Category: Attendance
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Stop Coddling Bad Kids
by Kerry Dougherty I have a new hero. I don’t know her real name but in her Southeast Washington D.C. neighborhood, they just call her “Grandma.” Last Friday Grandma was on her way to chemo when a 15-year-old punk walked up and ordered her to hand over her car keys. “I have a gun,” he…
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – The Epidemic of Risky Behaviors and Experiences in Adolescents
by James C. Sherlock The 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011–2021 , was released by the CDC on Monday, provides the most recent surveillance data, as well as 10-year trends, on health behaviors and experiences related to adolescent health and well-being among high school students in the United States. The survey was completed…
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Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Part 1 – Progressives, School Closures and Child Mental Health
By James C. Sherlock We have arrived today at a situation in which huge percentages of Virginia children and adolescents exhibit mental health problems. Both sides of the political divide acknowledge the problem. It’s existence is not up for debate. Both blame the soaring pediatric mental health issues, a problem before COVID, on COVID school…
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School Discipline – Part 5 – How and When Democrats Broke Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock We read earlier today that the eminent developmental theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner has written: The more we study human development, the more it becomes clear the family is the most powerful, most humane and, by far, the most economical way of making human beings human. That truth, however, does not account for…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 4 – The False Legend of PBIS Effectiveness
by James C. Sherlock To discover the origins of the legend that Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is effective, we have to dig into the interlocking government and ed school interest groups that fund and publish “studies” that validate their views. The goal of the ed schools is always to capture the attention, funding…
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Educational Expectations
by Matt Hurt Since the Region VII superintendents initiated the Comprehensive Instructional Program in 2014, we have annually identified our top five most successful teachers of our most at-risk students in each SOL-tested course. In their classes, at least 50 percent of students were economically disadvantaged, and they also had a significant number of students…
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School Discipline in Virginia – Part 3 — A Sharp Policy Turn to the Left after 2009
by James C. Sherlock Here is the information from a slide briefing to the Loudon County school board on February 6, 2013. “Experimentally.” The slide itself was actually produced in 2008 by pbis.org. It seems like a bad joke now, but that was how it was presented. Not a word about race there, but there surely…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework
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in Attendance, Charity, Philanthropy, Nonprofits, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Mental illness and substance abuse, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Social Services and Entitlements, Threat Assessmentby James C. Sherlock I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right. Community schools. One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed. The approach successful elsewhere…
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Chilling Revelations In The Saga Of The 6-Year-Old Teacher Shooter
by Kerry Dougherty Excuse my language, but what the hell is going on at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News? On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that school administrators there have downplayed threats of violence, apparently ignoring pleas for help from frightened teachers. One account claims that the same boy who shot and nearly killed…
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The Shooting at Richneck Elementary – Part 2 – the School
By James C. Sherlock The shooting at Richneck Elementary was a tragedy by every measure. I am not going to discuss the shooting itself here. I will instead offer a summary of the school’s state quality data so we can get a sense of the environment in that school. It is located across I-64 from…
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R.I.P. Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock I have crafted and will share what I believe to be an epitaph for public education in Virginia. All of the evidence we see is that Virginia’s public school system, counseled and cheered on by its disgraceful publicly funded schools of education, is crumbling at its foundations. We start children in…
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What Do We Do When Teachers Quit En Masse?
by James C. Sherlock What makes teachers want to teach? The satisfaction that comes from helping children and adolescents learn and grow into productive, mature adults. It is amazingly powerful. What is required for them to choose to teach? Enough money to live comfortably and a safe, supportive working environment. So that is three: teaching…
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Why Not Virtual Instruction for Routinely Disruptive or Potentially Dangerous Students?
by James C. Sherlock So, let’s examine a theoretical. A kid gets thrown out of a high school for a suspected rape. The (ex-) superintendent places him in another high school awaiting trial. He rapes again. What’s wrong with this picture? OK, lots of things. But let’s examine just one solution that can have wider…
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Student Mental Health Crisis Explained – By The Washington Post
by James C. Sherlock The Washington Post, in a lengthy article, “The crisis of student mental health is much vaster than we realize,” wrote about the mental health crisis facing our school children, especially adolescents. Nationally, adolescent depression and anxiety — already at crisis levels before the pandemic — have surged amid the isolation, disruption…
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Virginia’s Northam Learning Gap
by L. Scott Ligamfelter It should surprise no one. After the ill-conceived March 2020 closing of Virginia’s public schools by former Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam, it should have been evident that children would suffer academically. We now know the extent of that damage to fourth and eighth grade students. Virginia’s Secretary of Education, Aimee Rogstad Guidera,…