A reckoning for Virginia schools
The commonwealth's war on educational standards hurt its students
In 2017, Virginia, under the control of Democrats, jettisoned the high educational standards that had long prevailed in the commonwealth. Some key tests were abandoned and the scores needed to pass other tests were lowered. In addition, school accreditation standards were relaxed.
Even the editors at the Washington Post understood that lowering educational standards is terrible idea. They criticized the move in an editorial called “Virginia’s retreat from academic rigor.”
The Post was right. A report issued last week by state education officials shows that student performance has declined since 2017. It also shows that racial and income achievement gaps have widened.
The report documents drops in reading scores for both fourth and eighth grade students on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, which was administered in 2019. On this test, 42 percent of second-graders scored below a key reading benchmark.
Furthermore, 45 percent of public high school seniors in 2019 were not “college-ready” in math on the SAT. It was worse for black and Latino seniors. 76 percent of black and 54 percent of Hispanic seniors weren’t college-ready on that test.
Each of these numbers reflects a decline since 2017. And Virginia has fallen from third to ninth in the nation in students earning college credit on AP exams since then.
I highlighted “2019” because that was the year before the pandemic. This means that the decline started before covid-19 arrived.
Nor does the pandemic explain Virginia’s drop from third to ninth in the number of students earning college credit on AP exams. Education was adversely affected in all states due to covid and the response to it.
The decline in performance by Virginia students shouldn’t have surprised anyone. When less is demanded of students (or anyone else), less is what you get.
Yet, the Post’s local news reporters tried to dismiss the report’s findings of diminished performance:
A Washington Post analysis of the report suggests its use of data is misleading, and shows Virginia students performed at least as well as or better than students nationwide over the past several years.
But the fact that Virginia students still perform at least as well as students nationwide is irrelevant. The issue is whether performance has declined, not whether, thanks to previously stellar performance under the old regime of more stringent standards, performance still meets or exceeds that in other states.
The speciousness of the Post reporters’ attempt to downplay declining student performance brought what I take to be a rebuke from the paper’s editors, who had warned that a decline in standards would lead to a decline in performance:
One line of attack against the report seemed to be that it doesn’t really matter that so few eighth-graders (33 percent) and fourth-graders (38 percent) are proficient in reading on the Nation’s Report Card because that scoring is good enough. Virginia once prided itself on asking more of its students than what was minimally required by the federal government, and this report should be a call to action for meaningful reform.
Fortunately, the commonwealth’s new governor, Glenn Youngkin, is on the case. In fact, it was Youngkin who asked for the report on students’ performance.
The Youngkin administration is calling for revised school accreditation standards and an improved assessment system, along with more funding to support the hiring of reading specialists, raises for teachers, and innovation in early childhood and literacy programs.
The 2017 lowering of standards was driven by the desire for “equity.” Then-governor Ralph Northam explained that because children are diverse, "coming from different backgrounds and different regions," he's "not sure that it's fair" to give them all the same test. They shouldn't be penalized for the environment they come from, he added.
But Northam did “diverse” students no favor by lowering the standards they are expected to meet. In fact, as noted, minority group members have suffered a sharper decline in performance than their white counterparts.
Youngkin says “we took our eye off the ball in the state of Virginia” when it comes to education. He’s being too generous.
It was Northam and other left-liberal Democrats (not “we”) who lowered the standards. And it was Northam and the Dems who refused to recognize that high quality education, not a misguided obsession with “equity,” is the ball.
See also https://news.yahoo.com/top-sf-high-school-sees-192303605.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACqOcVNV9y9F9vZ8qU480S_lmunCJS5UV8FGPMJIwDO4wSsBpL7jSW4En59Huz2vd5hH5pmCPfhnocdd14uSA_zSmOuVI1u-_B6ie21q-A71wVHL7XM5n4RwGz66pDVKCcogbaCk3VeyHZF504ve7IdHOVz6-fTcEwTMwcMvYFMT