Bacon's Rebellion

  • School Discipline in Virginia – Part 3 — A Sharp Policy Turn to the Left after 2009

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Here is the information from a slide briefing to the Loudon County school board on February 6, 2013.

    “Experimentally.”

    The slide itself was actually produced in 2008 by pbis.org. It seems like a bad joke now, but that was how it was presented.

    Not a word about race there, but there surely is in a presentation linked by that organization now. Risk index and risk ratios? With cartoon figures of Black children? Seriously?

    Did I mention that Newport News Public Schools is rated fluent in PBIS by the state ed school consortium that trains and rates PBIS schools? They probably would take issue with all of those promises.

    As would most of the working staff of schools across Virginia that use PBIS.

    So how did we get here? (more…)

  • Virginia Is for Lovers… Er, Lawyers

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    James A. Bacon

    From a study by federal-lawyer.com: There are 21.23 applicants to law school per 100,000 population in Virginia — the ninth highest ratio for any state in the country. Leading the tally is our next-door neighbor, Washington, D.C., with 129.4 applicants, far exceeding the 29.15 per 100,000 ratio of runner-up New York.

    According to the American Bar Association, there are about 1.3 million lawyers in the United States.

    — JAB

  • Cavalier Daily Reveals Real Motive for Vilifying Bert Ellis

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    As a critical vote approaches in the Virginia state senate, The Cavalier Daily has doubled down on its denunciation of Bert Ellis, and in so doing has revealed its real motive for campaigning to block his appointment to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors: Ellis represents a threat to Business As Usual at UVa.

    In a Jan. 28 column, the Editorial Board rehashed its absurdly one-sided portrayal of Ellis’ actions as a member of the University Union 50 years ago and the two-and-a-half-year-old thought crime of intending, but never following through, to use a razor blade to cut down the infamous “F— UVA” sign on the door of a Lawn resident. The editors have persisted in their cherry-picking of facts despite the publication of multiple articles providing the full context of these incidents. (To refresh yourself on the details click here.) 

    The Cavalier Daily is not engaging in journalism. The editorial, like its previous articles and editorials libeling Ellis as a racist and homophobe, is a partisan polemic. Sadly, as the student newspaper’s charges have been amplified by the UVa Student Council and Faculty Senate and propagated through social media and the rumor mill, they have inspired Democratic Party opposition in the General Assembly to the confirmation of Ellis, who was nominated by Governor Glenn Youngkin last June.

    Normally, Virginia’ governors’ nominations for state boards and commissions are lumped together in a single bill and approved en masse. This year, two of Youngkin’s nominations have been stripped out for separate confirmation: State Health Commissioner Colin M. Greene, who has expressed skepticism of “systemic racism” as a cause of racial differences in racial health outcomes, and Ellis.

    Why has Ellis been singled out? Why the grotesque misrepresentations? Why have the CD‘s allegations transmogrified into claims so outrageous that even the CD would not recognize them — for instance, that Ellis used a razor blade to assault the young woman who penned the F— UVA sign?

    Militant leftists perceive Ellis as a threat to their stranglehold on UVa’s culture and power structures. (more…)

  • Dominion Seeks Return of RGGI Tax to Its Bills

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    Steve Haner

    The states currently in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative CO2 emissions compact.

    by Steve Haner

    The on again, off again, direct tax on Dominion Energy Virginia bills to pay for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) may be on again. If you feel like you are watching a shell game and just cannot find the pea, that is intentional.

    In its sales pitch for its latest effort to create a more favorable regulatory environment, Dominion Energy Virginia is touting its proposal to take several of its existing stand-alone rate adjustment charges (RACs) and roll them into its base rates. The claim is that will save ratepayers $350 million. (more…)

  • Drink Their Coffee, Then the Kool-Aid

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    Robin Beres

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    The only thing I remember from Howard Fast’s Lavette family saga is from the fourth book, The Legacy. A pragmatic leftist organizer is registering Black voters in Mississippi with two dewy-eyed liberals, and an older couple invites the three into their home. They drink coffee and the two liberals talk about the high-flown principles behind what they’re doing and what great things they hope to do for the Black community in the South.

    The pragmatic leftist sees two things wrong. First, the couple is already registered; the organizers should move on to someone who’s not. Second, they’re drinking a week’s worth of coffee from a couple too proud to say anything.

    Fast could be heavy-handed in his writing — but he made a good point. The people who thought they were doing the couple a favor just didn’t get it. The dew is in the eyes of proponents of the Bluestone Town Center (BTC) today.
    (more…)

  • School Discipline in Virginia – Part 2 – Positive Options Trumped by a Race Card

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    sherlockj

    From social media video of school fight

    by James C. Sherlock

    I have found both surprise and confusion among some readers when I use the term “valid studies” in discussing the avalanche of doctoral theses and studies produced annually by schools of education.

    The federal Institute for Educational Sciences established What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) in 2002 to sort the wheat from the chaff for school divisions and state education agencies before they choose a particular intervention to pursue to solve a problem.

    Since I discovered WWC a few years ago, I check it in my own research in an attempt to make sure I don’t go down a rabbit hole with some study that is flawed.

    On the subject of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), WWC shows in assessments of interventions to solve problems of social-emotional learning and behavior management:

    1. strong evidence that PBIS offers no measurable improvement, and
    2. that there are alternative approaches to PBIS that do show strong improvement.

    One study of PBIS, conducted in Maryland (which will come up again later), was the only one ever to meet strict WWC standards of quality and strong evidence.

    Strong evidence from that trial — in 2010 — found that PBIS did not work to improve social-emotional development and behavior in K-5 children.

    There were no positive findings. None.

    Yet a very large number of Virginia’s largest school divisions use it anyway.

    And all of them started using it after that 2010 study.

    But then again, so did Maryland. (more…)

  • RVA 5×5: State of The City – What The People Think

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    Robin Beres

    by Jon Baliles

    There is a little-known part of Richmond’s City Code that requires the City Auditor to produce a “Services, Efforts, and Accomplishments” (SEA) Report by conducting a thorough poll/survey of Richmond residents to see what they think about the level of service and performance and deliverability of City government. In other words, it’s the poll that every politician fears more than anything because they can’t B.S. their way past the peoples’ opinions of what they see and experience every day.

    Doug Wilder used to say (and still does), “The people are always ahead of the politicians,” and that is never more accurate than with the SEA report presented by the Auditor in February 2022. It received virtually zero attention, but that’s usually what happens with bad news. You try and bury it, label it fake news, or quickly move on to something else.

    SEA reports include questions like: Are you satisfied with the overall direction of the City? What is your opinion of the value of services for the taxes paid to Richmond? Does the City do a good job informing residents about issues facing the community? Is the City open and transparent with the public?

    The reason this 2022 report is relevant 11 months after it was issued is that tonight, Mayor Levar Stoney will deliver his penultimate State of the City speech that will undoubtedly be an upbeat recitation of his accomplishments and how great the City is doing — in his eyes. His office put out this four-minute video a few weeks ago to tee-up the talking points and set the stage for his speech (and perhaps his next campaign). (more…)

  • Virginia Dems Refuse To Support Female Athletes

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    Robin Beres

    by Kerry Dougherty

    I’m old.

    Old enough to remember when there were sane members of Virginia’s Democrat Party.

    They’ve apparently died or left the building and the party is under the complete control of woke loons. Like Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the former Speaker of Virginia’s House of Delegates, who recently pretended not to understand why the Old Dominion needs a law prohibiting transgendered athletes from competing in female sports.

    (Frankly, I have no problem with trans-men competing against males. Let ‘em try. Truth is, females are smaller and don’t have the strength of men and no amount of hormones and body hair will give them an unfair competitive advantage over biological males.)

    Referring to HB1387, a bill introduced by Del. Karen Greenhalgh of Virginia Beach that would require athletes to compete in sports that comply with their biological gender, Filler-Corn voted against the bill and called it “mean-spirited,” sneering: “We have had transgender youth living in the commonwealth, and there has been no takeover of women’s sports,” she said. “I just don’t understand why this conversation continues.” (more…)

  • School Discipline in Virginia – Part 1 – PBIS

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    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    Updated Feb 1 at 8:13:25 with a correction to IES assessment of PBIS.

    Newport News Schools PBIS Capacity Assessments – Courtesy Dr. Jaruan M. Ransome, Program Administrator, Student Conduct & Discipline

    Newport News Schools first implemented Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports (VTSS) and its discipline component, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), in the 2017-18 school year.

    That year Newport News Schools was in Cohort 3 of VDOE’s VTSS program, which provides support at the division level through grant funding and technical assistance. PBIS is implemented in every Newport News school.

    In April of 2022, for the second time, those schools were rated by the state as “fluent” in the implementation of VTSS/PBIS.

    Good to know. I mean that.

    That means that there can be no confusion as to what has gone wrong in Newport News Schools. The behavioral and educational chaos there represents some combination of system failure and individual failure.

    But the point is that was always going to happen in many schools, especially those in the toughest neighborhoods.

    PBIS is dangerous by design.

    It can work, but in trying to trade some safety for a lot of equity, it too often gets neither.

    And even its proponents have found out that without safety and order, nothing else about the schools can work.

    (more…)

  • Respect Art, Heal Divisions

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    Bob Rayner

    by Donald Smith

    “Our institution takes very seriously the responsibility to manage these objects in ways that ensure their origins and purpose are never forgotten: that is the glorification of those who led the fight to enslave African Americans and destroy the Union.” 

    Those are the words of Marland Buckner, interim director of the city of Richmond’s Black History Museum, in a December 2021 press release.  The press release responded to plans, just announced by Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and then-Governor Ralph Northam, to transfer nine statues of Confederate leaders and soldiers to the custody of the Black History Museum and the Valentine Museum.  The fate of those statues is still up in the air.  But, for those people in Richmond and Virginia who want to treat those statues with contempt and disrespect, the Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) has just offered them a wonderful gift.

    The CNC was formed by the last Congress and directed to review the visible memorials to, and mentions of, Confederates on Department of Defense assets.  It did much, much more than that.  It rendered an official assessment as to how all Americans should view Confederate statues that were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – an assessment the CNC implies has Congress’ blessing. (more…)

  • Five Reasons the Assembly Should Cut Taxes

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    Steve Haner

    By Barbara Hollingsworth

    Last week, the Republican majority in the Virginia House of Delegates passed a $1 billion package of tax cuts for individuals and businesses, the centerpiece of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s economic agenda. But Democrats, who have a 22-18 majority in the state Senate, have a laundry list of policies and programs they would prefer to spend the surplus money on rather than return it to taxpayers.

    Tax policy is a non-partisan issue that has real-world economic consequences, especially when it comes to taxes on business income. Here are five reasons why the state Senate should follow the House’s lead and pass the governor’s entire tax relief package, including reduction of the commonwealth’s corporate income tax rate.

    There’s a very large budget surplus.

    In fact, Virginia is sitting on a record budget surplus of $3.6 billion, which is revenue collected from businesses and individual taxpayers in excess of the needs and priorities state legislators have already identified and fully funded during the 2022-2024 biennial budget process. It’s disingenuous to suggest that Virginia “can’t afford” to return at least part of that surplus to taxpayers. (more…)

  • Psst! Where Is The Library?

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    I have been wondering about the possible effectiveness of Del. Tim Anderson’s bill trying to give parents control over their kids’ access to material in the school library that contain graphic sexual material (HB 1379).  Therefore, this weekend I asked my 16-year-old grandson, who is attending public school for the first him Johnny) restricted Johnny’s access to a book in the library. His answers surprised me:

    1. Not many kids in his school use the school library.

    2.  The security in the library is so lax that Johnny could walk out of the library with the book in his backpack without school officials knowing it.

    What I had expected him to say, and what I expect would commonly be the case, would be that Johnny would ask one of his friends, including possibly my grandson, whose parents had not put any restrictions on their access to books, to check the book out for him.  Lacking that option, Johnny could go to the library during a study period and look at, or read, the book without checking it out.

    This is not a bill offering a solution to a problem.  It is a bill designed to score political points while giving false comfort to those parents who do not feel they know and can trust their kids.

  • Virginia’s Educational Objectives?

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    Robin Beres

    by Matthew Hurt

    If one were to ask Virginians whether we wish to have the best educational system in the country, the answer would be a resounding “Yes!” However, if “What does that look like?” were to be the follow-up question, we would get quite a wide variety of answers. It appears that we have not gained consensus on this question, even among the key decision-making bodies in the state. If we don’t have a commonly held definition of what constitutes successful schooling, how can we ever accomplish that goal?

    During my leadership journey I have learned a number of important lessons that are critical to the success of any organization. First, the organization must identify desired outcomes and ensure those outcomes are measurable. Second, progress toward those outcomes must be monitored regularly. Third, if acceptable progress is not realized, impediments to that progress must be identified and mitigated. Fourth, the organization must maintain a disciplined focus on the desired outcomes and not be lured into investing in extraneous initiatives. Fifth, if not everyone in the organization is lined up and pulling in the same direction, the organization will not be able to achieve the desired outcomes — therefore it is imperative to get a critical mass of folks on board.

    Recently the Board of Education has been entertaining different ideas of how to update our state accountability system. Renewed focus has been placed on this due to declining proficiency on state Standards of Learning assessments (even prior to the pandemic) and significant declines in Reading 4 and Math 4 results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests relative to other states. It seems pretty clear that most constituents are not satisfied with the current accountability provisions, and they have not yielded success for our students. (more…)

  • As Much As We Want to Support the Boys in Blue…

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    James A. Bacon

    David Edward Stone. Photo credit: Daily Progress

    …sometimes we end up with cases like this one. Richmond Police Officer David Edward Stone, a Louisa County resident, was arrested last week on 50 child pornography charges. Stone has served on the Richmond police force since 2006, reports The Daily Progress.

    Society needs police to protect against criminals. And the Richmond police have been doing a creditable job in the past several months. But Stone reminds us that occasionally the cops are the criminals. Spotting and purging bad actors is all the more imperative when police departments are drastically understaffed, recruitment is suffering, and the temptation is strong to take anyone who seems remotely qualified. — JAB

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

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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