Reply to WE WANT SCHOOL WIDE SOL SCORES

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is all very informative, thank you. I had no idea. But I'm still wondering why there would be different rates of participation from pre to post pandemic for different racial groups. Because if we assume the massive variation is as you describe (in who takes what and when), if such patterns don't change systematically by school, you can still some get a sense of which school is doing better. Of course that's a big IF and I'm curious about how differences in patterns of test taking could affect how schools look when compared to one another. As noted earlier, I saw a pattern in some of the so-called top schools with the decline is test-taking among Asians from 2018/19 to 2022/23 being less than the decline among White students. Why would that be? It does seem to correlate with the change or lackthereof in test scores.[/quote]
The decision to have students only take one EOC SOL in high school stemmed from the changes in accreditation that Virginia made in 2017. Students taking Algebra 1 in 7th grade were unaffected by this change because they take the Algebra 1 SOL in 7th grade, Geometry 8th grade, and Algebra 2 in 9th grade. Students taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade would take that SOL and then Geometry SOL in 9th grade and now stop. Students taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade would only take that SOL and then stop, assuming they passed. Thus, maybe the patterns you're noticing stem from differences in the demographic shares of accelerated math. [/quote]

Basically for some schools there's a pattern where the #of Asian test takers rebounds more than White, and this relates to SOL pass advanced scores. Not so surprising given we know the Asian students generally perform better, but it's still hard to understand is why you'd see this differential rebounding, by demographics, in # of test takers.  Langely in particular sees a major rebound in Asian test takers of math SOL from 2018 to 2022 (170 to 151) but much less so for White test takers (528 to 302), and this undoubtedly affects how Langley looks in terms of recovery from pandemic (pass advanced rate in 2018/19 is 31 and pass advanced rate in 2022/23 is 26). Contrast with TJ, with rebound of math SOL test takers from 392 to 217 for Asians and 145 to 104 for White students, the pass advanced rate went from 91 in 2018/19 to 53 in 2022/23. TJ looks worse than Langley but this is no doubt in part due to changes in the demographic make up of who is taking the tests.

In terms of why the change in demographic makeup of test takers, maybe this can be explained as you suggested in terms of students at some schools not needing to take the test which makes the scores lower (at TJ?) or could be more sinister if schools want their scores to look better they might encourage students from specific groups to take the tests...but maybe that's unlikely? I'm not an insider so no idea how plausible that is.

Either way, when the underlying demographics of who is taking the tests changes so dramatically, the scores are going to change a lot. I don't think it means the scores are useless but there's certainly a lot of noise and changes from pre to post pandemic are very difficult if not impossible to interpret. [/quote]
There have also been changes in math course enrollment for entering TJ students. Previously, more than 90% of TJ students had taken Algebra 1 by 7th grade. Now, more TJ students have taken Algebra 1 in 8th grade so you would likely see some change in the number of students taking the various SOLs from that factor as well. [/quote]

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