Virginia's Standards of Learning assessments — commonly called SOL tests — have been delivered through Pearson's TestNav platform for years. TestNav handles the secure online testing environment that Virginia public school students use when taking their end-of-year or end-of-course assessments in grades 3 through 8 and in high school credit-bearing courses.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) contracts with Pearson to administer SOL testing, and TestNav is Pearson's delivery platform. When your teacher says "we're doing SOL testing in the computer lab," they mean students will be logging into the TestNav Virginia platform to take the actual assessment in a secure, monitored environment.
Understanding how TestNav works before the test matters. Students who have never used the interface — who are unfamiliar with the toolbar, the text highlighting tool, the answer eliminator, or how to flag and revisit questions — lose time figuring these out during the actual assessment. The platform is consistent across years and subjects, so time spent learning it once pays off across multiple SOL tests.
Virginia uses TestNav for the following SOL subject areas: English reading (grades 3–8 and end-of-course), mathematics (grades 3–8 and end-of-course), science (grades 5, 8, and end-of-course), and Virginia history and social science (grades 3, 4, VS, USI, USII, CE/EC). Not every subject at every grade level takes an SOL test, but TestNav is the platform for all that do.
One thing that surprises many students: TestNav for the SOL doesn't look exactly like a regular website. The interface has a specific toolbar layout, a flag system for uncertain answers, and navigation controls that differ from typical online quizzes or browser-based assessments students may have seen elsewhere. First-time exposure to the platform on actual test day is a disadvantage — VDOE specifically provides practice items using the same interface so students can eliminate the novelty factor before scores count.
Virginia SOL tests are also adaptive in some subject-grade combinations, meaning the difficulty of questions adjusts based on how a student answers earlier items. Computer-adaptive testing (CAT) means two students sitting next to each other may not see identical question sets — one student's harder questions reflect better performance on earlier items. TestNav handles this adaptive delivery transparently; students don't see difficulty levels, they just see questions. Understanding that the test may adapt removes the anxiety of "these questions seem different from what I practiced."
Teachers administer SOL tests during designated testing windows set by VDOE and local school divisions. Schools schedule computer lab time, notify families in advance, and provide any specific instructions for the subject. Students generally don't need to do anything special to prepare for the logistics — the school handles device setup and login credentials. What students control is their content preparation and their familiarity with the platform itself.
The Virginia Department of Education releases official SOL practice items that run directly on the TestNav platform. These aren't PDFs or printed worksheets — they're live browser-based items that use the same interface, the same toolbar, and the same question types as the real assessment. Accessing them is the single most useful thing a student can do before test day.
Practice items are available through the VDOE website under the Standards of Learning section. From there, you can select the subject and grade, and the items launch in your browser using the TestNav testing interface. Students interact with the actual highlight tool, the line reader accessibility feature, the eliminator, and the navigation buttons in exactly the same way they will on the real test.
The practice items are not full-length practice tests — they're sets of released items (typically 10–30 questions per set) that VDOE has publicly released after previous testing cycles. They cover all major question formats used in that subject: multiple choice, technology-enhanced items (drag-and-drop, hot-spot click, multi-select), and in some subjects, short constructed response.
Technology-enhanced items are particularly worth practicing. Students who have only seen multiple-choice questions sometimes stall on these formats during the real test. Drag-and-drop classification questions, click-on-the-correct-answer-in-a-passage questions, and multi-select "choose all that apply" items all appear in Virginia SOL assessments and all have a specific interaction pattern in TestNav. Students should be familiar with these before test day — not discovering them mid-assessment when time pressure is highest.
VDOE also releases answer keys alongside the practice item sets, which lets students self-score after completing the items. For technology-enhanced items, the answer key typically specifies the correct selection or arrangement so students can check their work. Some items include explanations that reference the specific Virginia standard being assessed, which helps students connect practice performance back to the content domains they need to review further.
Schools sometimes use VDOE practice items in class as a whole-group walk-through before testing season begins. Teachers project the TestNav interface on a classroom screen and walk students through the tools, navigation, and question types together. If your school does this, pay attention — it's the fastest way to get platform-familiar before individual practice. If your school doesn't, using the practice items independently at home still gives you the same preparation.
The TestNav interface includes several built-in tools that students can access during the SOL assessment. Knowing these tools beforehand — and practicing with them on VDOE practice items — helps students use test time more efficiently. The tool bar in TestNav appears at the top of the testing screen and remains accessible throughout the test, so students can pick up a tool mid-question without losing their work or navigating away from the item.
The highlighter lets students mark text in reading passages or questions. Colors vary by tool version, but typically include yellow and blue highlights. Students who use this for key evidence in English reading questions can move more quickly through the review process when revisiting flagged items. In reading passages with multiple embedded questions, highlighting different parts of the passage for different questions helps maintain context when reviewing.
The answer eliminator lets students cross out answer choices they've ruled out. This is a standard test-taking strategy that TestNav supports natively — students click on an answer option and a strikethrough appears, visually narrowing down remaining choices without deleting the answer from view. For math questions where students have worked through process of elimination, this tool keeps reasoning visible.
The flag/review button marks a question for review before submitting. Students can answer a question, flag it as uncertain, and return to it before the section ends. The review screen at the end of each section shows which items are flagged, answered, or unanswered — providing a quick dashboard before final submission. Students who don't use the flag button sometimes miss this review step entirely, submitting with unanswered items they intended to return to.
The line reader (sometimes called the masking tool) places a horizontal bar over the passage that students can scroll down line by line. This is an accessibility tool available to all students on TestNav, not just those with official accommodations. Students who find their eyes jumping around in dense reading passages often find this tool useful for maintaining focus on one section of text at a time.
Many Virginia schools use Chromebooks as their primary testing device. TestNav on Chromebook can run in two modes: through the Chrome browser (for practice and non-secure practice items) or through the TestNav app in kiosk mode for the actual secure assessment. Virginia school divisions configure these settings in advance through Google Admin Console, so individual students don't need to manage device setup before an SOL test.
For the real SOL test, schools configure Chromebooks to launch TestNav in Managed Kiosk Mode, which locks the device to the testing interface — students can't switch tabs, open other apps, or access search during the test. This is standard procedure in Virginia schools and is handled by IT administrators before test day, not by students. Students shouldn't try to modify this or work around it — the kiosk mode is a required part of the secure testing protocol.
For practicing with VDOE practice items, the regular Chrome browser is fine. Students can go to the practice items page, launch the TestNav interface in their browser, and practice with the actual question types and tools without the kiosk lock. The main difference is that the regular browser version shows the browser address bar and allows tab switching, while the real test kiosk mode doesn't.
If a student encounters a Chromebook that freezes or crashes during an actual SOL test, the standard protocol is to raise a hand and inform the test administrator. TestNav saves responses as students progress, so a device restart typically lets the student resume without losing work.
This is worth knowing ahead of time so students don't panic if technical issues occur — the system is designed to recover gracefully from device failures without losing saved responses. Test administrators are trained to handle these situations and students should rely on them rather than trying to fix device issues independently during a secure assessment.
Start by identifying which SOL tests you'll take that year and when they're scheduled. Your teacher will typically announce test windows several weeks in advance. Once you know the subjects and dates, your preparation can be intentional.
SOL test day has a specific flow that's different from regular classroom assessments. Understanding what to expect reduces anxiety and helps students start with a clear head.
Score reporting for Virginia SOL tests follows a specific timeline through VDOE and your school division. Understanding how scores are reported helps families know what to expect.
Virginia SOL tests use a scaled score range of 0 to 600. The passing score (called the "proficient" cut score) is 400. A score of 500 or above is considered advanced. These score levels apply across SOL subjects, though the raw-to-scaled score conversion differs by test and year based on difficulty.
For end-of-course SOL tests in high school courses, passing the SOL is a graduation requirement in Virginia. Students typically need to pass the SOL for verified credit in English, mathematics, science, and history. The specific requirements vary slightly by graduation pathway (Standard Diploma vs. Advanced Studies Diploma), but SOL performance directly affects whether credit counts toward graduation verification requirements.
Grade 3–8 SOL scores are reported back to schools and used for school accountability reporting under Virginia's accreditation system. They don't individually affect student promotion (except in specific district policies), but they inform teacher instruction, school improvement planning, and state accreditation ratings. Schools with consistently low SOL performance may receive state intervention — which is why SOL results matter at the institutional level, not just for individual students.
Score reports show performance at the reporting category level, not just a total score. For example, a math SOL score report might show separate proficiency indicators for Number and Number Sense, Computation and Estimation, Measurement and Geometry, and Patterns/Functions/Algebra. A student who passes overall but shows weakness in one reporting category can use this breakdown to target remediation before the next year's test or a retake.
Students who take end-of-course SOL tests as part of dual enrollment or accelerated coursework should confirm with their school counselor how SOL scores interact with verified credit in their specific situation. Grade 8 students taking Algebra I, for instance, may take the Algebra I SOL — and whether that score counts toward Standard Diploma verification depends on their grade level and school division policies.
Virginia uses TestNav for SOL assessments, but the platform also appears in other Virginia assessment contexts. Some locally-developed benchmark assessments purchased through Pearson, and specific remediation screening tools used in certain districts, may also run on TestNav infrastructure.
This means students in Virginia may encounter TestNav in non-SOL contexts — a benchmark test in October isn't an SOL, but it may use the same platform interface. Familiarity with TestNav from one assessment context transfers to all of them, which is another reason why practicing with the official VDOE practice items early in the year has value beyond SOL prep specifically.
Students preparing for college-readiness assessments may also encounter TestNav if their school administers the ACT or certain AP assessments through the platform. The SOL context is the most common Virginia exposure, but the platform's consistency across testing programs means that time spent learning the TestNav interface for SOL prep has transferable value. Any student who's used TestNav for a Virginia SOL test can navigate other TestNav-delivered assessments with minimal additional adjustment.
For students who take SOL tests across multiple years and subjects, the consistent interface is a genuine advantage. A seventh-grader who used TestNav for the Grade 5 science SOL already knows how to flag questions, use the highlighter, and navigate the review screen. That accumulated platform familiarity means eighth-grade SOL test day starts with one fewer thing to learn — students can focus entirely on the content being assessed rather than the mechanics of the testing software.