Latest news with #VanValkenburg
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Virginia overhauls SOL testing to boost student achievement
A view outside at Chesterfield County Public Schools. (Courtesy of Chesterfield County Public Schools) In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement on education policy, Virginia leaders have enacted sweeping changes to the state's K-12 testing system, aiming to raise student performance and make the Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments more meaningful. Despite ongoing political clashes over broader education policy, Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state lawmakers united earlier this month behind a plan they hope will strengthen student outcomes. One of the ways the legislation aims to improve outcomes is by making the Standards of Learning (SOL) assessments count as 10% of the student's final grade — a shift from current policy. The legislation will also require the release of more past exams to improve preparation. 'This is a gigantic step forward for Virginia students,' Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, who believes the changes will offer a clearer and fairer way of evaluating students while creating opportunities to make assessments more rigorous. 'So it's kind of a win all the way around and will hopefully put us on a better path for better student outcomes across all the different classes,' he said. Superintendent of Public Instruction Emily Anne Gullickson said in a statement that the bill is a 'forward-thinking step in modernizing' the commonwealth's approach to student assessment and achievement. She also said the bill codifies several reform measures adopted by the House Bill 585 Work Group and supported by the governor to make recommendations for the state assessments. VanValkenburg successfully introduced the bill creating the work group in 2022. 'By introducing greater flexibility in how schools evaluate student learning, this legislation reinforces Virginia's commitment to educational innovation,' Gullickson said. The proposal, carried by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, and VanValkenburg, seeks to improve how the SOLs — statewide standardized tests — are administered and used to evaluate what students should know at the end of each grade or course. Assessment results help determine student performance in core subjects such as mathematics, reading, history and social science. Last August, data released by the Department of Education showed modest gains in reading and math pass rates for the 2023-24 school year after a period of targeted recovery efforts. But performance in other subjects remained below levels seen during the 2022-23 school year. The governor's administration and Democrats have traded blame over the mixed results. Youngkin's team has faulted decisions made by the previous Boards of Education, while Democrats and former board members have defended such decisions, which included changing accreditation standards and adjusting the threshold for what's considered proficiency. VanValkenburg's original version of the bill failed to pass in the Senate in February. However, Helmer's version passed with technical changes before securing approval from the General Assembly. 'I think this makes Virginia a leader in delivering a world-class education for families across the commonwealth,' Helmer told The Mercury. The lawmakers said the legislation will help ensure that the state's next testing contract improves the quality of the tests and makes them more transparent — including the release of more exams afterwards. VanValkenburg said having the vendor release additional tests will allow teachers and parents to use them as practice tools. An earlier version of the bill called for all tests to be released, but that proposal fell through during negotiations. 'Our tests have for the last 20 years been very low quality, and the reason they've been low quality is because we haven't wanted to spend money on them, and the quality of the tests clearly need to improve,' VanValkenburg said. Under the legislation, tests will be administered during the final two weeks of the school year — a change from the current practice of five to six weeks earlier — to allow time for retakes. Because of early test administration, students who pass often miss class time, as teachers focus on helping students who need to retake the tests. As a result of the change, VanValkenburg said it will eliminate about a month of lost instructional time each school year. 'After the exam, there are high levels of absenteeism as teachers concentrate on test-retake prep for the few kids who failed,' the two lawmakers wrote in The Virginian-Pilot in January. 'During that wasted month, little other learning takes place. In effect, students lose a month of education — a year of lost instructional time over a career.' The legislation also aims to improve transparency by giving parents a better sense of how well their students performed on assessments, shifting the grading scale from 600 points to 100 points. VanValkenburg said, for example, that parents are far more likely to understand a score of 87 on a biology test than a score of 487. 'Pretty instantaneously, you'll be able to see what you did well on, and what you did poorly on, and teachers will be able to see that too,' VanValkenburg said. 'So as a teacher, you're going to have more time to teach, your kids are going to have more incentive to do well, and you're going to get more feedback quicker about what went right and what went wrong on those tests.' The legislation is set to take effect at the start of the 2026-27 school year. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Can one stairwell help solve Virginia's housing crisis? Lawmakers think so
A single-staircase structure in Charlottesville built before modern codes. (Photo by Lyle Solla-Yates) Virginia's next building code update isn't until 2027, but lawmakers are already eyeing tweaks that could unlock more housing — particularly on vacant or underutilized urban lots. One idea gaining traction is allowing certain multi-unit buildings over three stories to be constructed with a single stairwell instead of two. The move could help developers maximize space on smaller parcels, making it easier to add new housing in dense areas. Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, who pushed for the advisory group that studied the idea last year, said the goal is to encourage infill development — building on empty or underused city lots. 'I think the main goal was just trying to keep the attention on it and I think it was certainly successful in that,' VanValkenburg said. 'Now the next step is just to wait for the building code rewrite, and then I plan on being pretty vocal.' But making such a change isn't as simple as eliminating a staircase. The advisory group had to wrestle with fire safety concerns, outlining additional protections that could accompany single-staircase buildings. Potential requirements from the work group's recommendations include using noncombustible materials for structures over three stories, capping the number of occupants per floor, increasing sprinkler density, and adding advanced smoke detection in common areas. Last year, Fairfax fire marshal and advisory group member Steven Sites noted a gap in state code: common spaces in apartment-style buildings lack fire detector requirements. He suspected the advisory group's discussions would lead to a push for those protections. VanValkenburg sees the group's work as a test of whether a coalition can reach consensus on housing solutions. 'It might be a good test case of 'can a coalition get-to-yes' or do we let individual groups shut down policy changes?' he said. New research from Pew suggests fire safety concerns may not be a dealbreaker. The study found that from 2012 to 2024, the fire death rate in New York City's more than 4,000 modern single-stair buildings was the same as in other residential buildings. In that period, New York and Seattle recorded a total of four fire-related deaths in such buildings. Meanwhile, VanValkenburg has pointed to cities like Seattle, Washington, New York, and Honolulu, which all allow single-staircase buildings up to six stories, as proof that Virginia can follow suit. These buildings require considerations like square footage limits, unit caps per floor, and specific fire safety measures. Other states are already moving ahead. Tennessee passed a law last year allowing localities to adopt code sections permitting single-stairwell residential buildings up to six stories. VanValkenburg argues Virginia should be next, especially given the national housing shortage and rising rents. That urgency drove lawmakers to introduce several bills in the recent legislative session to tackle housing affordability. Some, like Senate Bill 812 from Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach — which extends rent payment grace periods — cleared the legislature and await the governor's approval. Others, including proposals from VanValkenburg and Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax, to encourage localities to expand housing supply, failed. The failed bills underscored a familiar tension: local control versus state intervention in solving Virginia's housing crisis. Sen. Glenn Sturtevant, R-Chesterfield, warned that state intervention 'might be an erosion of local control.' But VanValkenburg argues that tackling the housing supply crisis requires some level of state involvement, although it means 'telling localities what to do, and people get uncomfortable with that.' His bill attempted a middle ground — offering localities flexibility to show progress on housing without imposing a rigid mandate. However, if a locality failed to take action, the state would have had the authority to override zoning decisions. Much like his work with the single-stair advisory group, VanValkenburg plans to engage local governments, residents and organizations across political lines and in communities of all sizes over the next year to build support for another attempt. He emphasized that boosting housing availability isn't just about affordability — it's about economic growth. More housing means attracting and retaining workers, strengthening local economies, and bolstering tax revenues. 'I personally think (housing issues are) the biggest problem facing the state over the next decade, and so I plan on working that target bill pretty hard,' he said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
