Superintendent’s Memo
SOL Information
Dear PCPS Cougar Family:
As many of you already know, Governor Youngkin and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) held a press conference yesterday to provide an update on Virginia students’ Standard of Learning (SOL) scores (Press Conference). As a brief summary, the Governor praised Virginia students, teachers and parents for the increases in SOL pass rates from the spring of 2023 SOL assessments to the Spring of 2024 SOL assessments.
Virginia students in Grades 3-8 showed some improvement in the Standards of Learning testing in Math and Reading in the 2023-2024 school year. This year’s improvements followed the extensive work done by many Virginia educators on Virginia’s ALL In Virginia initiative initiated by Governor Youngkin to improve attendance, accelerate literacy, and prioritize learning in Virginia classrooms in grades 3-8. Additionally, after intense focus from school divisions, parents, and community members as part of ALL In, Virginia’s K-12 chronic absenteeism rate has decreased 16% since 2022-2023. 40,974 fewer students were chronically absent in 2023-2024 than in 2022-2023 (VDOE News Release, August 2024)
As stated in our 2023-2024 Pulaski County Public Schools list of accomplishments, PCPS had a fantastic academic school year last year, including some of the best SOL scores across the division that we have seen in a number of years. From the information we are receiving regarding SOL pass rate increases throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia, PCPS had the fourth highest increase in the state at 6.38%. This accomplishment needs to be celebrated!!! It took a unified and committed PCPS family focused on high expectations and no excuses.
We dug in and started our work early. We set high expectations for discipline and attendance! We required faculty to follow the Comprehensive Instructional Program’s curriculum framework and pacing guides. We implemented benchmarks and instituted high intensity tutoring during the school day. We placed an emphasis on high quality lesson plans and the importance of data review to understand where students and schools are and where we need to go. Many faculty and staff members came in before school and stayed late to tutor our most needy academic students. During SOL testing this past spring, creative schedules, including testing days where students who were not testing would stay at home, were created to provide our students with the best testing environment possible. Staff created individualized testing sessions, small group testing sessions and other testing sessions where an emphasis was placed on patience, thoroughness, reviews and then praise. We asked a lot of our faculty staff and students, and they delivered as expected!
Celebrate we will; however, we still have work to do. Unfortunately, our estimate for state rankings for highest SOL pass rates did not come in as expected. We thought we would move from 95 to somewhere in the high 50 to low 60 range. We are now hearing that we will land somewhere in the high 70 to 80 range. This is still at least a 15-point increase and worthy of recognition. As I review data posted on the School Quality Profiles, updated yesterday at noon, there are still are areas where we are below the state average regarding SOL pass rates, which we will do our very best to meet or exceed those state averages during the 2024-2025 school year.
As we begin our second week of school this year, we have much to be proud of in PCPS! We also know that we still have goals and objectives that we have yet to meet, but are in a very good place to continue to meet and exceed our expectations. PCPS is a special school division due to our students, teachers, school community members and Cougar Pride. There is no doubt in my mind we can accomplish anything and everything we want to! Best wishes for an outstanding 2024-2025 school year and GO COUGARS!
