Author: sherlockj
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General Assembly Education Bills – What is Missing?
by James C. Sherlock This is one of a series of regular a weekly updates on bills in the 2021 General Assembly that will affect education. I will discuss some the newly filed education bills tomorrow. After that, health care and health insurance. What is missing so far in educational legislation is more important than…
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The New York Model for Virginia’s Schools
by James C. Sherlock For those who think my writing for the last year about the future of education in Virginia was too pessimistic, it appears that I may have not been pessimistic enough. I have an article for you to read. See De Blasio hates gifted schooling because it exposes his own failures in this…
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Where in the Virginia Department of Education is the Kids’ Interests Division (KID)?
by James C. Sherlock There have been two iterations of relaxation of Virginia SOL rules issued so far this school year by the Department of Education. They offer perfect roadmaps to the future under the current leadership of that Department. School Accreditation Waived and Refusal to Take SOLs Authorized The first step was potentially the…
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Welcome to the Foxhole
by James C. Sherlock I just posted this response to a relative who asked me to read a post by a left wing professor blaming Q’Anon for the violence in the capitol. I read the article. I haven’t read enough of (name of the author) to characterize him, so I won’t. I will, however address…
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Mark Zuckerberg, Call Your Lawyer
by James C. Sherlock “You don’t need a Weatherman To know which way the wind blows.” — Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues. Consider this: “Facebook was hit with twin lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general from dozens of states on Wednesday, in one of the most serious challenges ever to the Silicon Valley…
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Race vs. Class in Education Personal Data Collection – An Alternative
by James C. Sherlock Earlier I addressed the current method for collecting racial and ethnicity data for civil rights enforcement and found it lacking. So why do we do it that way? Because we have done it for a long time? The constitutional concerns can’t be wished away, and there are new proofs available in…
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E Pluribus Unum
by James C. Sherlock Federal and state executive and legislative branches and the courts make thousands of decisions daily based on race and ethnicity data. The federal regulations for gathering and reporting those data have been imposed in response to civil rights laws. The iron law of unintended consequences has taken precedence as it often…
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General Assembly Legislation of Note: Education, Schools and Health
by James C. Sherlock As bills affecting education, educational institutions or health get filed and make their way, or not, through the General Assembly in 2021, I will occasionally make note of them here. I will certainly not list them all, but will highlight the ones of interest to me and I hope to our…
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Anyone Think They Understand Hospital Pricing?
by James C. Sherlock Having written yesterday about the newly appeals-court-certified HHS rules on hospital price transparency, I will use this opportunity to provide some real examples of the gargantuan Rubik’s cube that is hospital pricing. I will be talking about hospital prices only, not the much lower prices of non-hospital alternatives including ambulatory surgical…
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Important Changes in Healthcare Billing and Price Transparency
by James C. Sherlock A lot happened right before the New Year to change the rules for healthcare billing and pricing. Balance Billing In one of the events, new federal law buried in the end of year, 5,600-page $900 billion COVID-19 federal relief legislation bans balance billing to patients. “Surprise” billing for the balance due after an…
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The Gray Lady Backs School Testing
by James C. Sherlock I wrote in a column not long ago that it will be impossible to create plans to make up for COVID-related learning losses if we cannot benchmark those losses and their subsequent mitigation. I recommended standardized testing as the only readily available and proven way to take those measurements. For most…
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The Race Industry Can Never Declare Victory
by James C. Sherlock I read an op-ed by Scott Johnston this morning in the Wall Street Journal: “Revolution Consumes New York’s Elite Dalton School.” The subtitle was “Teachers of $54,000 Zoom classes demand a lowering of standards and hiring of a dozen diversity staffers.“ It is very much worth a read. Told of an eight-page…
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The Thought Police Have Her on Video
by James C. Sherlock You know how some things play out exactly as you expect and you still can’t figure out why they happen? Such a thing happened to me this morning when I opened the New York Times. On the front page was an article that was a rehash of reporting that had been…
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COVID Has Exposed Massive Failures in Governance
by James C. Sherlock In a comment to my previous post, we saw a statement “most parents are happy with the education their kids are getting.” That is no longer true. Polls say overwhelmingly it is not. On a personal note, my two grandsons in Albemarle County schools, twin seniors, haven’t set foot in…
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School Superintendents Are Accountable for Special Ed Compliance
by James C. Sherlock – Updated 23 Dec. with division-by-subject table of bad SOL results for students with disabilities. I just finished reading the December 14 JLARC Report. “K–12 Special Education in Virginia 2020.” The report is highly critical of public school special education in Virginia, but it misses the mark on its findings as…