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Jeanine’s Sunday Memes
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Teaching in the Time of COVID
by Matt HurtSince March 13 when Virginia schools were initially closed due to COVID-19, I have participated in discussions with hundreds (maybe thousands) of public school teachers and administrators from across Virginia. Most conversations centered on the educational difficulties imposed by the pandemic. A common thread through those conversation was the frustration that schools were not meeting the needs of at-risk students. Educators felt like they were between a rock and a hard place.
Most of these educators work in school divisions that offer some degree of in-person instruction to every student, and have done so through most of this school year. These folks are concerned that educational outcomes, even for students who opted for in-person instruction, will not be consistent with the progress expected prior to the pandemic.
Few divisions offered in-person instruction for students five days a week. Some offered four days per week, and many offered two days per week (one group coming two days a week, and another group coming another two days a week to accommodate spacing needs for social distancing). In almost all divisions, the school day was slightly shortened. In most instances teachers had significantly less time with their students than in previous years. (more…)
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Explaining Richmond’s Crazy Dropout Rates
by James A. Bacon
It is widely acknowledged by scholars on the Left and Right that there is a strong correlation between a high school student’s socioeconomic status and his or her propensity for dropping out. The generalization makes intuitive sense, and there is ample data to back it up. Across Virginia, 7% of economically disadvantaged (ED) students fly the coop before they graduate. Only 4% of their not-disadvantaged peers (NED) do.
But the Richmond City public school system is an anomaly, as John Butcher, publisher of Cranky’s Blog, has found in his relentless probing of school-system statistics.
Thirteen percent of Richmond’s disadvantaged students quit the school system before graduating. That’s a miserable performance; the dropout rate is about 1.8 times that for all disadvantaged students across the state. But get a load of this: 36% of students who are Not Disadvantaged depart before they graduate. That’s a mind-blowing nine times higher than the state average for that group, and nearly three times the rate for ED students. (more…)
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One Third of House GOP Backs Stronger SCC
Delegate Carrie Coyner, R-Chesterfield by Steve Haner
Five interrelated bills that will strengthen the State Corporation Commission’s oversight during Dominion Energy Virginia’s next rate case advanced out of the House of Delegates Friday, with the two strongest receiving either 12 or 10 Republican aye votes.
All received at least some Republican votes, and four of the five had Democrats voting in opposition. After I made a pitch (elsewhere) for Republicans to do this, a report on the outcome is in order. A major Dominion rate case begins in April and may be reaching a conclusion around Election Day, and by then the impact of all the restraints put on the SCC in past years may be painfully clear to millions of Dominion customers. (more…)
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Northam’s Vaccination Comeback
by James A. Bacon
After an abysmal start in vaccinating its population, Virginia has risen to 10th best in the nation ranked by the percentage of COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered. According to the Beckers Hospital Review database, Virginia has given 68.7% of the vaccine doses supplied by the federal government.
I don’t know what kind of whip Northam applied to his health care bureaucrats since Virginia ranked 50th in the nation a couple of weeks ago, but something is working. The system for giving shots in the Old Dominion has relied primarily on hospitals and secondarily upon local health departments. Doctors’ offices, community health providers and pharmacies have been tertiary players in the effort.
The Northam strategy faces a new test, however, as the state prioritizes local health departments. In the past week, health departments have been supplied with 81,550 new “first” doses compared to only 16,650 for hospitals, according to the Virginia Department of Health vaccine dashboard. (The distribution of “second” doses has been more even.) (more…)
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Consumer Reports Misleads on Virginia EV Bill
Great Seal of Virginia by James C. Sherlock
Few media outlets are as influential with their readership as Consumer Reports or as active in soliciting direct contact of public officials on issues that management feels are important to that publication’s political values. That is their right, but false statements in support of their positions is a violation of public trust.
I received yesterday afternoon in my email a solicitation for political action in Virginia pushed out by Consumer Reports to all subscribers. It read:
Earlier this week, the Virginia House of Delegates approved an exciting piece of legislation that would allow the state to make it easier for consumers to buy fuel-efficient and electric vehicles at car dealerships in the Commonwealth.
That in turn could help drivers save money on fuel and reduce our air pollution: a win-win no matter how you slice it.
But before the bill can get signed into law, it must pass through the Senate by next week. Can you send a message to your VA Senator now and ask them to vote YES on House Bill 1965?
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For “Cultural Competency,” Try Reading Two New Bios of Frederick Douglass
by Hans BaderThe General Assembly is moving toward requiring history teachers to study black history. SB 1196, passed by the state senate, would mandate teachers seeking a license or license renewal to have training in “cultural competency” and complete board-approved instruction in African American history.
I worry about these “cultural competency” requirements, and whether schools will teach bizarre racial stereotypes under the guise of cultural competency. For example, the Seattle Schools, under the guise of teaching cultural competence, made bizarre claims, such as that individualism is racism, that only whites can be racists, and that “future time orientation” – planning ahead – is a stereotypically white characteristic that minorities shouldn’t be expected to exhibit. As a black Supreme Court Justice disapprovingly noted in a 2007 ruling, “The Seattle school district’s Website formerly contained the following” examples of what it called “cultural racism’: “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology” and “defining one form of English as standard.”
These disturbing claims came from Pacific Education Group, one of America’s most famous diversity-training firms, which has been hired by school districts in Virginia, Maryland, and many other states. It has promoted some of the crudest imaginable racial stereotypes, such as claiming that “white talk” is “verbal, impersonal, intellectual” and “task-oriented,” while black talk is “emotional.”
Let’s hope that the Pacific Education Group is not involved in designing Virginia’s Black History curriculum. In the meantime, it is now Black History Month and Virginians should consider inoculating themselves against Critical Race Theory-infused thinking by reading about one of America’s great thinkers and orators, Frederick Douglass. (more…)
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Send Kids Back to School, Northam Urges
Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch by James A. Bacon
Better late than never. Citing the increased risk of depression and “irreparable learning loss” from current policies, Governor Ralph Northam said in his Friday press conference that every public school in Virginia should make in-person instruction available as an option by next month. He also urged school districts to offer summer classes to kids who want to take them.
“My fellow pediatricians say they’re seeing an increase in behavioral problems, mental health issues and even increases in substance abuse among their young patients,” said Northam. “They’re writing more prescriptions, such as anti-depressants and stimulants. And that’s just not a good direction for us to keep going. And we’re also seeing a decline in academic performance.”
It’s good to see Northam acknowledging these realities, which Bacon’s Rebellion columnists have been highlighting for months now. As the COVID-19 epidemic left Virginia’s public schools in tatters, Northam’s Department of Education and many school districts busied themselves with implementing Critical Race Theory to combat racial “inequities.” Ironically, the hardships and educational regression caused by schools’ shift to distance learning are most pronounced in minority communities. (more…)
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Criminal Justice Scorecard at Crossover
By Dick Hall-SizemoreWith the General Assembly at the crossover break, now would be a good time to take stock of the status of major criminal justice and public safety legislation. Not surprisingly, the priorities identified by Democrats are faring well.
Below is a summary of the actions taken on selected bills. For a more detailed description of each bill, see my earlier post. The votes are in parenthesis. In most cases, the original bill was amended or there was a substitute before it passage.
Still alive; Passed first house
Democratic priorities
Repeal of death penalty—HB 2263 (57-41); SB 1165 (21-17) (more…)
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A Tale of Three Virginias
Source: UVa Weldon Cooper Center; statchatva.com by Shaun Kenney
For those who have taken the opportunity to get to know the Old Dominion, one would be well served to drive the Colonial Parkway.
Built by the Rockefeller family in the 1930s, the road is designed in such a way that you could travel the length from Jamestown through Williamsburg and to Yorktown without even so much as noticing the colonial capital.
This is by design, of course. Yet it is also a way of understanding how unique Virginia is among her sister colonies turned states. Whereas New England built townships upon the rocky yet rich black soil, Virginians built farms and plantations upon cheap land, pushing further west when the soil gave out or new opportunities arose.
Townships and cities were the oddities.
For almost 400 years, this concept of Virginia was Virginia. We were an agrarian society of farms and farmlets, ranchers and miners, fishermen and merchants. True, we built a great manufacturing city in Richmond and a great port at Hampton Roads — our own Athens and Piraeus — but much like our Colonial Parkway, these major ports could go unnoticed. (more…)
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Virginia’s Legendary Corruption Blocks Antitrust Enforcement
Great Seal of Virginia by James C. Sherlock
Readers of this blog have indicated an unquenchable appetite for information about and discussion of Virginia’s Certificate of Public Need (COPN) law and its administration.
This essay informs on the negative impacts of the COPN law and the Virginia Antitrust Act (the Act) itself on the enforcement of antitrust laws against Virginia’s regional hospital monopolies.
First, know that the business activities that some of Virginia’s hospital monopolies exhibit can already be deemed illegal under both federal and state antitrust laws. But the Act gives them a special dispensation, complicates both state and federal antitrust enforcement and results directly in the in-your-face anticompetitive activities we see every day.
The federal government (and once even Bob McDonnell as Virginia Attorney General) occasionally have intervened to block interstate mergers or in-state acquisitions before they occur, but always within the federal administrative and court systems, and they have never challenged COPN decisions.
But no government agency has ever sued over the business activities of Virginia’s COPN-constructed monopolies. (more…)
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Why the Woke Fixation with “Enslaved” and “Enslavers”?
by James A. BaconThe Washington Post has taken notice of a bill, HB 1980, which would require the five public Virginia universities founded in the ante-bellum era to document their ties to slavery and establish scholarships or economic development programs to benefit communities descended from slaves.
I gave my take on that bill some three weeks ago in this post. In a nutshell, I argued that you can’t rectify the effects of past racism with reverse racism.
My focus today is the Post, whose story bears all the tics and tropes of contemporary progressivism. In particular, the newspaper appears to have adopted, as standard practice, use of the terms “enslaved” and “enslaver” in place of “slave” and “slaveowner.” Here are two examples in this article: (more…)
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Where Is the Outrage?
Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn and House Clerk Suzette Denslow
Photo Credit: Ned Oliver, Virginia MercuryBy Dick Hall-Sizemore
I have waited all day for the howls of protest on this blog concerning the high-handed action of a House committee chairman who would not allow a bill even to be considered and voted on in committee. She just sat on it. Shades of Ed Willey! And we thought these Democrats were going to be transparent, but there has been no complaint from those who are usually so quick to condemn the legislature and its “plantation elite” ways.
Oh, wait. That was Lee Carter’s bill (HB 1755) that would have repealed the right-to-work law. I guess the conservatives on this blog are OK with such dictatorial behavior when it comes to bills they hate. And we thought those Democrats were going to be so liberal and wreck one of the state’s business-friendly pillars. Heck, they don’t even want to talk about it.
If a Delegate or Senator introduces a bill, he or she deserves the courtesy of at least a subcommittee presentation and vote. Chairmen should not be allowed to protect members from having to “go on the board.”
Here is the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s account of the Democratic leadership squelching Delegate Carter. You have to give him credit—he went down fighting and did not hesitate to take on his party’s leaders
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The Logic for Rural Broadband Subsidies
Source: “Bringing Broadband to America” by James A. Bacon
Reputable estimates of the cost of making high-capacity Internet service universal across the United States run in the $80-billion to $85-billion range, but the society-wide benefits may be worth the outlay, argues Alexander Marré, a Baltimore-based regional economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in a recent paper.
There are multiple benefits, Marré contends. Broadband has positive effects for business-location decisions and employment growth in rural areas, research data shows (although effects can be stronger in rural areas that are closer to metropolitan areas than more remote regions). Broadband also enables rural consumers to choose from a wider array of goods and services, potentially saving more than $1,000 per household. High-speed Internet also can improve the efficiency of rural labor markets. It can improve access to healthcare via telemedicine and distance learning. And, as a desirable amenity, it can boosts home values.
The low density of businesses and households makes deployment of broadband infrastructure costlier than in metropolitan areas, and for-profit telecom companies can’t justify the low return on investment. But if the social benefits are as extensive as Marré contends, rural communities have a different cost-benefit calculus. His article explores several alternatives for bringing broadband to rural communities, including a Shenandoah Telecommunications (Shentel) projectin Virginia. (more…)
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Blacks, Republicans Most Distrustful of Vaccine
Question: Which comes closest to your view regarding the COVID-19 vaccinations recently approved by the FDA? by James A. Bacon
One out of five Virginians (19%) say they will never get vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a poll of 1,039 people conducted by the Wason Center at Christopher Newport University. The demographic groups most resistant to the vaccine are Republicans, 24% of whom responded that they would “never” get the vaccine, and African Americans, 26% of whom said the same.
In contrast to the Wason Center poll I criticized yesterday, this one seems to be well constructed and yields significant insight into Virginians’ attitudes toward the COVID epidemic.
Among other findings: (more…)
