Editorial

BEDFORD--We keep hearing from the governor, from his appointees charged with creating and keeping the SOL testing program going, and from pro-SOL journalists, that the SOL program is working and that feared negative effects haven't materialized. No one wishes this were so more than those of us with kids still in public schools. But wishing--and spinning with selected statistics--doesn't make it so.

A complete and honest review of all available data shows that, unfortunately, rising achievement is not what the SOL have brought to our schools.

The most recent instance is Gov. Mark Warner's claim--unquestioningly accepted by most papers--that 94.3 percent of the Class of 2004 graduated. He claims that graduation rates were not affected by SOL requirements. But the Class of 2004 lost about a quarter of its members between ninth grade and their senior year. Of the original group, 73.4 percent graduated with diplomas.

The governor, however, defines graduation and, therefore, his reported graduation rate, to include not just "regular" diplomas but all diploma options, including Modified Standard and IEP diplomas (which do not count toward graduation under No Child Left Behind and do not mean the same as regular diplomas to most employers or colleges).

This year, the number of students receiving Modified Standard or IEP diplomas jumped from 2,400 to more than 4,000. In fact, only 69.4 percent of the Class of 2004 earned a regular, i.e, Standard or Advanced Studies, diploma. This is a decrease from the 74.4 percent of the Class of 2003 who earned a regular diploma four years after entering ninth grade.

As for Virginia students' scores on National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, the effects of the SOL have not been something to write home (or editorials) about.

Keep in mind that not all increases or decreases in NAEP scores, or any other test scores, are statistically significant. The NAEP reports themselves explicitly indicate whether particular changes are statistically significant. Your selection of math scores on NAEP ["Not out--but up!" Oct. 21] was clever--and selective. Math scores on NAEP have improved across the nation, and Virginia was no exception.

However, Virginia students' average fourth- and eighth-grade reading and writing scores for both white and African-American students showed no statistically significant change from 1992 to 2003 for fourth grade or from 1998 to 2003 for eighth grade, the earliest to the latest rounds of testing.

At the same time, fourth- and eighth-grade reading and writing scores for those groups rose significantly in the rest of the country. If elementary SOL language-arts pass rates, which have risen from around 55 percent to around 72 percent between 1998 and 2003, signaled increased learning, surely we should have seen some NAEP movement.

Meanwhile, Virginia's exclusion rate for NAEP has been rising and, last time, was one of the highest in the United States.

Virginia students' reading and math scores on the Stanford-9 and other norm-referenced tests have been above the national average for about the past 20 years. Yet, while SOL test scores and pass rates have steadily risen over the past five years, most Stanford-9 scores did not significantly improve.

Scores on Stanford-9 reading and math did not significantly improve from 1998 to 2002 in sixth-grade reading, ninth-grade reading, and ninth-grade math. Only fourth-grade scores improved in all three areas (reading, language, and math). However, as the state's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission has noted, the rise in elementary scores should not be taken as an indication of improvement across the board, given that scores tend to start low and then rise when new tests are introduced and also given that scores in the upper grades have remained flat for the past five years.

As scores on Stanford-9 remained flat or fell, Virginia chose to drop the Stanford-9 as a required--and, therefore, as a state-funded--component of the Virginia State Assessment Program (by 2003 General Assembly adoption of Governor Warner's proposal to eliminate Stanford-9 funding).

On top of the flat or falling changes in SAT scores this year, Virginia also saw a decrease in the number of seniors who took the SAT in 2004. Almost 600 fewer students took the SAT test in 2004 than in 2003, while the total number of seniors rose. More importantly, this SAT participation rate for public school students is the smallest participation rate of the past seven years (i.e., since 1997, the year before SOL testing started).

Virginia high school seniors' average SAT math scores dropped one point from 2003 to 2004, and their average verbal scores remained flat.

Virginia's average verbal score was 512, the same as in 2003; the average math score was 507, compared with 508 in 2003.

And while Virginia's public schools, which use an SOL-driven curriculum, saw flat or falling SAT scores, Virginia's private schools saw theirs rising. The black-white score gap closed by six points from 2003 to 2004, because of a six-point drop in white students' average scores.

While some will dismiss these facts as more whining by the anti-accountability crowd (otherwise known as mom and dad), keep in mind that we aren't the only ones who have pointed out that rising SOL pass rates have not been matched by achievement on other measures.

JLARC has noted that the "increase in SOL test scores over time does not necessarily mean that Virginia students are outperforming their national peers by a greater margin over time. Virginia students' test scores have tended to be, on average, above the national average over the years. However, a review of long-term trends in Virginia scores does not suggest that Virginia students' performance relative to national norm groups has changed greatly over time."

If rising SOL pass rates mean that our children are learning more, why aren't other measures mirroring these gains? That's the big question--one that no one seems to be interested in asking.

MICKEY VanDERWERKER is a member of the Bedford County School Board and the founder of Parents Across Virginia United to Reform SOLs.

Editorial (ran in Fredricksburg Free Lance Star November 7, 2004)