2023 Graduation and Not

The 2023 4-year cohort graduation rates are up on the VDOE Web site.  VDOE likes to report its “On-Time Graduation Rate” because it inflates the numbers by counting the nonstandard diplomas. The data below are the “Federal Graduation Indicator” that counts only the Standard, Advanced, and IB diplomas.  On average, Virginia’s economically disadvantaged students (ED)…

Best and Worst School SOLs, 2023

Professor Excel is glad to sort the School test results so let’s look at the top and bottom performers.  But first: On average, Virginia’s economically disadvantaged (ED) students pass at about 20% lower rates than their more affluent peers (Not ED). Thus, the overall school averages are affected by the relative percentages of ED students,…

The Top and the Bottom Divisions, 2023

Professor Excel is glad to sort the Division test results so let’s look at the top and bottom performers.  But first: On average, Virginia’s economically disadvantaged (ED) students pass at about 20% lower rates than their more affluent peers (Not ED). Thus, the overall division averages are affected by the relative percentages of ED students,…

Petersburg: Paradigm of VBOE Fecklessness: 2023 Update

Despite nineteen years of “supervision” by the Board and Department of Education, the Petersburg schools marinate in failure. Va. Code § 22.1-8 provides: “The general supervision of the public school system shall be vested in the Board of Education.” Va. Code § 22.1-253.13:8 provides:The Board of Education shall have authority to seek school division compliance…

2023 Reading & Math SOLs, Selected Divisions

NOTE: The original version of this post suffered from a grievous error in the state math data. Wise County. Note the different scaleMath:Note different scale:And again, different scale:

SOL Disaster

The 2023 test results (generally called “SOLs” but including results of other tests) are up on the VDOE Web page. Those numbers are not pretty.  First, some background.  2020 was the first year without statewide SOL testing since 1997. Then came 2021, when participation in the testing was voluntary. The VDOE press release (link now…

Secret SOLs

The Superintendent of Public Instruction’s May 10, 2023, memo scheduled posting of the 2022-2023 student performance results to the Build-A-Table tool on August 17. Those data have not been posted.It’s not that they don’t have the information. The SOL data, in particular, are collected as they are produced by the online testing. Richmond had data…

NAEP II

The NAEP database offers considerable detail beyond the data reported in the earlier post. For example, it provides scores both for the group of students who are eligible for the federal National School Lunch Program (here abbreviated “NLP”) and their more affluent peers, (“NotNLP”).  I’ll use those abbreviations to refer both to the federal program…

NAEP Before and After COVID

We’ve been hearing about the post-COVID declines in scores on the NAEP tests. The NAEP database offers some (in fact, an abundance of) details. Here, as a small sample, are the 4th and 8th grade reading and mathematics data for the nation and Virginia.First, reading:As to the fourth grade, it looks like the deterioration started…

Dollars and Scholars

Table 15 in the 2022 Superintendent’s Annual Report includes the division expenditures per student for operations. Let’s juxtapose those data with the 2022 division SOL pass rates.  But first: “Economically Disadvantaged” (ED) students (those eligible for Free/Reduced Meals, or receiving TANF, or eligible for Medicaid, or identified as either Migrant or experiencing Homelessness) pass the…

Chronic Failure

Our Board of Education measures “Chronic Absenteeism” in the public schools. They define that item as the percentage of students enrolled for half or more of the school year who are absent for 10% or more of the days of enrollment. In the last year before the pandemic, 2019, the state average chronic absenteeism for…

Population Growth and Not

Capt. Sherlock at Jim Bacon’s blog has a short piece that includes some population growth numbers in Virginia localities. Here, for the record, is the complete Virginia list, sorted by decreasing 2021-22 percentage growth.

Richmond Area Graduation (And Not)

The estimable Carol Wolf asked about the Cohort Graduation Rates of the Richmond and suburban high schools. The VDOE Cohort Graduation Build-A-Table is a quick and convenient source of that information.Note: Virginia’s economically disadvantaged (ED) students (those who qualify for the free/reduced lunch program, TANF, or Medicaid) graduate at a 4-year cohort average rate ca.…

3xAnomalous Richmond Graduation Rate

Continuing to look at division performance in terms of both economically disadvantaged (ED) students and their more affluent peers (Not ED):We have seen that Richmond’s 2022 Graduation rate was anomalous in two respects: Both the economically disadvantaged (ED) students and their more affluent peers (Not ED) graduated at the lowest rates in the state, and…

Graduates. And Not.

At first glance, the spreadsheet in Table 5 (“Diploma Graduates and Completers”) in the Superintendent’s Annual Report looks to be a source of interesting data. The ‘22 report gives the diploma counts for 2022 and the fall memberships for 2019. Calculating the “Federal” diploma rates from those data, however, gives a 203.6% rate for Radford…

What Do They Learn When They’re Not In School?

A kind reader tells me that Table 6 in the Superintendent’s Annual Report is up with the 2021-22 division dropout count totals for Grades 7-12. Juxtaposing those data with the 2021-22 fall enrollments produces the following distribution.The red bars, from the left are Hampton, Newport News, and Norfolk. The gold bar is Richmond. The division…

Poverty and Performance in Virginia Schools

A recent study out of Stanford looked at eleven years of district level NAEP data by race and economic disadvantage from all public school districts and concluded that racial segregation is strongly associated with the magnitude of achievement gaps in third grade and the rate at which gaps grow from third to eighth grade. The…

Public School Enrollments After the COVID Lockdowns

The estimable Jim Bacon’s blog has looked at post COVID public school enrollment declines here and here and here. VDOE has just posted the 2022-23 fall membership (what you and I might call “enrollment”) data that provide a further look at the situation.In light of the hypothesis that the more affluent parents have been moving…

Graduation Inflation

The estimable Jim Bacon points out that the (already inflated: see below) graduation rate this year was higher than the pre-COVID 2019 rate, despite the effect of the pandemic and the government’s response to it. The excellent, new Cohort Graduation Build-A-Table provides a more nuanced look into that situation. The reports we see in the…

The Best and Worst 2022 School SOLs

Returning to the 2022 SOL data, here are the top and bottom twenty schools in reading and math. As a reminder:  Economically disadvantaged (“ED”) students (essentially those who qualify for the federal free lunch program) on average underperform their more affluent peers (“Not ED”) by ca. twenty points, depending on the test. This renders the…