Category: Education (K-12)
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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part One – Bad things Happen
by James C. Sherlock In the relationship between Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, very bad things have happened to Charlottesville and continue to do so. I have developed a working thesis on that relationship. The city is at the mercy of the University by virtue of the latter’s wealth, influence, and power in Charlottesville…
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UVa Picks Baltimore City Schools CEO to Feature in “Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation.” Seriously.
by James C. Sherlock I try to keep up in the field of education. That led me to read “Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation” produced by the UVa Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA-PLE), a long-existing joint project of the Darden School of Business and the School of Education and Human Development. I…
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“Parental Rights” Movement Fading?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore When Glenn Youngkin was elected Governor in 2021, largely on a platform of “parental rights” in schools, a national movement seemed to have been born. In Virginia, and elsewhere, school board meetings were packed with fervent citizens shouting at the board members and at each other about banning books in school libraries…
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Bari Weiss: “You are the Last Line of Defense”
by James C. Sherlock Video courtesy of the Free Press. See that link for a full transcript. I recommend it to everyone. Bari Weiss recently delivered a speech that will be long remembered. She offered eloquence in the service of experience, sorrow and determination. And defined the internal, and existential, threat to America. I will…
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Wokeness As Social Disease: Charlottesville Schools Edition
by James A. Bacon If you have any doubt that wokeness is the primary force responsible for collapsing discipline in Virginia public schools, eroding teacher morale, deteriorating learning conditions, and the educational impairment of tens of thousands of students, consider this story from Charlottesville. After incessant student brawls this school year, 27 teachers at Charlottesville…
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UVa’s “Community Crisis Resources” for Israel/Hamas War Tensions on Campus Has Strange Players
by James C. Sherlock The University of Virginia has not lost all sense of perspective. They know exactly what they have been doing. For this they had to try to thread a needle. They missed. From the University of Virginia Division of Student Affairs: “Our Division’s focus remains on supporting and caring for our students…
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Poor Test Results No Problem If You Ignore Them
By Nancy Almasi There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns had a real and persistent impact on our children’s education. Learning loss continues to be the subject of daily news reports, with SAT and ACT test scores at an all-time low. Overall, math and reading scores on standardized tests are at…
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William and Mary and the Chinese Communist Party – Dangerous Allies – Part One
By James C. Sherlock The faculties of America’s elite universities, among which William and Mary (W&M) would eagerly self-identify, are the beating heart of the anti-American radical left in this country. It would defy nearly impossible odds to fail to expect that some, perhaps many, of the William and Mary faculty join them. But we…
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Freedom, Consistency, and Tuesday’s Election
by Shaun Kenney One of the great things about being a conservative is that we are inherently an anti-ideology. As the late William F. Buckley Jr. once put it, the great task of the modern conservative movement is to stand athwart history yelling STOP! Yet in a wider sense, it is far easier for conservatives…
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Nine ODs in One Loudoun High School and Parents Were the Last to Know
by Kerry Dougherty What is it with Loudoun County school officials? They’re strangely fond of keeping secrets. They don’t like parents. And they never seem to learn from their mistakes. In 2021 they hid incidents of sexual assaults from parents. Last month they hid a fentanyl epidemic at Park View High School from parents for…
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“Good old TikTok: Chinese spy engine and purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.” Sen. Josh Hawley
by James C. Sherlock Taylor Lorenz, the estimable young Tech and Online Culture columnist for The Washington Post, has been the author of some of the most important reports on the Hamas-Israel war. Today, she published with Drew Harwell, a Post reporter covering artificial intelligence and the algorithms changing our lives, “Israel-Gaza war sparks debate…
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To Graduate or Not
by John Butcher The 2023 4-year cohort graduation rates are up on the Virginia Department of Education Web site. VDOE likes to report its “On-Time Graduation Rate” because it inflates the numbers by counting the nonstandard diplomas. The data below are the “Federal Graduation Indicator” that counts only the Standard, Advanced, and IB diplomas. On average,…
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What is Actually Taught about the History of the Jews and the Jewish State in Virginia Schools?
by James C. Sherlock What comes first? Sadism or hatred? Does religious radicalism create sadists or do sadists flock there for approval and opportunity? Some on the radical right and the radical left in the United States share a hatred for Jews. The radical right may not be able to remember why, but pursue it…
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Tales of Student Success in 2023
by Matt Hurt Virginia Standards of Learning test results remained rather flat from 2022 to 2023 (see Table 1). This occurred despite the fact that many considered the pandemic over. There were many contributing factors, such as (but certainly not limited to) worsening teacher shortages and continued high rates of chronic absenteeism. However, among Virginia’s…