Last week, the Virginia Secretary of Education urged all the public Virginia colleges and universities to update their codes of conduct regarding “disruptions of school functions, violations of the law, unlawful masking, erection of encampments, and facility usage by affiliated… pic.twitter.com/GVHoBGxR8Q
Stu Smith at StuStuStudios captured this message from a Virginia Commonwealth University student stating objections to VCU’s recent tightening of codes of conduct. The young woman is upset that the new rules will inhibit pro-Palestinian students from exercising their right to free speech by interfering with the rights of others to go about their business, although she doesn’t put it quite that way.
Here’s my favorite part: “Last May students wrote messages in support of Palestine, passed out flyers demanding VCU’s disclosure and divestment from Israel, and distributed masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.”
She neglected to mention that student protesters also set up a tent encampment and resisted arrest. But let that pass. Does anyone believe that the motive for passing out masks was to prevent the spread of COVID-19? As we used to say back in my college days, har de har har.
Virginia’s public schools face a long, hard slog before they reverse the damage done by prolonged school closings during the COVID epidemic. Virginia students made minor gains in Standards of Learning exams taken in the spring of 2024, but still fall far short of pre-COVID levels of achievement, according to data released by the Youngkin administration today.
Putting lipstick on a pig, administration officials credited higher standards, a crackdown on absenteeism, longer school hours, summer programs, and high-intensity reading tutoring for reversing some of what Governor Glenn Youngkin termed “the worst pandemic learning loss in the nation.”
Students showed notable gains in the pass rates for English writing, equaling pre-COVID levels. They scored smaller gains in English Reading, Math and Science but remained significantly below pre-COVID levels. They lost a little ground in History and Social Science.
In a statement made Tuesday morning, Youngkin also blamed previous administrations. Under the Northam administration, he noted, Virginia ranked 46th among the states for reopening classrooms. He also cited “a systematic reduction of expectations,” and an “honesty gap” about how Virginia students’ performance was eroding even before COVID.
Bacon’s Rebellion readers, please hang in there. We are experiencing technical issues of uncertain origin. There are indications that the blog is experiencing a Denial of Service attack from overseas, but we’re not sure. (We could understand if certain Americans wanted to take us out– but Russians or Chinese? Do they even know we exist?)
We’re working on it. As we try one thing and then another, you may experience significant lag times in viewing the blog. We appreciate your patience. — JAB
In a recent article about his new book, E.D. Hirsch argues that “child-centered individualism started the slide in American education.” Although he refers to the slide in academic outcomes, in my opinion, child-centered individualism is responsible for increased school disciplinary responses as well.
As an educator in Petersburg, including the time spent as a (deciding) member of many disciplinary hearing committees, I have listened to hours of parents communicating why their child or adolescent had disruptive behaviors so serious that they warranted referral for expulsion or alternative interventions outside the accepted convention of suspension.
For decades now, schools mostly follow constructivism theory — the child is taught to construct his/her own learning. However, when a child or adolescent is left alone to “construct a response to a situation” — like what to do when someone posts something ugly about you on social media, or what to do when you don’t like the teacher telling you what to do — the “constructed reaction” often opens the door for a multitude of responses not acceptable to general society (e.g. school shootings, suicide).
As K-12 schools open up this week, the good news is that the school-bus shortage has eased a bit. According to the Virginia Mercury, the bus driver vacancy rate is down 5% compared to last year. There’s still a shortfall that leaves school districts scrambling for bus drivers, but the situation is not as bleak as it has been.
The bigger, badder news is that teacher vacancies have gotten worse. Citing Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) data, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Virginia public schools have 230 more vacancies than last year. That amounts to a 4.74% vacancy rate.
The shortfall comes not from a lack of funding. The 2022-24 biennial budget contained $19.2 billion for public education, a 20% increase over the previous biennium. The current biennial budget steers another $2.5 billion to schools, an additional 13% boost. Teachers are getting 3% raises this year and next.
But you can count on the Virginia Education Association to take a partisan cheap shot against Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Cancel culture is all about tearing things down. It is inherently destructive. It builds nothing. It creates nothing. It only destroys.
Robert E. Lee
Like the Vandals who destroyed Rome, cancel culture is destroying American culture. Systematically, it targets and eliminates America’s heroes. It is fueled by anger, bitterness, envy, and vindictiveness.
It is the same mean-spirited mindset that led French revolutionaries to reject their past, create a new calendar starting with Year Zero, and execute thousands of their fellow citizens.
The widespread growth of cancel culture in America, with its unforgiving intolerance of all things past, instills a sense of terror—particularly in young people—that they too may be cancelled for expressing dissenting opinions. This leads to massive self-censorship, the absolute squashing of debate and civil discourse, and ultimately to the suppression of free and creative thinking.
Cancel culture rejects the Western and Christian notions of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In its place, it promotes violence, terror, intimidation, intolerance, and retribution.
Tyler Layne with WTVR News reported last week another disturbing story about how City Hall has been shortchanging the city’s at-risk youth and leaving a lot of state money on the table that could be helping them find brighter and better futures. According to Layne, about $1 million of available state money meant to help court-involved youth and reduce their risk of re-arrest has gone unused by the city over the last three years, despite the city experiencing an upward trend in crimes committed by youth since the pandemic.
Valerie Slater leads the nonprofit Rise for Youth , with the goal of helping youth before they get into trouble with the law and face court action for an arrest. It and other non-profits try to steer youth onto career opportunities and help them start to develop life skills. The Richmond Department of Justice Services provides some of these programs, but Slater calls the city’s overall effort “so woefully deficient.”
Every locality in Virginia participates in the Virginia Juvenile Community Crime Control Act (VJCCCA), which was set up to deter youth from getting involved in crime or re-offending, and also to divert youth out of the courts without absolving them of responsibility for their actions. The state provides funds to each locality to help provide these services and the flexibility to determine which services it wishes to provide based on the needs of its community from among 30 identified and approved programs.
According to Layne, in our region, Henrico County provided 14 programs last year, including anger management, mental health services, parenting coaching, and mentoring.
Virginia’s experiment with ranked choice voting may soon expand to a second locality, as the Charlottesville City Council is now considering that method for its future local elections. It is time for more people to pay attention to this voting method and decide whether they think it is a good idea.
The pros and cons are complex, and opinions are strong on both sides. Current Virginia elections allow a victory with a plurality, often far less than a majority of the votes cast. Making voters declare a second or third (or fourth or fifth) choice and continuing to count until a majority is reached is a major shift in our elections.
Former Virginia Delegate Sally Hudson, a Charlottesville Democrat, is leading one Virginia-based effort to expand the process here, Ranked Choice Virginia. Another, UpVote Virginia touts its bipartisan support, mentioning Congressman Don Beyer (D) and former Governor George Allen (R). The Foundation for Government Accountability, a national group on the other side, considers the idea a disaster.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch, a once-great newspaper, is done. You can put a fork in it.
Just before 5 p.m. Sunday a brief but fierce thunderstorm struck our part of western Henrico County, knocking down trees and power lines and finishing with a rare burst of hail. I watched amazed as the steel lamp post in our front yard swayed widely. The storm didn’t last more than ten minutes or so, but proved fatal for at least one man. About a block from our daughter’s house, on the street parallel to hers, a huge tree landed on a truck and killed the person inside.
The newspaper’s online and print edition did report this fact, but in a very brief story. The data all came from the cops. No reporter or photographer came to the scene. There is no mention of the widespread power outages, which lasted six hours at our townhome and nine hours on our daughter’s street and even longer for some, who were still out of power as of 6 a.m. A reference to the storm itself links to a weather forecast from another part of town. Embarrassing.
The storm cleared soon after 5 p.m. so there were almost three hours of daylight remaining – enough time to photograph the damage. But the online story is illustrated only with a map of the rough location where the man died, pulled from offline and copied.
What this tells this aging newspaperman is that there was no reporter or photographer on duty at all yesterday evening. Forty years ago it was standard practice at the Roanoke Times to have one or two reporters on duty in the evenings, and one photographer, usually until the final edition was put to bed after midnight, to dart out and cover stories like this — fire, accident deaths, storm damage. I did the job (we called it “night cops”) at least a few times per month. I’m not sure if Jim Bacon, officially a business writer, had to do it. But this is what a newspaper is supposed to do.
I don’t know what the RTD is now, but it is not a local newspaper.
Churchill Downs, the parent company of Rosie’s, plans to open the facility in an existing shopping center, the zoning of which would allow by right the uses proposed by Churchill Downs. That is, it would have allowed them by right before June 25, when the Board of Supervisors enacted an ordinance requiring a provisional use permit for any such facility. What has got VanValkenburg and others upset and frustrated is that Churchill Downs won the “race to the courthouse.” It filed its plans with the county on June 18; therefore, the zoning ordinance in effect on that date governs. There is nothing the county can do about it.
Shortly thereafter, Henrico’s three state senators and five delegates sent a letter to the Churchill Downs CEO expressing their opposition to the manner in which the company submitted the plans and asking the company to withdraw its plans and play by the new rules. A month later, there has been no reply. Now, the senator is upset that he is being ignored. “I am extremely disappointed in Colonial Downs Group and Rosie’s Gaming Emporium for their lack of response…. It is deeply problematic when you have every local and state elected official in Henrico asking a company to submit itself to public input, transparency, and to engage in a fair process and they refuse to respond.”
Those readers in the Bacon’s Rebellion community who view the Washington Post as a mouthpiece for progressives need to read the comments of the paper’s editorial board regarding Kamala Harris’ economic plan. For those who do not subscribe to the Post, here is the summation: “Instead of delivering a substantial plan, she squandered the moment on populist gimmicks.”
In perhaps the most interesting question posed in the Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School’s recent poll, 809 Virginians were asked if they thought the $26,500 average tuition charged by four-year colleges in the state was “worth it.”
Fifty-five percent disagreed — 30% strongly.
Higher ed faces a crisis in the value proposition it’s selling. Rising tuitions are pricing out less affluent Virginians, while the perception of rampant political correctness is turning off the half of the population that identifies as conservative.
The two most important issues — by far — influencing how Virginians intend to vote are inflation and abortion, according to Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School of Government’s latest poll. Inflation tops the list at 31%, followed by women’s reproductive rights (23%).
A second tier of issues are immigration (12%) and gun control (7%). Taxes, schools, and crime are third-tier issues.
Interestingly, a centerpiece of the Democratic Party’s rhetorical strategy — maintaining democracy and civility — didn’t register at all. Not one of the poll’s 809 respondents listed it as a top priority.
Thirty percent of those polled identified as Democrats, 26% as Republicans, and 35% as independents. As both parties play to their electoral bases in the elections, that leaves a plurality, independent voters, up for grabs. — JAB
Last week Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government issued findings from its latest public opinion poll. Some of the results were interesting, which I’ll get to in another post. But one was worthless to the point of being deceptive.
Here is the question: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The history of race should be taught in K through 12 schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The implication is clear. Either the history of race is not taught in Virginia’s K-12 schools, or there are people who don’t think it should be. Here is the result:
What a surprise — roughly four out of five Virginians agree that history of race should be taught.
What a blow to the Youngkin administration! As the Virginia Mercury dutifully wrote in providing context to the poll finding, “Since 2022, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has been examining and revising educational content related to race and equity, which the governor branded ‘divisive’ in his first executive order.”
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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