Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger blamed Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration Wednesday when she highlighted recent reporting from the Richmond Times-Dispatch that shows Virginia ranks 51st in the U.S. — behind all other states and Washington D.C. — in math recovery between 2019 and 2024, based on scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears took a jab at Spanberger in response and blamed Democrats’ handling of COVID-19 school closures.
The rankings from researchers at Harvard and Stanford Universities, along with the RTD’s reporting, show how Virginia’s math scores have dropped drastically in recent years.
“In fourth-grade math, Virginia fell from No. 2 in the nation in 2019 to No. 20 in the nation in 2024. In eighth grade math, Virginia ranked 22nd nationally in 2024, down from No. 5 in 2019,” the data shows.
“Unless state and local leaders step up now, the achievement losses will be the longest lasting– and most inequitable– legacy of the pandemic,” said one of the project leaders, Professor Tom Kane from Harvard, about the Virginia numbers.
Youngkin, who ran on improving education in Virginia, did not provide comment in the RTD story.
His Secretary of Education, Aimee Guederra, commented and said that Virginia is “raising all of our definitions of proficiency, our rigor, our standards and our requirements.”
“That’s leadership and that’s doing the right thing by our kids,” she continued. “Yes, it’s frustrating that it takes long to get real change to happen, but it’s the right strategy and the right way to go.”
Spanberger, in a statement Wednesday, blamed Youngkin’s administration for the poor performance.
“Virginians deserve a Governor who will do everything to make sure that children across our Commonwealth are not only meeting standards in math achievement and recovery, but are given the opportunity to excel,” she said. “This new report makes clear that the current administration is not doing that.”
She blamed Youngkin for vetoing legislation that would increase teacher pay as a reason that schools are underperforming.
“Virginians deserve a Governor who is committed to making our schools the best in America — and that means focusing on policies to develop math and reading skills, support public schools as they prepare our kids for a career or college, and address chronic teacher recruitment and retention challenges,” she said. “Unfortunately, our current Governor has vetoed bipartisan efforts to more quickly bring Virginia up to the national average in teacher pay.”
Sears responded to the statement from Spanberger by referencing how Democrats were in control in 2020 and 2021 when schools across Virginia were largely shut down to in-person learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The people who locked kids out of classrooms now want to be in charge of fixing education?” she wrote on social media. “Reminder: [Spanberger] is in the pocket of the teachers unions and opposed opening schools during covid. Look at what Washington politicians do—not what they say.”
After shutting down in-person learning for the final few months of the 2019-2020 school year, then-Gov. Ralph Northam allowed schools to reopen to in-person learning during the 2020-2021 school year if their local districts allowed it.
Very few school districts chose to allow students into the classroom to start the academic year.
According to an analysis from UVA, in September 2020, only 2% of Virginia students experienced fully in-person learning, with 81% entirely virtual and the rest on a hybrid system.
By May of 2021, only 3% of Virginia students were entirely virtual, 85% were in a hybrid system and 12% were entirely in-person.
The General Assembly commissioned a report from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in 2021 to look at how school closings impacted students.
The report found that SOL scores declined by more in divisions that relied longer on remote instruction, but those scores also rebounded more.
During the 2020–21 academic year, eighth-grade math SOL scores in school divisions that used remote instruction longer declined, on average, by 7 percentage points more than divisions that returned to in-person instruction sooner.
However, these divisions that relied longer on remote instruction also generally rebounded by more in 2021–22.
As of spring 2022, there was a 1-2% difference in SOL scores between divisions that relied on remote instruction longer and divisions that returned to in-person instruction sooner.
The report also found that chronic absenteeism rates were higher after students returned to in-person learning.
Students missing 10% or more of school days nearly doubled in 2021-2022 compared with pre-pandemic rates. Twenty percent of students statewide were chronically absent in the 2021–22 school year.
Sears and Spanberger are the frontrunners to earn their party’s nomination to run for governor later this year, and it appears they will both use the work and actions of past governors, Northam and Youngkin, against each other on the campaign trail.
In the final months of his term, Northam had a 48% approval rating among registered voters in Virginia.
Youngkin is performing better in polls as he is beginning the final year of his term, with a 58% approval rating according to a poll last month.