"Pointing to what the 34-page Virginia Department of Education report described as an “honesty gap” between what state learning assessments show and how Virginia students fare on a national assessment, Youngkin suggested decisions of prior administrations created an inaccurately rosy picture of the state of K-12 education.
Citing findings from the education reform nonprofit Achieve, Youngkin and his schools team said Virginia has an unusually wide gap between its state assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests samples of students from each state to produce a metric called “The Nation’s Report Card.”
For 2019, state Standards of Learning assessments showed 75 percent of Virginia fourth-graders proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent proficiency under the NAEP, according to the new report. The gap was wider at higher grade levels, with 76 percent of eighth-graders showing reading proficiency on SOLs, and 33 percent showing proficiency according to the NAEP.
To underscore some parents’ frustration with the state of public schools, the Youngkin administration’s report notes the number of homeschooled students jumped 56 percent in the 2020-2021 school year. That same year, the report says, 3,748 public-school students transferred to private schools in Virginia.
“We are not serving all of Virginia’s children,” Youngkin said. “And we must.”
The Youngkin administration’s analysis showed similar assessment gaps in math scores, and wider gaps in both math and reading for Black, Hispanic and low-income students. The governor’s office also presented data showing those achievements got worse due to pandemic-era school closures, with SOL pass rates dropping substantially between 2017 and 2021 for Black, Hispanic and low-income third-graders while white students showed a more modest decline.
https://news.yahoo.com/youngkin-says-report-honesty-gap-140100639.html