(The Center Square) — Despite budget increases in the hundreds of millions and multiple statewide education initiatives, Virginia students still aren’t showing a definitive recovery from pandemic learning lows.
Their test scores from January 2024 declined from their 2022 scores – the scores that caused Gov. Glenn Youngkin to call for major education reforms – in several areas.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “nation’s report card,” measures several subjects but is most known for its 4th and 8th grade math and reading tests.
Virginia’s average 4th grade reading score didn’t improve from 2022. Its 8th grade math and reading scores both decreased by four points. Only 4th grade math improved by two points, just one point above the national average. Virginia student test scores used to sit comfortably above the national average by as much as six to eight points in several subjects.
But Gov. Glenn Youngkin insists the ‘comprehensive efforts’ from both his administration and the General Assembly are working; it’s just the education system they were aiming to improve and the damage done by poor pandemic school policies was so deep, according to Youngkin.
“We knew we had a big problem,” Youngkin told attendees of a press conference Wednesday. “We moved mountains and resources and capabilities, and those… are working. We just have so much to do.”
In the years since the pandemic, the commonwealth passed the Virginia Literacy Act in 2022, in line with literacy legislation sweeping the nation, to revamp teacher training and education programs and to fundamentally change the way literacy is taught in schools.
The Department of Education, under Youngkin, raised cut scores for Virginia’s annual Standards of Learning tests to better align with NAEP standards and established different criteria for history. In the fall of 2024, Youngkin announced $418 million in direct aid to schools to fund a three-year “ALL IN VA” plan, providing intensive tutoring, continued focus on literacy and targeting chronic absenteeism among K-12 students.
This past summer, the governor issued an executive order calling for cell phone-free education “bell to bell” across the commonwealth, which many schools have adopted. Most recently, the administration began implementing a new School Performance and Support Framework, designed to reflect school performance better and separate the state’s “accountability” standards from its accreditation standards.
The governor and the General Assembly have raised public education funding by 50% or $7.3 billion, according to the governor, since the 2019-2020 biennium.
“The data that we’re seeing today out of NAEP, which is from tests that were taken in January 2024, remind us, yes, of what we already knew, but also encourage us that what we are doing is so important,” Youngkin said. “This is for our kids, and that’s why this journey together has to continue.”
The following learning recovery litmus test will be the end-of-year SOLs students take in May. Those results will likely be announced in August.
