Did local school-board issues in Loudoun County boost turnout for Republicans and discourage Democratic Party turnout in the 2024 presidential election? A New York Times article explores that possibility. Money quote from Austin Levine, a Republican-leaning independent who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016:
Mr. Levine said he remains disappointed by what he sees as a lack of accountability for Democratic-majority institutions, like the school system, that failed his family during the pandemic. He said his two sons learned “nothing” while Loudoun schools were largely shut down for more than a year, and the academic effects were still being felt by his younger child, now a high school junior.
Normally, we hear about the issues in presidential races affecting down-ballot contests. This year, we may have seen the reverse: local issues affecting a national race. — JAB
The estimable Dick Hall-Sizemore has commented on some results of the new accountability Framework. Through the magic of Excel, we can excavate a much larger trove of information.
Some background: the new system will take effect with the 2025 school year. There is a summary of the system here. As a warmup, VDOE has posted the Framework’s analysis of the 2024 data.
The byzantine process produces four sub-scores: Mastery, Growth, Readiness, and Graduation. These are multiplied by weighting factors and summed to produce an Overall Framework Score. The ranges of those scores look like this (here and below on the 2024 data):
In terms of the Overall scores, the top 36 schools (all that fit on my monitor) are these:
For those of us who have been around Virginia government and politics for 40 or 50 years, the line-ups for the elections for statewide offices next year are astounding. They are graphic evidence of how much the population and politics of the Commonwealth have changed in those years. Here are the potential pairings:
Governor—a Republican Black woman vs. a Democratic white woman
Lt. Governor—for the Republicans, no formal announcement yet, but an openly gay man is seriously “exploring” a possible candidacy. For the Democrats, the candidates announced so far include a Muslim female state senator born in India, a male Pakistani-American, and two Black men.
Attorney General—a Republican son of Cuban immigrants versus either a Black male or white female.
But More Clarity Needed to Improve Mayor-Council Relations
by Linwood Norman
City charters, which provide rules of governance for local government, may be revised with the best of intentions, but once those changes take effect, the cracks and crevices may begin to appear.
Such was the case for Richmond, Virginia.
In 2005, Richmond became the first city in Virginia to have a “strong mayor” form of government. Some viewed the city’s transition to this model of local government as a “political experiment in progress.” The goal was to promote greater efficiency, effectiveness and transparency in running the city. Now, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of its charter, Richmond remains the only city in Virginia with a strong mayor system.
Though Richmond’s charter was revised to establish the mayor’s role as the city’s chief executive officer and the city council as the legislative branch, the task fell short in clearly outlining all of the aspects of how the strong mayor system would operate.
Richmond’s new form of government brought fundamental changes that transferred additional power to the mayor, who served as the official elected citywide who directly reported to – and was held accountable by — the people.
In many respects, Richmond’s revised charter strengthened the mayor’s position in overseeing the operation of local government. He obtained line-item veto authority for the city’s annual budget (subject to a two-thirds override by city council), the ability to hire and fire top city officials through the chief administrative officer, and also had the authority to allocate funding to the school system within specific budget categories—such as instruction, administration, and facilities—for greater emphasis on academic performance and operational efficiency.
Phillip and Tanja Thompson aren’t ready to join the Republican Party, but their patience with Democrats is wearing thin. Once upon a time, they write, the Democratic Party stood up for working people. “Today, we’re left wondering if there’s room for the values we cherish,” they write in a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed.
It’s not that they disagree with Democrats about such issues as restoring voting rights for felons, say the African-American husband and wife, but they believe the Ds have lost interest in the issues that matter most to them — like economic opportunity, public safety and quality of life. “The party leans heavily on highly visible social issues that cater to select groups, often sidelining the bread-and-butter concerns that used to drive working families to the polls. Special interests seem to have taken center stage over expanding opportunity for all.”
Adopting a new worldview is not something that people do easily. Most people change their political loyalties by only a few degrees at a time. But a massive political realignment is occurring, and the Thompsons seem to be a part of it, even if they haven’t yet made the partisan jump from one party to the other.
Anyone who wants to understand modern politics needs to understand that realignment. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of FDR. It is a coalition led by educated elites, and its preoccupations are those of educated elites. Likewise, the Republican Party is becoming the party of working people. The transition is not complete, as both parties retain muscle memories of who they once were, but the process is far along, and it is driven by underlying changes in America’s class structure.
Comprehending the new class struggle has been a priority of mine, and I recommend several books to Bacon’s Rebellion readers who strive to understand the deeper forces at work in society.
George Will is one of my favorite columnists. Although I don’t always agree with him, his arguments are well-constructed and laid out. And the man has a way with words that few others have. Combined with a dry wit, his mastery of the language can be devastating (and hilarious) when he targets someone. Hence, his characterization in today’s column of Matt Gaetz, Donald Trump’s nominee to be Attorney General: “an arrested-development adolescent with the swagger of a sequined guitarist in a low-rent casino.”
As explained by Todd Truitt in his well-argued article regarding the new school accountability system developed by the Virginia Dept. of Education, the state has posted a listing of how each school would currently score under that system if it were in effect today. (It does not go into effect until next school year.) An analysis of the scores yields fascinating results.
Before going into the details, a summary of the criteria used would be useful. High schools are rated in four areas: mastery, progress, readiness, and graduation. Following is a summary of the components of each category:
• Mastery (50 percent)—various test scores and progress of English learners;
• Readiness (35 percent)—number of students taking college prep courses, weighted based on grades earned in those courses; number of students earning industry credentials in high-demand areas; scores on exams for armed forces enlistment. Chronic absenteeism is another component;
• Graduation (15 percent)—percentage of students in four years.
It is no surprise that the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County obtained the highest rating with an “overall framework score” (the sum of the mastery, readiness, and graduation index scores) of 105.1. The remaining schools in the top ten were surprising:
• Tunstall High, Pittsylvania County–102
• John S. Battle High, Washington County–100.2
• Western Albemarle High, Albemarle County–100.1
• Richmond Community High, Richmond city–100.1
• Franklin Military Academy, Richmond City–99.9
• Grundy High, Buchanan County–99.1
• James River High, Botetourt County—98.0
• Hanover High, Hanover County—97.4
• Eastside High, Wise County—96.2
• Rural Retreat High, Wythe County—96.2
To state the obvious, with the exception of the TJ School for Science and Technology, none of the top ten-scoring high schools were in Northern Virginia. Furthermore, the much-criticized Richmond public school system had two schools in the top ten, while the neighboring counties of Henrico and Chesterfield had none.
Dominion Energy Virginia has run additional projections on its future energy demand and how to meet it, and the answer keeps coming back that Virginians will need more – not less – natural gas-fired electricity in the next 15 years. The supplemental data was filed with the State Corporation Commission Friday and added to the case file.
Just before the State Corporation Commission received Dominion Energy Virginia’s new integrated resource plan back in October, it issued an order for the company to provide more information. Some opponents of the utility’s plans to add to its natural gas generation expected the additional data to bolster their case it could be done without gas.
Yet gas power continues to turn up in the company’s model runs (we all know how environmental activists trust models) even when Dominion removes the growth in its demand coming from the explosion of data centers in its region. More gas turns up even when the model is set to fully comply with the anti-gas Virginia Clean Economy Act and even when the model is told to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s new power plant emission rules. Dominion wrote:
The results of the modeling sensitivity analysis show that even with updated capacity pricing and removing the data center load growth:
There is still an incremental capacity need.
The model does not choose to retire any existing generation.
Renewable and dispatchable generation is needed to meet demand in all sensitivities.
Northern Virginia school districts have settled on their latest attempt to avoid greater transparency: asking the Virginia legislature to “delay” the implementation of the new school accountability system by an additional year, claiming the new system’s 3-year development and implementation period is “rushed.”
The effect of this request would be to push the full implementation until fall 2026, after a new governor and legislature will have taken office. One of the districts’ legislative directors publicly “suggested that an all-out battle to overturn the new rules was less likely to win support in the General Assembly [this legislative session] than an effort to delay them.”
The districts likely hope to replicate the 2015 precedent of the repeal of an A-F accountability system by then-Governor Terry McAuliffe prior to its implementation following its 2013 enactment under his predecessor, Governor Bob McDonnell. (For clarification, the new system uses descriptive summative labels as advocated by civil rights organizations.)
When reached for comment, Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera said: “The new accountability system is about seeing every child, meeting every child where they are, and getting every child and school what they need to be successful.” She also pointed to the state’s recently released data showing what school scores would have been if the new system had been in place. Guidera contrasted such information vs. the old system’s under-identification of schools needing help, lack of practical data for the general community, and resulting negative impact on the civil rights of Virginia communities, parents and students.
In 1995 James W. Loewen wrote a provocatively titled volume, Lies My Teacher Told Me, which proffered leftist interpretations of topics that allegedly had been sanitized from American history books. Two decades later, Wilfred Reilly has put his own spin on Loewen’s book title and American history in Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me.
Reilly could have just as well have called the book Lies My Leftist College Professor Told Me, for every one of the narrative myths he debunks originated in academe and flourish there today. Here is a sampling:
Lie #1: Brutal “True” Slavery Was Virtually Unique to America and the West;
Lie #3: Native Americans Were Peaceful People Who Spent All Day in Dancing;
Lie #6: European Colonialism Was — Empirically — a No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Thing;
#10: Bonus Lie: The Continuing Oppression Narrative.
For anyone fed up with the woke mind virus, Reilly’s books — which include Taboo: 10 Facts You Can’t Talk About, and Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left Is Selling a Fake Race War — are a joy to read.
I expect his speech, hosted by The Jefferson Council and the Young Americans for Freedom December 5, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the University of Virginia, to be equally entertaining. The title: “Narrative vs Reality – from UVA to the USA and Beyond.” (To register click here.)
Governor Glenn Youngkin is rightly concerned about the housing shortage in Virginia, which drives up living costs and throttles economic growth. Yesterday he announced a plan to spend $75 million over five years to catalyze investment of $750 million and build 5,000 units to accommodate a growing workforce. But he acknowledges that massive regulatory reform is needed to bring supply in line with demand.
“With record employer relocations and expansions in the Commonwealth, over $85 billion in capital investment, nearly 250,000 jobs created, and a reversal of recent trends on net-out migration, it is clear that Virginia is growing and we need to make sure the supply of housing can meet our surging demand,” Youngkin said in Executive Order No. 24 issued yesterday.
Resumption of Virginia’s economic growth is very good news indeed. As the executive order notes, “Virginia now ranks among the top ten states for overall job growth, with 250,000 more jobs filled today and more than $85 billion in new capital commitments from employers relocating or expanding operations in the Commonwealth.” In a reversal of recent trends, it adds, more people are moving into Virginia than moving out.
In the Governor’s own analysis, however, Virginia needs to build 550,000 units to match existing demand, plus an additional 30,000 units per year to match the state’s growth. The Workforce Housing Investment Program will create only 1,000 units per year.
Hopeful news in a time of gloom: forty-six state attorneys general across the United States have banded together in a bipartisan coalition to defeat a common hated enemy: illegal robocall operators.
Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, and his fellow AGs have called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to close a loophole in the Robocall Mitigation Database that allows bad guys to exploit access to the U.S. telephone network.
“When was the last time anyone was thankful for a robocall?” Attorney General Jason Miyares says in a press release issued today. “Not only are robocalls annoying, they can also rack up billions of dollars through scams targeting the most vulnerable.”
Let’s not mince words: robocallers are vermin. They must be exterminated. The AGs are doing God’s work.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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