Before Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger took office in January, the state was on track to raise the bar in education. In the fall of 2025, under former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Commonwealth’s Board of Education had planned to raise the state’s academic standards by increasing the test scores needed to earn course credit in core subjects.
As it stands,Virginia is on a short list of states where students must still pass a test — or in this case, several tests — in order to graduate from high school. These tests, called “Standards of Learning” (SOL) assessments, are administered at the end of core high school courses in English, math, science, and history.
But with a new proverbial sheriff in town, Virginia now appears likely to abandon its plan to raise its standards by obliterating the need for students to pass these tests entirely. Senate Bill 147 would require the Virginia Board of Education to invent “alternative graduation pathways” that still lead to a high school diploma, without requiring students to pass any of the SOL tests.
The bill would require the State Board of Education to consider “nonassessment demonstrations of competence…including capstone projects, portfolios, locally developed performance assessments, [or] completion of work-based learning experiences.” The Board would also need to “ensure at least one alternative pathway is approved that includes a nonassessment demonstration of competence.”
Such “nonassessment demonstrations” may ultimately take shape like New York’s new proposed graduation pathways, which include vague cop-outs like so-called project-based learning, future goal-setting, and “service-learning projects,” according to Chalkbeat. But graduation should not be a team effort among student groups, nor should it be about what students hope to achieve in the future. Either an individual has mastered the subject matter, or he has not. A shift toward group projects and away from testing muddies the water around what each individual has really accomplished (or, not accomplished). The politics behind this bill suggest that erasing individual merit might be part of the goal.
State data shows that white and Asian students perform substantially better on these tests than their black and Hispanic peers. Rather than fix the problem — an education system that routinely traps black and Hispanic students in failing schools — Virginia’s new leaders would rather cover up the results of their bad policies by making the tests useless.
As has been the case in many other states, teachers union bosses are eager to send the former state standards to the dustbin. The Virginia Education Association lists the bill’s aim as one of its legislative agenda items for 2026, wanting to “eliminate the requirement that students pass standardized tests, such as SOLs, as a condition for earning a high school diploma.” The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Stella Pekarsky, earned herself a 100% rating on the Virginia Education Association’s 2025 report card.
The report card from Virginia parents, colleges, and employers may look much different if this plan goes forward.