Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) signed 21 bills into law by April 7 focused on K-12 education. Bills impacted various parts of the K-12 education system in the Commonwealth, including increased financial support for “low-performing" schools, changes to the Standards of Learning and increased involvement from parents in their children's education.
Spanberger issued Executive Order Four Jan. 17, which has a primary focus of improving K-12 education in the Commonwealth. In the order, she outlined several priorities — including increasing test scores for literacy and math and changes to SOLs — which saw action by lawmakers in the 2026 legislative session. James Wyckoff, professor emeritus of Education and Policy, said Spanberger’s priorities in the order have been “alluded to or directly addressed” in the recently passed legislation.
A few bills signed into law increase transparency for parents on their children’s education in public schools. Senate Bill 817 requires schools to notify parents of public middle and high school students of course registration deadlines. In the same vein of increasing transparency, House Bill 206 requires that parents of students in College Partnership Laboratory Schools — partnerships between public schools and higher education institutions — are “notified of the collaborative partnership” and given contact information for administrators. Both bills have passed and are effective July 1.
In a press release, Spanberger said parents should be confident that their children are getting “an education that allows them to reach their full potential.”
“The strength of public schools is personal for me — both as someone who grew up in Virginia public schools and as a parent of three school-aged daughters,” Spanberger said in the release.
Many bills also aim to implement changes to the SOLs — Senate Bill 200, which is identical to House Bill 299, removes the through-year growth assessment system which tested students in grades 3-8 in reading and mathematics three times per year in favor of a “one-time end-of-year assessment.”
With a focus on improving performance in low-performing schools, House Bill 924 was signed by Spanberger April 6. Del. Sam Rasoul (D-38) was the chief patron of HB924, and he said that the law would implement an “equitable approach” to K-12 education. Rasoul said the bill will structure resources to support teachers and students in “struggling” schools. The bill directs the Superintendent of Public Instruction to implement a plan that supports schools based on their Standards of Accreditation, a metric which takes into account many factors including test performance on SOLs.
Rasoul said that HB924 implemented recommendations from a report in December 2025 by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The commission released a report titled “Virginia’s K-12 School Accountability System.” JLARC is an oversight agency in the General Assembly that aims to ensure legislators are informed, laws are being enacted as intended and state agencies are effective. Rasoul is a member of JLARC, and he said that the commission is widely viewed as objective and non-partisan.
The commission’s December report outlined current accountability systems for K-12 education and gave recommendations for the Virginia Board of Education regarding better communication and effective state programming for low performing schools.
“[HB924] was drafted as a response from JLARC’s study,” Rasoul said. “[We] worked closely with the administration after [the bill was] introduced to ensure that the language was aligned with where the governor, superintendent and the secretary of Education [wanted it] to be.”
According to Public Policy Prof. Daniel Player, the Commonwealth’s legislation to support low-performing schools is in part a response to Virginia’s National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, which dropped significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. The NAEP tests students’ performance in various subjects in grades four, eight and 12, including mathematics and reading. In mathematics for fourth-grade students, Virginia had a score of 247 in 2019 — seven points above the national average at the time. In 2022 and 2024, the Commonwealth had scores of 236 and 238 — slightly above the national average — though the actual scores dropped. Player said that while many states saw their NAEP scores decline following the pandemic, Virginia’s scores declined by a larger amount.
“Virginia took a pretty big hit after [the pandemic],” Player said. “Looking at national test scores … [Virginia] used to be leading the country, and now [Virginia is the] middle of the pack, which represents a pretty big decline.”
In addition to Player, Wyckoff also said that because Democrats have control in the House of Delegates and state Senate, legislators are passing bills to increase funding to improve test scores. Wyckoff said legislation that was passed in 2024 did not have enough financial support to succeed, but now, Democrats seem “much more interested” than Republicans in increasing financial support to low-income schools.
“What you've seen in the Spanberger [executive order] and [education] legislation is a reaction to things that occurred in the Youngkin administration, and it's not intending to reverse that by any means,” Wyckoff said. “Rather, it's trying to refine it in a way that addresses some of the concerns that Democrats had when that legislation was passed.”
With the passage of HB924, support for low-performing schools is contingent upon school accountability standards, and SOLs are one metric of assessing these standards. Speaking on test scores and school funding, Gerard Robinson, professor of practice in public policy and law, said he sees No Child Left Behind — an act that mandated standardized tests for students to benchmark progress — as the start of using standardized testing as a metric for lawmakers.
Passed in 2001, the federal bill was later replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act. Robinson said that national tests, with these landmark acts, became a metric for decision-makers to strive to minimize the “achievement gap” — persistent disparities in academic performance between schools and student groups.
“Testing became one mechanism by which we identified what students were learning [and] their proficiency level,” Robinson said. “Legislators and those in the Department of [Education asked,] ‘What can we do to close the achievement gap?’”
Speaking on the package of the legislation writ large, Player said that the laws passed by Spanberger increase the influence that the state has on education in the Commonwealth, in contrast to the “decentralized” education system of previous decades in Virginia that left significant autonomy to the schools. Player said that Spanberger is using the Commonwealth’s influence to bring students “on the right path.”
“If you leave everything up to school divisions, then you have this problem … [where] school [divisions are] not stepping up and they're not helping their lowest performing schools,” Player said. “I think she's serious about need[ing] to make sure that we fix this problem.”
Rasoul said he hopes the legislation signed by Spanberger improves school outcomes and closes the achievement gap.
“We're hoping that … [HB924] is how we are improving the outcomes of schools and school divisions that are struggling the most,” Rasoul said. “If we are successfully able … to close the achievement gap with many of these schools, then we will see that the policy and other policies … were impactful.”
Legislation signed by Spanberger during the 2026 legislative session — unless an exception was made for particular bills — will become law July 1.
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