Category Archives: Education (K-12)

by James C. Sherlock

Recommendations. Where to begin?

First things first. Day one, as Governor-elect Youngkin likes to say…

Stop the continued expansion of Virtual Virginia. We know hardly anything about it, and what we do know is not encouraging.

• We don’t have Virtual Virginia kids’ SOL scores;
• We do have parental survey data that have been less than enthusiastic about Virtual Virginia;
• We don’t have demographic data for either its student body or its teachers; and
• We don’t know its full financial costs.

Additional expansion is out of the question until we can fully define those parameters.

To stop the additional expansion, eliminate the line item in the Executive Budget that allows further expansion of Virtual Virginia from fees paid by the school divisions.

That will freeze the Virtual Virginia student population and its staffing at current levels until we get a handle on it. It will also leave up to $59 million in schools’ budgets over the next two years that they will not have to send to VDOE.

Crucially, it will also give time to make the more fundamental changes recommended below. Continue reading →

by James C. Sherlock

If parents asked their local schools for a full-time virtual K-12 (FTVK12) option for this school year, they were  presented with only the VDOE option, Virtual Virginia, unless their district runs such a program itself, as a couple of them do. 

Virtual Virginia is, thus, nearly the only virtual education option offered through the public schools.  

That option is heavily advertised to teachers and administrators using VDOE’s online seminar convening clout. No doubt there was some credit offered for watching.

It also is an experiment at the vastly increased scale — a 1,400% increase in its registrations this year — an experiment with children’s educations. Especially since we have no idea of the quality of that education.

No SOL scores have ever been published for Virtual Virginia students. In contrast, we can and have derived them from state records for MOP students. The MOP student SOL scores actually improved during COVID.

I have a few issues with this particular government experiment. Continue reading →

by James C. Sherlock

The demonstrated demand this school year for publicly-funded full-time virtual K-12 (FTVK12) education in Virginia has been about 17,000 kids. 

That figure does not include the home-schooled kids ineligible for public funding support, discussed below.  

While that is a big number, it represents less than 1.5% of the 1,251,970 kids  enrolled in Virginia public schools this fall, including virtual public schools. So less than 1.5% of Virginia public school children are being educated virtually full- time at public expense.  Nationally, the maximum seen in any state in that category before this year was 2%.

This chapter will discuss issues of demand and supply in Virginia. Continue reading →

by James C. Sherlock

The publicly funded competitors to VDOE-run Virtual Virginia provide VDOE-approved curricula and courses delivered by VDOE-certified teachers employed by highly experienced and nationally prominent companies regulated by VDOE.

You get the point: VDOE oversees its competitors. And it knows what they are paid by the government.

My very rough estimates indicate that a full-time, VDOE-run Virtual Virginia education is more expensive than a similar education provided by those private sector competitors.

But no one in the public or in government could either prove or disprove that assessment. I would call that a problem.

It would take a forensic accountant to determine the true cost of a full-time Virtual Virginia education. We should have those figures. We do not.

Neither does the government. Continue reading →