OPINION: Virginia’s SOL Assessment Challenges - Lack of Transparency
Test rigor is up, transparency is down, and once again teachers are caught in the middle.
By Matt Hurt
GUEST OPINION WRITER
Virginia’s Board of Education has significantly raised the stakes for student performance. A new accountability system has set a higher bar for school success, bolstered by rigorous “cut scores” approved last year. Data from 2025 suggests these scores could nearly halve the number of students deemed proficient in reading and math.
However, as expectations rise, transparency has lagged. To meet these challenges, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) must provide educators with clear, concrete examples of the standards they are expected to teach.
The Problem with “Teaching in the Dark”
Interpreting Virginia’s standards is not a simple task; teachers often disagree on what “mastery” looks like in practice. Historically, the VDOE released retired Standards of Learning (SOL) test forms, allowing teachers to “backwards design” their lessons to match the rigor of the actual exams.
That practice stopped in 2015. Since then, Virginia has implemented new Reading Standards in 2017 and 2024. For a decade, educators have been held accountable for results without seeing a single live exam item. While the VDOE provides practice items, these lack the scrutiny of live tests, and many educators find them poorly aligned with the actual SOL experience.
The CAT Problem: Technical Sophistication vs. Trust
The decade-long drought of released items is likely due to the shift toward Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT). Unlike traditional tests, CAT dynamically adjusts difficulty based on a student’s answers. This requires a massive “item bank” to function—a bank that the General Assembly has failed to fund sufficiently to allow for both testing and public release.
Furthermore, CAT has created a “trust gap” among educators. Because CAT weights questions differently based on difficulty, the data can appear nonsensical to non-statisticians. For example, on last year’s Math 3 SOL test, some students who scored a “400” (barely proficient) answered two-thirds of the questions correctly, while others answered only one-third correctly. Without seeing the questions, this “smell test” failure leaves teachers frustrated and skeptical of the results they are tasked to improve.
A Legislative Opening?
Recent legislation (HB299 and SB200), signed by Governor Spanberger, offers a glimmer of hope. The bills require the release of SOL items and repeal “through-year” growth assessments, which should free up capacity in the state’s item banks.
However, a loophole remains: the law waives the release requirement if the item bank is deemed too small. It also allows the VDOE to substitute “sample items” that have never appeared on a live test. If the General Assembly fails to fund these banks, teachers will remain in the dark.
Conclusion: Support Virginia’s Educators
To improve student outcomes, we must empower those on the front lines. Teachers deserve at least one released SOL test (or a full set of CAT items) per course, annually. Whether Virginia chooses to fully fund its item banks or reconsider the necessity of CAT testing, the priority must be transparency. We cannot ask our educators to hit a target they are not allowed to see.
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