This is part 3 of my recent series on Loudoun County schools in general and its high schools in particular. It will confirm what we have already discussed.
I will here compare Loudoun schools in 2018-19 math SOL performance (last year pre-COVID) and other metrics with the schools in Virginia Beach. A spreadsheet with the data for each is posted that includes the same data for Wise County.
Take a look. It is rendered as a heat map. Dark green is outstanding and dark red is bad. The comparison is with statewide averages. The rest of the palette is rendered accordingly.
Loudoun residents won’t like the outcome.
In parts 1 and 2 I showed with state data that Loudoun County high schools greatly outspent and yet underperformed the schools in Wise County in the Virginia coalfields There are specific Loudoun high schools that drove down the overall results.
The identical comparison between Loudoun and Virginia Beach high schools yielded the same results.
Exactly.
You will note on the spreadsheet that Virginia Beach and Loudoun schools from 2nd through 12th grade posted virtually equal pass rates in math SOLs in 2018-19.
But by the time Virginia Beach kids are in high school, they far surpass their Loudoun counterparts. Four of the Loudoun high schools had math SOL pass rates below the lowest of the Virginia Beach high schools and much lower than the state average.
This is part 3 of my recent series on Loudoun County schools in general and its high schools in particular. It will confirm what we have already discussed.
I will here compare Loudoun schools in 2018-19 math SOL performance (last year pre-COVID) and other metrics with the schools in Virginia Beach. A spreadsheet with the data for each is posted that includes the same data for Wise County.
Take a look. It is rendered as a heat map. Dark green is outstanding and dark red is bad. The comparison is with statewide averages. The rest of the palette is rendered accordingly.
Loudoun residents won’t like the outcome.
In parts 1 and 2 I showed with state data that Loudoun County high schools greatly outspent and yet underperformed the schools in Wise County in the Virginia coalfields There are specific Loudoun high schools that drove down the overall results.
The identical comparison between Loudoun and Virginia Beach high schools yielded the same results.
Exactly.
You will note on the spreadsheet that Virginia Beach and Loudoun schools from 2nd through 12th grade posted virtually equal pass rates in math SOLs in 2018-19.
But by the time Virginia Beach kids are in high school, they far surpass their Loudoun counterparts. Four of the Loudoun high schools had math SOL pass rates below the lowest of the Virginia Beach high schools and much lower than the state average.
That means the Virginia Beach kids started out behind and finished well ahead — a learning curve slope for which every school system strives.
Loudoun, not so much.
DEI in Virginia Beach Schools
Virginia Beach particularly dazzled with the absolutely outstanding math SOL performances of its Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged and English learner high schoolers.
The Virginia Beach school board, like that of Loudoun, has said its school system is systemically racist. It has been hiring diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) managers, forming DEI committees hand picked to view with alarm, re-training its teachers to fix their flawed characters and changing “inequitable†policies as fast as it can.
Dr. LaQuiche R. Parrott is the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Well done. Hard to figure out what she will fix, but easy to see what she may break.
Test results show that many minority and poor kids in Virginia Beach high schools posted what are statistically likely to be the best SOL results in the state.
Those kids may have to slow down in their academic pursuits to make “equity†less of a reality so it can be “repaired†by the school board and its race industry hires.
The school board needs to look up and smell the roses.
And stop driving away the very teachers who helped their students achieve these results just a couple of years ago. They love helping minority and impoverished kids succeed, and they are demonstrably wonderful at it.
But we will excuse them if they don’t appreciate being insulted for their efforts.
Leadership
The Loudoun school board, the superintendent’s office, the principals’ offices and classroom teachers and their counterparts in Virginia Beach are equally responsible for the results in their high schools.
As a citizen of Virginia Beach and the father and grandfather of kids who went to school here, I am proud of our schools.
I just hope the current school board doesn’t wreck them.
As for the Loudoun County school board and superintendent’s office, if you made excuses among yourselves when the comparison with Wise County made you look incompetent and not a little ridiculous, you are now going to have to try to explain the Virginia Beach comparison.
Good luck.
Published at baconsrebellion.com
4 comments
by Marianne K. Burke, Ph.D. and Alan J. Lewitus, Ph.D., parents of a TJHSST graduate
We disagree with Asra Q. Nomani’s and Erin Wilcox’s opinion letter that was published in the Washington Post on July 2, 2021,1 where they claimed that the recent changes to the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) admissions process will result in a reduction in the merit and potential performance of students entering the prestigious school. Nomani and Wilcox’s assumption that the standardized test is the best way to evaluate merit is antiquated. Instead, the clear bias inherent in standardized tests used for admissions has been exposed[2],[3],[4]: and economic bias is one of the strongest factors influencing discrepancies in standardized test scores, at least in part because test preparation opportunities are often too expensive for low-income families. The new admissions process at TJHSST is dramatically more equitable for Fairfax County students.
We disagree with Nomani and Wilcox’s statement that the new admissions process was intended to purge Asian students at TJHSST. In fact, the new way of evaluating applicants is intended to be, and is in fact, race- and gender-blind. The biggest changes to the process, besides no longer requiring the standardized test, is that all middle schools in Fairfax County are now able to send their top students to TJHSST, including those underserved schools with disadvantaged students. Also, because there is now no application fee, low-income students can participate.
It is not surprising that, with the changes made, the student body will more closely, but not perfectly, reflect the ethnic and socioeconomic makeup of Fairfax County. The biggest success resulting from the new admissions process is that more students from low-income families are part of the incoming class (2021-2022): the proportion of economically disadvantaged students increased from 0.62% to 25.09%. Also, even with the race- and gender-blind admissions process, racial equity improved for the incoming class. In Fairfax County, 20% of the students are Asian and the incoming class is 54% Asian, 38% of the students in the county are white and make up 22% of the incoming class, 27% of county students are Hispanic and the incoming class is 11% Hispanic, and 10% of county students are Black and 7% of incoming students are Black.[5] Admission offered to white, Hispanic and Black students increased, while the proportion of Asian students decreased but still comprised more than half of the incoming student body.
TJHSST is not the only academic institution that has revised how merit and potential performance is evaluated for admissions. In recent years, a growing number of colleges and universities have stopped using standardized testing (SAT and ACT tests) in their admission process[6] (e.g. University of Virginia[7]), because the inherent bias in the tests is being recognized. Also, in 2019, the US News and World Report changed the way that they now rank high schools, to a method that uses a more holistic approach. In fact, in ranking high schools, they have stopped using SAT or ACT scores of graduating seniors. However, they do use performance of students on state administered assessment tests (e.g. Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning, SOL), but each high school’s state assessment score is compared with scores predicted for a school with the same demographic characteristics.[8] Thus the 25% increase in disadvantaged students at TJHSST is a positive factor in their national ranking.
Over the last few years, there has been a national change toward using more holistic criteria to evaluate student merit and performance, and in ranking high schools, so it is timely that TJHSST employs those revised criteria in their admissions process. These changes are helping to push academic institutions to look at students as more than test scores, and this can help break the cycle of poverty by giving deserving low-income students the ability to attend accelerated high school programs, improving the college and career opportunities of disadvantaged people.
Marianne K. Burke, Ph.D. and Alan J. Lewitus, Ph.D., Fairfax, VA
Interesting soliloquy, and I know you like to post it wherever you can, but it has nothing whatever to do with the article on which you are commenting. Indeed, you wrote:
“However, they do use performance of students on state administered assessment tests (e.g. Virginia Department of Education Standards of Learning, SOL), but each high school’s state assessment score is compared with scores predicted for a school with the same demographic characteristicsâ€.
That is exactly what this article did, and several Loudoun high schools were found lacking. So any idea why some Loudoun High Schools are failing their minority students compared to Wise, Virginia Beach or even state SOL averages. Please share.
There’s that word equity again. Regardless of merit, all should be given the same result – and certainly not equality of opportunity which demands functioning standards associated with academic achievement. Standards are obviously white supremacy even thou Asian students seem to over populate Thomas Jefferson. The dolts of the left just can’t help themselves. Their road to hell isn’t even paved with good intentions anymore just potholes of their own making.
So Loudoun County School Board can conclude that not only are the Country Bumkins in Wise but their fellow Democrats in Va Beach are outperforming them.
Could it be that Loudoun School Board is just playing the race/blame game because they actually don’t have any Standards of Teaching in subjects that offer a direction of prosperity for their students.
When Education just continues to turn left they only “Circle Back†to the same ole crap hole.
Please remember this facetious form of leadership this November because it started 7 years ago with Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Many from the McAuliffe Administration still are on staff or very closely affiliated with the Northam Administration. This will only get worse with McAuliffe for he will only play to Liberal National talking points just as he has been doing with his fundraising throughout this campaign.
We have to have to stop electing the Governor of Washington DC, CNN and The Hill. We need a Governor for all Virginians and not be as divisive and arrogant as McAuliffe.
This November it is time for a change, time for a Leader not a political puppet.
Even Virginia’s Governor Democrat Doug Wilder thinks that we should have McAuliffe, Northam and Herring answer to us.
This November Vote Glenn Youngkin