Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin slammed the previous administration Monday for the poor showing on the nation’s reading and math scores.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, released full data Monday for the first time since 2019 after the 2021 exams were postponed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Significant losses were reported nationwide; national reading scores dropped to 1992 levels while math scores saw their largest decrease ever, with fourth-graders in Virginia suffering some of the largest declines in reading and math proficiency in the nation.
The Richmond-Times Dispatch reports that Youngkin placed blame for the grim results on his Democratic predecessors, and used the scores as an opportunity to announce plans to overhaul the state’s school accreditation system and toughen passing criteria for state standardized testing.
“Our nation’s children have experienced catastrophic learning loss, and Virginia students are among the hardest hit,” Youngkin said at a news conference on Monday. “We also must clearly recognize that the underpinnings of this catastrophic performance were decisions that were made long before we’d ever heard of COVID-19.”
Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, who also spoke at the press conference, said Virginia’s fourth graders had the largest decline in reading in the nation. Only 32 percent of Virginia’s fourth graders performed proficient or above in reading, compared to 43 percent in 2017.
For fourth-grade math, only 38 percent scored proficient or above, compared with 50 percent in 2017, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
Balow also said the two previous state administrations, under Democratic Govs. Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam, “systematically lowered standards for schools and lowered expectations for students.”
“More than 20 years of gains have been completely wiped out, and this massive learning loss cannot be blamed solely on the pandemic because nearly half of the learning loss occurred before anyone in this room ever heard of COVID-19,” Balow said.
Youngkin’s plan will overhaul accreditation standards
Youngkin claims he has a plan to get Virginia’s students back on track. Starting in January, he said Virginia will offer learning recovery grants to help families afford in-person or virtual tutoring.
Virginia is also partnering with educational nonprofits, such as Khan Academy, to provide high school students with access to free homework support groups.
Youngkin also announced he was directing the Virginia Board of Education to raise Standards of Learning (SOL) scoring thresholds by next spring. “When we challenge our students and our teachers, they rise to the occasion,” he said.
The governor also encouraged local school boards to use the remaining nearly $2 billion of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief federal funds on learning recovery efforts.
Politicizing education is a GOP tactic
What Youngkin is proposing may be all well and good, however, my biggest objection to the whole news conference is the way the governor politicized the education problem here in Virginia.
The Virginia Education Association criticized the governor for politicizing test results. The VEA is a union of more than 40,000 teachers and school support professionals in the state.
Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, head of the state Senate’s Education and Health Committee, said now is not the time to point fingers at those who are no longer in leadership.
“In a time where we need proper leadership from the governor, instead of taking time off the road to find solutions to learning loss problems in Virginia’s schools, he’d instead place the blame on previous administrations,” Lucas said in a statement.
The one thing the “Nation’s Report Card” did underscore is that the school lockdowns restricted students’ opportunities to learn, hitting those from lower-income families and ethnic minorities the hardest.
The assessment also pointed out that there is “no evidence” that shows a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed, a rebuttal to GOP officials that blame school lockdowns in Virginia for the low scores.
Results from the latest report card showed the pandemic widened the gap between higher- and lower-performing students. Black and Hispanic students saw larger score drops compared to their white peers in fourth-grade math.
Del. Schyuler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, who is also a teacher, said one of the reasons for the decline in scores is a lack of funding.
“The General Assembly has underfunded public schools since the great recession in 2009. … You had for over a decade a harshly GOP-controlled General Assembly, where school funding was kind of at the back of the bus,” VanValkenburg said.
So my response to all this back-and-forth squabbling? Grow up, people. This is not an election issue. Don’t relegate school funding to the back of the bus and don’t pass the blame to others. Just fix the problem.
