (for example, maybe an influx of young ESL children) can cause that school to have to offer transfer out options for every single student in the entire school. All 500 or 600 kids could get to transfer all over the district just because one segment of English language learners in one grade level tested as not making sufficient progress.

    NCLB needs LOADS more common sense than it currently has.

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