What Virginia's SOL Tests Can Tell You About Your Child's Reading
- bday569
- Apr 27
- 4 min read
If you have a child in Virginia’s public schools, SOL might be a four-letter word for you. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if parents or students dread them more. As the wife of a teacher, I will let you in on a little secret: teachers aren’t fond of them either.
But they do have a purpose and can provide you with much beneficial information if you know how to read the report and what questions to ask. The real problem is that very few parents know anything beyond testing dates and that their child needs to pass in order to progress to the next grade.
Virginia's state testing system is more layered than most parents realize, and the reports that come home can feel like they were designed for teachers, not for you. They weren't. There's genuinely useful information in there, and once you know how to read it, you'll feel a lot more confident walking into a conversation with your child's teacher.
There Are Actually Two Kinds of Tests
Most parents are familiar with the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, but fewer realize that their child is also taking something called the Virginia Growth Assessments in the fall and winter. Think of the Growth Assessments as the warm-up act. They're shorter, computer-adaptive tests given in reading and math during the school year to help teachers understand where a student is and what they need. Your child's teacher looks at those results, compares them to grade-level benchmarks and plans instruction accordingly.
The SOL tests are the main event. These are the comprehensive, end-of-year assessments that measure how well your child has learned what they were supposed to learn throughout the school year. They're taken in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies, typically in the spring. The Growth Assessments and the SOL tests are related using a common scoring system called a Vertical Scaled Score that allows teachers to track how much a student has grown from one test to the next. But the SOL is the one that matters in terms of grade-level benchmarks and school accountability.
Understanding the Scores
When your child's SOL results come home, you'll see a performance level that describes where your child landed. But the most valuable piece of the report isn't that summary score. It's a document called the Student Detail by Question report (or SDBQ report). If you haven't heard of it before, it's worth asking your child's school for it.
The SDBQ report breaks down your child's test question by question. For each item, it tells you whether your child answered correctly or incorrectly, the difficulty level of the question (low, medium, or high), and a brief description of what the question was actually testing. That last piece is what makes this report so useful.
How to Actually Use the SDBQ Report
Here's where parents can do something with this information rather than just file it away.
The questions on the test are grouped into reporting categories of related skills and concepts. When you look at the report, look for patterns. Did your child consistently get the questions in one category right and struggle with another? That's useful. Did they nail the low-difficulty questions in a skill area but miss the medium- or high-difficulty ones on the same topic? That is another key piece of information. It means they have a foundation, but they need more practice to solidify the skill.
The Virginia Department of Education has created a Parent and Caregiver Resources page specifically to help you make sense of all of this. There you'll find grade-specific guides for the Growth Assessments, a short video walking you through the SDBQ report, and a Parent-Teacher Planning Tool that can help you prepare for a conversation with your child's teacher about what the scores mean and what steps to take next.
What to Do If Your Child Needs Support
If your child's scores show that they need additional support, the most important thing to know is that you don't have to figure it out alone. Start with your child's teacher. The SDBQ report gives you a specific, informed starting point for that conversation. With this tool, you won’t be stuck asking generically "how is my child doing?" You will be able to ask specific questions based on real data and information about which skills need attention.
From there, you can discuss what interventions and services may be offered through the school. They want your child to succeed. If he or she is not passing the SOL tests, ask them how you can work together to make that happen.
Understanding the numbers is the first step. Knowing what to do next is what makes the difference.
If you need help with that, I'm here. Reading is my specialty, and if the scores are pointing to struggles with decoding, fluency, comprehension, or vocabulary, those are exactly the kinds of things I work on every day with kids. If you'd like to talk through what your child's results might mean -- and whether some targeted tutoring could help -- I'd love to have that conversation.
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