Category Archives: Children and families

Holding Richmond Public Schools Accountable — Part I

Posted on February 10, 2021 by | 46 comments

by James C. Sherlock

We have discussed here the failures of the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in educating its economically disadvantaged children, as well as the abysmal performance of Black children in its schools.  

I intend to help readers understand how it manages to fail repeatedly even with major federal funding as guardrails and state oversight officially in place.

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides financial assistance to local educational agencies (LEAs) such as RPS and its schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet state academic standards.

It is useful to drill down into the details of that program so that readers can understand how every school district in Virginia is supposed to plan and execute the education of poor kids to improve their chances of success.

The question that will remain when I finish will be accountability.  

How does a system like the Richmond Public Schools continue to submit similar paperwork every year and every year fail to meet its stated goals? Where is the accountability? Why do the people of Richmond put up with it?  Continue reading →

46 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Consumer protection, Education (K-12), Entitlements, Federal, General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Open Government, Poverty & income gap, Race and race relations, Scandals

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Richmond Schools Discover that the Shutdown Magnifies Mental Illness

Posted on December 9, 2020 by | 36 comments

Richmond Superintendent Jason Kamras visiting a school in pre-COVID days. Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

by James A. Bacon

The downside of the COVID-19 school lockdown has become fully apparent to Richmond Public School officials. Richmond schools are experiencing an “alarming surge” in mental health issues — depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — among the district’s 21,000 students in depression, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The impact of social isolation, fear of the virus, and the deaths of loved ones is magnified, school officials say, among students who have already experienced extensive childhood trauma. “Experts” fear that an underfunded mental health system is not equipped to handle the situation.

As Robert Bolling, CEO of ChildSavers put it, the pandemic has added a new layer of trauma where trauma was already the most severe.

“We are dealing with children who had, by the time they turned 9 years old, experienced significant traumatic events in their lives” such as poverty, neglect, abuse, sexual assault or witnessing violence, Bolling said. “Toxic trauma happens when a kid experiences that four times in their lives. Our children average six.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families, Education (K-12), Poverty & income gap, Uncategorized

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How Big a Problem Is Sexual Victimization of Children in Juvenile Facilities?

Posted on December 8, 2020 by | 3 comments

Credit: 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody

by James A. Bacon

According to the late 2018 National Survey of Youth in Custody, an estimated 7.1% of youth held in juvenile facilities reported being “sexually victimized” during the previous 12 months.

The good news, such as is it, was that the percentage for Virginia youth was somewhat lower: 5.1% (subject to a fairly wide statistical margin of error). Another silver lining: The rate of rate of sexual victimization had declined from 9.5% since the previous survey in 2012.

The bad news, of course, is that any sexual victimization of young people in state facilities is unacceptable.

This data was brought to my attention by Rise for Youth, an organization dedicated to “dismantling the youth prison model” and promoting community-based alternatives to youth incarceration. As Executive Director Valerie Slater wrote in January in ACLU Virginia, Virginia’s criminal justice system is “deeply flawed” and stacked against “black, brown and poor men, women and youth.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families, Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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The Lies in “Hillbilly Elegy”

Posted on December 1, 2020 by | 94 comments

By Peter Galuszka

A 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance, a former Ohio resident, drew praise from conservatives for its laud of self-reliance and disciple and criticism from others for its long string of debunked clichés about people from the Central Appalachians.

The book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” was held up as being a great explainer as to why so many in the White lower classes voted for Trump.

Vance exalts the strength of self-discipline, family values and hard work. He complains that when he worked as a store clerk he resented it when people on welfare had cell phones but Vance couldn’t afford one. He ended up going to Yale Law School.

Vance also spends a lot of time complaining about his dysfunctional family including a nasty grandmother, a mother constantly stoned on alcohol and opioids and lots of divorce – in other words the “social rot” of the hillbilly lifestyle he so disdains.

His tie to Appalachia is a bit thin. He grew up in a suburb of Cincinnati but spent summers in Jackson in the mountains of East Kentucky.

Now director and child actor Ron Howard has made a feel-good movie from the book that stars Glenn Close and Amy Adams. It is getting lousy reviews. Continue reading →

94 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Children and families, Culture wars, Economic development, Entitlements, Environment, Labor & workforce, Poverty & income gap

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The Pick-Your-Expert Game, Virginia Schools Division

Posted on November 27, 2020 by | 21 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Danica Roem

A story  by Dana Goldstein published in the New York Times on June 30, 2020, illustrates America’s new favorite parlor game: Pick your expert.  

This essay is hereby entered in the Virginia schools division of the bigger game. Ms. Goldstein wrote:

“The American Academy of Pediatrics has a reputation as conservative and cautious, which is what you would expect from an organization devoted to protecting children’s health. But this week, the academy made a splash with advice about reopening schools that appears to be somewhat at odds with what administrators are hearing from some federal and state health officials.”

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, have advised that remote learning is the safest option. But the (American Academy of Pediatrics) guidelines strongly recommend that students be “physically present in school” as much as possible, and emphasize that there are major health, social and educational risks to keeping children at home.”

Later, there was a government-directed shotgun wedding of the two opinions, but the core AAP recommendation remains. So like every other argument, confirmation bias proved determinative in how various interests chose their “experts.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Uncategorized

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Black Georgia Professor, UVa Ed School Teachers Conference Keynoter, Trashes Brown v. Board and Offers Return to Segregated Schools

Posted on November 10, 2020 by | 72 comments

Dr. Bettina Love

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina Love (2019)

Reviewed by James C. Sherlock

Background and Introduction

I became interested in reviewing this book when I watched Dr. Bettina Love, as Associate Professor of Education at the University of Georgia, speak at a seminar for Virginia K-12 teachers sponsored by the Education School at the University of Virginia.

I did that as part of personal research into the radicalization of my alma mater.

I found her presentation to be pretty radical to my old white ears. I decided to read her book.

This review, like the one that will follow of Dr. Sowell’s book, “Charter Schools and their Enemies,” focuses on the actual words of the author, not the views of the reviewer. I will give each their say.

Because her views are likely to be highly controversial, this review will be longer that it otherwise might to ensure I allow the reader full opportunity to hear her.

She has been featured multiple times in Education Week, and has been a recent speaker at the University of Texas, Duke, and the University of Houston as well as C-Span, the City Club of Cleveland, Women’s Voices and advocate.com. She has provided commentary for NPR, the Guardian and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Yet I find no review of her book by any major newspaper of magazine.

She needed an editor. The book is very disorganized and peripatetic. It is thus very hard to read. No editor is credited and none is apparent.

But no editor would have curbed the venom coming out of the author’s pen. Continue reading →

72 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12)

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Virginia’s Worst Public Schools and Districts for Black Children

Posted on November 7, 2020 by | 129 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I have competed a study of Virginia’s worst-performing schools in the education of black children.  The results presented in this essay represent a scandal of the first order and demand explanations, both from the school boards and the Virginia Department of Education.

In my next post I will review two books by prominent black academics with polar opposite views on what to do about it. But this is about the abject failure of many of Virginia’s schools to educate black students.

Continue reading →

129 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Education (K-12), Government Oversight, Money in politics, Scandals

Virginia Needs to Stop Playing Politics with School Reopenings

Posted on October 19, 2020 by | 86 comments

by DJ Rippert

Politics over science. Michael Hartney is a national fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and an assistant professor of political science at Boston College. He and a collaborator have studied school reopening decisions across the United States looking for factors that correlate with the seemingly arbitrary differences in school reopening policies from one school system to the next. His conclusion is that the politics of the community and the strength of the teachers’ unions play a far greater role in reopening decisions than any application of science. As Hartney writes in an Newsweek op-ed piece, “Education policymakers should consider public health indicators like the number of COVID cases, deaths and the acuteness of the pandemic’s spread in a given community when deciding when and how much to reopen schools. But such factors have not driven decision-making. Instead, it is partisanship and the power of the teachers’ unions that have largely determined which schools opened and how much they opened.”

Facts are stubborn things. Hartley’s analysis seems thorough. He studied nearly 10,000 school districts. The correlation between political attitude and school reopening policies appears to be real. As Hartley writes, “Even when comparing schools in counties that experienced very similar case rates, partisanship best predicted whether schools opened. For example, counties that voted 60 percent for Hillary Clinton in 2016 were nearly 20 percentage points less likely to hold in-person classes than counties that backed Donald Trump to the same degree.” A look at Virginia’s reopening map shows a notable east – west division between the 68 school divisions that are fully remote and the 64 divisions that have some level of generalized in-person teaching. Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families, Education (K-12), Governance

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Elmer Gantry In Lynchburg

Posted on August 26, 2020 by | 36 comments

Jerry Falwell, Jr., and wife Becki

By Peter Galuszka

The resignation of Jerry Falwell Jr. amid a series of scandals may have a strong impact in Virginia where his late father built an extraordinary, ultra-conservative evangelical university in Lynchburg that later became highly politicized lightning rod supporting President Donald Trump.

Falwell has been caught up in a number of controversies including limiting speech on campus, going after The New York Times for trespassing when it reported he insisted that student ignore wearing anti-viral pandemic masks and so on.

What happened with Falwell Jr is as  an American story as apple pie topped with a Cross. It might have some straight out of the pages of Elmer Gantry.

After touting strict school policies that forbid students from drinking alcohol, watching “R”-rated movies or engaging in pre-marital sex, Falwell was pictured aboard a NASCAR mogul’s yacht half dressed with a semi-clad, pregnant woman who was said to be his wife Becki’s assistant. Falwell was holding a wine glass with a liquid in it but Falwell said it wasn’t wine.

Shortly afterwards, he gave an interview to the right-leaning Washington Examiner stating that his wife had been involved with a multi-year sexual affair with Giancarlo Granda, a former Miami Beach pool boy whom Falwell funded to set up a hostel business. Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Consumer protection, Culture wars, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Governance, Individual rights, Media, Money in politics, Property rights, Public corruption, Scandals

Reform K-12 Education to Increase Diversity in Virginia’s Colleges — and in Life

Posted on August 25, 2020 by | 29 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Much is appropriately made of the relative lack of diversity in Virginia’s state-supported colleges and universities. Some trace that exclusively to racial discrimination. My research indicates it may also reflect the educational disadvantages of being poor.  

Here I will offer a path to begin to fix both.

I have researched and written a good bit about the wide variations in K-12 student SOL pass rates among Virginia’s poorest school districts. See Rev 1 Reading and Math Virginia 2018-2019 SOL results by State and Division by Subject by Subgroup.

Some students, parents and school districts in Virginia’s poorest communities exhibit extraordinary success in those standardized tests across all races and among economically disadvantaged students. That success is measured not against other poor districts, but among districts statewide.  

Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Demographics, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Poverty & income gap, Race and race relations

Virginia Educational Reform – Place, Class, Race — Or All Three?

Posted on August 23, 2020 by | 6 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I am an optimist by nature. Optimism wins elections, and optimism can bring about democratic change.  

Governments at their most basic level are created by people to protect themselves from outsiders and to minimize conflicts within their own ranks. From a condo association to Congress, that is a core role.   

I believe that representative government is the only form of democracy that scales and the form most likely to protect the weak. I believe in the rule of law and in traditions and institutions as stabilizing forces. I defend the individual rights embedded in our constitution.

I believe our republic needs to help Americans ensure they and theirs are secure in the basic necessities of life and their are children educated. Call me a class theorist. People of good character can and do get in fierce arguments about what constitute the basic necessities of life and whether assistance should be couched as a helping hand or a new bill of rights.  

I believe that self reliance is a core value of America. So is compassion. I support a policy of writing checks to help the disadvantaged in a crisis, but long-term policies that help them pull themselves up. There is dignity in that. People need dignity.

I oppose a distorted rationalism that seeks to put every responsibility on government and a rationalist government that inevitably settles on picking favorites and attacking religion. 

I regret the cascading failure of the regional newspapers as perhaps the biggest internal threat to representative government in my lifetime.

On June 17, 2020 in Areo magazine , Gabriel Scorgie wrote: Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance, Individual rights, Poverty & income gap, Race and race relations

Systemic Racism? What’s That?

Posted on August 4, 2020 by | 139 comments

By Peter Galuszka

At Bacon’s Rebellion there’s a constant, grating mantra debunking the concept that the U.S. has a serious problem with “Institutional” or “Systemic” Racism.

Slavery? Jim Crow? Irrelevant! We’re treated to commentary after commentary that Blacks just need to try harder. They are lazy. They do not support family values. They get too much wasted money in school spending and health care. Their constant abuse by law enforcement is imaginary. Black Lives Matters is a hateful, racist movement. BLM jeopardizes our values. Students interested in the movement were not “indoctrinated” enough. It’s bad enough if it comes up in public schools, but let BLM come up at a toney private institution in a wealthy, mostly White suburb, then it is a blood libel against every private school headmaster in the country.

For a partial list of blog postings with ideas, please see the URLs at the end of this column.

Ok. So what? Well, this morning I saw a small story in The Washington Post that shocked me since it went right to the heart of Institutional and/or Systemic Racism. If you still don’t believe it exists, read on. Continue reading →

139 Comments

Posted in Bacon and pigs, Blogs and blog administration, Children and families, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Public corruption, Public safety & health, Race and race relations

Back to School?

Posted on June 18, 2020 by | 37 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Remote learning leaves behind the poorest children. Please check the map above for a state near you.

37 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Education (K-12), Uncategorized

They Are Coming For Your Family, Your Strip Malls

Posted on June 10, 2020 by | 42 comments

Sen. Amanda Chase with sidearm

By Peter Galuszka

State Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield County, has always played the clown.

The conservative politician grabbed attention a year or so back when she addressed a meeting at the General Assembly wearing a revolver in a holster on her hip. She’s also feuded with the county Republican Party and was defrocked.

Now Chase is striking again by spreading fears of ANTIFA attacks on mostly white and middle class suburban areas. She says the loosely organized far left group is targeting strip malls at Meadowdale and Hancock Village in Chesterfield County and in Hanover County at Mechanicsville.

She said that members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun lobby, would be patrolling some of these areas.

A few problems here:

Chase said her source for source for the ANTIFA tip was Chesterfield Police Chief Jeffrey Katz. Contacted by the Chesterfield Observer, Katz said he was not her source. “At no time did I share any active criminal intelligence with her,” Katz told the Observer. Continue reading →

42 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Gun rights, Individual rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

The Shutdown and Unintended Consequences

Posted on May 1, 2020 by | 7 comments

Public policy during the COVID-19 epidemic has focused relentlessly on the number of virus infections, hospitalizations and death. Given that monomaniacal, media-driven fixation, other metrics of social health and well have been largely ignored in the debate over how rapidly to return the county back to something resembling normal.

Some obvious predictions: The shutdown will increase the prevalence of mental health issues like anxiety and depression, substance abuse, lapses among those trying to recover from addiction, domestic abuse, child abuse, and suicides. There tend to be long reporting lags — months, even years — with the relevant data sets so we can’t measure the impact of emergency measures in real time. And if policy makers can’t measure the impacts, they tend to act as if these things are not happening at all.

These are national numbers but I report them as a possible indicator of what might be happening in Virginia. According to RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, which runs the National Sexual Assault Hotline, by the end of March, there was a 22% increase in the number of calls coming from people younger than 18.

As National Public Radio reports: Continue reading →

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Posted in Children and families

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