Standard of Learning Test Scores Drop Significantly Across Virginia Schools this Year

2020-2021 SOL Test Results Reflect National Trends, Unprecedented Challenges

9/02/2021

PHOTO BY LUCAS LAW ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2021

Virginia Department of Education [VDOE]

SOL [Standards of Learning] test scores drop across Virginia School Divisions including Prince William County Schools.

RICHMOND — As expected, the results of Virginia’s 2020-2021 Standards of Learning tests taken by students reflect the extraordinary circumstances faced by students and schools last year, and establish a baseline for recovery from the pandemic.

The 2020-2021 SOL test results — required by federal law and released today by the Virginia Department of Education — followed trends on state tests nationwide. Pass rates reflect disruptions to instruction caused by the pandemic, decreased participation in state assessment programs, pandemic-related declines in enrollment, fewer retakes, and more flexible “opt-out” provisions for parents concerned about community spread of COVID-19. The SOL results also reflect disproportionate nationwide impacts across all student groups, especially African American students, Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and English learners.

“What matters now is where we go from here, and we will use the data from the SOL’s to identify the unique needs of every learner as our schools resume in-person instruction for all students,” Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane said.

The commonwealth’s SOL testing in 2019-2020 was cancelled, which means the 2021 SOL tests were the first state assessments administered in two years.

Students were required to take state assessments in school buildings to maintain testing security protocols. In a typical school year, participation in federally required tests is usually around 99%. In tested grades in 2021, 75.5% of students took the reading assessment, 78.7% took math, and 80% took science.

In addition, significantly fewer students retook SOL tests during 2020-2021 as a result of the waiver of state accreditation for 2021-2022, and the flexibility for students granted by the Board of Education in its emergency guidelines for the awarding of verified credits for graduation. Students are allowed to retake SOL tests if they fail their first attempt by a small margin. Retakes typically account for an up to 5% increase in school pass rates following first attempts.

The SOL pass rates in 2020-2021 were anticipated by school divisions and VDOE, given the impact of the pandemic as reported on local assessments administered earlier in the school year. Pass rates in federally required SOLs are 69% for reading, 54% for mathematics, and 59% for science. Last year was not a normal school year for students and teachers, in Virginia or elsewhere, so making comparisons with prior years would be inappropriate.

“Virginia’s 2020-2021 SOL test scores tell us what we already knew—students need to be in the classroom without disruption to learn effectively,” Lane said. “The connections, structures, and supports our school communities provide are irreplaceable, and many students did not have access to in person instruction for the full academic year. We must now focus on unfinished learning and acceleration to mitigate the impact the pandemic has had on student results.”

At the state level, the 2020-2021 SOL results will inform initiatives and policies to help schools and students recover from the disruptions to teaching and learning caused by COVID-19.

Recovery efforts are supported by an infusion of state and federal funding for the commonwealth’s public schools. In May, Governor Ralph Northam announced $62.7 million in Virginia LEARNS Education Recovery grants to help school divisions expand and implement targeted initiatives to address the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on student learning. The Virginia LEARNS grants included funds to address unfinished learning through the following strategies:

Increased in-person instruction and small-group learning.
Targeted remediation, extended instruction, and enrichment.
Strategic virtual learning, technology, and staff training.
Social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health supports for students and staff.
Alternate learning opportunities.
Student-progress monitoring and assessment.
Planning and implementing year-round or extended-year calendars.

Additionally, $147 million from the federal American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund are required to be used by the commonwealth to support instructional recovery efforts. The funding includes $105 million to address unfinished learning, $21 million for evidence-based afterschool programs, and $21 million for evidence-based summer learning. Details on the particular uses of these funds are forthcoming.

At the local level, SOL results are one of many tools that provide teachers, principals and superintendents with information on where students are excelling, and where they are struggling in order to design instruction and supports that meet their unique academic needs.

“While the impact of the pandemic is clear, the SOL data from last year also highlights inequities between student groups,” Lane said. “VDOE remains resolute in its commitment to supporting educators to close these achievement gaps and help all students succeed in the classroom. Virginia is fortunate to have world class teachers and school leaders that continue to demonstrate their ability to successfully navigate these ongoing challenges and help every student thrive.”

In addressing unfinished learning from the pandemic, VDOE and school divisions are emphasizing acceleration, not remediation. Acceleration maintains advancement trajectories for students by combining grade-level content with the teaching of skills and concepts not mastered during 2019-2020 and 2020-2021.

Data on the performance of students who participated in SOL testing during 2020-2021 — including pass rates for schools and school divisions — is available on the VDOE websiteand on VDOE’s School Quality Profile reports for schools, divisions and the commonwealth. As Lane stated in April, the focus of SOL testing during 2020-2021 was on collecting data to identify the academic needs of students and inform local and state efforts to help students recover academically from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

While the department has reported the results of the 2020-2021 SOL tests, accreditation ratings for the 2021-2022 school year will not be calculated. All schools will have the rating “Accreditation Waived,” as during 2020-2021.

Source

Parents Defending Education

4/19/2021

Parents Defending Education is a new grassroots organization determined to fight woke indoctrination in classrooms nationwide. “We believe our children’s education should be based on scholarship and facts, and should nurture their development into the happy, resilient, free-thinking, educated citizens every democracy needs,” the organization says.

The website DefendingEd.org features a robust IndoctriNation Map, where visitors can “learn about parent organizations, incidents and FOIA’s” in their area. And Parents Defending Education wants to hear from you: click here to help them shine a light on educational malfeasance in Fairfax County Public Schools!

A new video from Parents Defending Education succinctly conveys the organization’s vision. “I want my child to learn how to think, not what to think,” the voiceover says. “But in K-12 schools today, activists are pushing a radical new agenda. Instead of creating educated individuals, they are trying to create activists, turning blank slates into members of racial, ethnic or gender groups in conflict with each other — but it doesn’t have to be like this.”

Source: https://fairfaxgop.org/watch-parents-defending-education/

A Lawsuit Challenges TJ Admission Changes

Parents sue to stop TJ’s admission policy changes, alleging anti-Asian race discrimination.

**Erin Wilcox, attorney with Pacific Legal Association, speaks after filing the lawsuit. Screenshot**

By Mercia Hobson

3/19/2021

The Fairfax County School Board and Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott Brabrand face a new lawsuit filed against them last week in United States District Court in Alexandria. The lawsuit alleges race discrimination against Asian-American students by the School Board and the superintendent in changing the admissions process to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, known as “TJ.” The Pacific Legal Foundation filed the civil suit on Wednesday, March 10, on behalf of their client, Coalition for TJ, a group of mostly concerned parents at the high school.

#“This type of racial balancing is unconstitutional,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Erin Wilcox at a press conference held that morning outside the courthouse.

Six Spaces Home Staging

#The Plaintiffs allege FCPS’ recently-implemented overhaul of the TJ admissions process changes, which eliminated the long-standing race-neutral standardized admissions test, is specifically aimed to reduce the number of incoming Asian-American students to racially balance the school according to the racial demographics of the school. “Up until this year, admissions to TJ have been race-blind,” said Wilcox. “Unfortunately, Fairfax County Schools officials apparently believed that this is too many Asian students,” she said.

Photo by Sushant Sehgal
Pacific Legal Foundation holds a press conference on March 10 announcing that they filed a lawsuit against the Fairfax County School Board and Superintendent Scott Brabrand on behalf of their client, Coalition for TJ, challenging recent changes to the admissions policy at Thomas High School for Science and Technology.

#THE COMPLAINT alleges that without the court issuing an injunction, the number of Asian-American students in the incoming TJ Class of 2025 is likely to be cut in half due to the “defendants’ stated desire to manipulate TJ’s demographics.” “The discriminatory intent they’ve shown is intertwined and an inseparable part of the policies they put in place,” Wilcox said.

#According to the lawsuit, in the fall of 2020, Superintendent Brabrand and the School Board saw a reporting requirement by the Virginia Department of Education to include the racial/ethnic make-up and socioeconomic diversity of its students, faculty, and applicants as an opportunity “to completely overhaul the TJ admissions process in order to racially balance the school’s demographics, going far beyond the minimal reporting requirements.”

STEM Education for a Better Tomorrow

#Located in Alexandria, TJ is a regional Virginia state-chartered magnet school operated by FCPS with students eligible for admission from Fairfax, Arlington, Loudoun, and Prince William counties, and the City of Falls Church. TJ is ranked the number one public high school in the 2020 National Rankings.

#The School Board voted to eliminate the TJ merit-based admissions test at its Oct. 6 work session with no public comment opportunity. The complaint quotes Brabrand during the discussion at the work session with the Board to say that eliminating the merit admissions test “eliminat[es] the testing component that squeezed out talent and squeezed out diversity in our system.” Board members said they hoped the new process increased Black and Hispanic representation in the student body.

#On Dec. 17, the School Board voted and adopted, with immediate implementation, further changes to the TJ admissions policy applicable to the incoming TJ freshman Class of 2025 and to future years. The Board adopted the challenged admissions policy that limits the number of students accepted from each county feeder middle school to the top 1.5 percent who meet the minimum evaluation criteria-GPA, student portrait sheet, problem-solving essay, and experience factors: including economically disadvantaged students, English language learners, or special education students.

#The lawsuit alleges that coupled with the high concentration of Asian-American students at four middle schools – Carson, Kilmer, Rocky Run, and Longfellow – and their history of sending large numbers of students to TJ, racial balancing could be accomplished.

#According to the complaint, the plaintiffs sought “to vindicate the rights of Asian-American public school children in and around Fairfax County, Virginia, to compete on an equal footing for admission to the nationally-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) without regard to their race.” Overall, Plaintiffs’ data analysis reported in the complaint that the student body at TJ, at approximately 73 percent Asian-American students under the merit-based race-blind admissions system would drop to 31 percent under the new racial-balancing admissions system for the Class of 2025 with “no other racial group projected to lose seats.”

#The lawsuit alleges changes to admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “…a promise that government at every level will treat every American as an individual, not simply as a member of his or her racial group. Policies like the one implemented by FCPS stand in direct opposition to that promise.”

#THE PLAINTIFFS requested entry of an order requiring the Defendants to return to the admissions procedure for entry into TJ in the fall of 2020. “The Coalition for TJ is not going to stand for this kind of discrimination against Asian-American students and they are here to fight for equal protection for their children,” said Wilcox.

#Julia McCaskill, an immigrant, and parent of a TJ student and students in grades 8 and 6, said at the March 10 press conference that TJ does not belong to a certain race or certain group of people. Low admission rates at TJ for Black and Hispanics are the failure of the FCPS Board, according to McCaskill. “They failed those under-represented areas over the decades instead of fixing the pipeline issue. The authorities are stirring up hate against Asian-Americans hoping to slash the number of Asian-American students will fix the overdue school problem.”

#Asra Nomani, a cofounder of Coalition for TJ and parent of a senior at TJ, said during the press conference that she came to the United States at age four from India. Nomani said she was proud to be working the past nine months with families who came to the United States from communist China and eastern Europe, India, and other places where they faced injustice. “They never could have imagined that they would face injustice in America,” she said.

#A Fairfax County Public Schools spokesperson provided a statement saying, “The process continues to be race-neutral and merit-based… As a Governor’s school, we value diversity and believe that it contributes to the richness of the education at TJHSST.”

#Parents of 17 middle school students filed the initial lawsuit in November 2020 to overturn the School Board’s decision to eliminate the standardized admission test for TJ and the $100 application fee. On Feb. 2, a Fairfax Circuit Court Judge John M. Tran denied the parents’ request to require mandatory standardized testing in the admissions process. Tran said, “The debate over standardized testing belongs to educational professionals.”

#On Friday, March 12, Wilcox said that the next step would be the defendants’ response, either an Answer or a Motion to Dismiss, in approximately 60 days. “I’ve seen in various news articles that FCPS issued a statement on Wednesday. Their legal response to our complaint will be one of the documents mentioned,” Wilcox said.

Source: http://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2021/mar/19/lawsuit-challenges-tj-admission-changes/

Judge declines to halt elite school’s admissions changes

2/04/2021

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A judge on Tuesday refused to issue an injunction to stop an elite northern Virginia high school from changing its admissions policies.

Fairfax County Public Schools is overhauling the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which has been ranked as the top public high school in the country.

The school board hopes the changes will increase diversity at the school, which has long failed to attract Black and Hispanic students. Standardized tests that have long been part of the admissions process have been scrapped in favor of a more holistic review.

Supporters of the existing system sued, citing state regulations designating TJ as a school for the gifted and stating that giftedness should be measured by a standardized test.

Circuit Court Judge John Tran declined to issue an injunction that would immediately bar the changes from taking effect, but the lawsuit itself can still go forward.

A conservative legal group is also weighing a challenge based on racial discrimination against Asian Americans who currently make up a majority of the student body.

Source

Students, Parents Challenge TJ Admissions Changes

Coalition for TJ | Press Release

11/07/2020

Seventeen parents filed a lawsuit against the Fairfax County School Board and Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Brabrand for illegally changing the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

TJ, as the school is known, is the nation’s top-ranked public high school, according to U.S. News & World Report. Established in 1985, the STEM-focused Governor’s School has long maintained rigorous, merit-based, race-blind admissions standards that include the administering of a set of standardized tests. In an October 6 work session, however, the Fairfax County School Board voted to abolish the school’s admissions tests, and the superintendent abruptly eliminated the tests from this year’s admissions process.

The lawsuit alleges that the school board and superintendent violated state laws and regulations requiring that a “nationally norm-referenced aptitude test” be used as part of the TJ admissions process to identify gifted learners with an aptitude for STEM. As a Governor’s School, TJ provides services to gifted students, or advanced academic learners, and receives special funding from the Commonwealth for this purpose.

Today, the Coalition for TJ held a press conference outside the Fairfax County Courthouse, announcing that the 17 parents had filed a lawsuit against school officials. “The basis for the complaint against Fairfax County School Board and Scott Brabrand is relatively simple,” Coalition for TJ co-founder Glenn Miller said at the news conference. “Virginia law, which is the superior law and controls the actions of Fairfax County and its school board, contains specific requirements that must be followed in order to admit students to TJ. Fairfax County and its school board violated those laws. As such, the Fairfax County School Board and the superintendent acted beyond their authority and acted arbitrarily and capriciously.”

The abolition of TJ’s standardized admissions tests will invariably reduce the number of Asian students at the school. The lawsuit’s 17 plaintiffs are families of current middle schoolers who are disadvantaged by the admissions changes. Plaintiff James Pan, father of a gifted middle schooler, spoke at today’s press conference. “FCPS is using the pretext of banning the test for their goal of reducing Asians at TJ,” Pan said. “The government is using a process that is plain old bigotry.”

Plaintiff and middle school parent Srinivas Akella said that he chose to live in Fairfax County for its program for gifted students and for TJ, in particular. “The school board and FCPS arbitrarily made changes to the admissions process in violation of state law,” Akella said today. “I have faith in our judiciary, and I am petitioning them as a last avenue since there was no other recourse left for me to pursue.”

**Jessie Huang, Mortgage Loan Professional, Meridian Bank Mortgage**

Following the plaintiffs’ remarks at today’s press conference, Coalition for TJ co-founder Asra Nomani spoke of the opportunities that TJ has afforded generations of immigrants in Fairfax County. “My father came here for the American Dream. My son pursued it here in this country and is now a student at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology,” Nomani said. “We should not allow anyone — including the Fairfax County School Board and Superintendent Scott Brabrand — to stand in the way of justice. We are all here for the justice that America provides, and I applaud these courageous families.”

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