Category: Education (K-12)
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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…
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Now the Hard Part Begins
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Overlooked in all the news around the election was some sobering budget news for the next governor. As reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Virginia Dept. of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) has forecast that Virginia’s Medicaid costs will increase by $3.2 billion over the next three years. That increase consists of an additional…
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Mississippi and Louisiana Schools’ Decade-Long Surge Past Virginia
by Todd Truitt Much attention has been paid lately to what’s being called the “Southern Surge” in K-12 education on the National Assessment of Education Progress (aka, the nation’s report card or NAEP). Misinformed statements made during the recent New Jersey gubernatorial debate about Mississippi and Louisiana’s educational results have shed new light on the…
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The Constitutional Amendment Democrats Should Be Pushing
by Paul Goldman House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, has done independent minded challengers to the political status quo like me a real “solid.” Inadvertently, of course, since I have been one of his leading critics. I admire Don’s political skills. His daring takedown of the previous Democratic Speaker is textbook Machiavelli. The man is a stone gamer.…
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UVA’s Weldon Cooper Backpedals on Economic Gloom Yet Again
By Steve Haner, In April, economic prognosticators at the University of Virginia published a prediction that Virginia would lose 32,000 jobs during 2025. The Al Gore-like jeremiad was promptly adopted by Virginia Democrats who used it in speeches and advertising to claim Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin and his chosen successor, Winsome Earle-Sears, were mismanaging the economy.…
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Loudoun County Public Schools Are Abusing Students’ Free-Speech Rights
by Stephanie Lundquist-AroraRepublished with permission from IWFeatures Last week, a federal judge ruled that Loudoun County Public Schools’ (LCPS) leadership must delay the suspensions of male students who asserted their discomfort about a female student being in the boys’ locker room at Stone Bridge High School. America First Legal’s Ian Prior, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, told IW…
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Ditch the School, Take the Vacay
by Kerry Dougherty I read this post on X the other day. It was posted by a school principal. I wanted to argue. Instead, I reminisced about one of the happiest days of my life. Here it is: One morning, in the spring of my junior year, my dad offered to drive me to school.…
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Parental Involvement an Afterthought in Fairfax County Public School Prayer Rooms
by Stephanie Lundquist-AroraRepublished with permission from IWFeatures On September 8, during the Religious Liberty Commission’s hearing at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump announced upcoming guidance from the Department of Education regarding prayer in public schools. He said, “I am pleased to announce this morning that the Department of Education will…
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Talking SOL Testing Reform with Senator VanValkenburg
by Todd Truitt I met with Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, this summer over tacos at a restaurant in his district to discuss what’s next with Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) exam reform. VanValkenburg is the Chair of the Senate Public Education Subcommittee and a high school Social Studies teacher in Henrico County. Whoever wins the…
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Teacher Pay and Student Performance
In a newly published study, Open the Books calculated the relationship between the increase in a state’s average teacher pay between 2019-2023 and the increase (or decrease) in NAEP (National Assessment for Educational Progress) test performance between 2019 and 2024. It found a mild negative correlation: “Higher overhead costs are associated with lower test scores.”…