Tag: James Sherlock
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Another Race Institute at UVa
by James C. Sherlock Fund it and they will come. The Daily Progress reports that thanks to a $4.9 million gift from an anonymous philanthropist, a new “Institute” has been launched at UVa’s School of Law. The new organization, the Education Rights Institute, plans to “find ways to improve K-12 education and help educators address…
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Virginians Sail Towards Gaza
by James C. Sherlock The U.S. Navy has sailed towards the sounds of battle for more than 200 years. This time it is responding to the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, already in the Mediterranean Sea as part of…
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Teach for America in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock One commenter on my last article was highly critical of Teach for America (TFA). I cannot let that go without refutation. Look at the map of TFA places to work. You will see that in Virginia only the inner suburbs of the D.C. area have access to those highly motivated young…
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Petersburg School Board Folds on Union Bargaining
by James C. Sherlock The Petersburg Education Association has a plan for collective bargaining. So, once, did the school board. Unanimously. We have been looking for signs of strength in the Petersburg School Board so we can believe it will take strong and innovative measures to improve the city’s dreadful schools. It is the wrong…
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Petersburg Public Schools Cheat Children of Their Futures
by James C. Sherlock We like to think of ourselves as civilized people. Virginia and America are at an advanced stage of social and cultural development. Aren’t we? For the children of Petersburg, we are not. We continue to let them quite publicly and measurably be cheated of their futures by their public schools. Queue…
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New Bad SOL Data Bring A New Youngkin Administration Plan for Mitigating Learning Losses in Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The Governor announced today that he and the General Assembly came together on a bipartisan basis to invest $418 million to tackle student learning loss. The Virginia Department of Education recommends school divisions allocate the $418 million “to proven programs that will achieve the greatest student impact—approximately 70% for high-dose tutoring,…
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The Virginia State Budget and the Rising Costs of Registered Nurses
by James C. Sherlock I was asked yesterday by a reader about the relationship between nursing homes, rising registered nurse salaries and the new Virginia budget agreement. Good questions. Virginia’s workforce includes nearly 70,000 registered nurses. The state pays its workers, but it also pays its Medicaid share for private sector nurses. Pay for private…
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The Decidedly Unintuitive Student Debt of Undergrads upon Graduation from Virginia’s Public 4-Year Colleges and Universities
by James C. Sherlock I had never until now looked at college costs from the perspective of the new graduate, as opposed to his or her parents. But it is fair to say that many look closely at their debt and their incomes after graduation and are taken aback, whether or not they borrow yet…
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Changes in Student Populations and Choices of Majors in 4-Year Colleges and Universities 2010-2023 Challenge Virginia Schools
by James C. Sherlock Tastes change, and with them trends. Between fall 2010 and fall 2021, total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in America decreased by 15% percent (from 18.1 million to 15.4 million students). In Virginia’s 4-year public colleges and universities, the drop was 8% in that same period, right at the national…
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Huge Swings in Student Populations Among Virginia’s 4-year Public Colleges and Universities Have Consequences
by James C. Sherlock I have previously in this series on Virginia’s public institutions of higher learning (IHE’s) used the term “cannibalization” to describe some getting bigger and some getting smaller, a few much smaller, in terms of student populations. I will here provide the numbers to back that up. While the total undergraduates dropped…
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Virginia State Colleges and Universities Slouching Towards a Cliff
by James C. Sherlock The economist Herb Stein once said that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. The University of West Virginia has just stopped to take stock. Facing a $45 million shortfall, it had to cut programs. Instead of taking the unthinking way out — assigning a cut target to each…
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Who Knew?
by James C. Sherlock I just came across a fact that surprised me considering how much I have studied Virginia hospitals. Henrico Doctors’ Hospital with 767 beds and CJW Medical Center with 758 beds, both in Richmond, rank numbers five and six in size in the entire 180-hospital empire of HCA, the largest private hospital system…
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Impressions from a Weekend in Charlottesville
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes, things just force their way into your consciousness. My wife and I were in Charlottesville this weekend. We were not there to visit the University, but its continuing construction overwhelms both the senses and attempts to get from A to B. Most of the growth is vertical — very vertical —…
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Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need Program – A New Sheriff in Town
by James C. Sherlock Everywhere counterproductive to competition, innovation and cost, Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) program also has proven antithetical to quality and safety in nursing homes. A thorough 2022 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on improving nursing home quality had this to say about state Certificate of…
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New Virginia Nursing Home Law Appears to Violate Federal Statute
by James C. Sherlock In addition to the General Assembly embarrassing themselves in the way they passed a law on nursing homes in this year’s session, they did it in an unseemly rush. There was no pre-filing, a near-immediate and disgraceful floor “debate” led by the nursing industry’s lobbyist, and a rushed vote in the…