Week Five:

Sorry, everyone, due to college visits, I wasn’t able to get as much done this week as I would like, and I wasn’t able to push out a blog post. So, in lieu of a major update, here is a brief tangent/rant about some stuff I discovered in researching for this project and wrote up a while ago but never published.

Sorry, everyone, due to college visits, I wasn’t able to get as much done this week as I would like, and I wasn’t able to push out a blog post. So, in lieu of a major update, here is a brief tangent/rant about some stuff I discovered in researching for this project and wrote up a while ago but never published. Virginia’s Standardized tests, the SOLs, are nowhere near as terrible as some politicians (cough*cough* Youngkin) like to claim. They produce graphs such as the one below which I took from an actual Virginia Department of Education report produced at the behest of the governor. This report, while technically truthful, distorts the truth to make Virginia look like it is doing far, far, worse than it is in reality. This graph compares the passing scores on state assessments to scores on a federal diagnostic assessment. What this graph ignores, however, is that the SOL and the NAEP are meant to do two entirely separate things, with the SOL meant to test whether students measured up to a certain minimum proficiency, while the NAEP is meant to test whether students go beyond that.

Additionally, if you actually look at the source Youngkin pulled this graph from, it quite clearly states that the graph is not meant to make any sort of statement on the quality of state assessments, which is exactly what Youngkin is using this for. I, as a High School student, was able to figure this out in about five minutes. The fact that the people who were producing this point either did not do even the cursory amount of research I did, or deliberately ignored these warnings is utterly inexcusable.

So, basically, the government of Virginia doesn’t know what it’s talking about when it comes to education and is politicizing rational policy choices for nothing more than political clout.