Spanberger: ‘Value’ Will Be Guiding Factor for Virginia’s Use of National Education Assessment

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s leading assessment tool, will expand in 2028, giving states, including Virginia, the opportunity to use the tests to address student achievement and inform learning practices.

On Friday, the National Assessment Governing Board voted to expand the number of courses it administers through NAEP, which measures academic performance across grades 4, 8, and 12, using a randomly selected sample designed to reflect student diversity across factors like gender, economic background, ethnicity, and school size.

Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger said on Monday she and her administration will look further into the changes before committing to utilizing them. She spoke on Monday at Highland Springs High School in Central Virginia, after signing a package of bipartisan legislation focused on strengthening the state’s education system for students and teachers.

Bills to boost school construction and modernization efforts also received her sign-off. There are about 1,000 schools statewide that are 50 years old or older, according to a 2022 report, and replacing them will cost approximately $25 billion.

On the NAEP courses, the governor said the guiding factor for her administration will be the value of the assessments.

“I think they can be important guideposts, and certainly they provide valuable information when we’re trying to ensure that we can track the progress that our students are making,” said Spanberger. “
But for me, the question will always be, ‘what do we then do with the information that we are collecting?’”

She pledged to continue conversations about the expanded assessments with Secretary of Education Jeffrey Smith, who attended the bill signing alongside Spanberger and several lawmakers.

NAEP was a tool that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration leaned heavily on to assess the success of fourth and eighth-grade students in reading and math over the past four years. The Northam and McAuliffe administrations relied on the state’s Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments to gauge proficiency in areas like reading and math.

The Youngkin administration often cited NAEP data to highlight the “honesty gap,” or the disparity between state-level proficiency standards and the more stringent NAEP standards.

Beginning in 2028, states,, including Virginia, will have the opportunity to participate in state-level NAEP in additional subjects and grades beyond fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math. The assessments have been conducted every four years for over three decades.

The new tests would be in eighth-grade science and civics, and 12th-grade civics, math, and reading.

Last fall, the Virginia Board of Education approved a four-year phased plan to raise expectations set by Youngkin’s administration with the goal of aligning the state’s benchmarks, or cut scores, with the rigor of the NAEP and helping students improve their thinking problem-solving skills.

However, lawmakers derailed the plan after passing legislation to make changes to statewide testing.

After last year’s overhaul, Va. lawmakers consider tweaking K-12 assessment testing

“If it’s a test for the sake of having a test, with three school-aged daughters at home, I know very strongly that a test for a test’s sake is not what I think does any value for kids or for educators,” Spanberger said.

Still, she said, if the state wants to use the NAEP assessments “to support our educators, to support our schools or support our kids,” then “that becomes a different question.”

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