My Sept. 22, 2009, Examiner column questioned Fairfax School Superintendent Jack Dale’s seemingly miraculous improvements in standardized test scores, for which he was rewarded with a lucrative contract extension. I wrote that the county’s scores — especially those among students with limited English and learning disabilities — were being artificially inflated through the exclusion of thousands of students from the Standards of Learning exams.

In a subsequent letter to the editor, Dale characterized that column as “misleading, inaccurate and unsubstantiated.” But now, the previously excluded category of students is being made to take the regular test. And in the schools where this change has happened most rapidly, SOL pass rates are down significantly.