<p>In VA, you take tests in [7th, 8th,] 9th, 10th, and 11th grade, in... algebra, geometry, algebra 2, bio, chem, 2 english, world history I (but not if you're on IB track), world history 2, US History. I think that's all of them, and you don't even have to pass them all. The tests are ridiculously easy, at least they were for me, and frankly, if you can't pass these tests, you should not be getting a high school diploma.</p>
<p>I took the US History one, and my Jr year class was "History of the Americas"... half the class was spent on Latin America, and half was spent on the US. And I managed to get the higher of the 2 passing marks on all of the tests, except for one.</p>
<p>my 2 favorite questions from my English SOL (VA):
1. there were like 12/14 sentences divided into 4 paragraphs about a job. Then the question asks "Which paragraph is the phone number in to call for more information?"</p>
<ol>
<li> Which of the following is written correctly?
a. economix
b. econimics
c. economics
d. ecconomiccs</li>
</ol>
<p>... seriously, these tests are untimed, but they mandated that everyone stay for like an hour and a half or 2 hours, and then they took people who weren't finished to another place. It took me like 15 minutes to answer the 70 English questions, it was ridiculous.</p>
<p>SOLs were never mentioned in my classes (all preIB/IB classes) until like the week before, if we had to touch on something that we weren't learning for IB. Like in History, we had to touch a couple things that we wouldn't have otherwise, as the class was heavily focused on Latin America, and started with the age of exploration, and the class finished at 1900, so anything on the test on the 20th century we tried to briefly touch, and it was left up to us.</p>
<p>Again... you list Virginia, but if the SOLs keep your kids from graduating, you have bigger problems.</p>