Category Archives: Education (K-12)

Wow, the Richmond School Board is asking some very pointed questions about the unexplained ballooning of costs to build three new schools for the Richmond Public School system. I’m impressed.

In a letter sent to the city’s procurement director and city engineer in charge of the construction projects, four school board members asked why the estimated $110 million construction cost leaped to $140 million in just five months. The spunky Richmond Free Press obtained a copy of the letter. City officials blew off the Free Press when its reporter inquired into the cost escalation, but it may be more difficult to ignore the school board members. Continue reading →

Emma Clark, from her Twitter page

Emma Clark was an idealistic young woman who became a teacher at Boushall Middle School, a Richmond school where three in four students are eligible for government assistance. “I wanted to get into a high needs school because, to me, the whole point of getting into education was to try to create more equity of opportunity in our country,” she told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “That meant teaching in a school where kids aren’t getting everything they deserve.”

After two and a half years of teaching civics, Clark left Boushall. She didn’t like the direction the school was heading under a new principal, she told the RTD. She would have liked to have transferred to another city school but a Richmond Public Schools policy prohibited teachers from transferring schools before they’ve taught for three years. She now teaches in Chesterfield County.

Desperate to reduce a teacher turnover rate of nearly 20% — compared to a national average of 11% to 13% — superintendent Jason Kamras has rescinded the policy. Better to let someone transfer within the system than to see them move to a school in Henrico, Chesterfield, or Hanover County.

Teacher turnover is a chronic issue in Richmond Public Schools, as it is at many other low-performing school districts. (And by “low performing,” I mean schools where standardized test scores fall below the level expected based on the percentage of students classified as disadvantaged or disabled.) But it astonishes me how little attention is given, either by school administrators or local media, as to why turnover is so high. City schools attract many idealistic young teachers who want to make a difference — they just don’t stay long. Continue reading →

In its ongoing transformation from an organization dedicated to protecting civil liberties into an organization dedicated to advancing social justice causes, the ACLU has issued a report, “Cops and No Counselors,” which makes the case that “the lack of school mental health staff is harming students.” (The study was picked up obligingly by Richmond’s WRIC TV.)

The ACLU, which has taken the lead in instituting a social justice model of school discipline in Virginia schools, argues that Virginia should reallocate resources from law enforcement and “school resource” officers to more mental health counseling.

The study documents that 86% of Virginia students attend schools that fail to meet the benchmark of American and Virginia school counselor associations of at least one counselor per every 250 students. As WVIR notes, mental health support for schools was a focus of the General Assembly this year. Among other measures enacted, the budget set aside $12 million to cover the cost of hiring about 250 more counselors across the state, enough to reduce the ratio of counselors to high school students from 1-to-350-to 1-to-325.

Another bill requires counselors to spend 80% of their day working with students. Apparently, counselors aren’t doing enough counseling. Continue reading →

If you want an explanation of why the Richmond Public Schools (RPS) are such a mess, start with the fact that the Richmond educational establishment is in a state of denial, unable to acknowledge reality. Unless Richmond educrats cast off their the false premises under which they operate, the school system will continue to fail the thousands of children, mostly minorities, that it purports to educate.

Richmond educators blame everyone but themselves for the abysmal standardized-test outcomes of its students — racism, not enough money, and in particular the high poverty rate of its school population. We have busted these claims on this blog, but John Butcher at Cranky’s Blog shows how the most recent budget plan perpetuates the self-serving narrative by twisting the data.

Using the free-and-reduced-lunch population as a measure of poverty, the RPS budget notes that the city has the 9th highest free and reduced lunch population, which it documents in the following graph that compares Richmond to “neighboring” jurisdictions:

Continue reading →