Hanover County Public Schools (HCPS) students continue to achieve at the highest levels in Virginia – graduating and passing state exams at rates that exceed their statewide peers – according to new data from the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). Additionally, all Hanover schools have once again achieved full state accreditation, making HCPS one of only five of the Commonwealth’s 15 largest school divisions to have every school achieve accreditation.
On Thursday, VDOE released accreditation ratings, Standards of Learning (SOL) pass rates for the 2022-23 school year, as well as graduation rates for the Class of 2023. Pass rates among HCPS students remain higher than the state averages across the five subject areas (reading, writing, math, science, and history) and HCPS students earned the highest pass rate in math – and tied for the highest in science – among the 15 largest school divisions in the state. Driven by this high achievement, all schools in the division earned state accreditation, meaning that in all three years of the Virginia Board of Education’s
updated accreditation standards, all HCPS schools have achieved full accreditation.
These ratings also take into account graduation rates. For the 11th straight year, the HCPS on-time graduation rate exceeds 95 percent and this year’s 95.6 percent rate is the third-highest among the 15 largest school divisions in Virginia.
“I, along with our School Board, am remarkably proud of the students, faculty, and staff who have put in the hard work and contributed to our continued success as a school division. This important work does not happen by accident. It is intentional and represents the collective efforts of our exceptional and caring team who continue to rise to the occasion, working tirelessly to help ensure we serve our students’ evolving, ever-growing, and complex needs,” said Dr. Michael Gill, Superintendent of Schools. “I am especially proud of members of the Class of 2023, both for their many accomplishments – some of them reflected in this data – inside and outside of the classroom as well as their resilience during a high school journey that began and ended with normalcy, but was intensely interrupted and altered by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Gill added: “While I am pleased with these results and the growth we are exhibiting, we all readily acknowledge that our work is never finished. We recognize the need to continue to combat the unfinished learning brought about by the pandemic, as well as further support students who are underperforming. We remain deeply committed to providing our students with the resources and supports they need to succeed and reach their fullest potential, and I am looking forward to working alongside our School Board, educators, staff, and families to continue to achieve at the highest levels and uphold our longstanding Tradition of Excellence.”
HCPS pass rates on the 2022-23 SOL exams met or exceeded state pass rates in the vast majority of reporting categories, including among Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, and economically disadvantaged students, among others. To that end, for the second consecutive year, the HCPS graduation rate among economically disadvantaged students exceeds the state average (89.2 percent for HCPS compared with 87.8 percent state average). Additionally, the school division’s 88.8 percent graduation rate for students with disabilities has increased from 82.7 percent in 2020-21.
In addition to having a higher overall graduation rate than the state, a higher percentage of our students graduated with advanced diplomas (65.5 percent for HCPS compared with 51.5 percent across the state).
More information can be found in the Virginia Department of Education’s School Quality Profile
for Hanover County Public Schools.