Waiting for NAEP
by Charles B. Pyle
On December 18, the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP) -– the battery of fourth- and eighth-grade exams in reading and math known as the Nation’s Report Card -– announced that the results of the 2024 tests will be released January 29, 2025.
State-by-state NAEP results are typically published in the fall, but during presidential election years the governing board delays reporting to keep the assessment program from becoming ensnared in national politics.
But state politics don’t factor into the NAEP governing board’s timetable. And in Virginia, the results of the national tests students took at the beginning of 2024 will land in the middle of a contentious General Assembly session and in what promises to be a bruising election year as Republicans seek to retain the top three statewide offices and Democrats battle to hold their narrow majority in the House of Delegates.
The 2024 NAEP results will be as much of a report card on the educational policies and initiatives of Governor Glenn Youngkin as a measure of the reading and math skills of Virginia elementary and middle school students.
As discussed in an earlier column on this site, Youngkin seized on the disastrous performance of Virginia students on the 2019 NAEP during his 2021 campaign for governor. The former Carlyle Group executive tied the sharp declines in the performance of Virginia students on the national reading and math tests with the low bars set for corresponding state Standards of Learning tests during the Northam administration.
Youngkin’s call for raising the rigor of the SOLs was buttressed by a 2021 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) “mapping” study comparing how states define proficiency on their own tests compared with the bars set on the national assessments.
The study found Virginia was the only state that defined proficiency in both fourth- and eighth-grade reading at the “below basic” level on the national tests. The national testing program describes below basic as denoting performance that falls below its lowest performance level (basic).
Youngkin repeated his call for higher standards after the 2022 NAEP documented further declines in reading and math among Virginia students — declines the governor described as catastrophic.
A follow-up NCES mapping study released in November 2024 shows that despite Youngkin’s repeated vows as a candidate and governor to increase the rigor of the SOLs, Virginia still sets the lowest bar in the nation on its fourth- and eighth-grade reading tests compared with expectations on the corresponding national assessments. According to the latest timeline, the state Board of Education won’t set new SOL proficiency benchmarks until after Youngkin leaves office in early 2026.
The Youngkin administration also has been slow to carry out its pledge to increase the rigor of the commonwealth’s school accountability system. A new ratings system that prioritizes proficiency and mastery of content will finally go into effect in the fall of 2025, more than three years after Youngkin appointees achieved a majority on the state Board of Education.
In fairness to the state board, it should be noted that for much of the first two years of the administration, the board’s agenda was micromanaged by Youngkin’s former chief of staff, a businessman like his boss with little interest in advice from education policy hands from previous GOP administrations.
More time was lost as the governor’s second imported state superintendent sought to curry favor with school divisions by developing school accountability proposals strangely at odds with Youngkin’s call to prioritize proficiency in evaluating school performance.
So, given the slow-walk on raising standards, what can we expect when the 2024 NAEP results are released in January?
The performance of Virginia fourth and eighth graders this past spring on the SOLs suggests that the 2024 NAEP results will not mark a turnaround from the sharp declines of 2019 and 2022.
Reading and math pass rates on the 2024 SOLs were essentially flat. For example, 73% of fourth graders met Virginia’s low bar in reading, the same percentage as in 2023. Eighth graders managed a one-point improvement, from 71% to 72%, hardly more than statistical noise. The pass rates for African American students were much lower in both grades.
It is important to keep in mind that the state and national tests are different. Representative samples of fourth and eighth graders sat for the national tests in January 2024, while practically all students in the state took the SOLs for their respective grades a few months later.
The tests also serve different purposes. While NAEP items are designed to assess mastery of “complex grade-level content,” the purpose of the SOLs is to determine whether students and schools meet basic accountability standards.
Nevertheless, it is entirely appropriate to compare the relative rigor of state expectations with how proficiency is defined on the national tests. That is why the NCES produces mapping studies after each NAEP administration.
During the 2000s and early 2010s, increases in the rigor of Virginia’s standards and improved student performance on the SOLs led to gains on the national tests. Conversely, the watering down of accreditation standards and the lowering of SOL cut scores during the McAuliffe and Northam administrations set the stage for dramatic NAEP declines in 2019 and 2022.
If the 2024 SOL scores presage another round of dismal NAEP results, the release of the 2025 SOL pass rates next summer — scored against the very benchmarks the governor has repeatedly decried as dishonest — will represent an ironic last hope for Youngkin to claim an end-of-term success he’ll need to compete with potential 2028 rivals like Florida’s Ron DeSantis for the mantle of the nation’s foremost Republican “education” governor.
Charles Pyle covered the roll out of the SOL reform as a reporter with WWBT (NBC12) in the 1990s and served as director of communications of the Virginia Department of Education 2000-2023.
