Sadly obsessed with the SOLs

Today’s front-page story asks if there are too many Standards of Learning exams. Our answer is yes. Worse, they are over-emphasized and have hijacked K-12 education in Virginia, with no proof that our students are better educated, much less better prepared for the real world, for having taken them.

Educators are forced to teach to the test. Students endure endless drilling. Focus is not on critical thinking but absorption of facts because state accreditation and new teacher performance reviews are largely based on SOL results, not on actual understanding and progress, which are trickier to measure.

We’re pleased that in recent years the state has reduced SOL testing, with hopes for further streamlining in the future. But 30 years from now, will our country’s leadership reflect a public education system that allowed innovative teaching and encouraged a love for learning? We fear not.

Standardized tests carry too much weight and cause too much stress to teachers, students and families. Some teachers have learned not to pass the pressure onto their students, but others have not and understandably so.

Every year, over-testing sends good teachers fleeing from the public schools. They are, says former Waynesboro teacher of the year Josh Waldron, discouraged by an “obsession with flawed assessments.”He wrote those words last year in an essay about leaving the job he loved.

This must change, and we are sympathetic to the few local parents who choose for their children to opt out of SOL testing, whether out of protest or genuine concern for students’well being.

In Northern Virginia, opting out of the SOLs has become a modest movement that unfortunately punishes schools while making a point. Though opting out of SOLs in elementary school has no affect on a student’s marks or promotion to the next grade, the state considers that student to have failed the test in not taking it. This means that even the highest performing school would lose accreditation if enough students at that school opted out of the SOLs.

That, in typical SOL fashion, is blatantly unfair.

SOLs have already sabotaged public education. A family’s act of conscience or concern need not add to the undermining. The state should look at why a student opts out, rather than punish that student’s school. If a flood of students opt out, the state should wake up and get the message.

In Georgia, some teachers felt so much pressure to raise standardized test schools they resorted to cheating and ended up in prison. We don’t advocate the dishonesty, obviously, but we understand the desperation at its root.

SOLs were created to increase accountability, something we applaud and want from our schools. But the state has overreached and created a system worthy of backlash and reform.

How many more years before Virginia gets serious about fixing the SOLs? No more drips and drabs of refinement. The system needs an entire overhaul, for the sake of our students and teachers, for the future of us all.

Our View represents the opinion of the newspaper’s editorial board, Roger Watson, president and publisher; David Fritz, executive editor; and Deona Landes Houff, community conversations editor.