Bacon's Rebellion

By Chris Braunlich

Governor Glenn Youngkin’s Executive Order for developing policies restricting or eliminating cell phones in schools – a concept garnering widespread support among parents, with 61 percent favoring requiring students to leave their phones in secured locations during the day – responds to a clear and rising mental health, academic and behavioral problem.

Seventy-two percent of high school teachers say cell phones in the classroom are a major distraction. Ninety percent of principals support restrictions on middle- and high-school cell-phone use during the day. And 68 percent of all American adults believe that smart phones should not be allowed in school.

The reason for this level of support is self-evident: more than 80% of American adults – young and old – are concerned about the impact of social media on today’s children. This concern is supported by the evidence.

According to the American Psychological Association, 41% percent of teens with the highest social media use rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor, compared with 23% of those with the lowest use. Ten percent of the highest use group expressed suicidal or self-harm intent in the past 12 months compared with 5% of the lowest use group; and 17% of the highest users expressed poor body image compared with 6% of the lowest users.

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by Paul Goldman

The latest poll from Virginia Commonwealth University has Donald Trump up 3% — 39% to 36% — over Joe Biden after being behind by six in the school’s previous survey of public opinion. Top Trump advisor Chris LaCivita has been telling people publicly and privately Trump will win Virginia as part of a coming MAGA landslide.

Not so fast.

Having done a few polls in my lifetime, I view these results as more a reflection of Biden’s current weakness than any new Trump strength. In 2020, then-incumbent President Donald Trump lost Virginia by a whopping ten percentage points, considered a landslide defeat in the world of elections. Candidate Biden got 54% of the vote, the biggest Democratic winning margin in Virginia since FDR crushed Thomas Dewey in 1944 when Virginia was still part of the “solid South“ of Democratic segregation states. Even President Lyndon Johnson, while winning the biggest Democratic national landslide ever, carried Virginia by only 7% over GOP loser Barry Goldwater in 1964.

Sure, there was a time between 1968 and 2004 when the Commonwealth had proven to be the most reliable GOP bastion among the Southern states in presidential elections. The GOP “lock” on Virginia got picked by Barack Obama in 2008. Even defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton carried Virginia by a comfortable 5% in 2016.

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by James A. Bacon

Americans are rightly concerned about the impact of the flood of foreigners entering the country illegally through a broken border — not just the fiscal burden of increased outlays for healthcare, schools, and social services but the longer-term risk of creating an unassimilable mass in the body politic. Such fears gain traction when we observe cultural elites trying to radicalize “people of color” by portraying them as victims of systemic racism. Every racial disparity in the metrics of wellbeing is said to be evidence of oppression — as if immigrants from Third World villages should feel entitled to the same income level as native-born Americans who have been lifted up over generations.

One of the disparities that critics of American society see as unjust is the racial/ethnic gap in educational outcomes. English Learners score much lower on their Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores than English-fluent students. The learning gap is often said to be proof of bias.

A close examination of the testing data, however, shows quite the opposite. It shows remarkable upward mobility for immigrants, at least in terms of academic achievement.

We cannot tell from Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) data how many immigrant children there are in public schools. But we have a decent proxy. VDOE tracks the number of “English Learners.” By VDOE’s count, there were about 130,000 in the 2022-23 school year. Not surprisingly given the difficulty in understanding their teachers, they passed their Reading, Writing, and Math SOLs at rates that were half to one-third of their English-fluent peers.

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