What’s at stake in the battle to improve Virginia’s charter school law is more than $350 million. It’s a question of whether we will do whatever we can to ensure that every child in the Commonwealth has an opportunity to achieve the best they can.
Virginia has only three operating charter schools, and the concept of virtual schools is still a new frontier. But around the country, both are expanding – often together – and they offer lessons for the Old Dominion.
Though Virginia may currently be a vast wasteland for quality charter innovation that could help kids, the Virginia School Boards Association is right on this: the quality of the charter applications that are received by local boards is often quite poor. Changes proposed by the NACPS, however, could change that.
Since 2006, State Senator Walter Stosch has introduced legislation that would create Tuition Assistance Grants for students with disabilities in Virginia. As the General Assembly struggles to reduce costs and burdens on local school divisions this year, they might follow the lead of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah and finally pass it.
A 17-point victory offers newly-elected Governor Bob McDonnell a mandate on those policies he made part of his platform. Developing quality public charter schools – particularly those that would serve as a turn-around mechanism – seems a good a place as any to start.
Unless the miraculous properties of Virginia water cure disabilities after the eighth grade, something is rotten. A dramatic increase in over-identification and misidentification of some children as ‘special education’ has left some teachers, parents and even retired administrators fearing state-wide, systematic cheating on the SOLs.
In 1998, the first year of SOL testing, only 2 percent of Virginia’s schools received full accreditation. This year, the State is bragging that 98 percent of Virginia’s schools are accredited. What they don’t tell you is that both the State and the schools cheated to get those scores.
In much of Virginia students are quite successful in their public schools, but there are also significant pockets where the public school system has failed the students who attend them. The Virginia Education Association and the Virginia School Boards Association should focus on bringing quality charters into the Commonwealth to address those failings.
The consequences of this trend will not be borne by the individuals alone either, society too, will pay a steep price.
Meaning both face serious challenges as they work to bring greater options and choice into our educational systems.
