Category Archives: Education (K-12)

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by James A. Bacon

Over the past several days I have been highlighting how public schools in Southwest Virginia have bucked the statewide trend of declining standardized test scores. While the Northam administration has implemented a top-down “social justice” approach, a consortium of rural Southwest Virginia schools has embraced a totally different  strategy: (1) identifying the most successful teachers across the region; (2) sharing their instructional materials and other best practices; (3)  measuring results and incorporating feedback, and (4) raising expectations.

John Butcher, the author of Cranky’s Blog, has done some follow-up numbers crunching to show just how effective Southwest Virginia’s Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP) has been at lifting the Standards of Learning pass rates of economically disadvantaged students — the very same demographic the social-justice crowd wants, but has failed, to help.

The first two graphs (above) show how the reading and math SOL scores, which were at rough parity with statewide averages in 2014, have zoomed ahead of the pack. Continue reading →

School divisions participating in the Comprehensive Instructional Program

by James A. Bacon

The school districts of Southwest Virginia are among the poorest in the Commonwealth, but that hasn’t stopped them from out-performing more affluent districts across the state. Public schools in Region VII, stretching from the City of Radford to Virginia’s far-western tip in Lee County, have the lowest per-pupil funding in the state, yet they have the highest average pass rates for Standards of Learning (SOL) test scores. I highlighted those findings in a recent post. What I couldn’t say then was how Region VII managed to score the best results of the state’s eight education regions.

So I talked to Matt Hurt, curriculum director for the Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP), a bottom-up initiative starting in Southwest Virginia, to find out more. It is a remarkable story and an encouraging one. With the right approach, Virginia schools can lift themselves up by their boot straps. Lesson for the General Assembly: The answer isn’t Mo’ Money.

Southwest Virginia students have not always been top SOL performers. Their rise to the top has occurred in just the past few years, says Hurt. The secret: Local school districts pooled resources to do three main things: (1) identify the most successful teachers across the region; (2) share their instructional materials and other best practices; (3) set high expectations, and (4) measure what works. Five years have made a significant difference. Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

Reading scores of Virginia students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, a national standardized test, plummeted this year, and math scores declined as well. The average reading scores of Virginia fourth- and eighth-grade students on the national tests fell by four and six points, respectively. The average math scores for percent proficient fell by two points for both grades.

In releasing the results, Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane acknowledged that Virginia has a big problem. “The latest NAEP results — coupled with the declines we have seen during the last several years on our state reading tests — underscore the importance of the efforts already underway at the state and local levels to strengthen reading instruction for all students,” he said.

He implied that factors other than the Progressive “racial equity” policies he has championed are to blame. Rather, he said, “We must … recognize that Virginia’s schools are enrolling increasing numbers of students whose learning is impacted by poverty and trauma.”

The solution: $950 million in money for “equitable supports and services for all of the students who need them.” Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

The Richmond Public Schools school board is desperate to get more diversity in its schools, meaning it wants more white kids in schools dominated by African-Americans. The board has been considering a proposal to smear the cream, so to speak: spread the limited supply of white kids, concentrated in two elementary schools, among more schools. Another option, described in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today, is to create a “weighted lottery” for open enrollment, giving preferential treatment to students from low-income students trying to get into schools that aren’t in their neighborhood zones.

One option that the superintendent and school board have steadfastly ignored is creating more charter schools. Richmond’s only charter school, the Patrick Henry School of Sciences and Arts, is about as integrated as you can get. The 318 students enrolled in 2018-19 were 41% white and 56% black, according to Virginia Department of Education statistics. Forty percent of the student body is classified as disadvantaged. In other words, Patrick Henry fits progressives’  dream of mixing poor African-American kids with better-off white kids.

Why don’t Richmond school officials look at Patrick Henry as a model? Could that school be doing something different than other public schools?

Continue reading →

by James A. Bacon

It’s not often that I speak kindly of government programs of any kind. But a few days ago, I praised a financial literacy initiative recently announced by the City of Richmond with the goal of empowering citizens, especially lower-income citizens, with the knowledge to make better consumer decisions. The program not only educates but preaches the virtues of saving money, building assets, and participating in the banking system.

Now a column in Governing Magazine calls into question the value of financial literacy education, especially if it is tied to obtaining Medicaid benefits, as has been proposed in Kentucky. Matt Darling, vice president of Ideas42, a nonprofit that “uses behavioral science for social good,” argues that poor people already know how to handle their money better than wealthy people. They, unlike the wealthy, have to stretch a dollar. Additionally, he cites a 2014 study, “Financial Literacy, Financial Education and Downstream Financial Behaviors,” as evidence that “financial education programs, while well-intentioned, don’t noticeably improve the financial behavior of their participants.” Continue reading →