Bacon's Rebellion

See this story from today’s Daily Press:

U.S. history still trips up students

The state has excluded history scores from the accreditation process for many middle schools.

BY KATHRYN WALSON

757-247-4535

October 27, 2005

STANDARDS OF LEARNING — Virginia is steeped in national history, but its young students aren’t too familiar with the United States’ early years.

Scores on the state’s Standards of Learning exam on American History to 1877 – given to fifth- or sixth-graders – were so low that state officials have decided ,for the past two years, that the scores on the History I exam don’t have to count toward a school’s rating.

The students’ limited understanding of American history is disappointing – especially in a place surrounded by historical sites, said Bill White, director for educational program development at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

“Neglect of history in our schools has already generated two generations of Americans who don’t have a good grasp of who we are as a people,” he said. “This is a national problem and a long-running problem. It’s not something that’s going to be fixed in a school year.”

Because the foundation’s mission is to improve history education, it offers training for teachers and interactive television programs for students nationwide.

“What we need a public school system to do is to create good future citizens of the United States, and the only way to do that is to make sure children understand American history,” White said.

The current history exams began in the 2003-04 school year. Students previously took a cumulative test in eighth grade. But most now take an exam each year of middle school – on American History to 1877, American History Since 1877, and Civics and Economics.

“Changes require a time period for adjustments – for the new curriculum to be in place, for teachers to revise their classroom instruction,” state Education Department spokeswoman Julie Grimes said.

The History I exam is particularly challenging because of all the information that it requires fifth- and sixth-graders to know, Grimes said. “These are some of the younger students … that are being tested on a lot of facts,” she said.

Still, Grimes said, next year’s History I scores would count in the accreditation process.

It couldn’t be determined how many schools in the area and the state excluded History I scores because of low passing rates. But many schools pressured the state to allow the exclusion, she said.

Mathews County schools are among those that benefited from the state’s decision. “Being able to not count, that certainly played out well for us,” Assistant Superintendent George Kidd said.

For two years in a row, Mathews students’ passing rates fell far short of the state’s 70 percent benchmark. Just 50 percent of fifth-graders passed the History I exam last school year, up from 39 percent in 2003-04.

Eighty percent of Mathews’ sixth-graders passed the exam for American History Since 1877, while just 66 percent of seventh-graders passed the Civics and Economics exam.

The reason for low scores is a mystery to Kidd. He said a position was created for a teacher to review students’ SOL answers and pinpoint trouble spots.

“We’re puzzled as much as the state as to why we’re not seeing better scores, ” Kidd said. “We’re grateful that the state gave us another year to get to the bottom of this with them.”

In Isle of Wight County, the History I exam was excluded at Smithfield Middle School as a result of a 66 percent passing rate, which administrators attribute to one low-performing class. The poor scores were the result of an instructional issue that’s been resolved, said Mary Mehaffey, assistant superintendent for instruction.

Poquoson was one of the few school systems that kept the cumulative history test, which 92 percent of eighth-graders passed last year, said Marilyn Barr, assistant superintendent for instruction.

She said, “We had a good system in place, and our students were doing well with it.”

End of Article.

Please note that the Poquoson kids passed. Hmm. Maybe the history teachers did what the tiny (two teacher) biology department did years ago. The biology teachers looked at everything taught in science k-9 and looked for the holes in building blocks of scientific knowledge. They filled in the instruction in what should be cumulative learning. The results were spectacular.

Likewise, my wife’s school in York County has passed the SOLs every year from year One when under 1% of the schools made it. They evaluated each child to see what they didn’t know. Then, golly gee whilikers, they taught the children – as individuals – with extra instruction including volunteer tutors in class and after school to bring them up to speed. This is a school with 20% ‘at risk’ population in schoolese.

K-12 teaching isn”t rocket science. If it is done properly the kids can become rocket scientists.

I still remember things I learned in Arlington County history (3rd grade), Virginia history (our Yankee 4th grade teacher, Mrs Scharf, actually taught about the feats of Confederate arms) and U.S. History (5th grade). The best class I have had was a two hour course combining English and History in the 11th grade – called American Civilization (soon to be the web site I am building).

Final note. It’s wrong to exclude the failing subject for accreditation. Either schools pass or they don’t.

In a commentary released yesterday, titled, Immigration Reform is Everyone’s Business, Thomas Donahue, President and CEO of the US Chamber, talks sense about immigration:

The Chamber supports immigration because immigrants have always been a key to the success of our economy. Immigrants fill jobs that Americans don’t want or refuse to take, and will play a key role in alleviating inevitable worker shortages that will be created as aging Baby Boomers start retiring.

Here’s the Chamber’s plan: penalize undocumented workers with fines, extend permanent legal status to many immigrants after a long test period, allow employers to keep an essential part of their current workforce, and require that immigrants pass additional security checks and pay their taxes.

It’s important to ensure that American workers have a fair shot at job openings before they’re open to immigrant workers, and that’s a key part of our plan. We also need a fast and reliable way to match willing employers and willing employees, combined with visa limitations that fluctuate according to market needs. Finally, a reliable employment eligibility confirmation system that is easy to use will aid small businesses with deciphering federal immigration relations so that they can avoid having to hire expensive lawyers.

One thing is clear, however: we can’t simply round up every illegal immigrant and ship them back. There are an estimated 10.2 million undocumented workers in the United States. Their families include another 3 million children who are U.S. citizens. Aside from the inhumanity of separating children from their parents, it would take about 200,000 buses to carry these workers to our borders. Lined up, bumper to bumper, the bus convoy would extend over 1,700 miles and carry a population the size of Ohio. The results would paralyze our economy. That’s not going to happen.

Taken together, these proposals can help fix our broken immigration system and return business owners to doing what they do best: creating jobs.

So, unless you’re in the busing business or you’re a baby boomer who wants to be making beds in hotels or picking fruit in the Valley in your retirement years, enlightened self-interest should have you urging your reps in Congress to do something that makes sense regarding immigration ….

something that doesn’t further devolve federal responsibilities to state and local governments with no money attached;

something that doesn’t assume that closing our borders to all immigration is either desirable or possible;

something that realistically secures our borders against those who seek to harm us rather than serve or work with us;

something that isn’t so fraught with bureaucratic excess that the paperwork kills whole forests and small businesses;

something that doesn’t reflect or serve the protectionist, isolationist, nativist, jingoistic rhetoric too often infecting the current immmigration debate;

something that sounds like common sense and works in the real world.

Learn more.

Virginia Chamber? You’re next…

From the Free Lance-Star:

John Cole Goolrick, 70, a native of Fredericksburg, died Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005, at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond.

He was a graduate of James Monroe High School and a graduate of the University of Richmond. He was a longtime journalist for The Free Lance-Star; a district representative for several U.S. congressmen from Virginia, most recently, Jo Ann Davis; and had served 20 years with the Virginia Army National Guard.

Goolrick also was an occasional contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. We will miss him.

Peter Bacque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing a good job of staying on top of ongoing developments at the Virginia Information Technology Agency. In today’s report, he reveals that Northrup Grumman has received the state IT Investment Board’s backing for a nearly $2 billion contract to rebuild Virginia’s IT infrastructure.

The potential savings are significant. The deal would be worth $1.986 billion over its 10-year length — about $38 million a year less than VITA spends annually now on the state’s hardware and software. That’s about 19 percent per year. That’s serious money, folks.

Of course, aspects of the deal must be opened to public scrutiny and subjected to public critique. But based on the numbers reported so far, it looks like a major win for efficiency in government.

Jerry Kilgore has opened up a can of worms, accusing the “liberal press” of “defending a liberal soulmate” — Democrat Tim Kaine — from criticism of his opposition to the death penalty. (See Jeff Schapiro’s article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

I have two reactions. First, so what else is new? Second, that’s the way it is, quit whining and get over it.

Of course the Mainstream Media is biased. The only people who can’t see it are those who share the same mental framework for viewing the world as the journalists themselves. To liberals, reportorial coverage just looks normal. The rest of us can see the bias plainly. How do we know? Because we live in daily stupefaction at the spin put on the nightly news and front pages of the leading newspapers. We know there’s bias because we know that we’d write the same stories very differently, ignore stories that get replayed incessantly, and give greater weight to stories that the MSM doesn’t bother to cover.

The fact of bias in the national media is so blindingly obvious that I won’t bother to defend my statement any further. If you can’t see it, I’ll never convince you. It’s a conservative thing, you wouldn’t understand.

On the other hand, I would argue that local reporters tend to be less biased than their national counterparts. Yes, biases exist, but they’re not nearly as intrusive. While the national MSM, cloistered in liberal enclaves like Manhattan and Washington, D.C., ignores vast bodies of evidence that contradict its worldview, local journalists live amidst the mainstream culture, not in isolation from it. That tends to moderate their views. Furthermore, most local reporters, I’ve found, are fairly diligent about reporting both sides of a story. You might have to read a little deeper to read the pro-death penalty quotes, but they’ll be there in the article. There may be subtle bias in the way reporters write the leads and slant the story, but, honestly — and I can say this because I’m very sensitive to it — it’s not nearly as egregious as with the national media.

The true failing of local media, to my mind, is the superficiality of coverage, particularly of public policy issues. Political reporters are, by nature, generalists. They cannot become experts in every field of policy — taxes, budgets, transportation, health care, education, etc. So, they tend to engage in he said/she said reporting without making any great effort the claims being made. Regarding the death penalty debate, why isn’t the T-D’s Frank Green, who has won numerous national awards for his reporting on the death penalty, part of the team covering the debate? Why leave the issue to the generalists?

Kilgore is unhappy because his death penalty initiative isn’t giving him the traction he was looking for. But he shouldn’t blame the media. It’s like Democrats kvetching that Republicans raise more money. As Tom Silvestri, my old boss and now publisher of the Times-Dispatch, used to say about some intractable problem: “It is how it is.” The sub-text of his message was, you can pout about it, or you can work around it. A biased media is part of the background of any political campaign.

Reporters, no matter how liberal, are drawn to many elements of a story. They like conflict. They like human interest. And, yes, they strive to uphold a standard of objectivity and fairness in their coverage. They often fall short of that standard, but the existence of the standard does moderate their biases. Finally, I would add, the local MSM is not monolithic. Blogs provide a limited corrective. So does local talk radio.

Ultimately, the existence of a biased media puts the onus on the Kilgore campaign to craft and deliver its campaign messages in such a way as to penetrate the filters of the MSM. Jim Gilmore succeeded eight years ago, and George Allen did four years before him. It can be done.

It’s time for Phil R. to chime in, and where better than here on Bacon’s Rebellion?

The mailman brought me a bit of a surprise today, a copy of the fake Club for Growth mailing challenging Kilgore on taxes. But it is only sort of a fake, since it is based on a real Oct. 10 news release from the Club for Growth. You have to really hunt to find the Kaine for Governor disclaimer printed on the right side of Kilgore’s photo, but it’s there.

The best place to see it for yourself (if you are not on the Republican primary voter list like we are) is at the Washington Post’s blog. They have the full PDF posted. I’ve seen it discussed on a couple of other blogs as well. Our readers should chime in.

When I first saw it on line, I thought it was really from VCFG. Then I read today it was a Kaine mailing, but used real rhetoric questioning Kilgore on taxes from a Club for Growth news release. It even goes so far as to state that the text was originally “approved” by the Virginia Club for Growth — wouldn’t want anybody claiming plagarism or failure to disclose.

First thought, there Phil goes again — right in character, shooting at a Republican who doesn’t meet his measure of perfection and putting purity above victory. Second thought — how deceptive of the Kaine campaign. But it’s growing on me. As a tactician, it’s growing on me. In my reporting days I used to say that the meanest thing I ever did to a politican was quote him accurately.

This mailer is going in the permanent collection. It won’t change the outcome, but it will sow confusion and resentment on our side and it must be ruining somebody’s day. I hope it is causing the Club for Growth the most grief, frankly. To my D friends: A tip of the hat, guys — I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Another old rule of mine: Never underestimate the Republican Party’s gift for self-destruction.

One of the most imaginative legislators in Virginia today is Chris Saxman, the Republican delegate from Staunton. Saxman has devoted more energy than almost anyone else in the General Assembly to devise creative ways to reduce state spending. His latest brainstorm: Encourage college students to graduate early rather than drag out their educations for five or six years at public expense.

The State Council on Higher Education projects enrollment demand for in-state students to increase by more than 56,000 students by 2012; Virginia’s four-year institutions are expected to absorb 11 percent of that increase. State support covers roughly 68 percent of tuition and general fees for in-state students. Incredibly, there is no requirement for students to complete their educational requirements on time. Indeed, Saxman notes, it takes students five years on average to graduate. “By offering incentives to students to complete their undergraduate degrees in less than four years,” he says, “we will help to free up space for incoming students.”

Saxman’s idea: Provide students with graduate school scholarships if they graduate in three years from public four-year colleges and universities. In return, scholarship recipients would obligated to remain and work in the Commonwealth for a minimum period or pay back the cost of graduate school tuition. He is particularly keen on encouraging doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and other professionals in short supply to stay in the state.

Phyllis Palmiero, former director of SCHEV and a member of the Joint Subcommittee Higher Education Funding likes the idea. “Many students come to college with a number of college credits, some equivalent to a full year, however, they do not have the incentive to finish their degree early,” she says. “They prefer to remain with their class and ultimately enjoy their senior year. This is partly cultural and partly because there is no financial incentive to graduate early. Providing incentives or rewards for finishing early, such as graduate school scholarships, would certainly provide that incentive.”

Chris Craddock, a Republican candidate for a House of Delegates seat in western Fairfax County, has a little driving problem. The 27-year-old youth minister has racked up nine driving tickets over the past five years, including a citation last week for reckless driving, the Washington Post reports.

The politics of transportation could get interesting in the 2006 General Assembly if both Craddock and Republican gubernatorial nominee Jerry Kilgore win their races in November. Kilgore has proposed levying heavier fines on traffic scofflaws as a way of discouraging the kind of reckless behavior that causes traffic accidents and creates traffic gridlock. He also sees the fines as a revenue stream to pay for more road improvements.

Craddock’s Democratic opponent, Chuck Caputo, says the tickets show Craddock’s unfitness for office. But I rather like the idea of electing a politician who will help pay the cost of government out of his own pocket!

Here comes a new Mason-Dixon poll confirming the findings of earlier polls: The issues that matter to voters are the ones that impact their daily lives — not cultural wedge issues. The most important issues in this year’s governor’s race, as summarized in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

21 % – education issues/public schools funding
17 % – state taxes/state spending
15 % – roads/traffic/transportation
8 % – economy/jobs/economic growth
7 % – crime/death penalty/criminal justice
6 % – leadership/character/personal qualities
5 % – moral issues/family values

One final plea: Would the gubernatorial candidates please focus their speeches, press releases and, above all, their campaign ads on the issues that matter to the electorate?

The RT-D reported: Clinton helps Kaine raise $1.5 million. The fundraisers were at a home in the Keswick area of Albemarle County and at a residence in McLean. Clinton made no public appearances.

Allies stump for Kaine, Kilgore

The WaPo reported: “We’re definitely excited to have him coming,” said Mo Elleithee, Kaine’s communications director. “The president is clearly someone who speaks to a lot of folks.”

Bill Clinton to Appear at Private Kaine Fundraisers

Excited to have him coming, but with no public appearances! No Mark Warner either!

Q. Where are the TV commercials with former President Bill Clinton touting Tim ‘the choirboy’ Kaine as the second coming of Governor Mollycoddle?

No doubt, Mo Elleithee and the Kaine campaign are hiding Clinton who is “clearly someone who speaks to a lot of folks.”

Spank me!

~ the blue dog

How many people live in your city? It’s a simple question, and a lot rides on the answer. Federal and state funding formulas allocate money, in part, on the basis of a locality’s population. Businesses choose where to invest and expand based on market demographics. So, you can see why the City of Charlottesville takes such a keen interest in how many people live there.

According to an article in Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, the U.S. Census estimated the city’s population in 2001 to be 45,049, a jump of nearly 5,000 from the previous year. Then it adjusted the 2001 estimate back down to 39,300.

This April, reports the Daily Progress, the Census “released its 2004 population estimates, reporting that Charlottesville had lost 3,494 residents since 2000 for a total population of 36,605. This month, though, the bureau accepted the city’s challenge to the figures, agreeing the estimate should have been 40,745.”

By tracking the number of new houses built, car registrations and enrollment increases at the University of Virginia, city officials persuaded Census that the population had grown, not contracted. “It’s important for our prestige,” said Mayor David Brown. “We are a dynamic, exciting community where people want to be.”

Virginia’s older cities are making a come-back. Tremendous re-development is taking place. People are moving back. It’s vital that the numbers reflect this positive trend. Based on the Charlottesville experience, city officials shouldn’t count on Census to get the numbers right.

The Senate’s START Committee, a large group of senators and citizens charged with writing a transportation bill for 2006, met yesterday with far less fanfare than its first meeting. In the presentations, little new ground got plowed. The next meeting promises to be more interesting, as the group will start its own discussions, working with a professional facilitator.

But when I went to the Senate Finance Committee website for all the documents, I found a diamond in the sand, something that had not been discussed in the meeting. The list included a 9-page letter from Phil Shucet, the former Transportation Commissioner who has instantly become one of the leaders in this effort now that he is out of state government and able to speak frankly. You can find the letter on that list under “Shucet Letter” or by clicking here.

Shucet’s suggestions range from outsourcing more maintenance to demand management techniques to, yes, building more roads — and he seems to be leaning toward the tolling proposal of former Governor Baliles as the main source of funds for construction.

You too can write your own plan for this group to consider, but you have to hurry. The staff has issued a general call for proposals, idea, discussions, and has set up a special email address, [email protected] to receive them. They want them by Halloween. They ask for a one-page summary and a limit of four pages on discussion. Shucet’s is longer, but worth every page.

“Va. scores above average on national report card,” reads the headline in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Virginia’s fourth-and eight-graders are doing slightly better in math and reading than their peers around the country,” continues the text of the story.

But dig into the numbers in “the Nation’s Report Card” published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and there is some encouraging news on the racial disparity front.

The NAEP reports a composite figure reflecting the percentage of students in each state whose scores are classified as “below basic,” “basic, ” “proficient” and “advanced.” The average reading scores for fourth graders is 226 in Virginia vs. 217 nationally, suggesting that Virginia overall is significantly above the national average. The math score for 4th graders is 240 for Virginia vs. 237 nationally, suggesting that we’re modestly above average. The 8th grade differentials are comparable.

But there are some interesting trends within the broader numbers. Minorities in Virginia — African-Americans and Hispanics — outperform their peers nationally by a wider margin than whites do. For example:

4th Grade Reading Score
Performance Gap Compared to Peers in Other States

Whites……….. +5
Blacks………… +9
Hispanics…… +9

(The performance gaps are comparable for the most part for math and 8th grade scores. I won’t bore you with the details. Look them up here.)

Another way of looking at the performances differences is to compare the size of the racial gap in performance in Virginia and the United States.

4th Grade Reading Score
Racial Gaps Nationally vs. Virginia

Blacks

Nationally……….. 29 points below whites
Virginia…………… 26 points below whites

Hispanics

Nationally………. 27 points below whites
Virginia…………… 15 points below whites

The disparity in scores between whites and blacks is modestly smaller in Virginia than in the rest of the country, and startlingly smaller between whites and Hispanics.

Perhaps the most appropriate measure of comparison for Virginia, however, is not with other American states but with foreign countries. There’s a global marketplace for employees with education and skills. Unfortunately, the performance gap may well be the other way around — how far behind the Poles and South Koreans are we? That’s where our attention really needs to be.

Let’s see now…. The state Department of Education awarded Pearson Educational Measurement a six-year, $139.9 million contract to develop, score and report Virginia’s Standard of Learning tests — even though a competing proposal by Harcourt Assessments, Inc., would have cost $35 million less. And it turns out that Pearson made scoring errors that resulted in 60 students being told they’d flunked tests they’d actually passed — and that firm had been involved in a legal settlement in Minnesota back in 2000 for scoring errors that had flunked 8,000 students.

There may have been legitimate reasons for hiring Pearson despite these revelations, but the leadership of the House of Delegates is right to want to know what those reasons were. They are understandably concerned after finding out from newspaper reports that the soon-to-retire state school superintendent Jo Lynne DeMary had served on what the House leadership described as an unpaid “advisory council” for Pearson and she characterized as an annual “think tank” session for state and local school officials.

There may be a perfectly legitimate explanation for giving the contract to Pearson. But the House is right to look into the matter. That $35 million differential is a lot of money — even in a budget as inflated as Virginia’s. As House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, put the sum in perspective yesterday, the $5.8 million a year extra paid to Pearson would translate into 150 more teachers across the state.

Read the Richmond Times-Dispatch story here.

The three gubernatorial candidates addressed about 400 people at a Richmond forum sponsored by AARP Virginia Monday and, not surprisingly, told the crowd why old people should vote for them.

Mr. Russ “Blunt Talk” Potts, 66, noted that he was the only candidate who was a member of the American Association of Retired People and “the only guy with gray hair running in this race.” Wow, that’s a great way to get someone to identify with your vision for Virginia — emphasize your similarity in age. Let’s see. I’m 52. Tim Kaine is five years younger, Jerry Kilgore is eight years younger, and Russ Potts is 12 years older than me. I guess that means I should vote for Kaine. And I would, oh, yes, I would, if it weren’t for the fact that…

Kaine’s idea of appealing to old people is to shovel money at them. He would seek additional money from the 2006 state budget if rising heat bills begin to hurt low-income seniors, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He said he’d spend more money on Meals for Wheels, an adult day care service for the handicapped that has a long waiting list. And he bragged about the Warner administration’s track record of boosting the pay of caregivers and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Kilgore matched Kaine pander for pander. He, too, would seek to help old folks hurt by rising heating costs, increase funding for rural medical clinics, and give tax incentives for the purchase of long-term care insurance.

If I were running for governor, here’s what I would tell old people: You old people have more disposable income, more assets and more free time than your children and grandchildren. Sure, some of you are poor, and I’ll make sure that there’s a social safety net to guarantee that your basic needs are taken care of. But I’m not treating you as a privileged class deserving of special consideration based on your age. What I will do is stop sticking it to your children and grand-children by promising you stuff and taxing them to pay for it!