Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Loudoun County School Board Needs to Clean up its Own Equity Mess

—

by

sherlockj
in ,

by James C. Sherlock

The Loudoun County School Board gets to lecture absolutely no one about equity. The richest county in America has shoehorned most of the high schoolers among its record low percentage of poor children into one of its 15 high schools, Park View High.

That in itself is not an indictment.  They go to school where they live, and in Loudoun County most live in Sterling near Dulles Airport in the Park View High School district.

What is utterly unusual, and a disgrace, is that having placed them in Park View, LCPS has failed to educate them.

For context read my report yesterday. Only 60% of Park View’s Black students passed SOL math tests; 70% of its Hispanics.

Virginia Department of Education data puts the lie to the school board’s incessant claims of systemwide systemic racism. Eighty-six percent of Briar Wood’s High’s Black students passed math SOLs, as did 90% of its Hispanic students. Those are virtually the same as the white student 88% pass rate state wide.

If Wise County in the coalfields of Virginia failed to educate its poor kids, all of its high schools would have a Title 1 designation. None does.

Park View is one of only 13  high schools in the state with a school wide Title 1 designation. That is not an award. It is a disgrace.

Nine of the state’s Title 1 high schools are in Richmond.

All you need to know is embodied in the name of the program:

Title I, Part A: Improving Basic Programs Operated by Local Educational Agencies

Bottom line

Loudoun County Public Schools is the “local educational agency.” It has not only packed Park View with poor kids but also has failed to educate them, “earning” a Title 1 designation. In the richest county in America.

The next thing we hear from the infamous Loudoun County School Board must be their plan for Park View.

The Chairwoman of that board can lead the discussions. She sent her kids to Park View.

They can shut up about equity until they clean up their own mess.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

23 responses to “Loudoun County School Board Needs to Clean up its Own Equity Mess”

  1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    First of all, I don’t see where they are lecturing anybody else. Second, of the nine school board members, seven were first elected in 2019. Therefore, they are in their first terms. Maybe what they are trying to do is clean up the mess someone else made.

    1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      They lecture their own citizens and then adjourn. The Park View issue issue is theirs. Maybe now it will come up. Or not. Because it is demonstrably from the data not “systemic”, just situational incompetence. For Loudoun to request federal money to fix Park View through Title 1 is an absolute travesty. The current crowd has been in office 2 years. If they need a clue, they can call Wise County.

      1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        The current crowd has been in office since January, 2020, a total of 18 months, most of which was spent dealing with the pandemic. It is impossible to turn a school system, or even a school, around in a year, not even with not having to deal with a pandemic.

  2. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Wait. It just dawned on me. The Wise County Public Schools symbol is a lighthouse. A lighthouse?? Where? Where is this place?

    1. Nancy Naive Avatar
      Nancy Naive

      Oh, I get it. The Wise County lighthouse is like that giant ball of string in Iowa someplace.

      1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
        James C. Sherlock

        The symbol refers to Wise County Schools’ reputation as a beacon of light in Southwest Virginia. It is not only the largest school district there, but, as we have read, the most accomplished. If you want to pause the snark, learn something about the kind of people who run and teach in those schools and their struggles with declining population and poverty, and perhaps have your heart touched, go to https://heraldcourier.com/news/wise-county-the-beacon-of-the-coalfield-school-divisions-closes-another-school/article_5a334dd7-71ba-58a9-85ef-c3daee097d46.html .

        1. Paul Sweet Avatar
          Paul Sweet

          The school is still in use. The county is letting Mountain Empire Community College use it at no charge for dental hygiene and other workforce development classes.

          NN, you don’t have to be so snarky about Southwest Virginia. They are some of the friendliest people I have known and worked with.

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Well, you could move there, build a house, and double their tax base.

          Sounds like a great place to establish a Navy retirement village.

  3. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    Captain Sherlock mentions Briar Woods High School as a success story in Loudoun. I can tell you why. Two words. Ed Starzenski. Mr. Starzenski opened the school and guided Briar Woods for 12 years. I remember the first meeting with Ed and all of the department chairs before the school was even finished or had a occupancy permit. He instantly zeroed in on SOL scores and closing achievement gaps. Briar Woods was going to have a tough start. Initially students had the option of staying at Stone Bridge or Broad Run the first year. Established and successful schools. Briar Woods ended up inheriting the bottom of the barrel from both schools.

    Ed was so smart. He knew what we had to focus on but he did not have the answers. So we the department chairs and Ed hammered it over many long meetings and we came up with a winning plan. Attracting and hiring the best teachers was Ed’s greatest contribution and being our school cheer leader and establishing business partnerships to bring in big time outside money.

    The nuts and bolts of solving the SOL riddle was left to us department chairs. And we did just that. A remarkable remediation system was installed that exposed those who were going to fail the SOL. We knew who those kids were by November. I remember Jim Noland the English Department Chair and Mr. Earl the Math chair personally taught the remediation classes to those in most danger. The results were amazing. We still had failures. But only a handful and those scores were high enough for expedited retakes.

    Briar Woods was amazing. Hell the student body actually knew the words to the alma mater because they loved that school. After the first few tough years the Falcon’s soared in academics, athletics, and fine arts. It was a lot like Park View once was back in the 1980s and 1990s.

    Briar Woods is still a good school but mostly because of the foundation Ed Starzenski built. Since Ed’s retirement the school has had less able leadership. We lost a number of important neighborhoods to new high schools and the ever expansion of Ashburn. A lot of teachers have left because of retirement as well. After 16 years there is always a generational shift.

    1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      These are terrific contributions. Thank you.

    2. James C. Sherlock Avatar
      James C. Sherlock

      Most large schools systems have “troubleshooter” principals on their teams. These are proven leaders who are sent to turn around poor performing schools. Does not Loudoun have these men and women?

      1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead

        We did have those types of principals. They were good too. Problem. They were baby boomers. Boomers are old now. Tremendous transfer of institutional knowledge from one generation to the next is not happening.

    3. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
      Dick Hall-Sizemore

      These are very useful observations. They bear out my long-time perception that a school’s principal makes all the difference.

      There is a tendency on this blog to blame the party that is in power now. However, as you ably point out, the success or failure of schools often occurs over a span of time. Loudoun County has seen a lot of upheaval over the last forty years. In 1980, it was still largely a rural county, with development starting around Dulles and the Rt. 7 corridor. At that time, one of the big issues was the preservation of open land and farmland. Since then, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the major battles have been over whether and how to control growth.

      The population in 1980 was 57,427. Forty years later, the 2020 estimated population is 375,615.

      Rapid growth like that is bound to result in social tumult. It also resulted in political tumult. From 1980 to 1991, Democrats were in the majority on the Board of Supervisors. They were mostly moderates. (I knew and worked with many of them.) Beginning in 1992, the board flipped completely and there began a series of radical realignments, as shown below:

      1992-1995: R-8, D-0, I-1
      1996-1999: R-7, D-1, I-1
      2000-2003: D-4, R-2, I-3
      2004-2007: R-6, D-1, I-2
      2008-2011: D-5, R-2, I-2
      2012-2018: R-8, D-0, I-1
      2016-2019: R-6, D-3
      2020-2022: D-6, R-3

      Beginning in 1995, the school board members were elected. Unfortunately, the party designation for all of them is shown as “independent”, so I cannot say for sure whether they are liberal or conservative. However, I think it would be safe to say that the ideological balance of an elected school board largely reflects that of the board of supervisors.

      So, if one wants to fix blame on the state of the county’s schools, Republicans have been in political control for most of the past 30 years.

      1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
        James C. Sherlock

        As I have pointed out before, Dick, it is you that is focused on political parties, not me. The authority is in the hands of the current school board. They have said that the Loudoun County school system is systemically racist. The data say otherwise.

        1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
          Dick Hall-Sizemore

          I have looked, but I can’t find where the school board has said that the school system is “systemically racist.” Can you point me to that statement?

          1. James C. Sherlock Avatar
            James C. Sherlock

            https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000195/Centricity/domain/60/equity_initiative_documents/Detailed_Plan_to_Combat_Systemic_Racism_August_2020.pdf

          2. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
            Dick Hall-Sizemore

            I agree with your larger point. The new school board is too caught up in the progressive rhetoric of diversity and equity.

            It needs to move beyond rhetoric and elaborate plans with strategies and goals (a favorite of the education bureaucracy) and focus on those schools in which the kids are not showing levels of achievement in math and reading comparable to those of other schools in the district. Probably the best approach would be to place strong principals in those schools and support them in their efforts.

      2. James C. Sherlock Avatar
        James C. Sherlock

        If a principal makes all of the difference, and I somewhat agree, how then is the Loudoun County school system systemically racist instead of intermittently poorly led?

        1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
          James Wyatt Whitehead

          One of the worst mistakes Loudoun ever did was build a new school board office. The old school board office on North Street kept the bureacracy lean, mean, and focused on it’s purpose. When the new school board office was built in Ashburn it gained the nickname Taj Mahal. That is when the educrats began crafting policies that tied the hands of principals who could move the needle of achievement. Never let government build a temple for itself.
          https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CoEJW9uODjs/X_D7DXSYfkI/AAAAAAAADZg/YjaP6d_i2NE7DiHWhLNwJF7ib26w6Y2WACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/P1380102.JPG

          https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/05/14/18/41879094-9579353-The_District_Administrative_Offices_For_Loudoun_County_Public_Sc-a-40_1621013194322.jpg

      3. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
        James Wyatt Whitehead

        The change to elected school boards did start in 1995. Each locality voted on this. So Loudoun was late to the party. I don’t think we saw an elected school board until 2011. It stayed as appointed board up to 2005 for sure.

        1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
          Dick Hall-Sizemore

          According to the Loudoun County website, there were school board elections in 1995.

          https://www.loudoun.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/80

          1. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
            James Wyatt Whitehead

            Indeed. Haven’t thought about some of those names in a long time.

  4. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    Park View High School has a long and storied history. Opened in the year of the bicentennial. Sterling Park was a working class neighborhood where young families could own a home and send their kids to a good high school. Park View is an amazing school. In terms of athletics, academics, and school spirit it was the best in Loudoun. Hands down best pep rallies I have ever witnessed. A long time principal Jim Person was a big part of that success. He went on to open Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn and that school was always in the top ten of everything.

    Park View had less able leadership for a number years. I won’t name that principal. But this leader created a “woke” climate before that word existed and drove off the best teachers. This was in the early 2000s. On top of that Sterling Park was undergoing massive transformation and development. The neighborhood completely changed. Higher number of minorities and ESL families. Gangs, MS 13 all sorts of problems.

    A new leader came along Dr. Minschew who did wonders to stem the tide. Key staff members kept leaving. Why not? So many new high schools opening in more affluent neighborhoods that also eased a long commute for top teachers. Have you ever tried to roll down Rt 7 in rush hour from Winchester or Berryville? Try it one time.

    The current principal Mr. Dolson is a good leader. He faces the challenge of attracting talent in a demanding school climate. He was once a teacher at Park View. I respect Mr. Dolson. A very compassionate man who goes the extra mile.

    But the sad fact is easy to see. Loudoun County failed to invest additional resources to correct a severe list of this once flagship school. This neglect went on for years. The gerrymandering of the school attendance boundary doesn’t help either.

    Captain Sherlock is right to point out the deficiencies of Park View. Those families deserve better. The elected leaders have failed to do their part. You can’t blame Dolson or the teachers at Park View for this. I wish this school all the best.

Leave a Reply

Read More