Category: Education (K-12)
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State Money for Private Schools
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The state of Virginia spends more than $100 million annually for Virginia students to attend private colleges and universities in the state. The program is the Tuition Assistance Grant program, commonly known as TAG, authorized in Sec. 23.1-628 through 23.1-635 of the Code of Virginia. There is no need or merit requirement.…
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Poll: School Accountability System Supported
By Derrick A. Max While Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly appear unanimous in their opposition to the Governorโs new School Performance and Support Framework, there is near unanimous support among registered voters for enhanced educational standards that measure both growth and accountability by student subgroups according to a new poll. In a survey conducted…
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The Real Reason Dem Legislators Hate New Accountability System
by James A. Bacon Democratic legislators in the General Assembly want to delay implementation of the state’s school accountability system that is scheduled to go into place next school year. Critics have called the rollout of the new system “rushed.” The new standards would identify failing schools in “need of intensive support.” Although the Youngkin…
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Oops! VEA Owns Itself
by Todd Truitt In its lobbying efforts to try to kill the new school accountability system, the Virginia Education Association (the state-level โteachers unionโ organization, or VEA) has produced a report that strongly supports the new system. In what would be described as an โown goalโ by soccer parents, the key findings from the VEAโs…
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At Least They’re Culturally Competent!
by James A. Bacon A couple of days ago I skewered New Jersey for enacting a law, effective Jan. 1, that removes a requirement for teachers to pass a reading, writing and mathematics test for licensure. Noting that Virginia teachers seeking initial licensure must pass the Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment (VCLA), I expressed the…
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Another Reason to Avoid the Virginia Lottery
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the top selling points made for approval of the establishment of the Virginia Lottery was that lottery profits would be dedicated to public education in Virginia. That is still the message that the Virginia Lottery peddles. Scroll to the bottom of its website home page, past all the current offerings,…
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Waiting for NAEP
by Charles B. Pyle On December 18, the governing board of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NEAP) -โ the battery of fourth- and eighth-grade exams in reading and math known as the Nationโs Report Card -โ announced that the results of the 2024 tests will be released January 29, 2025. State-by-state NAEP results are…
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Virginia Democrat Wants SOLs Offered in Foreign Languages
by Kerry Dougherty Hey Virginians, remember that $1.2 billion surplus in the state budget that Gov. Glenn Youngkin has been trying to return to taxpayers? Unsurprisingly, Democrats in Richmond are finding ways to spend it. All of it. Take State Sen. Barbara Favola, for instance. Please. Sheโs introduced SB753, a measure guaranteed to cost a…
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In Defense of Mark Warner
by Paul Goldman I find the attacks against Senator Mark Warner on this site most hypocritically amusing. It seems you are all afraid to appropriately criticize President-elect Trump, Elon Musk, and the GOP House majority. Despite you all claiming to be such great defenders of fiscal responsibility. Let’s review some facts.ย (1) Under his watch,ย President…
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Cut Scores and Lies of Omission
by Todd Truitt Virginia is in the process of raising the minimum cut scores for passing English and math Standards of Learning (SOL) exams — scores that the U.S. Department of Education (USED) declared in 2021 were the lowest in the nation. A USED official publicly testified in 2022 that Virginia’s cut scores were not…
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A Voucher by Any Other Name
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Governor Youngkin has included in his proposed budget $50 million to provide $5,000 “Opportunity Grants” to 10,000 students from low-income families to apply against the cost of attending private schools. While this limited voucher program avoids the primary objection of being a subsidy to rich families who send their kids to private…
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Weapons Scanners, It Appears, Are Not Enough to Stop School Stabbings
๏ปฟ by James A. Bacon Last week a Henrico High School student was hospitalized after being stabbed at school. Needless to say, many students are upset. โSeeing the aftermath of it all โฆ the poorly cleaned up crime scene and still seeing the dried-up blood on the pavement and on the door โฆ as I…
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Will Helicopter Dollars Improve Virginia Schools?
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin is dumping money into Virginia’s public education system like a liberal Democrat. He’s not putting the funds to work in the quite same way — there’s more for accountability measures and Lab School Partnerships — but it’s hard to see a big difference. I don’t know if he’s…
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Still Crucial to Shine Light on Educational Disparity
By Chris Braunlich, More than 70 years ago, black and white students in Virginia received separate and very unequal educations. In They Closed Their Schools, author Bob Smith writes that in Farmville, a city not unlike the rest of Virginia, the white public school built after a 1939 fire โhad a gymnasium, cafeteria, locker rooms,…