Bacon's Rebellion

  • A Proposal for a Broad Trial of Single Sex and Co-ed Virginia Classrooms on the Woodbridge Middle School Model

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    This is an expanded version of an article originally published on Dec. 16 of this year.  To avoid confusion, the original has been removed.

    This update contains important information about the multi-year experience of Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County with the approaches recommended here for broader testing in Virginia.

    See the video below.

    It also contains Australian results.  

    Both are based on reader tips. A tip of the hat to Abigail Norfleet James, Ph.D. for the Woodbridge Middle tip and the commenter with the pen name Nancy for the Australian information.

    This is part 2 of a series on the learning deficits in boys relative to girls in Virginia public schools that are measured by the SOLs every year.

    Part one, Boys Left Behind Academically – Yet Another Crisis in Virginia Schools, defined a problem. This essay offers a potential solution.

    Everyone talks about school choice. Everyone wants better schools.

    But as a nation we have gone into our two corners relative to public policy.

    • Parents — and conservatives — want choice;
    • Teachers unions — and thus progressives — do not want the type of choice most commonly offered, which is generally something other than the neighborhood school;
    • By school choice, both sides generally mean choice external to the neighborhood school — magnet schools, charters, single-sex academies, etc. And that’s the rub.

    I offer here a suggestion for a wide and deep trial in Virginia of parental choice of single-sex classrooms internal to the neighborhood school. Such an experiment is not unprecedented.

    It has been in place for more than a dozen years in Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County, as featured in the attached video. Watch it for the observations of the teachers and the kids.

    A similar program has been tried in New York City.

    The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education is the gold standard for finding scientific evidence of the efficacy of educational interventions.

    There is no indication that such a school format has been subjected to a trial that meets WWC standards.

    I think that, with well-documented and increasing problems of learning, attendance and behavior in many Virginia public schools, the time is right to create a broad, scientifically designed trial of parental choice for single-sex classrooms here.

    The goals are to observe, improve and report on single sex classroom:

    • learning by boys;
    • learning by girls;
    • behavior of boys;
    • the learning environment;
    • attendance, with improved parental valuation of schools that give them choices for their kids; and
    • school order and safety.

    (more…)

  • Fairfax School Board Chair Takes Oath of Office on Stack of Porn

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    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Ah, December. That marvelous holiday month, when Jews and Christians celebrate joyous holidays.

    Of course it’s also the season when those who loathe religion spring into action. This is their moment too.

    This year’s crop of religion haters is especially ugly.

    According to the New York Post, Harvard University officials — who have done almost nothing to protect Jewish students who were threatened and harassed by pro-Hamas radicals — told a rabbi that he could light a menorah on campus but warned him to take it down and hide it at night, lest those who hate Jews vandalize it.

    On our campus in the shadow of Widener Library, we in the Jewish community are instructed, ‘We’ll let you have the menorah, you made your point, OK. Pack it up, don’t leave it out overnight because there will be criminal activity we fear and it won’t look good’, Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi said at a Hanukkah lighting Wednesday night.

    Zarchi, the founder and president of Harvard Chabad, said the university has asked the group to take in the menorah each night since the first Hanukkah lighting on campus.

    And in the Iowa State House last week, The Satanic Temple erected an altar to Satan alongside a nativity and menorah, claiming they had a right under the First Amendment to slap their hideous Satan-worshiping abomination alongside the religious ones.

    As if THAT was what the Founders had in mind when they penned the founding documents that established  America’s principle of freedom of worship.

    A Navy vet and devout Christian beheaded the statue of Satan and knocked down the altar before turning himself in to authorities. The man has been charged with a misdemeanor criminal mischief.

    In Hanover County, a parent has objected to the Bible being in the school library because of the stories contained therein.

    You couldn’t make this garbage up.

    More madness in Fairfax County — where else? — where several school board members, including the chair, mocked those who take the oath of office with their hand on a Bible, Koran or other holy book by pledging their oaths on stacks of secular books or porn. The Washington Post points out that all 12 of the new board members elected in November are Democrats. Color me unsurprised. (more…)

  • Let’s Make a Deal

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Sen. Louis Lucas (D-Portsmouth)

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Gov. Glenn Youngkin earned his spurs (and his money) making deals in the private sector. He came into the governorship with no political experience. During his first two years in office, he showed little inclination to compromise or make deals. He bet big this fall on coming out of the November elections with Republican majorities in both houses of the General Assembly. He lost, big time.

    Now there is something that he wants; something that would be a feather in his cap: engineering the move of two major-league sports teams, the NBA Washington Wizards and the NHL Washington Caps, to Virginia.

    His major obstacle is a General Assembly controlled by Democrats, whom he spent all fall trying to defeat. To get what he wants, he is going to have to be willing to make deals. How good a deal maker will he be in the political realm?

    At least one legislator has signaled her willingness to deal. Sen. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), the incoming chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee recently observed, “While some people want sports stadiums … I want tolls to disappear from Hampton Roads and I want recreational sale of marijuana. Guess we will have to find compromises this session.” Want to make a deal, Governor?

  • The Mailman Did It

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    Bob Rayner

    by Jon Baliles

    They say bad news comes in threes, and this week is no exception for news from the City of Richmond’s Finance Department. This week wasn’t just raining; it has been a monsoon when it comes to sloppy administrative work, penalties, interest, and deflecting blame.

    Madison McNamee with NBC12 filed a story last night that says a number of residents in the West End, all in the same area/street, never received their real estate tax bills and were fined with penalties and interest by the city for untimely payment. The residents on a street just off of Grove Avenue never got their bills and never knew about it until they were sent a hefty late fee with interest, and the residents were told it was the fault of the Postal Service.

    Resident Ken Davis is a former Deputy Attorney General who said he always pays his city taxes and has lived in the neighborhood for decades, but got hit with $800 in fees and fines, which he paid immediately. He said under Section 58.1 3916 of Virginia Code that “penalty and interest for failure to file a return or to pay a tax shall not be imposed if such failure was not the fault of the taxpayer.” (more…)

  • Subsidizing a Billionaire

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals; Gov. Youngkin on left. Photo credit: Virginia Business

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    If approved by the General Assembly and the City of Alexandria, the deal reached between Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the owner of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals for those teams to move from Washington, D.C. to the Potomac Yards site in Alexandria would constitute the largest public subsidy for a sports team in the nation’s history.  That is the conclusion of a report by JP Morgan commissioned by the state, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

    The total estimated cost of the project is $2.2 billion.  The owner of the sports teams, Monumental Sports and Entertainment would contribute $403 million up front.  The City of Alexandria would be on the hook for $106 million.

    The state would create a sports and entertainment authority which would own the land and the buildings and lease them to Monumental. The company would sign a 40-year lease with rent beginning at $29.5 million annually and increasing to $34.5 million.  In addition to the arena for the two sports teams, the project would include a concert hall, underground parking, a conference center, a Wizards practice center, and Monumental’s  corporate offices and media station. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Teacher Vacancies in Virginia Cities with a Majority of Black Students Continue to be Very High

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    The statewide performance of Black kids on Virginia’s SOLs was horrible. Chronic absenteeism is a primary reason.

    But I continue to look for underlying reasons and solutions for both.

    This morning I checked the Staffing and Vacancy Dashboard.

    The teacher vacancy rate for Region 2, Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, is currently the highest in the state at 7.62%. That statistic combines teachers and special education teachers aides and paraprofessionals. There are 3,115 unfilled positions in Region 2.

    That region has been the worst in the state for a long time.

    The next highest is Central Virginia at 4.9%. Southwest Virginia is lowest at 2.28%.

    Region 2 vacancies both in actual numbers and in percentages are always high because school staff vacancies in Hampton Roads’ majority Black urban cities, and their proportion of the region’s public-school population, drive them up.

    The data reveal that in divisions with majorities of Black students in the rest of the state, some are very high and some not.

    Petersburg, as such things happen, is off the charts.

    But there are a major differences in teacher vacancies, and in student performance, between Black kids in Black majority urban cities (Suffolk is a officially a city but not urban) with the honorable exception of Hampton’s Black student SOL scores, and those in Black majority rural counties.

    We should perhaps look at what vacancies can tell us.

    And another time at what the City of Hampton Public Schools has been doing right for so long. (more…)

  • Racism Comes in All Colors

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    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty 

    What follows here is fiction. Totally imaginary. Still, picture this with me:

    The mayor of Virginia’s largest city — that would be Virginia Beach, population 458,000 — decides to hold a holiday party for city council members on city property.

    The mayor — and let me remind you this is hypothetical, it did not happen — sent out invitations characterizing this in some kind of strange pidgin English as a party for “white electeds,” which meant that the four black members of council were not welcome.

    Because of their skin color.

    What would the reaction be when the whites-only party became public?

    I can tell you.

    There would be loud cries of “racism”! Calls for the mayor’s immediate resignation. There would be  protests in the streets, with both whites and blacks denouncing the mayor’s shocking behavior. The local newspaper would call for the mayor to be removed from office and the editorialists would lament that Virginia hadn’t progressed from the days of Jim Crow.

    The news would make national headlines and no doubt state and federal prosecutors would be looking at the civil rights violations in an exclusive, all-white Christmas party for elected officials.

    It would be — pardon the expression — a poopstorm.

    Odd then, that when something similar actually happened, not in Virginia, but in the largest city in Massachusetts, Boston — there is just a mild outcry. And lots of folks defending the move.

    Could it be because the Boston mayor excluded whites, not blacks? (more…)

  • Oh, That Song of Solomon!

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    A Hanover County parent has submitted a complaint to the school system’s Library Materials Committee about a book in school libraries, writing that its “vulgar and inappropriate” content depicts rape, prostitution, sexual assault, violence, illegal activities and sexual activities. The book:  The Bible;  specifically, the New International Version of the Bible.

    To emphasize the harm she feared emanating from the accessibility of The Bible to her child, she stated, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, that she feared “it would absolutely turn my child into a groomed, immoral, prostituting, violent, polygamist and/or rapist.”

    Under the Hanover County School Board’s  book review policy, amended last summer, any parent of a child in a Hanover County school or any resident of Hanover County “may file a challenge regarding any material located in a school’s comprehensive library or within a classroom library which is believed to contain sexually explicit content.” If the school principal or librarian determines that the challenged material meets the criteria for “deselection,” the material is removed from the school libraries. If the principal or librarian determines that the material does not meet the criteria, the challenge is forwarded to the Library Materials Committee, which reviews the material and makes a recommendation to the School Board. The School Board, by a majority vote, in its sole discretion, may remove any material from school libraries or classrooms. (more…)

  • The “Chanukah Dilemma”: Is the Menorah a Religious or Political Symbol?

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Chabad-Lubavitch of Williamsburg Rabbi Mendy Hebor leads a menorah lighting at William and Mary.

    by Ken Reid

    Thursday night is the final night of Chanukah, the eight-day Festival of Lights that I (and millions of Jews across the world) celebrate, to mark the miracle that occurred when the 2nd temple was restored following a rebellion by religious Jews against secular Hellenistic Jews and their Greek-Syrian allies in the 160’s BCE.

    Because of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, in which 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were murdered by Hamas thugs, Chanukah has a really special meaning this year – bringing “light” to conquer the “dark” (i.e. Hamas).

    But while the ongoing war has united Israelis, and probably most Jews worldwide, there is a deep divide in the U.S. and other nations on whether Israel’s response in Gaza is inhumane; some 18,000 Gazans have died in Israel Defense Force (IDF) aerial bombing and ground attacks.  The pressure, mostly from the far Left, for a permanent ceasefire keeps pressing on,  

    Enter the controversy about lighting a menorah in public at a recent Williamsburg arts festival.

    There, the board of the festival voted not to allow CHABAD of Williamsburg to light a menorah at the festival, thinking it was a one-sided political statement for Israel.  Arguments also were made that this is a religious holiday, and the festival was to be secular – although Christmas decorations and Christmas stuff abounded there  But then a sop was thrown at Rabbi Mendy Heber to have a pro- ceasefire message there as equal time.

    Kerry Dougherty’s  article on the controversy is here  but a more detailed article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is worth reading. too  

    Chabad moved the menorah lighting to the William & Mary campus, but the incident went viral.  Gov. Glenn Youngkin denounced the arts festival’s ban and Chabad has complained to the Virginia attorney general’s anti-Semitism task force.

    Is the menorah a religious or political symbol, both, or neither? (more…)

  • Metro is at the Precipice. Declare Bankruptcy.

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    Steve Haner

    Recent ridership figures for Metro. Source: WMATA Click for larger view.

    By Derrick Max

    Tuesday, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) warned that without substantially greater subsidies from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, they would be facing a $750 million annual shortfall that would require draconian cuts in services, including closing 10 stations, cutting 67 bus lines, and laying off 2,000 employees.  They would also freeze salaries, raise fares and parking fees, reduce bus and train frequency, and close all stations at 10 p.m.

    The threat of such cuts was meant to be a bargaining chip for more funding rather than a true plan to save WMATA, as any such cuts would just accelerate, not slow, the demise of WMATA.  It is time for Governor Youngkin and the two other regional funders, all of whom are facing reduced federal aid in their own budgets, to seriously consider forcing WMATA into bankruptcy.  And if WMATA’s unique structure as a bi-state compact agency makes it ineligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy — a complete restructuring and rethinking of WMATA along a similar line as Chapter 9 bankruptcy are in order.

    The truth is that bankruptcy is not a new idea.  In 2016, WMATA hired one of the nation’s top bankruptcy lawyers, Kevyn D. Orr, to advise the agency on fixing its troubled finances.  At the time, WMATA had a $1.8 billion operating deficit (a loss of over 200 percent of operating revenue) with $917 million in long-term debt (not counting pension and other benefit liabilities).  The hope was that Mr. Orr’s expertise would help WMATA restructure its debt without resorting to bankruptcy, take a tougher line on labor negotiations, and wrest more money from the three Washington-area funding jurisdictions.  Sadly, whatever reforms were implemented have had little, if any, impact on WMATA’s financial situation today. (more…)

  • Boys Left Behind Academically – Yet Another Crisis in Virginia Schools

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Girls significantly outperform boys in English Language Arts (ELA) (reading and writing) in public schools and perform about as well in math and science, both across the nation and in Virginia.

    Virginia statewide SOL performance statistics give the details here.

    Across the state, girl students are better readers and far better writers than boys. Those English language arts performances at the state level of course mask both smaller and greater gaps in individual divisions and schools.

    The writing gaps exist in both high-performing Loudoun County and in poor-performing Richmond City schools.

    Broken down to the next level of detail in writing performance statewide, it looks worse.

    There is a single-sex classroom option that has been operating for a long time at a middle school in Prince William County. For the best ELA results, it is reasonable to think that model may have to be extended to elementary school.

    College and Career Readiness statistics offer confirmation of the outcome of boys’ ELA deficiencies.

    The Virginia Literacy Act starting in the 2024-25 school year will make major upgrades to literacy instruction.

    Absenteeism.  It would be easy to consider educational gaps in boys to be an artifact of higher absenteeism than girls.  But that’s not it.

    One of the artifacts of my research into chronic absenteeism in Virginia public schools statewide in 2023 was that male and female results by percentage were exactly the same: 19.5%.

    That, on the surface at least, may confirm parental influence on absenteeism.

    The science of learning in boys. The medical community has offered scientific observations of brain science and social development that matter here.

    Those observations typically include, aggregated by Microsoft Bing AI search from three different sources:

    • Boys’ brains secrete less serotonin, which is directly related to impulse control;
    • Boys start out primarily as tactile and kinesthetic learners;
    • Boys show more areas in the brain dedicated to spatial-mechanical strengths;
    • Girls generally demonstrate a focus on verbal-emotive processing;
    • Girls have more of their cerebral cortex defined for verbal function;
    • The hippocampus, where memory and language live, does develop more rapidly and is larger in girls than in boys. This impacts vocabulary, reading, and writing skills.

    We will consider those to be illustrative. They certainly seem to argue for different approaches to educating boys and girls.

    Asian students.  The special case of Asian students in ELA and all other subjects must be taken into account when seeking solutions to the boy/girl gaps. They absolutely blow away all other demographics of students, despite the fact that English may not be the first language spoken at home.

    That clearly represents a difference in learning style and effort, not in teaching style.

    The public data on Asian students are not in Virginia deconstructed by male and female results, but I have asked VDOE to provide and I will report it.

    Educational evidence.  In 2005, the Policy and Program Studies Service of the U.S. Department of Education published Single-Sex Versus Coeducational Schooling: A Systematic Review.  

    The reviewers used What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards to sort through 2,221 studies.

    The Executive Summary is here. I urge you to read it.

    You will see that the bulk of the evidence at the time of that review favored learning in single-sex schools. But you will also see that the support for the conclusions is generally thin because of a dearth of scientific studies of important issues.

    A current search of WWC on that topic yields no study that meets their standards.

    The ed schools have moved on.

    Single-sex classrooms have been offered successfully at Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County for more than a dozen years.  We will examine that in more detail in the next article.

    But that single school effort is not robust enough to meet WWC standards. It will take a much broader, scientifically designed and run trial.

    Bottom line. The educational gaps between boys and girls are too big for state government and citizens to continue to ignore in Virginia.

    Indiana has not ignored them. See both sides of The Great Gender Debate: Should Boys And Girls Learn Separately? published by Indiana’s State Impact Project.

    It is time to focus on the education of boys who, unsurprisingly, act and learn like boys.

    Woodbridge Middle has proven it is possible to offer single-sex classrooms in co-ed public schools, subject to parental choice of classroom assignments.

    And it has apparently solved, if such a thing is achievable, the ACLU’s objections to single-sex schools detailed in The Great Gender Debate.

    Next time I will offer a concept for the voluntary implementation by school divisions of single-gender and co-ed classrooms in co-ed public schools across Virginia.

    It will serve as the basis for a definitive study to provide the evidence needed to solve the debate.

    Updated Dec. 19 at 15:20 to add the discussion about Woodbridge Middle and to eliminate the discussion about ed schools.

  • Sorry, Senator. Zalenskyy is No George Washington

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    Sen. Tim Kaine

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Tim Kaine jumped the shark.

    Get a load of the nonsense this United States Senator – from VIRGINIA – Tweeted on Tuesday:

    President Zelenskyy spoke to the Senate today about the critical role of American support for Ukrainian democracy. He stood beneath a portrait of George Washington, who helped birth an America free from domination by a great power. A moving moment.

    — Tim Kaine (@timkaine) December 12, 2023

    Seriously, senator?

    No member of Congress should ever compare America’s first president with this little corruptocrat.

    This is the problem when Virginians vote for a Kansan to represent them in Washington. He missed fourth grade Virginia history and apparently they didn’t teach American history in the schools he attended either.

    If they had, the senator would know that Washington was a humble man who fervently believed in freedom and the rights of man. He was an educated, measured leader who stepped down after two terms in office and refused to allow himself to be set up as anything more than a man of the people.

    In his farewell address, Washington warned against foreign entanglements.

    Presidents have been ignoring Washington’s admonitions for decades, unfortunately. (more…)

  • A Brief Case for Giving Virginia Legislators a Raise

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Gordon C. Morse

    I thought it would be worthwhile to pursue further the subject of legislative compensation in Virginia. A report I’ve  referenced before is dated December 1998 – 25 years ago – and offers the following rationale for increasing the amount paid to Virginia lawmakers holding these posts, attending the annual legislative sessions and all that pertains thereto: 

    The significant increase in the time required for members of the General Assembly to carry out their responsibilities, to our way of thinking, requires an increase in compensation and in per diem allowances. In addition to the 90 days required of a legislator for the two sessions of the General Assembly, the time a legislator has to devote to attending meetings of committees, subcommittees and study commissions has increased sharply. Those members of the General Assembly who responded to our questionnaire indicated that they spent from between 30 and 60 days on legislative duties between the sessions of the General Assembly. 

    Moreover, a legislator is expected to keep in touch with his constituents and to answer inquiries from them. While the performance of this duty is time-consuming, nevertheless it is necessary for a legislator to keep in touch with the views of those he represents, and to maintain a relationship with them which will reveal their desires and concerns.

    There are any number of metrics and tables and summaries and all that in the report. Things sometimes get stashed away casually in the Commonwealth, but I am working on the optimistic belief that other people and/or institutions retained a copy. Legislative demands have increased in the intervening years, along with the willingness of elected lawmakers to make this their primary work in life. The implications of that, undoubtedly, will cause some of the newer members to wonder why the General Assembly is organized the way it is, as well as seed an interest in reform. Others will resist this impulse and I would be inclined to agree with them, that a full-time legislature would be unlikely to produce an improvement in representative democracy.  (more…)

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

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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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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