After preliminary analysis of the 2008-2009 Standards of Learning (SOL) test results, it is projected that 100 percent of Virginia Beach City Public Schools will earn full SOL accreditation. The Virginia Department of Education will release the official results in the fall.

“These scores reflect a year of hard work on the part of students and staff,” said Superintendent James G. Merrill. “In fact, I believe our new strategic plan, Compass to 2015, is already factoring into our success. We raised the dialogue last year among administrators, principals and teachers about the importance of rigor, relevance, critical thinking and problem solving in classroom instruction.  As a result, many adjusted instructional practices to purposefully raise student achievement above and beyond minimum standards.”

A preliminary overview of divisionwide data shows:

• Pass rates for both English and history exceed 80 percent at all 56 testing elementary schools.
• Science pass rates equal or exceed 92 percent at all middle schools.
• English pass rates equal or exceed 90 percent at 13 of 14 testing middle schools.
• Pass rates for all core subjects meet or exceed 85 percent at the high school level.

Bettie F. Williams Elementary made significant strides at the fifth-grade level in history, reading, mathematics, and science. The school missed full accreditation last year because of low scores in the area of fifth-grade history. Remarkably, the unadjusted pass rate for fifth-grade history increased more than 39 percentage points from last year. That is the largest increase of any test at any level.

“We made a concerted effort to incorporate history throughout our core subjects,” said George MacKay, principal of Williams Elementary. “We looked at the data and found opportunities to provide support and strengthen student achievement with additional resources,” MacKay continued.

Williams Elementary also posted gains in other key subject areas. For example:

• Unadjusted pass rates in grade 5 mathematics improved 16.96 percentage points from 2007-2008;
• Unadjusted pass rates for grade 5 science increased 10 percentage points from the previous year; and,
• Unadjusted pass rates for grade 5 reading are up 9.28 percentage points when compared to 2007-2008 data.

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