Sam Powers, Michele Claibourn, Beth Mitchell, Nina Schoonover, Asha Muralidharan, and Samantha Toet
We use Virginia Department of Education data on the Commonwealth's Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments to visually illuminate the significant gaps in reading and math pass rates -- between Black students as compared to their White peers, between economically disadvantaged students as compared to their more fortunate classmates, and between Hispanic students as compared to their non-Hispanic peers. Research shows that lack of reading and math proficiency have long-lasting impacts on future educational attainment, future earnings, and more. We seek to make this data easier to use for explorative purposes, as a call to action, and hopefully, as a manner by which localities can track progress in eliminating these gaps, and working towards the goal of reading and math proficiency for ALL students.
We provide multiple ways of viewing the data. Click to explore further.
- Overall reading gaps by school division, estimating the overall SOL test reading pass rates for students in grades 3-8 by school division and year
- Overall math gaps by school division, estimating the overall SOL test math pass rates for students in grades 3-6 by school division and year
- Third grade SOL Reading test and 6th grade Math SOL test pass rates by school division, highlighting the Commonwealth's overall performance at a key developmental moment in the education of Virginia's children
- Reading proficiency rates by grade cohorts within each school division, visualizing changes in SOL Reading proficiency and gaps over time