Category: Education (K-12)
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The Fruit of School Disciplinary “Reform”?
by James A. Bacon If your son came home saying that a bully had hit and strangled him on the school bus that morning, and if you saw images circulating on social media confirming what he told you, how would you have reacted? Like Taylor Brock, mom of a 7th grader at Walt Whitman Middle…
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You Want to Teach? Wait in Line.
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Last September, Governor Youngkin issued an executive directive addressing teacher shortages in Virginia. That directive laid out numerous actions to be taken by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and other agency heads with regard to reducing the teacher shortage. In his remarks upon releasing the directive, he called the actions “transformational.” It…
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Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” and the Suppression of Debate
by James C. Sherlock There have been countless articles here on the tyranny of the left on Virginia college campuses. And nationwide. I need not summarize them here. But I think it useful on a weekend to consider the origins of that movement to better understand it. It did not spring up randomly, and it…
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Dionysian Rites at a Spotsylvania County School Board Meeting
by James C. Sherlock The FY 2023 budget for Spotsylvania County was $341,355,792. In increasing the 2022 budget, the Supervisors transferred an additional $5.8 million to schools to “Address the Commitment to Educational Opportunities.” That brought the total transfer to schools to $138,081,416 including that $5.8 million (4.4%) increase. It was pointed out offhandedly in…
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More Discouraging News for Virginia Student Test Scores
by James A. Bacon As recently as 2015, the percentage of Virginia high school graduates qualifying for college credit on at least one Advanced Placement test ranked third in the nation. In the 2021-2022 school year, according to data released by the College Board, Virginia’s percentage had fallen to 11th in the country, slipping two…
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Virginia Beach School Board Celebrates Excellence Again
by Kerry Dougherty Congratulations, Virginia Beach voters. You did it! By electing a handful of common-sense school board members to join the duo who were already on the board, you began the process of bringing back excellence to students in the Resort City. Board veterans Vicky Manning and Carolyn Weens needed more allies in their…
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Woke Liberalism Is a Dead End for African Americans
by James A. Bacon Earlier this month the Isle of Wight School Board passed a resolution declaring, “There is no systemic racism or bigotry perpetuated by the United States or any governmental entity.” Timothy Sullivan, a former president of William & Mary, James W. Dyke, a former state Secretary of Education, and Alvin J. Schexnider,…
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Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes
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in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Corruption and Scandals, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Land use & Development, Mental illness and substance abuse, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversightby James C. Sherlock Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion. Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact. I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year,…
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An Open Letter to Sen. Louise Lucas About Funding New Richmond Schools
Editor’s note: Paul Goldman, a Richmond attorney and former chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia, asked us to publish the letter below, which he sent last week to state Sen. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, a fellow Democrat who serves as president pro tempore of the Virginia Senate. As of today, Sen. Lucas has not…
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Flee Any Public School Resisting Parents’ Rights
by Kerry Dougherty Four years ago no one was talking about parental rights. Now everyone is. It all began with the covid lockdowns. Once schools were closed parents got a look at what was and wasn’t being taught in public schools. And the scales fell from their eyes. Parents began to see school administrators and…
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Did Southern Poverty Law Center and James Madison Museum Team Up to Put ‘Anti-racist’ Curriculum in Virginia Schools?
by Brenda Hafera The Albemarle County school district in Virginia has been subjected to two lawsuits related to its implementation of an “anti-racist” curriculum, which one parent said was “incubating a culture rooted in grievance, discord, and victimhood.” But parents in the school district near Charlottesville may be alarmed to discover that it is not…
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The Governor’s Tutoring and Special Ed Services Initiative
by James C. Sherlock VDOE has provided me a concise and clear description of the Governor’s initiative to provide tutoring and special education services to struggling Virginia school kids. The program seems both on point and appropriately careful. The input describes the sources of the money, where it was originally targeted, where some of it…
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Correction on Departure of Balow
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In comments to the post about the resignation of Jillian Balow as Superintendent of Public Instruction and her severance pay, I asserted that her appointment was subject to the pleasure of the Governor. I was wrong. The heads of almost all agencies, by law, serve at the pleasure of the Governor. (There…
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You’re Fired!
by Dick Hall-Sizemore So, what almost everyone suspected is now confirmed: Governor Youngkin fired his Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jillian Balow. However, to avoid embarrassment over having to fire his own hand-picked state leader of public education, the governor asked her to resign, instead. She agreed to do so in exchange for a payout of…
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Virginia Republicans Should Run in the Fall on the Virginia Senate Silencing of Suparna Dutta
by James C. Sherlock Virginia Republicans, not noted for organization, common approaches or dexterity, have been granted a gift by Democrats if they will accept it. The Democratic majority in the General Assembly rejected the appointment of Suparna Dutta, a mother, engineer and an immigrant from India, to the Board of Education. This happened because Senate…