CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Student assessment results in West Virginia are remaining steady.
The state Board of Education heard 2026 student results at its meeting Wednesday.
West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) Assessment Director Vaughn Rhudy reported a mixed bag across disciplines. He said that science results have stayed about the same throughout all grade levels, while two particular disciplines have shown improvement.
“We have seen substantial increases in ELA (English-Language Arts) and math since 2022,” Rhudy said. “In fact, an interesting point, if you go back to pre-COVID in 2019, the 2026 proficiency rates in ELA and math meet or exceed the 2019 pre-COVID proficiency rates overall and at each grade level.”
In math, pre-COVID proficiency rate among all students was 38.7 percent. It’s now risen to 39.4 percent after a dip during the shutdown. In ELA, most grades remained flat since last year but are still higher than 2019 levels.
Rhudy noted the outlier in ELA was in eleventh grades across the state, as proficiency numbers dropped from 55 percent last year to 51 percent this year. Only 21 percent of eleventh graders were proficient in math, with 23.6 percent of students meeting proficiency standards in science.
He said there’s an explanation for that, and such a decline was seen nationwide.
“Remember, one of our summative assessments that we give is the SAT School Day in Grade 11,” Rhudy said. “We asked College Board about this, they did some analysis, and this was a drop that was seen across all of the states that participated. It wasn’t just unique in West Virginia. We don’t know exactly why they may have happened.”
West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Michele Blatt admitted that eleventh grade is definitely a concern. She reported a 70-percent proficiency rate from eleventh-grade students who take national assessments for occupations they’re in through the WVDE’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. Still, that junior-year assessment remains important, she said.
“Our schools continue to focus and emphasize the importance of this eleventh-grade assessment to all of our students,” Blatt said. “It’s not something that we believe that they see the value in.”
Board member Dr. James Paul questioned Blatt about a discrepancy between the 21-percent math proficiency statistic for eleventh graders and a reported 93 percent four-year graduation rate in West Virginia.
Blatt said there could be multiple factors playing into that.
“The SAT is a college-entrance exam, it’s a summative assessment, that’s a one-day snapshot that we’re looking at,” Blatt said. “When we measure in other measurements and other work that we do, that counties do, with final exams and things, that also plays into those graduation rates.”
Rhudy and Blatt both reported that there’s work still to be done in middle schools. Blatt said that the WVDE is committed to improving results in those age ranges.
“Part of the issue that we have, especially with middle school, is the reason we kicked off the Bridging the Future middle school initiative,” Blatt said. “We have seen for the past several years, when we look at our schools, all programmatic levels, it is our middle schools that we need to put the most focus in and determine how we can better engage those students.”
The full assessment results are available online here.