Tag: James Sherlock
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General Assembly Legislation of Note: Education, Schools and Health
by James C. Sherlock As bills affecting education, educational institutions or health get filed and make their way, or not, through the General Assembly in 2021, I will occasionally make note of them here. I will certainly not list them all, but will highlight the ones of interest to me and I hope to our…
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Anyone Think They Understand Hospital Pricing?
by James C. Sherlock Having written yesterday about the newly appeals-court-certified HHS rules on hospital price transparency, I will use this opportunity to provide some real examples of the gargantuan Rubik’s cube that is hospital pricing. I will be talking about hospital prices only, not the much lower prices of non-hospital alternatives including ambulatory surgical…
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Important Changes in Healthcare Billing and Price Transparency
by James C. Sherlock A lot happened right before the New Year to change the rules for healthcare billing and pricing. Balance Billing In one of the events, new federal law buried in the end of year, 5,600-page $900 billion COVID-19 federal relief legislation bans balance billing to patients. “Surprise” billing for the balance due after an…
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The Gray Lady Backs School Testing
by James C. Sherlock I wrote in a column not long ago that it will be impossible to create plans to make up for COVID-related learning losses if we cannot benchmark those losses and their subsequent mitigation. I recommended standardized testing as the only readily available and proven way to take those measurements. For most…
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The Race Industry Can Never Declare Victory
by James C. Sherlock I read an op-ed by Scott Johnston this morning in the Wall Street Journal: “Revolution Consumes New York’s Elite Dalton School.” The subtitle was “Teachers of $54,000 Zoom classes demand a lowering of standards and hiring of a dozen diversity staffers.“ It is very much worth a read. Told of an eight-page…
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COVID Has Exposed Massive Failures in Governance
by James C. Sherlock In a comment to my previous post, we saw a statement “most parents are happy with the education their kids are getting.” That is no longer true. Polls say overwhelmingly it is not. On a personal note, my two grandsons in Albemarle County schools, twin seniors, haven’t set foot in…
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School Superintendents Are Accountable for Special Ed Compliance
by James C. Sherlock – Updated 23 Dec. with division-by-subject table of bad SOL results for students with disabilities. I just finished reading the December 14 JLARC Report. “K–12 Special Education in Virginia 2020.” The report is highly critical of public school special education in Virginia, but it misses the mark on its findings as…
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Mitigating COVID-Related Learning Losses – Conflicted Advice Gets an Airing in the Richmond Times-Dispatch
by James C. Sherlock Any attention given to learning losses is welcome, but some are more welcome than others. Data published in an op-ed by Kristen Amundson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch give preliminary evidence of the destruction of K-12 learning that has been going on since last March. “A new poll from Christopher Newport University found…
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Healthcare Spending Drives Growth in Virginia Budget over Last 10 Years
by James C. Sherlock On December 16, the Director of the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget provided a briefing for the Joint Meeting of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, the House Appropriations Committee, and the House Finance Committee. The subject was the Governor’s proposed amendments to the 2020-2022 Biennial Budget. The Governor submitted…
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Year-Round School in Virginia until COVID Learning Losses are Made Up
by James C. Sherlock – revised 20 December 2020 This essay will recommend that each school board implement what the title suggests. The concept is far from fanciful. COVID-related learning losses are extreme. Summer learning losses are also a big factor on traditional school calendars. Year-round schools are acknowledged to improve student learning, and Virginia is…
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Orwellian Aspirations, a False Alumni Association Narrative, and Adult Supervision at UVa
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes things come together that confirm one’s worst fears but improve hope for the future simultaneously. Such a turning point happened with me not long after UVa’s alumni magazine, Virginia (Winter Edition 2020), arrived at my house earlier this month. The first story in the magazine was a piece written…
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Hard Power Matters – America’s Universities Must Protect It
by James C. Sherlock This is a continuation of the discussion raised by my column on the folly of educating Chinese and Iranian visa holders in Virginia universities and colleges. Some in that discussion thought soft power would overcome what America loses in hard power. Soft power is both crucially important and utterly insufficient to…
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Why Are We Educating Citizens of Hostile Nations in Advanced Math, Science and Engineering?
by James C. Sherlock Updated Dec 16 at 1:55 PM The title poses a reasonable question. China and Iran are two of America’s greatest national security threats. Yet we continue to educate their citizens in the most security-sensitive programs of instruction at the highest levels of American higher education. Chinese and Iranian students are nearly exclusively…
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Sen. Lucas’ Record Shows No Concern for Poor Health of Her Constituents
by James C. Sherlock I mentioned Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, prominently in my essay yesterday in which I criticized the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. To illustrate the point, I have reviewed Sen. Lucas’ sponsorship of bills concerning health care that came before the Senate Education and Health Committee of which she was Chairwoman in 2020…
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Omissions and Lies in the Annual Report of the Virginia Board of Education
by James C. Sherlock This weekend I read the 168-page 2020 Annual Report on the Condition and Needs of Public Schools in Virginia (the report) published by the Virginia Board of Education appointed by Governor Northam. The report is most notable for its omissions and occasional lies. Poverty. First the good news. The Board…