Category: Poverty & income gap
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Republicans Must Find a New Way Forward
by James A. Bacon Virginia is a blue state now. Not only do Democrats occupy all statewide elected positions — two U.S. senators, governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general — with yesterday’s election, they control both houses of the General Assembly. Republicans got their booties kicked. And the butt-stomping is not likely to subside. The…
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CIP: the Secret to SW Virginia Schools’ Success
by James A. Bacon The school districts of Southwest Virginia are among the poorest in the Commonwealth, but that hasn’t stopped them from out-performing more affluent districts across the state. Public schools in Region VII, stretching from the City of Radford to Virginia’s far-western tip in Lee County, have the lowest per-pupil funding in the…
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We Can’t Explain Virginia’s Declining Test Scores — Just Trust Us and Give Us Mo’ Money
by James A. Bacon The Richmond Times-Dispatch took a good hard look today at the alarming decline in reading scores by Virginia students in standardized tests, including both the state Standards of Learning (SOL) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). But reporter Justin Mattingly came up dry in explaining what might have caused…
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Housing Values and School Quality
by James A. Bacon In an essay posted earlier this week on the StatChat blog, Spencer Shanholtz with the Demographics Research Group at the University of Virginia explored the relationship between housing values and school quality. He documents the reality that children living in census tracts with low-value housing are more likely to attend low-performing…
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Rapid Rehousing: a Homelessness Program that Works
by James A. Bacon Not only can Virginians count on getting electric current when they flip on the light switch, the Old Dominion can boast of something else that Californians cannot: The number of homeless people in the state is declining. A lot. And we’re spending a tiny fraction of the money that Californians do…
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Virginia Reading Test Scores Plunge
by James A. Bacon Reading scores of Virginia students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, a national standardized test, plummeted this year, and math scores declined as well. The average reading scores of Virginia fourth- and eighth-grade students on the national tests fell by four and six points, respectively. The average math…
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How to Integrate Richmond Schools: More Charters
by James A. Bacon The Richmond Public Schools school board is desperate to get more diversity in its schools, meaning it wants more white kids in schools dominated by African-Americans. The board has been considering a proposal to smear the cream, so to speak: spread the limited supply of white kids, concentrated in two elementary…
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Do Financial Literacy Classes Do Any Good?
by James A. Bacon It’s not often that I speak kindly of government programs of any kind. But a few days ago, I praised a financial literacy initiative recently announced by the City of Richmond with the goal of empowering citizens, especially lower-income citizens, with the knowledge to make better consumer decisions. The program not only…
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Finally, an Anti-Poverty Program that Actually Might Reduce Poverty
by James A. Bacon Most anti-poverty programs are double-edged swords. They alleviate the symptoms of poverty — insufficient money for housing, food, health care — but do nothing to induce poor people to change their behavior and improve their condition. But this program is different: With funding from the the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund…
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Is Inclusionary Zoning the Answer to the Housing Crisis?
by James A. Bacon I have often advanced a common-sense proposition: If you want to create more affordable housing, increase the supply of housing. If the housing stock increases faster than demand, the price declines. A new study on “inclusive housing” policies in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, which includes Northern Virginia, gives some support to…
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Our Little Five Billion
by James A. Bacon University fund-raisers are like presidential elections — as soon as one campaign ends, another one starts. Here in the Old Dominion, the University of Virginia is in the midst of a $5 billion boodle-building campaign. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech is raising $1.5 billion, the College of William & Mary $1 billion, Virginia…
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Dems & Dom, RGGI Grows, Medicaid & Work
By Steve Haner What Was Lost Is Found Again. Couldn’t they wait at least another few weeks? Anybody foolish enough to believe that Dominion Energy Virginia and the Virginia Democratic Party establishment have really parted ways (as Jim Bacon seemed to think a while back), take note of this from today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch: Governor Ralph…
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Why Are So Many Rural Virginians Stuck in Place?
by James A. Bacon A recurring question on this blog and elsewhere is why don’t more Americans (and rural Virginians) move to areas of greater economic opportunity? Why do they remain stuck in communities with high unemployment and low wages? Americans have always moved to economic opportunity in the past. What’s different now? Those questions…
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UVa’s Booming R&D Program: What It Means
by James A. Bacon One can debate how well the University of Virginia is serving the interests of students, families and the general citizenry through its aggressive increases in tuition, fees, and other costs of attendance. But there is no denying that Virginia’s No. 2 research university has been successful at attracting outside research dollars.…
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Want More Affordable Housing? Build More Luxury Apartments.
by James A. Bacon Planners in the Washington metropolitan area are worried, as they well should be, that continued population growth coupled with housing shortages could turn the region into another unaffordable hellhole like San Francisco or Los Angeles where legions of homeless people are taking over the public spaces and making life miserable for…