As students begin testing this week in the state’s Standards of Learning annual evaluations, the Mathews County School Board took the opportunity Tuesday night to review the division’s most recent benchmark exam results.

Assistant superintendent Nancy Welch went over the third-quarter results with school board members during the meeting, which was held in the Mathews High School media center.

For the most part, the results were good with many of the pass rates in the 80-90 percentile. “Overall, the scores are where they should be this time of year,” Welch said. One area of concern discussed during the meeting, however, was the 64 percent pass rate for third grade English.

Welch and Lee-Jackson Elementary School principal Drew Greve explained that that poor result is attributable in large measure to test fatigue among the 8-9 year olds, who had not been exposed to tests lasting several hours before.

As the students got further into the “excessively long...