by Kerry Dougherty
Is it too much to ask the news media to put accuracy ahead of their political agendas?
We asked this in March when activists were more obsessed with pronouns than the fact that the trans Nashville school shooter, who killed three little kids and three adults, was occasionally referred to as a female. That’s what she was, by the way.
Now this from the local newspaper:
This is not true. The accused is a biological man. The slain man’s son. (more…)
by Scott Dreyer
World War II saw conflict across Europe, North Africa, Asia, and the oceans of the world. However, the charming Central Virginia town of Bedford is the site of the famous D-Day Memorial. Bedford sent 35 men to land at Normandy, France.
The memorial honors the 19 local boys who died on June 6, 1944, in the heroic struggle to liberate Europe from Nazism. Before the end of that campaign, four more Bedford boys lost their lives. Bedford’s mind-numbing 65 percent death rate means that on a per capita basis, the town sacrificed more residents than any other American community in that epic fight between good and evil.
Because of the fog of war and poor communication then, horrific news of those casualties did not begin to come into Bedford until July 17th, a month and a half after D-Day, when the first 11 deaths were reported. Reports of the other deaths trickled in over the following days and weeks.
Notably, since telegraph messages then were sent from town to town, news of Bedford’s losses first came through the Western Union telegraph office in Roanoke. One Roanoker had the terrible task at work of sending these five words to the Bedford office: “Good morning, we have casualties.”
“The youngest one was just about to turn 21 and the oldest was 30,” said Linda Parker, co-director of the Company A Bedford Boys Tribute Center.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at Tuesday’s commemoration (June 6th) at the D-Day Memorial to honor the 79th anniversary of that event. Remembering the sacrifices of those who went before, the Town of Bedford has festooned the lampposts along Main Street with banners featuring the names and photos of those Bedford Boys who never made it home from WWII, along with U.S. and French flags, since the site of the landings, the Normandy beaches, are in Northwest France.
As our state and nation face today’s many challenges, we can take hope and encouragement from the bravery, patriotism, and sacrifice of those who have gone before.
Republished with permission from The Roanoke Star.
by James C. Sherlock
Virginia is suing FEMA over its new risk rating methodology for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
Virginia’s suit says that the new methodology:
doesn’t recognize many mitigation efforts, nor does it clearly explain how rates are calculated based on mitigation efforts. This means that (Virginia’s) mitigation efforts don’t result in lower premiums for policyholders.
The suit does not state that the rates are not high enough. Which they are not.
The rest of the country does not “owe” a discount on flood insurance to those of us that choose to live in flood-prone areas.
Rate payers need to cover the costs of the NFIP, including building a reserve – like a real insurance program. (more…)
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
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…)
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…)
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.
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…)
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…)
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…)
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.
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…)
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…)
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…)
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.
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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