by Steve Haner and Kip Hansen
With the rainy remnants of another hurricane heading for Virginia from battered Louisiana, the stories of a coming Climate Armageddon will again ramp up. A couple of good examples of what to expect recently appeared in Virginia Mercury, the main one quoting numerous sources claiming Virginia is seeing more and more intense rainfall and will suffer more flooding as a result. (more…)
by James A. Bacon
It has become commonly accepted wisdom that a leading cause of poverty in Virginia is the phenomenon in which affluent citizens use their superior buying power to move to school districts with the highest quality schools. The poor, who have little buying power, are stuck in the worst school districts and get worse educations. Poor kids stuck in poor schools are more likely to grow up…. poor.
I am not disputing that belief, but I am subjecting it to critical scrutiny. The effect likely is real, but we don’t know if it is strong or weak.
On the one hand, there is abundant evidence that school quality and home prices are inter-related. In a recent blog post Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist for the Virginia Association of Realtors, cites a National Association of Realtors survey finding that 24% of home owners say the quality of schools was important when they were looking for a new home. The share rises to 42% for home buyers between the ages of 31 and 40. Another study has found that a five percent improvement in test scores in a school district can raise home prices by 2.5 percent. Another study concluded that homes in top-ranked school districts get more viewers and sell faster. (more…)
by Hans Bader
Many kids became fatter when schools closed to in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. “Overweight or obesity increased among 5- through 11-year-olds from 36.2% to 45.7% during the pandemic, an absolute increase of 8.7% and relative increase of 23.8%,” noted the Journal of the American Medical Association.
That’s making the effects of the pandemic much worse. “The evidence linking obesity to adverse COVID-19 outcomes is ‘overwhelmingly clear,’” say health experts. More than half of all people hospitalized for the coronavirus are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Children very rarely die of the coronavirus, but they can suffer a lot from it, especially if they are fat. Obese people are much more likely to require hospitalization when they contract the coronavirus.
“Pediatric COVID-19 cases are surging, pushing hospitals — and health care workers — to their breaking points,” reports Time Magazine. New Orleans is one of America’s fattest cities, and is located in one of America’s least vaccinated states. Predictably, Children’s Hospital of New Orleans (CHNO) is facing a surge in hospitalizations. (more…)
by Walter Smith
To the tune of “Unforgettable”…
Unequivocal you’re not at all
Unequivocal nowhere this fall
Like an empty phrase that runs from me
How your illusion does things to me
Never before has something been less
Unequivocal in every way
The University of Virginia formed the Free Expression and Free Inquiry Committee in February 2021. In May the Board of Visitors “unequivocally” endorsed the work of the Committee. Personally, I think the statement is a disgrace to Jefferson’s free speech legacy – I was hoping for more than the Chicago Principles and got a lukewarm, turgid, academic, PC jargon, kinda sorta saying UVA believes in free speech..
Does UVa really believe in free speech? We have seen that F— UVA is vigorously protected on the Lawn, but what about in the classrooms and on the Grounds? Are students and professors free to express their beliefs without fear of recrimination? Anecdotally, I don’t think they are. I have heard stories. and I have seen true harassment and shaming and threats for the “crime” of not agreeing with current woke ideology du jour. (more…)
by Kerry Dougherty
They were heartfelt and poignant. Most remarkably, they seemed spontaneous.
I’m talking about the makeshift memorials that suddenly appeared in American taverns, breweries and restaurants over the weekend to honor the 13 service members killed in action in Afghanistan on Thursday.
Most featured 13 glasses of beer on an otherwise empty table marked “Reserved.” Many listed the names of the fallen. Others had simple words of appreciation.
These tables were inspired, it seems, by the “Missing Man” table at many Armed Forces dinner events and they served as moving reminders of the Marines, soldier and sailor who were killed by a suicide bomber outside the Abbey Gate of the Kabul Airport as they tried to protect Americans and Afghans trying to flee that country.
No one seems to know who bought the first 13 beers and set them on a table marked “Reserved,” but by Sunday they were everywhere, from Cowboy Jack’s in Fargo, ND to First Line Brewing in Orchard Park, NY. From Klooz Brewz in Lebanon IN, to the Thirsty Horse Saloon in San Antonio. From Southern Craft in Bristol, VA, to at least two local joints, O’Connor Brewing in Norfolk and New Realm in Virginia Beach. (more…)
Dr. Bob Holsworth is a former professor and founding director for both the Center for Public Policy and the Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Holsworth shared extended thoughts on the current state of play in Virginia on his Facebook page. Shaun Kenney applied some light editing and formatting for republication in The Republican Standard. That version appears below.
Three university-based polls have been released in the last week about the Governor’s race. Taken together (and with an appropriate grain of salt), the surveys help to set the table for the November election. Here’s my take on the state of play.
1. The Horse Race
Every poll has McAuliffe leading.
CNU and Roanoke has him with significant leads, 9 and 8 points respectively. VCU (3) and some GOP leaning survey firms (2-5) has McAuliffe ahead by smaller amounts.
I’m comfortable saying that McAuliffe is ahead right now, but I would need to know more about the makeup of the electorate and the relative enthusiasm for the candidates before I’d recommend placing bets on the outcome and the spread. (more…)
by James A. Bacon
Readers of Bacon’s Rebellion in the early days may remember Ed Risse, a long-time contributor to the blog (and its predecessor publication, a biweekly newsletter). Ed, who was 84, passed away a week ago from injuries sustained from a fall.
Ed, whose idiosyncratic byline was E M Risse (with no periods), was a ponderous writer, prone to long essays loaded with specialized vocabulary of his own devising, but a brilliant thinker — the deepest and most original thinker of my acquaintance. Readers who could plow through his work were well rewarded. His passion was human settlement patterns — land use and its relationship to transportation, municipal services, taxes, livability and sustainability. His core thesis was that sprawling, low-density, autocentric development (what others called suburban sprawl, a term he thought too imprecise to ever use himself) had turned Northern Virginia and other Virginia metros into an uninhabitable mess.
The antidote to “sprawl” was balanced, mixed, and compact growth. Ed famously said that if Fairfax County had been developed at the same density as Reston, which is widely regarded as a very livable community, the entire population would fit into a third of the county, leaving the rest for countryside. His vision was similar to that which we now call Smart Growth, although Ed, always the purist, had his disagreements with Smart Growthers, too. (more…)
by James C. Sherlock
Virginia has 132 school divisions.
I don’t pretend to know what each has done to address the monumental task of teaching kids who have been at varying levels disconnected from the educational system for 18 months.
But I offer a suggestion that some may already be using: seek the assistance — as volunteers or temporary employees — of retirees.
These may include: (1) retired teachers; (2) retirees with some teaching experience and verified subject matter expertise in high-need specialties; and (3) those with special staff qualifications.
Such an initiative will have to be managed carefully and well to ensure the experience is efficient and effective for both the children and the adults and the schools can access the rules relatively easily.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) will need to clear the way by organizing and publishing state licensing guidance. (more…)
by James C. Sherlock
The question asked in the headline is a class 5 hurricane that has come ashore.
School is in session.
The recommendations for whether and how to execute large-scale retention in grade, whatever they might have been, would have proven very controversial but potentially helpful. Such guidelines are now moot.
Work in schools on the assessments of individual children for retention or advancement likely started in June. But under what assumptions? None of the decision makers have never seen conditions like this.
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE), prone to maddening and useless pontification rather than dealing with reality, has not acknowledged much less discussed the issue or offered counsel. Unusually silent, the top brass has decided to wait out the storm in their Richmond redoubt.
Virginia schools, parents and children are left to deal with the crisis alone.
VDOE can be counted on to tell them later what they should have done. (more…)
by James A. Bacon
Most Virginia news media duly reported the release of the latest Standards of Learning (SOL) data showing the biggest collapse in pass rates in the history of the SOLs. Most accepted the Northam administration’s spin that the decline was due mainly to COVID-19-related disruptions, and that Virginians should not read too much into the results. Then the media dropped the story. K-12 news coverage moved on to other topics such as the shortage of teachers and bus drivers. (The Washington Post did not deem the SOL story worthy of coverage of any kind.)
You’d think that a collapse of the magnitude seen in the 2020-21 school year — 46% of all students failed to pass their math SOLs — would generate greater interest. You’d think widening racial gap in educational achievement — 66% of Black students failed their math exams — would prompt more scrutiny. Perhaps if the governor were a Republican, the media would be more interested in exploring the story.
Whatever the reasons for the media’s lack of interest in the most important K-12 education story of the year, Bacon’s Rebellion is prepared to step in.
Every school district faced the COVID-19 pandemic. Every school district had to make tough choices based on imperfect and evolving information about whether to continue in-person classes, shift to remote learning, or cobble together a hybrid of the two. But in some districts, the decline in SOL performance was far worse than in others. (more…)
by James C. Sherlock
Chief Dan George played Lone Watie in the 1976 classic The Outlaw Josie Wales, one of the greatest westerns ever made.
Lone Watie related a story of a visit to Washington. The visit was the occasion on which the Secretary of the Interior told the chiefs that they would have to relocate their tribes far from their homes.
Watie:
“He told us ‘Endeavor to persevere.’”
“When we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.”
The Secretary was callous but at least he was brief as he presaged the trail of tears.
I will give you a taste of VDOE guidance in the current educational crisis. You can choose whether the leadership are in way over their heads or simply blinded in the thrall of their own dogma. Or both.
Not sure it matters. “Endeavor to persevere” would be preferable to what they have delivered. (more…)
by Donald Smith
This is a story of two political candidates, from two different parties, and the standard that should –but almost assuredly won’t — be applied to both.
The candidates are Terry McAuliffe, Democrat, running for governor of Virginia in 2021, and Nick Freitas, Republican, running for the House of Delegates in 2019.
The standard is that candidates in Virginia elections have to satisfy state requirements for filling out key paperwork.
In 2019, Nick Freitas didn’t. From the Washington Post, July 26th 2019.
State election officials said his local Republican legislative committee never submitted a required form indicating Freitas was the party’s nominee. The state said another form, which Freitas personally should have filed, was also missing.
Freitas was forced to run as a write-in candidate. (He won).
Apparently, in 2021, Terry McAuliffe has his own paperwork problems. From the AP: (more…)
by John Butcher
2020 was the first spring since 1998 without SOL tests in Virginia. Then came 2021, when participation in the testing was voluntary.
The VDOE press release says, “[2020-21] was not a normal school year for students and teachers, in Virginia or elsewhere, so making comparisons with prior years would be inappropriate.” The first line of the very next paragraph of the press release then quotes the Superintendent making a comparison: “Virginia’s 2020-2021 SOL test scores tell us what we already knew—students need to be in the classroom without disruption to learn effectively.”
Let’s look at some data and see whether they offer any principled implications.
But first: As we have seen, economically disadvantaged students (“ED”) underperform their more affluent peers (“Not ED”) by around twenty points, depending on the test. This renders the school and division and state averages meaningless because of the varying percentages of ED students. Fortunately, the VDOE database offers data for both groups. Hence the more complicated analyses below.
To start, let’s look at the numbers of students tested by year for reading in Richmond and statewide. (more…)
by James A. Bacon
The University of Virginia is engaging in an interesting real-world experiment in the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine mandates. UVa’s must-vaccinate rule for students is similar to policies at almost every other university in Virginia and many employers as well. But UVa’s COVID tracker, which is updated daily, provides a finer-grained insight into what’s happening in its community of students, faculty and staff than other dashboards I’ve viewed.
Recall that one year ago, UVa relied upon a combination of testing, masking, social distancing, online classes, and quarantining to contain the spread of the virus. Three very big changes have occurred since then. First, vaccines were introduced. Second, the super-transmissible Delta mutation became the dominant COVID-19 virus in the United States. And third, UVa reinstituted in-person classes.
This academic year, UVa went “all in” on vaccinations, requiring all students (save a handful with medical or religious exemptions) to get the jab. Students who failed to comply were “unenrolled.” Faculty and staff were “strongly urged” to take the shot. As of last week, reported UVA Today, 97% of UVa students were fully vaccinated, as was 92% of the teaching and research faculty. Additionally, everyone is required to wear masks in public indoor places. The policies and protocols are much stricter than for Virginia as a whole.
How are they working out? (more…)
by Walter Smith
Have you noticed that pharmacy ads on TV close with a long list of side effects and warn you to ask your doctor if BigPharma XYZ is right for you? How come there is no similar warning for COVID shots?
You must be an anti-vaxxer, I imagine you are thinking right now. A conspiracy theorist! A government hater! No, I am a sentient human being with a brain, and a finely attuned lie detector from being a lawyer for large companies for more than 30 years.
Some people are making a big deal out of the fact that the FDA has given the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccination its full approval, not just an authorization for emergency use. It’s approved, they say. Hopefully more people will get the jab now.
But consider: the treatment got the thumbs up after less than a year when “vaccines” historically have taken ten to 15 years to gain approval. If anyone believes the government is inefficient, it is me… But a 1,500% improvement? Color me skeptical.
The FDA press release announcing the Pfizer-BioNTech approval aroused my suspicions. The tip-off: you have to get to paragraphs 13 and 14 to read about myocarditis, pericarditis and the ongoing studies conducted to ensure that “safety concerns continue [are] identified and evaluated in a timely manner.” (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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