Bacon's Rebellion

  • VPM Reporter Digs Into Power For Tomorrow

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Ben Paviour at Virginia Public Media has fleshed out additional substantial details on the political activities of Power for Tomorrow, a utility advocacy group with major funding from Dominion Energy Virginia.

    Questions asked and issues hinted at by this report on Bacon’s Rebellion now have more clarity.

    Yes, Paviour found quite a few Virginia incumbent legislators are being supported by the group, not just Senators George Barker (D) and Siobahn Dunnavant (R).  Other beneficiaries include Senator Joe Morrissey (D), Senator Scott Surovell (D), Delegate Delores McQuinn (D), Delegate Buddy Fowler (R) and Delegate Emily Brewer (D).  Most but not all are involved in party nomination contests.

    Yes, there is a strong correlation with the people receiving support from Power for Tomorrow not receiving support from Clean Virginia, with the exception of Surovell.  He has received help from both.  Along with the mailings mentioned before, Power For Tomorrow is also spending on digital advertising (as Clean Virginia also does.)

    Paviour also found the group is active in South Carolina, another Dominion Energy state, attacking a proposal that South Carolina utilities be forced to join a regional transmission organization.  He turned up the 2021 IRS 990 report for “Power 4 Tomorrow,” but of course that is now out of date.  The IRS reports for these groups lag badly.

    The key issue that somebody needs to keep watching is how all of this is reported – or not – in campaign finance disclosures.  No question now, these are political expenses intended to influence an election.  Period. Power for Tomorrow still only shows up as having a registered lobbyist on the Virginia Public Access Project database, with no mention of any campaign donations.  That is the point where this may be stretching Virginia law and should irritate voters who care about transparency.

    — SDH

  • New Style of Computer Adaptive Testing for Math and Reading SOLs in Spring 2023

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    End-of-year SOLs will be released this summer and are much anticipated to see how well kids are recovering from enforced shutdowns during COVID.

    Some readers know the current testing system like the backs of their hands. But nearly all of us took standardized tests in school in which everyone took the same tests with the same questions.

    That is not how math and reading SOL tests are designed now in Virginia.

    Computer Adaptive Tests (CAT) – the link provides more detail than I will here – use AI algorithms to personalize the test for each student.  SOLs have been computer adaptive for more than a decade.

    How a student responds to a question determines the difficulty of the next item. A correct response leads to a more difficult item, while an incorrect response results in the selection of a less difficult item for the student.

    CATs more completely test the level of knowledge of each student, not continuing with test questions which are either too easy or too hard for that particular student.

    Important changes were made for the tests taken in Spring of 2023.

    Based upon legislation in 2021, Spring 2023 tests administered questions on grade level, one level up or one level down depending upon the student’s progress through the earlier parts of the exam.

    That seems an improvement, offering a more thorough measure of student learning and potentially being more engaging for each student. (more…)

  • VMI’s DEI Chief Resigns — “Vitriolic” VMI Critics Implicated

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Jamica Love

    by James A. Bacon

    Virginia Military Institute’s chief diversity officer, Jamica Love, has resigned nearly two years after taking on the job of implementing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the military institute.

    While Superintendent Cedric T. Wins noted that Love served with distinction and professionalism, VMI gave no reason for her resignation. She has issued no statement and turned down an interview request.

    My purpose in writing about Love’s resignation is not to highlight her role in the ongoing controversy over DEI at VMI — my sense is that she did exactly what was expected of her — but to explore how The Washington Post has framed her departure. Writer Ian Shapira takes the opportunity once again to recite the litany of racism allegations against VMI and cast the controversy as a good guys/bad guys melodrama with the black hats worn by “a political action committee of mostly White conservative graduates called The Spirit of VMI.” (more…)

  • Mountain Valley Pipeline Back Thanks to McCarthy-Biden Debt Deal

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by Shaun Kenney

    As part of the debt ceiling deal, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), long thought dead, is now suddenly back in the cards.

    But don’t expect bulldozers back in Virginia anytime soon, as the 4th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is not expected to grant permission to cross any streams or wetlands before 15 June. From The Roanoke Times:

    Efforts to obtain the permit — the last major approval needed to restart construction that has been stalled since the fall of 2021 — were underway well before the Mountain Valley provision was added to the debt ceiling bill at the urging of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

    Most importantly for Mountain Valley, the bill prohibits any legal challenge of the Army Corps permit or any other government approval.

    Since work on the pipeline began in 2018, the Fourth Circuit has thrown out about a dozen permits, siding with environmental groups who argued that agencies failed to take adequate steps to limit muddy runoff from the construction sites.

    A pending lawsuit over the fate of endangered species in the pipeline’s path, and a potential legal challenge of a permit allowing its passage through the Jefferson National Forest, will be rendered moot as soon as the law takes effect.

    (more…)

  • Alumni Free Speech Alliance Affiliate at William & Mary

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by Robert Kaplan, Karla K. Bruno, and John S. Buckley

    The cross removed from Wren Chapel in 2006. “Marshall-Wythe” deleted from the name of the law school during the past decade. Recently, urine thrown by a student protestor at other students promoting pro-life views on abortion and an ACLU spokesperson speaking on campus about free speech shouted down by Black Lives Matters advocates. Alas, even the venerable College of William and Mary in historic Williamsburg, Virginia, is not new to, or immune from, anti-free speech and inquiry, political correctness, and historical “presentism” that has come to characterize higher education throughout America.

    It’s time for William and Mary alumni to get more involved. With a tip of a hat to The Jefferson Council at the University of Virginia — an independent association of recent vintage of Charlottesville alumni — alums at W&M are now organizing to keep a more vigilant eye on left-wing indoctrination and assorted bullying tactics that appear to be at play among faculty, administration, and students.

    Our intention is to affiliate with the rapidly growing national Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), a consortium of independent alumni organizations at major universities across the United States, formed to advocate for free intellectual inquiry in the halls of higher education. It so happens that the Commonwealth of Virginia has of late the greatest concentration of AFSA affiliates in the U.S. with organizations at the University of Virginia, Washington and Lee, Virginia Military Institute, and James Madison University, with William and Mary on its way. (more…)

  • A Rebound Towards Excellence — and Smiles — in Newport News Public Schools

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    NNPS McIntosh Elementary School Odyssey of the Mind team – courtesy NNPS

    by James C. Sherlock

    The national and international headlines were awful.

    The shooting of Abby Zwerner at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News was horrible.

    The investigative reports were chilling.

    Newport News Public Schools (NNPS) has chosen the right path forward — positivity, community consultation and openness centered on the children.

    There are signs that they are getting it right in practice. (more…)

  • Without Full $1B Tax Cut, Let July 1 Deadline Pass

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    by Steve Haner

    Because the federal government cannot operate without constantly borrowing money, members of Congress in both parties recently held their noses and voted for a compromise budget and borrowing deal. That need not and should not happen now in Virginia.

    There is no similar pressure in Virginia, even though the June 30 end of the state fiscal year approaches. Virginia has a viable, fully balanced budget that runs through June 30, 2024. The stalemate underway involves only unadopted second-year amendments.

    Governor Glenn Youngkin and the House of Delegates should insist that any amendments to that new fiscal year budget include every dollar of tax relief they approved earlier this year. None of the spending increases approved by either the House or the Virginia Senate should be included unless the full amount of tax relief accompanies them.

    If the July deadline passes with no action, with no agreement to couple tax cuts with spending increases, Virginia’s Republican legislators will have accomplished what their colleagues in Washington failed to do (and in fairness couldn’t do). They will have stood firm until the taxpayers received the same level of consideration as those who consume those taxes.

    The real decision deadline is Election Day in November. Continuing the stalemate would give the voters a clear choice between the House vision of tax relief coupled with reasonable spending growth, or the Senate vision of mainly higher spending and zero tax relief. (more…)

  • Thanks, Loudoun County! We Needed That.

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty 

    Dear Loudoun County,

    Thanks so much for hiring Aaron Spence as your new superintendent of schools.

    Love, Virginia Beach

    Good news for those who care about returning sanity and common sense to Virginia Beach Public Schools: superintendent Aaron Spence is leaving to head up the troubled Loudoun County Public schools.

    Spence is not stupid, just incredibly woke. No doubt he realized that after last year’s school board elections he was exactly one vote away from being sacked. Why not take a high-paying job in a larger Virginia district where he’ll no doubt look terrific compared to the last guy, who was fired and is under a criminal indictment?

    The Washington Post reported in December that not only had Scott Ziegler been canned by the Loudoun County School Board, but a grand jury indicted him on criminal charges.

    Virginia special grand jury charges against former Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler and spokesman Wayde Byard were unsealed Monday. At least some of the indictments appear unrelated to the subject of the grand jury’s investigation: how the district handled two high-profile sexual assault cases in 2021.

    (more…)

  • What the Minutes Say About Public Education in Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    Robin Beres

    by James Wyatt Whitehead, V

    School may be out for the summer, but the report card for the Commonwealth’s public schools is headed for the inbox. It is hoped that progress can be measured and built upon.

    School boards face a siege of ailments not likely to be cured overnight. The challenges range from pandemic-era learning loss to chronic absenteeism, falling test scores, teacher retention, bus driver shortages, expanding achievement gaps, crumbling and aged schools, declining student conduct, and a concerned public that desires better outcomes from the billions of dollars spent on schools.

    Politicians and education experts have spilled gallons of ink outlining reforms that will correct the failures of public education in Virginia and move our students in the promising direction of success and achievement. Yet none of the reforms have examined an immediate solution that is in plain sight and could be implemented for August 2023; time.

    Since there are no caped crusaders who will save the day for the coming school year, school boards, superintendents, principals, teachers, and students are going to have to use the one thing that they do have. The Code of Virginia stipulates 180 instructional days or 990 hours of instructional time. Five-and-a-half hours or 59,400 minutes must occur each day and educators should waste none of this precious commodity. A typical high school class must have 140 hours or 8,400 minutes of instructional time to qualify for a standard credit for graduation. High school credits are measured by seat time thanks to the Carnegie Unit. But this measurement was conceived in 1906 and does not measure knowledge learned. Every school board in Virginia must ask the superintendent if that time was delivered to every teacher.
    (more…)

  • Belated Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • New Jefferson Institute CEO: Derrick Max

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Derrick Max, new CEO of the Thomas Jefferson Institute of Public Policy

    The following was released this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy:

    The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy announced today that Derrick Max has been appointed the new CEO and President of Virginia’s non-partisan, free-market public policy organization.

    An experienced thought leader and advocate, Derrick Max will succeed outgoing CEO Chris Braunlich, who is retiring from full-time employment,  and assume full responsibilities on July 1, 2023.

    Derrick Max has worked at the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute and served as a staff economist on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce where he led investigations into the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Departments of Education and Labor, the National Endowment for the Arts, and AmeriCorps.  Derrick led two business organizations trying to reform Social Security and co-founded and ran Cornerstone School, a private Christian school in Southeast DC, serving low-income students for more than 23 years. (more…)

  • A Fool’s Errand Finds Takers in Charlottesville

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    As an experiment, I went to the UVa Ed School research page and searched “all topics” for “Charter Schools.” The response: “No research items found matching your search.”

    So, I expanded the search to “Charter” and got the same response.

    I then investigated what should have proven a promising lead.

    The Partnership for Leaders in Education (UVA-PLE) is a unique joint venture between the highly ranked University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and School of Education and Human Development.

    Darden is involved, so it must be professional, businesslike, right? It certainly claims so.

    UVA-PLE combines the most innovative leadership advancement, practical expertise, and proven methodologies from both business and education to demonstrably improve educational and life outcomes for our nation’s students.

    “Proven methodologies” it says.

    Now take a look at “UVA Partnership for Leaders in Education – Exploring New Frontiers for K-12 Systems Transformation” published by UVA-PLE in February of this year.

    It is a 28-page word salad unblemished by any assessment of the pedagogy of charter schools, especially the most prominent and successful K-12 public school operation in the United States, Success Academy in New York City. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Back in Vogue at UVa: Viewpoint Diversity

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Douglas Wetmore

    by James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia leadership normally keeps its Board of Visitors meetings running on such a tightly scripted schedule that board members rarely get an opportunity to engage in free-wheeling discussion. But Rector Whitt Clement and President Jim Ryan made an exception Friday during the board’s June meeting: they set aside nearly an hour to talk about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

    Board member Douglas Wetmore, a Richmond businessman appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, set the tone as soon as the discussion began. On paper the administration values “viewpoint diversity” along with demographic and other forms of diversity, he noted. But unlike the meticulous statistics it compiles on the racial and gender breakdown of students, faculty, and staff, he said, the university does not track viewpoint diversity at all.

    “We want a wide range of competing ideas,” Wetmore said. “One hundred percent of statistics are related to race and gender. I haven’t seen one reflecting viewpoint diversity,” he said.

    While a few board members suggested that viewpoint diversity was not a serious issue at UVa, the ensuing discussion revolved mainly around how to define viewpoint diversity, how much of such diversity was desirable, and how to measure it while respecting individuals’ right to privacy.

    The Board conversation was unprecedented at UVa, where the DEI bureaucracy dedicated to advancing the interests of “marginalized” minorities has grown to 55 employees by the university’s own count. (more…)

  • UVa’s Undergraduate Female/Male Demographics vs. Diversity, Equity and Federal Law

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    UVa President Jim Ryan

    by James C. Sherlock

    The University of Virginia measures its diversity efforts by statistics. We’ll hold them to their own standards.

    That seems only equitable.

    President Ryan has said that the demographic composition of students is easy to measure. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office, proving him right, proudly displays a Diversity Dashboard.

    All eyes, including their own, go to race.

    But we’ll look at sex. And we’ll remember the requirements of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Amendments.

    no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

    It is demonstrable statistically that males are woefully underrepresented in the undergraduate population of the University of Virginia at rates inexplicable by chance.

    We will examine as potential root causes the skewed demographics of:

    • the undergraduate student population on the one hand; and
    • the Undergraduate Admissions Office and Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights on the other.

    And then we will see if we can identify any other potential causes of those discrepancies.

    It won’t go well. (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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