Former VA LG Bill Bolling (R) hits the Youngkin administration on this story:
Preliminary results from annual state accountability tests show that Virginia students’ academic achievement has remained largely stagnant since the previous school year.
The Virginia Department of Education has delayed releasing the test scores, despite its original tentative plans to release the scores on Aug. 17. This will be the first time in at least 19 years that the state education department publishes the results after August.
See below for former LG Bill Bolling’s response, in which he says, “This is what you do when the results of performance tests are not what you want. You delay releasing the results.”
Also, as Ben Paviour highlights, note this line from the article: “The unidentified VDOE spokesperson did not respond to requests for clarification.” I mean, does this epitomize the secretive, slimy, extreme, incompetent, hack-filled Youngkin administration – or what?!?
A few more comment include:
- VA Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, who knows a TON about education (far more than Youngkin and his clowns): “Youngkin & his VDOE have tried to erode parents’ trust in public ed in order to defund schools & send billions into private hands. They’ve driven down teacher morale & bottlenecked licensure. They said they would focus on academics. Instead, they’ve focused on fake culture wars.”
- Great point by RVA Dirt: “When the 2022 scores came out, Youngkin assured everyone that the drop in scores was the fault of [D]emocrats and their low expectations. The 2023 scores are WORSE (history) or the SAME (reading, writing) under Youngkins leadership. Now we blame Covid?”
I’ll add more comments if/when I see them. With that, here’s what former LG Bill Bolling (R) had to say:
PUBLIC SCHOOL PERFORMANCE NEEDS TO IMPROVE
This is what you do when the results of performance tests are not what you want. You delay releasing the results. But the preliinary data is not encouraging. It shows that 1/3 of Virginia students failed to pass SOL tests in history, science, math and writing.
Let’s be clear, there are public schools in Virginia that perform very well, but many do not. Some of this may be due to carry over declines during the 2020 COVID year and virtual learing, but there is a deeper problem in many Virginia’s public schools.
As someone who is a product of the public schools, and a strong supporter of public education, I offer this. Schools need to get back to teaching core subjects, holding people accountable for results, and teachers need to be freed up from many of the unrelated responsibilities they have been given that have nothing to do with teaching.
There are many other things that need to be done to improve the quality of our public schools and make certain that we are attracting and retaining the best possible teachers in the classroom, including raising teacher pay, removing problem students from the schools, reducing class sizes, modernizing textbooks and technology, etc.
If we are not willing to do these things, the best teachers will continue to leave to persue other careers, mediocrity will persist, results will continue to lag, and parents will continue to opt for alternatives to public education when they can.
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