Tag: James Sherlock
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Journalistic Competence and Integrity, Explained – Part 2
by James C. Sherlock We are back to the story posted on the front page above the fold by the Virginian-Pilot on Sunday, July 11. This is Part 2 of my critique. Last time we discussed a lot of false flags in that story. In this one I will take up the story’s references to…
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Journalistic Competence and Integrity, Explained – Part 1
by James C. Sherlock A couple of reporters, Sara Gregory and Matt Jones, wrote the lead front page article in The Virginian-Pilot print edition today. It was headlined “Critical Race Theory, Explained” and was presented as news, not opinion. The line between the two is more blurred every day. I wish it were not,…
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Where Is a Parents’ Bill of Rights for Virginia?
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes, the simplest and certainly one of the best ways for a public official to serve the public is to inform them about things they care about. The Attorney General of Indiana, perhaps the best governed state in America, has just published a roadmap for parents and caregivers to “exercise their…
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President’s Executive Order Could Bolster Healthcare Competition in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday President Joe Biden issued an executive order (EO) on competition that has the potential to significantly affect Virginians, especially our monopolized regional healthcare markets. While an EO does not have the force of law, the president as chief executive can set priorities. The executive departments will honor the EO where…
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School Finance in Virginia – the Issue of State Contributions
by James C. Sherlock We have been discussing public school policy often, and it merits the attention. So to provide background, I prepared a spreadsheet to help us all understand school finance in Virginia. I used the school year 2019-20. It is both important and interesting and certainly raises questions, primarily about state contributions. The…
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Loudoun County School Board Needs to Clean up its Own Equity Mess
by James C. Sherlock The Loudoun County School Board gets to lecture absolutely no one about equity. The richest county in America has shoehorned most of the high schoolers among its record low percentage of poor children into one of its 15 high schools, Park View High. That in itself is not an indictment. They go…
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Are Poor Rural White Wise County Evangelicals More Antiracist than the Wealthy, Urbane Citizens of Loudoun?
by James C. Sherlock Many are fascinated with the nationally infamous Loudoun County School Board. Board members seem preoccupied with driving social change without pausing to look at data. I have thought someone ought to check how the Loudoun students have been faring in SOLs to see if there are academic issues…
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Loudoun County School Board Ignorant or Dismissive About the Performance of Its School District
by James C. Sherlock I have, with much of America, been watching the woke cabal that forms the majority of the Loudoun County School Board. They are true believers. It is testimony to the depths of their feelings that they don’t let the needs of the kids in that school district get in the way of…
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Pre-COVID Test Results Show a Failed Public Education System
by James C. Sherlock I have questions in my own mind about the quality of Virginia public schools. In search of answers I invested several weeks full time in building into a spreadsheet what I consider some of the critical metrics among both Virginia public schools in general and ten different school districts that I…
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A Gift to VDOE From a Critic
by James C. Sherlock I write about education in Virginia. I think VDOE is going down the wrong rabbit holes in some of its programs, but I want to be able to see what the data says. There are vast troves of state and federal government education data, but I have been frustrated…
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Removal of Cops on Richmond School Board Agenda
by James C. Sherlock The City of Richmond School Board tonight has as an agenda item its strategic plan “Priority 3 – Safe and Loving School Cultures” tonight at 6 PM. Meeting Jun 07, 2021 – Richmond City School Board Meeting – 6:00 p.m. Category New Business Subject New Business. Type Procedural Goals Priority 1…
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Virginia Local Ability-to-Pay Calculation and State Contributions to Public Schools — Some Surprises
by James C. Sherlock Some things are very important that the average citizen knows little to nothing about. For example, a complex state computation, the Composite Index of Local Ability to Pay, determines how much state money per student goes to your school district to maintain an overall state ratio of 55% state and 45%…
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An Expanded View of the Extraordinary Chesapeake Schools
by James C. Sherlock Yesterday I wrote about the six school districts in South Hampton Roads. At the request of a reader, I expanded the data for Chesapeake. The data show a white minority (43%), multiracial school system that in 2018-19 (last year before COVID disruptions) exceed state SOL passing averages for every major racial…
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First Get Kids in School, Then Offer Educational Theories, Then Pilot Them, and We Might Believe You
by James C. Sherlock The wisdom of Occam’s razor has seldom been more fully realized than in modern educational theory. Friar William of Ockham in the 13th century proposed that simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they tend to be more testable. And usually more accurate It has been true a long…
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North Carolina AG takes on Hospitals That Fail to Publish Shoppable Prices
by James C. Sherlock Attorney General Josh Stein of North Carolina, fresh off killing the Sentara-Cone merger, on his very busy day yesterday had an Assistant AG send a letter to North Carolina hospitals. It demanded that hospitals comply with federal hospital pricing transparency regulations that require that hospitals make publicly available a machine-readable file containing a…