Richmond’s Disastrous Public Schools Expose Hypocrisy of State Equity Policy
Share this article
ADVERTISEMENT
(comments below)
Comments
Comments
15 responses to “Richmond’s Disastrous Public Schools Expose Hypocrisy of State Equity Policy”
-
This is the real scandal that Glenn Younkin, Winsome Sears and Jason Miyares need to focus on. The public education system across many areas of Virginia has been cratering. The worst of the worst is in the City of Richmond. This has been documented over and over again on Cranky’s Blog, this blog and elsewhere.
Over the last eight years Virginia has been run by failed Democratic governors. While large areas of the state fail to provide an adequate education to its children Terry McAuliffe signed hundreds of thousands of documents allowing convicted felons to vote. That was what he found important. During the horrific tenure of Ralph Northam we have seen Critical Race Theory become gospel in public education while Thomas Jefferson has been dumbed down and accelerated math classes are under fire. These are Northam’s priorities.
Where is the priority of fixing utterly broken schools like those in Richmond?
Could it be that the likes of McAuliffe and Northam hop up and down about relatively unimportant issues in order to deflect from the wholly terrible job they have done addressing the actual issues?
I just saw a TV ad for McAuliffe where the man had the temerity to claim he was the education governor. The ad promised pay hikes for teachers. Does anybody believe that more pay for teachers is the most important action to take to fix Virginia’s broken schools?
It’s past time to throw the bums out.
-
Superintendent Kamras has a 4 year contract extension to implement his
long term strategic goal. Hard to believe that only 3 voted no and 6 voted yes. Here was Richmond’s chance to address, head on, the issues raised by Captain Sherlock.Real reform will not come until the current school board is unseated, Kamras is fired, or the year 2025 finally arrives. It all starts from the top. If the Dreams4RPS is successful, most of the deficiencies will be corrected. But Richmond does not have a strong track record of immediate and measurable success in just 4 short years. Long term data suggests Kamras has already failed but he will be a million dollars richer. Who knows? Maybe Terri, if elected, will throw a life line out to Kamras. Good luck Richmond. You voted for this.
https://www.rvaschools.net/cms/lib/VA02208089/Centricity/Domain/4/Dreams%204%20RPS/Dreams4RPS-English.pdf-
That lifeline is a probablity. Here comes Sex Ed Kamras!
Nothing says curing educational systemic racism like a white middle age guy making 6 times the median wage of his constituents.-
I fully expect Kamras to be on the first lifeboat to the good ship McAuliffe administration.
If Kamras is serious about Dreams4RPS he needs to muscle those teachers back into the classrooms, start the year early, recruit an army of truant officers, and pursue perfect attendance like a bird dog. Even those simple goals will be a difficult reach given Richmond’s long term track record.
-
Whoa…. that does not sound very equitable nor woke!
Tryant officers are like modern day slave catchers.
And the Museum of African American History’s publications will tell you that being on time (analogous to attendence) is deeply associated with the poison known as whiteness. And we all known whiteness is analogous to white supremacy.
Not to mention there’s a big election on the horizon which hinges on union and Black support, so those teachers and wokesters are holding a full house.
Sec Ed elect Kamras is quite the politician, so I believe your suggestions (although most likely correct) will be passed over in lieu of actions with politics taking precedence.-
Yeah should have read truant….
-
Tryant officers are like modern day slave catchers.
Right on the money. That is exactly why RPS laid off or reassigned 32 truant officers in 2019. But those Tyrant’s must be rehired and empowered to get those kids seated in a classroom.
-
-
-
-
-
Great statistical overview. Richmond schools are unreformable under current leadership. Richmond school leadership has been committed for years to the ideas behind Critical Race Theory before it crystallized in its current form. They blame everyone and everything but themselves. Human nature being what it is, they will never admit they were wrong. Conditions will only deteriorate, no matter how much money is spent… or Richmond schools get new leadership.
-
There is no question that Richmond city schools are a disgrace. Jim Sherlock has done a good job summarizing their status and their failure to help the children of the city.
I am not sure what the Governor can do about it. The State Constitution vests the control of school with local school boards.
Several of the comments to this post criticize the current superintendent and call for new leadership. I know nothing about Mr. Kamras or what kind of job he is doing, but I suggest those general criticisms are premature. The test results Jim cited were of fourth graders in the 2018-2019 school year. Kamras was hired in early 2018. The poor test scores of those fourth graders cannot be laid at his feet; they were third graders when he became superintendent. Then there has been the disastrous 2020-2021 school year. Kamras now has a four-year contract. It will be in the years of that new contract that he can begin to be held accountable for progress, or lack of it.
-
My 8th grade son, tasked with a social justice paper for English this week, is writing on the Achievable Dream schools. These public-private partnerships, in the most disadvantaged schools in Newport News, Virginia Beach, and Henrico, have a 100%, with 95% going on to college and the remaining 5% joining the military or going to trade school. These kids, who didn’t have a snowball’s chance on hell, are better educated and behaved than most of the kids in my sought after district (York County). AAD has recently put together a system it is offering to other school districts. It won’t help the horrendous infrastructure of Richmond City schools, but this is exactly where RCS needs to look for help with its shambles of a school system.
-
Thanks for this reminder and advocacy for Achievable Dream. One good aspect of the program is that it can be incorporated in public schools. Therefore, it avoids the controversy surrounding charter schools. Henrico public schools has established the program. Perhaps Richmond next door will notice and try it. Also, there is a strong advocate in the Governor’s cabinet, Aubrey Layne, Secretary of Finance. Hopefully, he can have some influence at that level. https://richmond.com/opinion/columnists/aubrey-l-layne-jr-column-an-achievable-dream-is-an-asset-to-henrico-county/article_c74f4d8a-e21a-5d4e-8c6a-3ab37f2ad370.html
-
Layne is an advocate for AAD. He has put his money where his mouth is. But there has been a student achievement problem in the Henrico AAD. Henrico is also where AAD shifted from its operational control model to an advisory model. At the end of the day, it follows a charter school model. Hands on leadership is the key. School systems need to be sure that this particular system survives its founder.
-
-
-
[…] I wrote a column about the broad and deep failures of the Richmond Public School (RPS) system in educating the […]
-
[…] spent the past couple of days writing about thousands of human tragedies playing out in Richmond Pubic Schools (RPS), their complexity […]
-
[…] advocates of the SRO removals is to reduce arrests. To review some facts from my previous post on that […]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.