Virginia Governor Youngkin and the State Board of Education have publicly committed to addressing ... [+] the lower expectations, wider gaps and lack of transparency stifling student progress.

The flood of recent dismal education reports —from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to the Education Recovery Scorecard —is stinging evidence that now is not the time to take the foot off the gas in terms of holding students, parents and policy makers to high educational standards.

But that is what is effectively happening. The reports show stalled progress overall and growing gaps between the highest and lowest performers. And in an unfortunate pile-on to that news, the just-released 2025 Honesty Gap report from my organization, the Collaborative for Student Success, shows that most states have elected for a more lenient definition of learning “proficiency” compared to NAEP.

So not only are we struggling to better educate our students, but we’re also being less truthful about where students stand in that challenge.

The warning signs were clear in some cases. More states are just outright lowering proficiency “cut scores” on their annual statewide assessments, obscuring student progress—or lack thereof. Cut score refers to the minimum score needed to pass an assessment.

Wisconsin and Oklahoma, for example, have rolled back the alignment between state assessments and the NAEP definition of proficiency, according to Christy Hovanetz, a senior policy fellow for the non-profit ExcelinEd focusing on school accountability and math policies.

“And so now we’re saying lower expectations are good enough,” she said during a panel discussion on this topic with the Council for Grade Level Learning.

Some states, however, are taking bolder stands on student expectations. Virginia stands out as an exemplar for other states battling the same “soft bigotry of lower expectations,” as George W. Bush memorably said. Virginia has made transparency a central theme in its effort to claw back from persistent and deep learning loss amassed over nearly a decade.

In 2017, the Virginia Board of Education lowered school accreditation requirements for grade-level proficiency, effectively allowing struggling schools to stay the course. In 2019, the Board lowered student proficiency cut scores, essentially masking years of declining achievement. And in 2020, the pandemic hit, shuttering schools and sending students home for an extended and tough remote learning environment.

That series of educational blows ultimately knocked the state down in NAEP performance and sank it to the very bottom of both the Honesty Gap and the Education Recovery Scorecard.

But in 2022, Governor Youngkin and the Virginia Board of Education committed very publicly and explicitly to addressing the lower expectations, wider gaps and lack of transparency stifling student progress.

“Governor Youngkin made a commitment to Virginians to restore excellence to education. Closing the honesty gap is a core part of that agenda,” Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera told me in an interview.

Secretary Guidera says Virginia's new K-12 accountability system will be a major improvement and ... [+] will prioritize transparent, actionable information for parents, teachers, and school leaders.

They started by redesigning the school accountability and accreditation system.

Secretary Guidera says the new system will be a major improvement in accountability. Once in place, “parents will have a clear picture of how well their neighborhood school is serving all its students, teachers and staff will better understand where there are areas for improvement, and policymakers will be able to allocate resources more effectively to ensure that those schools that need the most help are prioritized.”

The state committed $418 million for high-dosage tutoring, expanding core literacy instruction based on evidenced-based supports, and addressing chronic absenteeism.

Next, leaders are striving to improve the rigor of the state standardize test—the Standards of Learning—by refining test content and expanding question types to better measure higher-level learning.

“We are on track to benchmark our proficiency definitions with the highest in the nation this spring. Improving transparency and actionable data in a way that empowers parents, teachers and students remains one of our core guiding principles” Guidera said.

Perfection cannot be the enemy of action. Virginia is embracing the problem, not running from it, which is the kind of courageous leadership our students and families need and deserve. But most states appear content with gaming their definitions of learning proficiency, widening not just the honesty gap but an urgency gap as well – one that will ultimately come at the expense of the nation’s children. The real test will come when the 2026 results reveal where exceptions truly stand.