Youngkin Wants to Close Wide ‘Honesty Gap’ in Virginia Schools
24th May 2022
The honesty gap—the difference between Virginia students’ proficiency on Virginia’s Standards of Learning tests and their documented proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which assesses student performance across the country in math, reading, science, and civics—is stark.
For example, although the state boasts a whopping 76% of eighth graders who were proficient in reading in 2019, just 33% of Virginia eighth graders scored as proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Similarly, whereas 77% of Virginia’s eighth graders scored proficient in mathematics on the Standards of Learning in 2019, that figure drops precipitously to just 38% of eighth graders as assessed by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The same honesty gap exists for younger students, too.