The Virginia Board of Education hears from experts on setting performance levels for K-12 students at Reynolds Community College on Feb. 26. (Photo by Nathaniel Cline/Virginia Mercury)
Virginia students may soon face tougher academic benchmarks as the state aligns its performance levels with the higher standards of a national assessment.
Starting next month, the Virginia Board of Education will begin adjusting its cut scores — used to determine whether K-12 students are meeting proficiency levels — to better match the rigor of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Student performance is typically categorized as “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced,” reflecting their knowledge and skills in core subjects.
Since 1998, Virginia has relied on its Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments to gauge proficiency in areas like reading and math. However, NAEP, a widely recognized national organization, has often been used to assess smaller student groups, such as fourth and eighth graders.
“The NAEP assessment provides a common benchmark that states can then use to look at the relative rigor of their own assessment cut scores,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, during a work session Wednesday.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has frequently pointed to NAEP data to highlight what it calls the “honesty gap” — the disparity between state-level proficiency standards and the more stringent NAEP benchmarks.
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Between 2017-2022, Virginia’s fourth-grade reading and math results showed a staggering 40-percentage-point gap between the state’s SOL and NAEP assessments. That disparity does not provide an “accurate picture of student performance,” said Em Cooper, deputy superintendent of teaching and learning, during Wednesday’s work session.
In response, the board has begun discussing plans to revise the cut scores — the threshold for determining student proficiency — in key subjects. The effort is a cornerstone of Youngkin’s broader push to “restore excellence in education,” which includes raising standards in core subjects, increasing transparency and accountability, and overhauling the state’s assessment system.
Youngkin has argued that Virginia’s current proficiency standards are the result of the previous Board of Education lowering cut scores and altering school accreditation standards.
However, Anne Holton, a former state education secretary and an appointee of former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, defended the previous board’s approach. She noted that Virginia’s pass rates aligned with the NAEP’s “basic” achievement level, which reflects “partial mastery of the knowledge and skills that are fundamental for proficient work at a given grade,” according to NAEP.
