Fairfax and Loudoun Schools Have a Results Problem

Last week, the Virginia Department of Education released the results of the state’s Standards of Learning assessments. The results from two of Virginia’s most affluent counties are troubling. Students in Fairfax County Public Schools and Loudoun County Public Schools failed their SOL assessments at rates that should concern parents, taxpayers, and district leaders.

2025-2026 SOL Failure Rates in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties

Source: Virginia Department of Education School Quality Profiles

Note: In FCPS, 41.1% of students are classified as economically disadvantaged; in LCPS, 24.7% are classified as economically disadvantaged.

Results for history and English writing SOLs are omitted from this table because the districts have primarily moved away from tests in favor of more subjective Project-Based Assessments.

The contrast between overall student performance and the performance of economically disadvantaged students is particularly disconcerting. In both school divisions, economically disadvantaged students were roughly twice as likely to fail their reading, math, and science SOL assessments as the overall student population.

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These results should prompt a serious examination of whether Fairfax and Loudoun are getting sufficient academic returns on their substantial education spending.

That question is particularly important because both school divisions have faced budget pressures even as their enrollments have declined and their budgets have continued to grow. When student enrollment falls but expenditures continue to rise, district leaders should be able to clearly demonstrate where the additional money is going—and, more importantly, whether it is improving student outcomes.

In fiscal year 2026, for example, FCPS employed 2,346 non-school-based central administrators, whose combined salaries totaled more than $272 million. Even modest shifts in spending priorities could put more resources directly into schools—potentially supporting additional teachers, smaller student-to-teacher ratios, tutoring, intervention, and other academic supports.

The same scrutiny should apply to Loudoun County. LCPS has also experienced declining enrollment while maintaining a growing budget. Yet 38% of its economically disadvantaged students failed the reading and math SOL assessments, and 42% failed science.

Money alone does not guarantee academic achievement. Fairfax and Loudoun are two of Virginia’s most affluent communities, and their school systems spend enormous sums educating their students. The latest SOL results demonstrate that the central question is no longer simply how much these districts spend, but how effectively they spend it.

Parents and taxpayers should demand more than annual budget increases and promises of additional resources. They should demand measurable academic results. If district leaders want to ask taxpayers for more money, they should first be prepared to explain why existing resources, including hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to central administration, are not producing better outcomes for the students who need help most.

A school system’s first obligation is to educate its students. When academic performance is struggling, taxpayers deserve to know that their dollars are being directed toward that mission—not toward expanding the bureaucracy that surrounds it.

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