Varina High School is a predominantly black (68%) high school in eastern Henrico County with a significant white minority (27%, mostly working class), and a smatter of Hispanics, biracial students, and others. As part of the Henrico County school district, Varina is one of the high schools subjected to a therapeutic disciplinary regime imposed by the Obama administration in order to reduce the number of students punished for disciplinary infractions on the grounds that the old methods disproportionately impacted African-Americans. I focus on this school because a source tells me that discipline, never great, is deteriorating — an assistant principal was assaulted by a student in the last school year — teacher morale is terrible, and teacher turnover is high. The school appears to be a perfect example of what happens when social justice warriors impose “reforms” heedless of unintended consequences.
I have long maintained that the new, politically correct disciplinary regime, far from advancing racial justice, does grave damage to blacks. When teachers are unable to maintain order in classrooms, they cannot teach. Further, they get discouraged, and quit or transfer to other schools. Thus, predominantly black schools are staffed by less experienced teachers. I have predicted that as the new disciplinary regime took hold, academic achievement would suffer.
In the previous post, I noted that SOL test scores for blacks and Hispanics have deteriorated statewide in the past two years, which I tentatively suggested might reflect increased classroom disruption at schools in districts where the policies took hold. But I was reluctant to draw hard-and-fast conclusions on the basis of statewide data. We needed to drill down to a school-by-school level.
To get a sense of whether my hypothesis held up or not, I drilled down to Varina High School, which may or may not be typical of all high schools subject to the social-justice-warrior disciplinary regime. The results are startling. While average SOL pass rates have eroded statewide over the past two years, they have plummeted at Varina. As can be seen in the table atop this post, pass rates have deteriorated in subjects across the board.
As can be seen in the table below, the decline has been especially marked among blacks. To be sure, whites have suffered from the breakdown in discipline, displaying a greater cumulative deterioration in SOL pass rates than whites statewide. But the collapse in SOL pass rates among blacks has been disastrous.
Varina seems to be a perfect confirmation of the Bacon hypothesis. I don’t want to make too much of this one example. Conceivably, other factors could account for this skewed performance, although I can’t think of any off-hand. However, the results at Varina are so shocking that it would be reckless to refuse to consider the possibility that the same thing is happening elsewhere.
Someone — preferably VDOE — needs to conduct a systematic review that compares school districts and individual schools subjected to SJW disciplinary systems and those that have not been, paying special attention to high schools and junior high schools, where discipline is a more pressing issue than in elementary schools, as well as to schools dominated by economically disadvantaged and/or African-American students where the new rules likely have had the greatest impact on discipline and classroom disruption.
If you want examples of institutional racism, this is a good place to look — blacks as victims of social justice warriors’ half-baked theories and unintended consequences. Of course, being an SJW means never having to say you’re sorry. Ignore the wreckage, blame racism, and move on to the next cause.
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