September 25, 2025
Where Virginia Schools Stand
Last updated September 2025
Children in every community should be able to go to a high-quality public school where they can learn and thrive.
Past Choices Created the Current Conditions
While we know Virginia is home to many great public schools that attract people and their families to the commonwealth, not every child in Virginia has had access to great public schools. And in some ways, it got worse when lawmakers cut funding after the Great Recession. Falling test scores in Virginia compared to other states came after state funding was cut compared to other states. Students, parents, and teachers in communities across Virginia are working hard, yet in many communities, they do so without access to sufficient funding from the state.
Virginia has the capacity to do better — we’re a top-12 state in terms of median household income — but lawmakers hesitate to tap into that capacity, limiting the resources that we could invest in our communities. Due to this inaction and other policy choices, Virginia ranked 33rd in the country in state per-student funding during the 2022-2023 school year. In some places, the local government can and does make up for the state’s failings, but in many lower-income communities, local governments don’t have the capacity to do so. To make matters worse, it’s still true that de facto segregation in housing leads to de facto segregation in schools, leaving many children without access to the education they need to reach their full potential. This matters because money matters for student outcomes.
By the early 2020s, all three leading national comparisons showed that the state of Virginia wasn’t doing its part to make sure every student in every zipcode had access to a great public education. Researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Miami, and the Shanker Institute found that for the 2019-2020 school year, “Virginia is a low effort state” with “highly unequal” educational opportunity. In December 2022, Virginia received “D grades” for adequacy and equity in state and local school funding and an “F grade” in funding effort from the Education Law Center. And Virginia school divisions serving the most students of color received 5% ($722) less state and local revenue per student than districts serving the fewest students of color, according to a study by The Education Trust.
Shifting The Blame For State Funding Shortcomings
To make matters worse, in 2021, some politicians began campaigning against our public schools, blaming teachers for the struggles of students during the pandemic and deflecting from the state’s funding failures by cherry-picking anecdotes to create a new culture war and divide our communities. There are real problems in some of our schools with too few resources to meet the needs of our students, but rather than trying to solve those problems for all our children, those politicians attempt to divert public funds to private school vouchers for a handful of students (despite most research showing that vouchers don’t improve student outcomes).
We know what it takes to make sure every student has access to a high-quality public education. Decades of high-quality research show that money matters for student outcomes, particularly for students from low-income families, and the state’s own research agency (JLARC) has provided recommendations for how to get to what our students need. By working together, we can make sure elected officials put our shared resources toward creating great public schools in every community.
Recent Progress
The good news is that advocates and legislators have overcome resistance and distractions to start implementing the research-based improvements that our students need. It will take time to see the outcomes from these improvements in student scores and outcomes, but the vast majority of research shows we can be confident that more students will be successful in the classroom.
In the last 7 years, Virginia advocates and legislative champions have made the following investments in our schools:
- More than tripled state supplemental funding for students living in low-income communities by boosting the “at-risk add-on” and modernizing how it’s calculated so we don’t leave out as many students.
- Restored state funding for support staff. In 2009, state policymakers arbitrarily limited state funding for the people who maintain our school buildings, work at the front desk, and do all the other important support jobs that create the conditions where students can learn. Advocates have been fighting for years to remove that limit, known as the “support cap.” In 2025, legislators finally began providing the state’s fair share of costs for support staff again. Including the new stand-alone funding for licensed health staff, known as specialized student support staff, lifting the cap means the state is now funding its share of salaries for almost twice as many support staff as in the 2020-2021 school year. This translates to Virginia paying its share of the costs for over 16,000 staff to help our students.
- Significantly increased support for students learning the English language by providing more instructors for students with lower levels of English proficiency. Now, the state will pay its share of costs for 1 instructor for every 20 students with the lowest levels of English proficiency — nearly triple the old flat ratio — with support stepping down as students learn more English and need less help.
- Increased resources for students with disabilities by creating flexible add-on funding to help school divisions better meet their needs. While an important first step, this $53 million investment is only about 10% of the additional funding JLARC identified as needed in their modeling of a potential add-on for students with disabilities.
Taken together, these improvements meaningfully boosted resources for our students, and per-student state funding finally exceeds 2009 levels after adjusting for inflation. This happened because of the hard work of students, parents, teachers, and other advocates, and also because Virginia legislators boosted public school funding well above levels proposed by Governor Youngkin by wisely rejecting unaffordable, permanent tax cuts that would have sapped the state’s ability to invest in future years.
These are meaningful changes that should raise student outcomes and achievement if maintained over time. Yet work remains: JLARC made significant additional funding recommendations that have not yet been adopted by the General Assembly, and also suggested that policymakers consider transforming Virginia’s school funding formula to a simpler and more transparent student-based formula. As students, parents, teachers, and policymakers consider next steps, it will be critical to stay grounded in the research-based findings that money does matter for student outcomes, and that it particularly matters for students from low-income families. We’ve made some progress, and we can continue to do so together.
Category:
Education
