Two pieces of interest today on the topic of education. First piece: The Education Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit group focused on school reform, has questioned the rigor of Virginia’s Standards of Quality exams, according to the Virginian-Pilot. Among eighth-graders who took the state Standards of Learning math test in 2005, 81 percent were either “proficient”…

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will introduce legislation $250 million in bonds to upgrade 89 municipal sewage treatment plants with the goal of slashing nutrients released into the Chesapeake Bay. Said Kaine in a prepared statement today: “Through this partnership with our local governments, we will be able to accomplish with this $250 million bond package…

The word “density” means different things to different people. To some, it conjures images of a dystopic, skyscraper-ridden Manhattan. To others it evokes a crowded, jostling K Street in Washington, D.C. To developer Ted Smart, it means a few blocks of three- and four-story buildings clustered around a Virginia Railway Express station in Stafford County.…

A move by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to fully fund a three-percent pay raise for public school teachers and administrators generated the headlines in today’s newspapers, but it isn’t likely to prove terribly controversial. The General Assembly had already recommended the three-percent raise but just hadn’t funded it. With an anticipated $500 million surplus anticipated…

Virginia must be running a budget surplus — lawmakers are pushing for new entitlements. The latest bid to expand the size and scope of government comes from two Republican lawmakers. Never let it be said that Democrats are the only ones who support bigger government. Senate Majority Leader Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico and House Appropriations…

House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, has pledged to commit at least 50 percent of the anticipated $475-550 million, biennial budget surplus to transportation projects. He also said that he would submit a package of proposals, crafted by a special subcommittee set up after the September transportation special session, to align transportation and land use.…

Any comprehensive approach to transportation in Virginia must include aggressive use of public-private partnerships. Not only can the private sector tap private sources of capital, making it possible to build road and rail projects the state can’t afford, but the discipline of the marketplace improves the odds that projects are built only if they are…

Bob Gibson, political reporter for Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, opines on the prospects for transportation taxes in the 2007 session of the General Assembly. Traditional wisdom, he writes, says that it’s hard to get new taxes passed in the 46 days allotted to short sessions of the legislature, especially when all seats in the House and…

Last night Tim Kaine and his wife sat in the row behind my wife and me at the Westhampton Theater in Richmond, attending a showing of “The Queen.” The Governor dressed like an ordinary bloke: He wore a tieless, button-down shirt and a leather jacket. That’s one of his more appealing traits. He may be…

Former VDOT Commissioner has left Dragas Management Corp., a Virginia Beach home-building company, on friendly terms after a year and a half there. An e-mail to friends and associates signed jointly by Shucet and company owner Helen Dragas stated: “Philip finds that his passion for large engineering and construction projects continues to burn. His fire…

The conventional wisdom holds that traffic congestion is getting worse and worse, that commuting times are getting longer, and that citizens are enduring increasingly unbearable frustration while stuck in traffic. But what if that’s not true? What if, while nobody was looking, commuting times actually got shorter? What if the reality on the ground was…

After reader Larry Gross referred to the AAA “Pockets of Pain” survey in comments on a couple of previous posts, I decided I ought to take a look. I found a summary of the survey in a press release but could not find the details of the survey itself. But even the pro-tax AAA’s spin…

Alec MacGillis with the Washington Post ran a story two days ago on the anti-growth backlash in the Washington region, highlighting recent events in Loudoun County, Prince William County and Montgomery County, Md. Most disturbing from my perspective was a vote by the Prince William board of supervisors to approve a one-year freeze on most…

Media General Inc., owner of newspapers in Richmond, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Danville, Bristol and other Virginia cities, has entered into a strategic alliance with Yahoo! and a consortium of other newspaper chains. Media General newspapers will transition their online career sections to Yahoo’s HotJobs platform, with the goal of creating one of the most comprehensive jobs…

A friend of mine, whom I will identify only by his nom de plume, Veritatus, has offered the following satire of the Wrenn cross controversy at William & Mary. I will say only this about our pseudonymous contributor: He, like me, is not particularly religious. But he, like me, is distressed by political correctness that…