While I agree with Kristen Amundson on the need for a charter school for our at-risk students in Fairfax County [Local Opinions, Jan. 27], the data she used to justify the school are misleading. While Fairfax County Public Schools still has a lot to accomplish in raising the achievement of all of our students — particularly our African American and Hispanic ones — it is simply not true that Fairfax lags Richmond and Norfolk.
Many Virginia school districts rely heavily on the non-SOL alternative assessment called VGLA. This practice causes many at-risk students to achieve at the advanced level merely because this assessment has a high pass rate. This practice distorts the numbers and prevents us from doing an apples-to apples comparison. Even ignoring this distortion, the pass rates for these FCPS students far exceeds those of other school districts. In 2010-11, 87 percent of our African American students passed the English assessment compared with Richmond’s 78 percent and Norfolk’s 74 percent. Norfolk had a failure rate twice that of Fairfax.
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