Category: Education (K-12)
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Youngkin (Tries to) Take the Money and Run
The federal tax-credit scholarship program isn’t open yet, but Virginia’s already in line. by Chad Aldeman Republican Glenn Youngkin will leave office as governor of Virginia later this month. To his credit, he spent a lot of his tenure pushing for higher standards for public education. He revised the state’s accountability system to bring more…
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Schools Push the Religion of Secularism and Assume the Role of Parent
by Victoria Manning A Virginia school district has spent precious educational funding on a controversial outside mental health counseling program for students—without parental knowledge or consent. One of the largest districts in the Commonwealth recently announced a $255,000 contract with Uwill Mental Health to provide online counseling to 35,000 students in grades 6-12. Uwill’s ideology is in…
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Youngkin’s Term Made Virginia Stronger, More Prosperous
by Derrick A. Max Governor Glenn Youngkin’s final State of the Commonwealth address last night offered more than a farewell. It served as an empirical rebuttal to the claim that conservative, pro-growth governance, like those supported by the Thomas Jefferson Institute, cannot deliver tangible results. By every meaningful metric — jobs, investment, education outcomes, revenue…
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Virginia’s New K-12 School Report Cards
by Todd Truitt In December 2025, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) issued new school report cards for the 2024-25 school year under the new school accountability system. The school report cards provide an overview of schools’ performance under the new system, as well as summarize such results into 1 of 4 summative ratings: Distinguished;…
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New School Accountability System Could Use Some Tweaking
by Matt Hurt In December JLARC released a report on the School Performance and Support Framework (SPSF), Virginia’s new accountability system. The report states that the new system is better than the old Accreditation system, but improvements are needed. From the perspective of an educator who has spent the last twenty years focusing on student outcomes and…
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Extremists Doxxing TPUSA High School Club and Teacher Sponsor
by Victoria Manning First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach is the latest battleground for extremists targeting Turning Point USA clubs. A public records request reveals activists attempting to silence students whose views they oppose. Even the TPUSA teacher sponsor is getting doxxed on social media for being a Christian. Activist Danna Cullen runs a…
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School Division’s Legal Bills Continue to Swell
by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora Even Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, Virginia Senate president pro tempore, knows the last thing Fairfax County needs is more money. Earlier this month, Sen. Lucas posted on X, “I’m getting sick and tired of localities in Northern Virginia (especially Fairfax) spreading misinformation about being underfunded by the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s time to correct…
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Fairfax Forfeits Transgender Case
Fairfax County Public School leaders capitulated after a student challenged their pro-transgender policies in court, offering hope that the era of so-called “transgender rights” is coming to a close. by Stephanie Lundquist-AroraRepublished with permission from IWFeatures Last month, Fairfax County Public Schools, represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, extended a Rule 68 Offer of Judgment to a former…
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Youngkin Budget Proposes Partial State Deduction for Tips, OT
by Steve Haner Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed that Virginia conform its tax rules to most of the changes in federal taxes adopted by Congress last summer, including recognizing a state tax deduction for tip income, overtime pay and interest payments on car loans. Those tax policy recommendations are part of the Republican’s final…
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Advocacy and Activism for Teachers
The Virginia Education Association emphasizes radicalism and resistance over reading and math. by Victoria Manning The Virginia Education Association (VEA), the state arm of the National Education Association, has no interest in educating your children. Instead, they want to push “advocacy and activism for educators”—a goal they stated explicitly and repeatedly throughout their November 2025…
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Spanberger’s K-12 Education Opportunity
by Andrew Rotherham A lot of people are asking: What’s going to happen on education in Virginia? It’s a good question. And it matters beyond Virgina’s borders. The commonwealth took several big steps forward on schools over the past few years — some initiated by the legislature (science of reading and assessment reform), and some…
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Performance Issues at TJ, Revisited
Increased enrollment of economically disadvantaged students seems to have had only a minor impact on academic performance. by John Butcher Responding to discussions (here, here, here, and here) of a new admissions policy and a decline in the US News ranking of TJ (aka Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson School for Science and Technology), I posted an analysis of the end-of-year test (“SOL”)…
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Also Worth Reading…
The first university has admitted to race-based hiringby Scott Douglas Gerber in The Hill Money quote: After Students for Fair Admissions was decided, [Interim President Paul Mahoney] wrote, the university had received new guidance that “commits us to cease using race as a criterion for employment.” Of course, the university cannot “cease” using race in employment…
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Spanberger Inherits School Improvement Push
The future political prospects of Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger could rise and fall with student test scores. by Kevin Mahnken, The 74 Democrats’ romp in Virginia elections offered an almost complete redemption of their poor performance four years ago. In that race, Republican Glenn Youngkin upset national expectations to seize the governorship, with a raft of…