by James A. Bacon
Last week I observed that the 2023 Crime in Virginia report, a compilation of the previous year’s crime statistics published by the Virginia State Police, used to come out in May. It is now August, and there’s still no sign of the document. The older the data gets, the more it loses relevance as a source for understanding current crime trends.
Now the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that it is “unclear” when the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) will publish its annual update on public schools’ Standards of Learning (SOL) performance. In the past the document was released every August. According to the RTD, Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons notified school districts in June that the data would not be published until “the end of September,” although in response to the newspaper’s inquiry VDOE said the release could occur “much earlier.”
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner typically publishes its annual report in August. The CMO’s annual review of some 20,000 deaths is crucial to understanding important trends from fatal drug overdoses to maternal mortality. There are still more than two weeks to go in the month, so there’s hope that the Youngkin administration can keep to its schedule on this one.
Newspapers, bloggers, and policy wonks rely upon the timely publication of data to get a handle on what’s happening and how well — or badly — government is doing its job. It’s not enough to make the statistics transparent. The numbers have to be timely. It doesn’t help government decision-making on crime when the latest data from the 2022 Crime in Virginia report is 20 months out of date. It doesn’t help educators adjust policies before the school year begins when they can’t get access to the previous spring’s SOL scores.
To be sure, the gathering of statistics can be a laborious, drawn-out process that involves synthesizing data from 133 cities and counties across the Commonwealth. To maintain public trust, it is important for state officials to get the numbers right. But the State Police and VDOE have done this before. They know the drill. Why are both agencies running so late this year?
Crime statistics and SOL scores are politically sensitive. Is the Youngkin administration massaging the presentation of the data in support of its political narratives? I’m not accusing anyone of doing that, but in our cynical, hyper-partisan, low-trust era, such suspicions inevitably arise.
At the very least, delays mar the image of run-government-like-a-business competence that Team Youngkin likes to project. Imagine if companies owned by the Carlyle Group turned in its quarterly financial reports a month late!
Youngkin’s predecessor Ralph Northam was Virginia’s worst governor in modern times. Violent crime rates shot up. Educational achievement plummeted. His personal oversight of the COVID epidemic was a case study in confusion and ineptitude. Yet even under Northam, the state managed to roll out critical data series on time.
Team Youngkin should hold itself to higher standards.
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