Fairfax schools criticize Youngkin for releasing test results

FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — The Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent criticized Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin and the state’s education officials for omitting information from the release of 2023-2024 Standards of Learning scores last week, which the district complained gave the impression that students were losing ground.

Patch obtained a letter from FCPS Superintendent Dr. Michelle C. Reid to Youngkin, Secretary of Education Aimee Rogstad Guidera and Dr. Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction. The letter said the lack of alternative testing in the SOL numbers makes it appear that Fairfax County students are performing significantly worse in English writing and history/social studies compared to the rest of the state.

Only a small number of Fairfax students choose to take SOLs in these two subjects.

“Instead, thanks to the School Division of Innovation designation awarded to FCPS by the VDOE in 2021, our students can demonstrate mastery on a variety of state-recognized alternative assessments, including Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams – in many cases, nationally standardized college exams,” Reid said in the letter.

Patch reached out to Governor Youngkin, Secretary Guidera and Superintendent Coons for comment on Reid’s letter and the issues raised in it. A VDOE spokesperson responded with the following statement:

“As has been the case for many years now and as school districts are aware, the Virginia Department of Education is required by the U.S. Department of Education to calculate scores that only include those students who have taken the approved state assessment exams (Virginia’s Standards of Learning and the Virginia Alternate Assessment Program). School districts may offer students the opportunity to take board-approved substitute tests in lieu of the state SOL test to meet this state testing requirement. This is a local decision left to each school district. However, in accordance with U.S. Department of Education requirements, the substitute test scores will not be included in the SOL results released last week. Most board-approved substitute test scores will be included in the state’s accreditation results released later this fall.”

In the 2023-24 school year, as in previous years, the vast majority of students in Fairfax County took local alternative achievement tests in writing and history instead of the SOL exams, a school district spokesperson said.

Related: Fairfax schools see decline in writing and history: Learning standards

In the 2023-24 school year, a small subset of students chose to take the SOL exams in writing and history (110 students in writing and 474 in history), and 18,000 students took VDOE-approved alternative exams, Reid said. That information was missing from the numbers Youngkin and the VDOE released last Tuesday.

The VDOE figures showed that FCPS students scored 41 percent in history/social studies and 28 percent in writing. When taking alternative tests into account, Fairfax students scored higher in these subjects than students in other districts.

“To be clear, FCPS, Virginia’s largest school district, continues to exceed the state average in all state-mandated SOL subjects,” Reid said.

Reid also criticized the governor and VDOE’s release of 2023-2024 SOL numbers in a pre-release press conference that did not include information on the performance of FCPS students who took VDOE-approved alternative assessments.

“Uncharacteristically, the VDOE released statewide data to schools earlier this week after hosting a press conference that failed to recognize the achievements of large school systems like Fairfax County Public Schools,” she said. “Local media then misrepresented student achievement in writing and history/social sciences.”