Author: sherlockj
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An Inspiring Story about Public School Reformation, Beautifully Written
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes it is fun to acknowledge great work. For a wonderful story about schools and kids transformed for the better by local action, see “The Rutters of Athens County” from New York Magazine reprinted in the Intelligencer. It is beautifully written by Dan Xin Huang, an investigative journalist who lived in…
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Petersburg Public Schools Cheat Children of Their Futures
by James C. Sherlock We like to think of ourselves as civilized people. Virginia and America are at an advanced stage of social and cultural development. Aren’t we? For the children of Petersburg, we are not. We continue to let them quite publicly and measurably be cheated of their futures by their public schools. Queue…
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A Concept for Simpler and More Compliant Virginia Regulation of Medical Facilities and Services in Virginia
By James C. Sherlock I saw a comment somewhere that medical facilities are the second most regulated industry in America, just behind nuclear power. Yet we see that it has not been working in Virginia in the case of nursing homes. And compliance is considerably harder in the other medical facilities and services in Virginia…
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New Bad SOL Data Bring A New Youngkin Administration Plan for Mitigating Learning Losses in Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The Governor announced today that he and the General Assembly came together on a bipartisan basis to invest $418 million to tackle student learning loss. The Virginia Department of Education recommends school divisions allocate the $418 million “to proven programs that will achieve the greatest student impact—approximately 70% for high-dose tutoring,…
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The Virginia State Budget and the Rising Costs of Registered Nurses
by James C. Sherlock I was asked yesterday by a reader about the relationship between nursing homes, rising registered nurse salaries and the new Virginia budget agreement. Good questions. Virginia’s workforce includes nearly 70,000 registered nurses. The state pays its workers, but it also pays its Medicaid share for private sector nurses. Pay for private…
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Virginia Has an Opportunity to Take the Lead in Nursing Home Technology Insertion to Improve Care with Existing Staff
by James C. Sherlock A pending new federal rule defining strong nursing home staffing minimums has finally accomplished something that I thought unlikely in my lifetime. It has in a single stroke aligned the interests of patients and their loved ones, nurses, nursing homes, state and federal governments, and taxpayers in finding ways to make…
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An Overdue New Federal Rule to Improve Nursing Home Staffing
By James C. Sherlock What would happen if the federal government were to propose for the first time specific nursing home staffing minimums? We are about to find out. A new rule. A new federal proposed rule introduced yesterday has already survived fierce opposition from the industry, which tried to kill it in the womb.…
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A Small Victory – So Far – for Common Sense and Flood Mitigation in Virginia Beach
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes things work. Perhaps they will this time. There was a time in Virginia Beach when a partnership between a developer and a church to build new houses would have breezed through the Planning Commission and the City Council. That kind of open season on clearing and building on Virginia Beach’s…
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The Decidedly Unintuitive Student Debt of Undergrads upon Graduation from Virginia’s Public 4-Year Colleges and Universities
by James C. Sherlock I had never until now looked at college costs from the perspective of the new graduate, as opposed to his or her parents. But it is fair to say that many look closely at their debt and their incomes after graduation and are taken aback, whether or not they borrow yet…
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Changes in Student Populations and Choices of Majors in 4-Year Colleges and Universities 2010-2023 Challenge Virginia Schools
by James C. Sherlock Tastes change, and with them trends. Between fall 2010 and fall 2021, total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in America decreased by 15% percent (from 18.1 million to 15.4 million students). In Virginia’s 4-year public colleges and universities, the drop was 8% in that same period, right at the national…
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Huge Swings in Student Populations Among Virginia’s 4-year Public Colleges and Universities Have Consequences
by James C. Sherlock I have previously in this series on Virginia’s public institutions of higher learning (IHE’s) used the term “cannibalization” to describe some getting bigger and some getting smaller, a few much smaller, in terms of student populations. I will here provide the numbers to back that up. While the total undergraduates dropped…
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Virginia’s State Higher Education System – A Concept for Magnet Schools among the Smaller Ones
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday I posted an article listing a series of challenges facing Virginia’s Institutions of Higher Learning. Today I will offer a concept for a solution designed to address both the cost of a 4-year degree and the thriving of the smaller schools. Create a magnet school program in the smaller schools:…
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Virginia State Colleges and Universities Slouching Towards a Cliff
by James C. Sherlock The economist Herb Stein once said that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The University of West Virginia has just stopped to take stock. Facing a $45 million shortfall, it had to cut programs. Instead of taking the unthinking way out — assigning a cut target to each…
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Who Knew?
by James C. Sherlock I just came across a fact that surprised me considering how much I have studied Virginia hospitals. Henrico Doctors’ Hospital with 767 beds and CJW Medical Center with 758 beds, both in Richmond, rank numbers five and six in size in the entire 180-hospital empire of HCA, the largest private hospital system…
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Impressions from a Weekend in Charlottesville
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes, things just force their way into your consciousness. My wife and I were in Charlottesville this weekend. We were not there to visit the University, but its continuing construction overwhelms both the senses and attempts to get from A to B. Most of the growth is vertical — very vertical —…