Category: Education (K-12)
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Virginia Dems Refuse To Support Female Athletes
by Kerry Dougherty I’m old. Old enough to remember when there were sane members of Virginia’s Democrat Party. They’ve apparently died or left the building and the party is under the complete control of woke loons. Like Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the former Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, who recently pretended not to understand why…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 1 – PBIS
by James C. Sherlock Updated Feb 1 at 8:13:25 with a correction to IES assessment of PBIS. Newport News Schools first implemented Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports (VTSS) and its discipline component, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), in the 2017-18 school year. That year Newport News Schools was in Cohort 3 of VDOE’s VTSS…
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Psst! Where Is The Library?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore I have been wondering about the possible effectiveness of Del. Tim Anderson’s bill trying to give parents control over their kids’ access to material in the school library that contain graphic sexual material (HB 1379). Therefore, this weekend I asked my 16-year-old grandson, who is attending public school for the first him…
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Virginia’s Educational Objectives?
by Matthew Hurt If one were to ask Virginians whether we wish to have the best educational system in the country, the answer would be a resounding “Yes!” However, if “What does that look like?” were to be the follow-up question, we would get quite a wide variety of answers. It appears that we have…
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Three Warnings? You’re Out of a Job.
by Kerry Dougherty Unbelievable. If what Abby Zwerner’s lawyer said yesterday in her press conference is true, it wasn’t enough to sack only the superintendent of Newport News Public Schools over the near-fatal shooting of a first-grade teacher by an armed 6-year-old. A host of other indifferent school administrators need to join him in the…
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Graduates. And Not.
by John Butcher The U.S. Department of Education requires every state to annually report high school graduation rates. Those data, along with students’ performances on state assessments in subjects such as mathematics, English, and science, along with other measures, are also used to determine annual accreditation ratings. The VDOE’s website includes the Superintendent’s Annual Report…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Part 2 – Stop Trying to Provide Mental Health Services in School
by James C. Sherlock In Part 1 of this series I described the current Virginia Community School Framework (the Framework) and found it not only lacking, but counter-productive. Its basic flaw is that it assumes all services to school children will be provided in the schools by school employees, including mental health services. When you…
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Newport News School Chief About To Be Sacked
by Kerry Dougherty As I wrote this I debated whether or not to put a question mark at the end of my headline. Newport News School Chief About To Be Sacked? I decided against it. News reports seem certain that the Newport News School Board will vote tonight to fire School Superintendent George Parker for…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework
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in Attendance, Charity, Philanthropy, Nonprofits, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Mental illness and substance abuse, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Social Services and Entitlements, Threat Assessmentby James C. Sherlock I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right. Community schools. One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed. The approach successful elsewhere…
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Democrats at a Town Hall: Earning a Merit Award ‘Doesn’t Matter That Much’
by Steve Spiker The investigation into Northern Virginia schools withholding notification that some students earned Merit Recognition, based on scoring in the top 3% of the country, started with just one school, the prestigious Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology. Since this issue was first uncovered a few weeks ago, there has been a…
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Chilling Revelations In The Saga Of The 6-Year-Old Teacher Shooter
by Kerry Dougherty Excuse my language, but what the hell is going on at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News? On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that school administrators there have downplayed threats of violence, apparently ignoring pleas for help from frightened teachers. One account claims that the same boy who shot and nearly killed…
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Lab School Process Underway; Youngkin Oblivious to Overfunding
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Governor Youngkin’s Lab School initiative is off to a fairly good start, although it is probably not progressing as quickly as he thought or hoped it would. According to the Department of Education (DOE), the department has received two applications for the establishment of a lab school— from James Madison University and…
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School Choice for Poor Still Hard Sell to Democrats
By Chris Braunlich On being told that peasants were starving for lack of bread, Marie Antoinette is reputed to have said “Let them eat cake.” Marie Antoinette had nothing on Delegate Suhas Subramanyam. At a House subcommittee meeting on Wednesday, Delegate Subramanyam was confronted with more than a dozen low-income families and Black community leaders…
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Free at Last
by Jim McCarthy Compulsory K-12 education under state law is a fact often taken for granted since its enactment in 1908 in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1984, the state authorized homeschooling initiated by an earlier Supreme Court decision in 1972 (Wisconsin v Yoder), providing for a religious exemption from compulsory attendance in public schools.…