Category: Discipline and Disorder
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Disabilities and Discipline
by James A. Bacon The American Institutes for Research has published a review of the Fairfax County Public Schools special-education programs for students with disabilities. Here’s the lead paragraph of The Washington Post: “Students with disabilities in Fairfax County Public Schools are more likely than their peers without disabilities to be suspended and to fail…
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Prioritize Joyful Teaching and Learning in Virginia Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes things are so right in front of you that you look past them. I have been studying public education in Virginia for more than 15 years. The policy face of the teaching and learning is — there is no other word for it — depressing, at least to the degree…
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Lessons from One of the Worst Middle Schools in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock I wrote last time about school climate surveys. Yawn. But perhaps not in this case. I am going to use the results of a 2019 climate survey of Fredericksburg’s only middle school, Walker-Grant, to make a point. The results of that survey of students and staff were absolutely brutal. Especially the…
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Virginia’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) for School Discipline – How is it Going?
by James C. Sherlock The means that Virginia has chosen to maintain classroom discipline, called Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), is controversial. That controversy exists within the federal Department of Education (DOEd). That organization’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has claimed for years that traditional methods of discipline are racist in outcomes and thus…
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Yup, Teacher Shortages Worst in High-Poverty Schools
by James A. Bacon I have long contended that the teacher shortage is most acute in Virginia’s high-poverty schools where student discipline is the worst, but I didn’t have the school-by-school data to back up the proposition. Now the Richmond Times-Dispatch has published data for Henrico County comparing vacancies in the school system’s five districts.…
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Get Weapons Out of Schools – Start with the Schools Most Threatened
by James C. Sherlock When we talk about getting weapons out of schools, most Virginians don’t have any concept of how many are found in schools every year. Or think they are all in high schools. Or likely both. When they do find out, eyes glaze over thinking of the cost and difficulty of fixing…
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Hallelujah! Cellphones Banned In Virginia Beach Schools
by Kerry Dougherty Quietly and without fanfare the Virginia Beach School Board on Tuesday night decided to ban cellphones in schools. Even powering up a phone on school property will now be against school board policy. Hallelujah! No longer will teachers have to patrol the aisles, reminding kids to put their phones away. No longer…
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Equal Time: American Federation of Teachers on Teacher Retention and Discipline in Schools
by James C. Sherlock To balance my reporting on discipline in schools and teacher retention, it is only fair to go to the best progressive source of ideas. To give them equal time. It is a close call, but the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is the most progressive and militant of America’s major teachers’…
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Partisan Explanations for Teacher Shortage Are Inadequate
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin and state senator Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, have given WLJA-TV alternative explanations for Virginia’s teacher shortage. Youngkin’s is partisan and incomplete, and Surovell’s is partisan and disconnected from reality. In an interview with the Washington television station, Youngkin blamed Democrats for holding up negotiations on the biennial budget that…
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School Discipline Issues Meet Unshakeable Progressive Dogma
by James C. Sherlock Moral panic has been defined as a: …widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. Virginia’s progressive community is in moral panic over the refusal of school discipline outcomes to bend to their prescriptions…
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Why are Teachers Quitting? In Virginia Beach, It May Not Be “Mean Parents”
by James C. Sherlock In the latest installment of “Why are Teachers Quitting,” I have come in possession of a summary copy of the 2020 responses of Virginia Beach teachers to a survey conducted by the Virginia Beach Public Schools (VBPS) administration relating to school discipline. Survey results were forwarded by Dr. Donald Robertson, Chief…
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A Teacher Safety Perspective on Teacher Shortages
by James C. Sherlock We have discussed here teachers shortages in Richmond and some of the other larger school divisions in Virginia. When the issues of teachers being physically afraid to continue teaching because of behavioral chaos in the schools is brought up, it is ignored or dismissed by the left in favor of its…
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Alexandria Schools’ Tentative Return to Sanity
by James A. Bacon Yesterday I wrote about a move by the Alexandria public school system to designate 30 minutes each day to “social-emotional learning” — a therapeutic approach involving counseling and community circles to teach students how to behave themselves in school. This initiative follows a previous decision to restore School Resource Officers (SROs)…
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Alexandria Schools to Devote 10% of Instructional Time to Social-Emotional Learning
by James A. Bacon Beginning in the new school year, Alexandria City Public Schools will designate 30 minutes every day to “social-emotional learning,” according to the school system’s website. In addition, Student Support Teams will provide more “targeted and intensive” interventions for individual students identified through the school’s Multi Tiered System of Support process. In…