Parent & Caregiver Resources for Virginia Assessments

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New Fall 2024! Virginia Growth Assessment (VGA) Parent Report

To help give families and teachers a more complete picture of student progress, VDOE has developed a new Fall Virginia Growth Assessment (VGA) Parent Report. This new report is designed to provide parents additional information in a clear and accessible format. Information in the report can be combined with teacher input, classroom work, report cards, and the Student Detail by Question report to give families and teachers a more complete picture of student progress. If your school division used the Virginia Growth Assessments, these reports may be obtained directly from your child's school. Refer to Parent Resources: Assessment for an example of additional resources to support conversations with your child's teacher(s) and tips to support learning at home.

Resources for the Parent Growth Report

What Parents Need to Know About Literacy can help parents learn more about the Virginia Literacy Act (VLA). (Spanish version: What Parents Need to Know About Literacy)

Parent Teacher Planning Tool can help facilitate conversations with your child's teacher. (Spanish version: Parent Teacher Planning Tool)

Please visit the Parent Resources page of the VDOE website for more information and resources designed to help parents advocate for and support their child's education.

Questions to Ask Your Child’s Teacher About Reading

Whether your child is a book worm or needs more support, summer reading is essential to keep them on track. Here are questions to ask your child’s teacher as well as tips and resources to help you learn more.

Questions to Ask Your Child’s
Teacher About Math

Math skills are essential for life– including daily tasks, problem-solving, creativity, career options and more. Here are questions to ask your child’s teacher as well as tips and resources to support math at home.

Resources to Support Students

Engaged parents and caregivers are a critical part of a child’s successful learning experiences. Reading with students and talking about what is being read is important to the development of strong readers. Talking about and doing math within the family is a great way to engage students and encourage success. Some of the many online resources available for reading, mathematics, science, and history and social science are provided to help parents and caregivers support their children and continue their learning at home.

Understanding Growth Assessment Scores

A growth assessment score, also called a Vertical Scaled Score, is one piece of information in the Parent Report and the Student Detail by Question (SDBQ) Reports for the Virginia Growth Assessments.

Resources for growth assessment scores from the 2024-2025 Virginia Growth Assessments in reading and mathematics have been developed for parents. These resources include:

Interpreting the Student Detail by Question Report

The score report that results from completing a Virginia assessment is called the Student Detail by Question Report or SDBQ Report. School divisions can provide the SDBQ Report to families. Please contact your child’s school for access to these reports.

Two resources are available to assist with understanding these reports:

The VDOE Standards of Learning (SOL) SDBQ Overview (YouTube) is a short video that explains the information contained in a student's SDBQ Report.
The Overview of the SDBQ Report (PDF) is available to assist in the interpretation and use of the SDBQ Report.

Growth Assessments

Growth Assessments are computer adaptive tests, shorter than the Standards of Learning tests, that were developed in grades 3-8 reading and mathematics as a result of legislation passed in the 2021 Virginia General Assembly. The growth assessments consist of test items that measure the Standards of Learning, have been reviewed by Virginia teachers, tried out with Virginia students, and accepted for use on the growth assessments.

Beginning with the second year of implementation (2022-2023) and beyond, the legislation requires that the grades 3-8 reading and mathematics growth assessments be administered to students once in the fall and once in the winter (mid-year) during the school year. In addition to the growth assessments, the SOL tests for grade 3-8 reading and mathematics will continue to be administered.

The fall 2023 fall growth assessments will focus on content from the student’s previous grade level. For example, a student taking grade 5 mathematics in the 2023-2024 school year will be administered a fall growth assessment that focuses primarily on grade 4 mathematics content. The winter 2023-2024 growth assessment will focus on content from the student's current grade level giving priority to content taught first semester.

However, in compliance with the 2021 legislation, the computer adaptive test (CAT) algorithm has been configured so that the student might be administered some items from below or above the current grade level depending on the student’s responses to the on-grade-level content items. For example, students taking the grade 5 mathematics growth assessment will primarily be administered grade 5 test items; however, depending on the student’s responses to the on-grade-level test items, the student may also be administered some grade 4 test items or some grade 6 test items.

There are exceptions to the potential administration of off-grade level test items. The grade 8 reading and mathematics growth assessments only include items assessing SOL content that is at or below the 8th grade level since there are no above-grade-level items available in the current CAT item banks. In addition, a student who meets the criteria for a paper test will only be administered test items that assess SOL content aligned with the student’s grade level.

Computer Adaptive Testing

A computer adaptive test or CAT is an assessment that is customized for every student. How a student responds to questions determines the difficulty of the next question. Correct responses lead to more difficult test questions, while incorrect responses result in the selection of less difficult items for the student.

Watch the videos to learn how computer adaptive testing provides students with a customized assessment experience.

A Guide to Computer Adaptive Testing

This video explains the basic principle for how computer adaptive testing works.

Computer Adaptive Testing in Virginia

This video provides information about computer adaptive testing in Virginia.