Category: Discipline and Disorder
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The Shooting at Richneck Elementary – Part 2 – the School
By James C. Sherlock The shooting at Richneck Elementary was a tragedy by every measure. I am not going to discuss the shooting itself here. I will instead offer a summary of the school’s state quality data so we can get a sense of the environment in that school. It is located across I-64 from…
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R.I.P. Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock I have crafted and will share what I believe to be an epitaph for public education in Virginia. All of the evidence we see is that Virginia’s public school system, counseled and cheered on by its disgraceful publicly funded schools of education, is crumbling at its foundations. We start children in…
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The Shooting at Richneck Elementary – Part One
by James C. Sherlock There is trauma everywhere you look. A six-year-old boy shoots his teacher in school and we first consider the trauma. Then we look for ways to minimize its effects. And we simultaneously ask questions about the event itself. What happened and why? Unless we are personally involved, and even if we…
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Authority of Virginia Principals to Keep Schools Safe is Dangerously Undermined
by James C. Sherlock At St. Anthony school when I was a student, Sister Mary Adria was the final decision authority. The only one, really. Sister Adria was the principal. There was no division staff, for the simple reason that there was no division. I guess parents could have appealed to the pastor, but we…
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Junior ROTC – Important to Students, High Schools, Society and the National Defense
by James C. Sherlock Richmond Senior High School (RSHS) is a 1,200-student grades-10-to-12 school in the Sandhills Region of North Carolina. Its mission, vision and belief statements genuflect at none of the shrines of progressive dogma. Not a single one. Minority enrollment is 57% of the student body (majority Black), which is higher than the…
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Can Threat Assessment Teams Function in Schools Practicing PBIS?
by James C. Sherlock Last I read, Attorney General Miyares’ Loudoun County special grand jury is still empaneled. There is another matter worthy of investigation in the cases of the rapes of two school girls in Loudoun County high schools. That is the matter of the threat assessment teams (TATS) in each school. The special…
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Indictments For Loudoun County School Officials
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares just turned up the heat on Loudoun County. When he was elected, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order calling for an investigation into what happened in Loudoun County Public Schools, where an alleged predator in a skirt reportedly got a pass for raping one…
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The JLARC Report and Virginia’s Unexecutable School Discipline System
by James C. Sherlock The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) report Pandemic Impact on Public K–12 Education 2022 collected and made available a lot of valuable information. One issue escaped their analysis and recommendations — school discipline. The authors reported student conduct as the number one concern of school teachers, and then failed to address it…
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What Do We Do When Teachers Quit En Masse?
by James C. Sherlock What makes teachers want to teach? The satisfaction that comes from helping children and adolescents learn and grow into productive, mature adults. It is amazingly powerful. What is required for them to choose to teach? Enough money to live comfortably and a safe, supportive working environment. So that is three: teaching…
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Why Not Virtual Instruction for Routinely Disruptive or Potentially Dangerous Students?
by James C. Sherlock So, let’s examine a theoretical. A kid gets thrown out of a high school for a suspected rape. The (ex-) superintendent places him in another high school awaiting trial. He rapes again. What’s wrong with this picture? OK, lots of things. But let’s examine just one solution that can have wider…
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Student Mental Health Crisis Explained – By The Washington Post
by James C. Sherlock The Washington Post, in a lengthy article, “The crisis of student mental health is much vaster than we realize,” wrote about the mental health crisis facing our school children, especially adolescents. Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety — already at crisis levels before the pandemic — have surged amid the isolation, disruption…
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Student Misbehavior Is Schools’ Biggest Challenge, JLARC Says
by James A. Bacon In what will come as no surprise to Bacon’s Rebellion readers (other than the reality-denying ankle biters frequenting our comments section), Virginia public school staff cite poor student behavior as their most serious challenge, found a study of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC). More than 56% of respondents…
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No Grades, No Discipline, No Structure, No Learning
by James A. Bacon Albemarle High School opened the 2021-22 school year in a state of chaos after a year of COVID closings, and it never recovered, according to The Crozet Gazette. To ease students back into the rigors of a regular school day, the school stopped imposing penalties on students for skipping or being…