Category: Poverty & income gap
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What Can We Learn from Virginia’s Educational Outliers?
by James A. Bacon One last set of graphics shedding light on the SOLs… Occasional contributor John Butcher graphed the correlation between 9th-grade reading pass rates and the percentage of economically disadvantaged (ED) children in Virginia’s school divisions. The big-picture conclusion: The percentage of economically disadvantaged children is the dominant variable accounting for a division’s SOL performance,…
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When the Gender Gap Meets the Racial Gap
by James A. Bacon When remarking upon disparities in educational outcomes, most pundits focus on the racial/ethnic gap between Asians and whites on the one hand and blacks and Hispanics on the other. That’s no surprise, given the distressing size of the gap and the dismal implications of that gap for the prospects for forging a…
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Plumbing the SOL Racial Gap
by James A. Bacon Jim Weigand, also known on this blog as Hill City Jim, responded to my call yesterday for a crowd-sourcing of the Standards of Learning data to better understand the key drivers of educational performance. Why do some school systems show SOL pass rates that are so much higher than others? Clearly, the…
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Identifying the Education X Factor
by James A. Bacon The 2014 Standards of Learning (SOL) scores are in, and it appears that Virginia’s school divisions made decent improvements in mathematics over the past year while losing ground marginally in reading, writing, science and history. Bottom line: Virginia students tread water another year. Here are the percentage pass rates across all grades and schools…
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What Price Happiness?
by James A. Bacon After learning that Virginia cities report some of the highest levels of personal satisfaction in the country (see “Happy“), I have been thinking a lot about what creates happy communities. In the hope of gaining a better understanding, I recently finished reading Dan Buettner’s 2010 book, “Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue…
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The View from Federal Court’s Media Room
By Peter Galuszka The media corps is just starting to amble into small room granted by the U.S. District Court, albeit with tight rules. No cell phone calls outside the cramped quarters in the hallways. No slouching in the corridor with your laptop on the floor hoping your cellphone hot spot still works. If you…
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Maureen McDonnell and Sexism
By Peter Galuszka Sitting for hours listening to former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell testify in his federal corruption trial makes one wonder exactly what his values are, especially as they relate to women. His entire legal strategy is to “Throw Maureen Under the Bus” – namely his lawyers and those of his co-defendant wife Maureen…
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“The State Cut our Funding” — the Excuse that Never Stops Giving
Students attending Virginia’s four-year colleges and universities will pay an additional 5.2% in tuition and fees compared to last year, according to the latest State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) data. Tuition leaped 6.8% but that was partially offset by a modest 2.3% increase in mandatory fees, covering such things as student health, transportation,…
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Map of the Day: Best and Worst States for Underprivileged Children
WalletHub has struck again, compiling a basket of indicators measuring the well being of poor children, including such factors as the percentage in foster care, the percentage in single-parent families, the percentage in below-poverty households, the percentage that are malnourished, the percentage experiencing food insecurity and the percentage that are homeless. By these measures, Virginia ranked 10th…
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Poor Blacks Must Abandon Negative Learned Behaviors
The discussion about poverty in America is dominated by politicians, academics, journalists and members of the professional caring class, most of whom have their own biases and agendas. We hear very little from poor people themselves. The Richmond Sheriff’s Department has launched a new program, Recovering from Everyday Addictive Lifestyles, to help inmates convicted of…
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One Very Sad Day In Court
By Peter Galuszka One literally could have heard a pin drop in U.S. District Court in Richmond today. William Burck, lawyer for Maureen McDonnell, said in his opening argument in a trial that Virginia’s Former First Lady who has been indicted no 14 corruption charges along with her former governor husband was “collateral damage” in…
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RAM, Coal and Massive Hypocrisy
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in Business and Economy, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Health Care, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, TaxesBy Peter Galuszka Sure it’s a photo op but more power to him. Gov. Terry McAuliffe is freshly arrived from the cocktail and canape circuit in Europe on a trade mission and is quickly heading out to the rugged and impoverished coal country of Wise County. There, he, Attorney General Mark Herring and Health and…
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In Praise of an Unsung Hero
by James A. Bacon Nearly 40 years ago I moved from the big city to a place had I barely heard of, Martinsville, Va., to embark upon my journalism career as a cub reporter for the Martinsville Bulletin. Compared to Washington, D.C., where I had spent most of my time growing up, it seemed a…
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Two UMW Daughters of the ’60s
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Just a few days ago, Elena Siddall, a Mathews County Republican activist and Tea Party Patriot, posted her account on the Rebellion of being a social worker in New York in the 1960s and the wrong-headedness of Saul Alinsky, a leftist organizer who had had a lot of influence back in the…
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Child Services in the Shadow of Cloward and Piven
by Elena Siddall In 1963 I graduated from Mary Washington College of the University of Virginia, with a BA degree in Pre-Foreign Service and headed for New York City. The degree did not get me a job as translator at the United Nations, so I answered an ad for Social Investigator in the Department of…