Category Archives: Education (K-12)

Why Is Anne Holton Claiming the Length of Virginia’s School Closures Didn’t Matter? (Part 1)

Posted on January 15, 2024 by | 14 comments

Anne Holton

by Vernon Taylor (a pseudonym)

The Virginia Board of Education meeting on December 12th, 2023 had a rare moment of must-see TV (22:50 – 29:27). In an attempt to gaslight parents, students and educators everywhere as she ignored the preponderance of data from COVID-era and post-pandemic studies, Board Member Anne Holton proposed an amendment striking the following words from the Board of Education’s 2023 annual report:

These [learning] losses were most severe among low-income and minority students and students whose schools were closed longest.

Board Member Holton reasoned (emphasis added):

The evidence for it is in my estimation inconclusive at best. The Virginia evidence is very sparse and it disappears if you control for poverty…. The international evidence, the PISA report, just came out saying the countries that opened sooner did not perform significantly better in the pandemic than those…who stayed closed longer.

Finally, and most importantly, our school board leaders and other local education leaders had very, very tough challenges in the pandemic. We were operating under so many unknowns. They were trying to manage so many priorities, keeping their staff safe and alive, keeping their students safe and alive and protecting against learning loss. They were all doing the best they could in my opinion under very difficult circumstances with so many things we just didn’t know at the time and to me these words are unnecessarily picking a fight with those who closed schools longer. Nobody in Virginia closed schools very long frankly, and most of them were open by March ‘21.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12), Uncategorized

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Virginia Bill Could Define Student Bullies by Race

Posted on January 10, 2024 by | 57 comments

by Hans Bader

Should students be defined as bullies partly based on race? A confusingly-worded bill just introduced in Virginia’s legislature seemingly classifies students as bullies partly based on racial differences between “the aggressor” and the victim, such as a “real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim, including on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, religion, or other distinguishing characteristics of the victim.”

That language is found in HB 536, a bill introduced by Delegate Joshua Cole (D-Fredericksburg). It would add the language in italics to Virginia Code § 22.1-276.01, so that it reads:

“Bullying” means any aggressive and unwanted behavior that is intended to harm, intimidate, or humiliate the victim; involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the aggressor or aggressors and victim, including on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity, religion, or other distinguishing characteristics of the victim; and is repeated over time or causes severe emotional trauma.

If Virginia adopted such legislation, it would create legal risks for school systems. If schools enforce a race-conscious definition of bullying, which applies (or not) based on the “race…of the victim,” that could be deemed by the courts to violate the rights of students defined as bullies based on racial considerations. School systems could end up being sued under the Constitution’s equal protection clause, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and 42 U.S.C. 1981. Even rules designed to help historically-disadvantaged groups are subject to legal challenge when they classify students based on race or gender, as the Supreme Court made clear last year in striking down the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. Continue reading →

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Posted in Courts and law, Culture wars, Education (K-12)

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Not Every Teacher’s Salary Can Be Above Average

Posted on January 5, 2024 by | 13 comments

by Hans Bader

In the mythical Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average. But in real life, half of all people have to be below average, by definition. Half of all people are paid below average, especially in counties with very low living costs, where the vast majority of people are paid below the national average.

Still, no teachers union likes its members to be paid below average, even when they live in areas where the cost of living is below the national average, like Richmond, Amherst, Lynchburg, Roanoke, Harrisonburg, Staunton, or Waynesboro.

Nadarius Clark, a Democratic Virginia delegate, has introduced House Bill 187, which would require Virginia teachers to be paid at or above the national average for teachers. The bill “requires that public school teachers be compensated at a rate that is at or above the national average teacher salary…. ” The bill also requires that public school instructional and non-instructional support staff be compensated at a rate that is “at or above the national average salary for such staff.”

It is a bad idea for states to pass such laws. If every state passed such a law, teacher pay would be higher than for any other profession, and increase toward infinity, because states would be constantly increasing their teachers’ pay relative to other states so as not to be below the national average, and yet, many states would never reach the national average, due to other states increasing teacher pay first. (By definition, half of all states are going to be below average.) Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12), General Assembly

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A Far Better Option for Public Education of Poor Urban Minority Students in Virginia

Posted on December 28, 2023 by | 51 comments


by James C. Sherlock

We are going to discuss here — it will be a series — Virginia’s urban majority-minority school divisions.

School boards, superintendents and teachers in those divisions want their students to learn. They are especially frustrated that far too many of their minority students fail to do so.

For those divisions, an exhaustive 2023 report from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) confirms that poor urban minority students can and do learn at the same or higher levels as white children.

They do so in charter schools nationwide managed by the best Charter Management Organizations (CMO).

The results reported are stunning.

CMO schools make a bigger difference in urban environments, and for poor minority kids, than anywhere else for any other populations.

Those kids come to school. They and their parents like school. In some of the toughest neighborhoods in America.

Readers who oppose charter schools think there are unacceptable explanations for that. Fair enough. CREDO addresses every one of the commonly cited rationalizations and bats them away. We will get to that in a follow-on article.

What matters here is that the study, focused on equity, finds over 1,000 “gap buster” public charter schools, most run by CMOs, that deliver academic results that eliminate the learning gap across student groups. Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in DEI, Education (K-12)

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Virginia Child Victims in the Left’s War on the Enlightenment and Science

Posted on December 26, 2023 by | 75 comments

Richard Bernstein, a founder of American critical theory.

by James C. Sherlock

Modern progressivism is religion, defined by Webster as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.”

The critical theory progressive, that is to say the modern American progressive, rejects proudly and publicly, root and branch, both the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolutions of the 16th through 18th centuries in Europe.

Critical Theory developed into a synthesis of Marx and Freud. The Frankfurt School which birthed it studied the sources of authoritarianism. Their followers, as in much of human experience, wound up as practitioners.

By contrast, the leading lights of Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution awakenings, bravely in their time, stressed the belief that science and logic give people more understanding. And with understanding came freedom and the rights of man.

Logic is the principles of reasoning; science provides the principles of investigation and proof.

They led much of Europe, and the American colonies, to develop more successful systems of governance, economics, mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, and education than did tradition and religion.

One development, capitalism, has raised more people out of poverty than any economic system ever.

Some of the rest of the world followed. Some did not. Those that did, prospered, and improved the lives of billions of people.

But success in those twin intellectual revolutions came too slow for some.

To that table came two prominent 19th and 20th century experiments in rejecting the Enlightenment: communism and national socialism.

They proved the deadliest political movements in human history. Continue reading →

75 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, DEI, Democracy and Western Civilization, Education (Early Childhood), Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Governance, Marxism, Public-Employee Unions, Race and Race Relations, Science & Technology, Virginia Law

Standards of Learning, Educational Reform and the Blob

Posted on December 23, 2023 by | 68 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Courtesy clipartix.com

Readers opine that I am throwing ideas into institutional quicksand when advocating for education reforms. But I hope not.

For example, in my most recent series I have suggested that Virginia’s Standards of Learning (SOL) process needs fundamental reform with the integration of learning and teaching standards.

Critics have written with varying levels of insistence that teachers do not like being told how to teach. That horse has been out of the barn for a very long time.

That is perhaps one reason why so many of them are leaving.

The system of which they are part does little else but tell them:

  • what to teach;
  • how to teach;
  • what they can and cannot say about what they teach; and
  • even how to feel about all of that.

And God help parents or teachers that disapprove.

VDOE claims, in the case of its new math SOL, to take input from:

parents, teachers, the business community, school administrators, representatives from higher education and state mathematics education organizations.

That is boilerplate.

Does anybody know a parent or a business that made an input? Or whose input was accepted? The NEA itself complains that teachers have little voice.

Education is a closed government-industry system that literally cannot imagine being better than it is. The words “closed” and “government” in that context are redundant.

To understand how it is so closed we need to examine it. Continue reading →

68 Comments

Posted in Education (higher ed), Education (K-12)

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The Institute of Educational Sciences and its Missing Role in Virginia Standards of Learning

Posted on December 21, 2023 by | 42 comments

By James C. Sherlock

In investigative reporting on education in Virginia, I regularly refer to the federal Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES) and its What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).

The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA; amended in 2004) Part A established the Institute of Education Sciences.

Section 111 establishes IES as a research institute within ED.

The mission of IES is to provide national leadership in expanding fundamental knowledge and understanding of education from early childhood through postsecondary study, in order to provide parents, educators, students, researchers, policymakers, and the general public with reliable information.

This information is to address (1) the condition and progress of education, (2) practices that improve academic achievement, and (3) the effectiveness of federal education and other education programs.

IES must carry out its mission by compiling statistics, conducting research and evaluations, and disseminating information in a manner that conforms to high standards of quality and objectivity.

The IES was established under the oversight of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to sort out the claims of sponsors of various educational interventions.  

Professors and their PhD or EdD candidates in schools of education have tended to examine their own theories with studies as they can find grant money.  

Those studies earned a very bad reputation for lack of scientific testing and proven efficacy.  Sometimes because the sponsor did not have enough money to do it right.  

But they are published anyway.  It’s a free country.

People with an agenda can and do cherry-pick evidence for articles and presentations supporting their favored policies.  They then tour education symposia.

That was the problem that IES was created to solve.

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) has long ignored the proven solutions IES has offered.  

They often choose instead among educational intervention prescriptions favored by those schools of education and the less stringent standards bodies that support them.  And they document it.

Doing so bucks the standards under which Virginia receives federal education funds.

It is a mistake even if there were no dollars at risk.

Continue reading →

42 Comments

Posted in Education (K-12)

A Proposal for a Broad Trial of Single Sex and Co-ed Virginia Classrooms on the Woodbridge Middle School Model

Posted on December 19, 2023 by | 5 comments

by James C. Sherlock

This is an expanded version of an article originally published on Dec. 16 of this year.  To avoid confusion, the original has been removed.

This update contains important information about the multi-year experience of Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County with the approaches recommended here for broader testing in Virginia.

See the video below.

It also contains Australian results.  

Both are based on reader tips. A tip of the hat to Abigail Norfleet James, Ph.D. for the Woodbridge Middle tip and the commenter with the pen name Nancy for the Australian information.

This is part 2 of a series on the learning deficits in boys relative to girls in Virginia public schools that are measured by the SOLs every year.

Part one, Boys Left Behind Academically – Yet Another Crisis in Virginia Schools, defined a problem. This essay offers a potential solution.

Everyone talks about school choice. Everyone wants better schools.

But as a nation we have gone into our two corners relative to public policy.

  • Parents — and conservatives — want choice;
  • Teachers unions — and thus progressives — do not want the type of choice most commonly offered, which is generally something other than the neighborhood school;
  • By school choice, both sides generally mean choice external to the neighborhood school — magnet schools, charters, single-sex academies, etc. And that’s the rub.

I offer here a suggestion for a wide and deep trial in Virginia of parental choice of single-sex classrooms internal to the neighborhood school. Such an experiment is not unprecedented.

It has been in place for more than a dozen years in Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County, as featured in the attached video. Watch it for the observations of the teachers and the kids.

A similar program has been tried in New York City.

The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) of the Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education is the gold standard for finding scientific evidence of the efficacy of educational interventions.

There is no indication that such a school format has been subjected to a trial that meets WWC standards.

I think that, with well-documented and increasing problems of learning, attendance and behavior in many Virginia public schools, the time is right to create a broad, scientifically designed trial of parental choice for single-sex classrooms here.

The goals are to observe, improve and report on single sex classroom:

  • learning by boys;
  • learning by girls;
  • behavior of boys;
  • the learning environment;
  • attendance, with improved parental valuation of schools that give them choices for their kids; and
  • school order and safety.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Teacher Vacancies in Virginia Cities with a Majority of Black Students Continue to be Very High

Posted on December 15, 2023 by | 32 comments

by James C. Sherlock

The statewide performance of Black kids on Virginia’s SOLs was horrible. Chronic absenteeism is a primary reason.

But I continue to look for underlying reasons and solutions for both.

This morning I checked the Staffing and Vacancy Dashboard.

The teacher vacancy rate for Region 2, Tidewater and the Eastern Shore, is currently the highest in the state at 7.62%. That statistic combines teachers and special education teachers aides and paraprofessionals. There are 3,115 unfilled positions in Region 2.

That region has been the worst in the state for a long time.

The next highest is Central Virginia at 4.9%. Southwest Virginia is lowest at 2.28%.

Region 2 vacancies both in actual numbers and in percentages are always high because school staff vacancies in Hampton Roads’ majority Black urban cities, and their proportion of the region’s public-school population, drive them up.

The data reveal that in divisions with majorities of Black students in the rest of the state, some are very high and some not.

Petersburg, as such things happen, is off the charts.

But there are a major differences in teacher vacancies, and in student performance, between Black kids in Black majority urban cities (Suffolk is a officially a city but not urban) with the honorable exception of Hampton’s Black student SOL scores, and those in Black majority rural counties.

We should perhaps look at what vacancies can tell us.

And another time at what the City of Hampton Public Schools has been doing right for so long. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, DEI, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance

Boys Left Behind Academically – Yet Another Crisis in Virginia Schools

Posted on December 14, 2023 by | 109 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Girls significantly outperform boys in English Language Arts (ELA) (reading and writing) in public schools and perform about as well in math and science, both across the nation and in Virginia.

Virginia statewide SOL performance statistics give the details here.

Across the state, girl students are better readers and far better writers than boys. Those English language arts performances at the state level of course mask both smaller and greater gaps in individual divisions and schools.

The writing gaps exist in both high-performing Loudoun County and in poor-performing Richmond City schools.

Broken down to the next level of detail in writing performance statewide, it looks worse.

There is a single-sex classroom option that has been operating for a long time at a middle school in Prince William County. For the best ELA results, it is reasonable to think that model may have to be extended to elementary school.

College and Career Readiness statistics offer confirmation of the outcome of boys’ ELA deficiencies.

The Virginia Literacy Act starting in the 2024-25 school year will make major upgrades to literacy instruction.

Absenteeism.  It would be easy to consider educational gaps in boys to be an artifact of higher absenteeism than girls.  But that’s not it.

One of the artifacts of my research into chronic absenteeism in Virginia public schools statewide in 2023 was that male and female results by percentage were exactly the same: 19.5%.

That, on the surface at least, may confirm parental influence on absenteeism.

The science of learning in boys. The medical community has offered scientific observations of brain science and social development that matter here.

Those observations typically include, aggregated by Microsoft Bing AI search from three different sources:

  • Boys’ brains secrete less serotonin, which is directly related to impulse control;
  • Boys start out primarily as tactile and kinesthetic learners;
  • Boys show more areas in the brain dedicated to spatial-mechanical strengths;
  • Girls generally demonstrate a focus on verbal-emotive processing;
  • Girls have more of their cerebral cortex defined for verbal function;
  • The hippocampus, where memory and language live, does develop more rapidly and is larger in girls than in boys. This impacts vocabulary, reading, and writing skills.

We will consider those to be illustrative. They certainly seem to argue for different approaches to educating boys and girls.

Asian students.  The special case of Asian students in ELA and all other subjects must be taken into account when seeking solutions to the boy/girl gaps. They absolutely blow away all other demographics of students, despite the fact that English may not be the first language spoken at home.

That clearly represents a difference in learning style and effort, not in teaching style.

The public data on Asian students are not in Virginia deconstructed by male and female results, but I have asked VDOE to provide and I will report it.

Educational evidence.  In 2005, the Policy and Program Studies Service of the U.S. Department of Education published Single-Sex Versus Coeducational Schooling: A Systematic Review.  

The reviewers used What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) standards to sort through 2,221 studies.

The Executive Summary is here. I urge you to read it.

You will see that the bulk of the evidence at the time of that review favored learning in single-sex schools. But you will also see that the support for the conclusions is generally thin because of a dearth of scientific studies of important issues.

A current search of WWC on that topic yields no study that meets their standards.

The ed schools have moved on.

Single-sex classrooms have been offered successfully at Woodbridge Middle School in Prince William County for more than a dozen years.  We will examine that in more detail in the next article.

But that single school effort is not robust enough to meet WWC standards. It will take a much broader, scientifically designed and run trial.

Bottom line. The educational gaps between boys and girls are too big for state government and citizens to continue to ignore in Virginia.

Indiana has not ignored them. See both sides of The Great Gender Debate: Should Boys And Girls Learn Separately? published by Indiana’s State Impact Project.

It is time to focus on the education of boys who, unsurprisingly, act and learn like boys.

Woodbridge Middle has proven it is possible to offer single-sex classrooms in co-ed public schools, subject to parental choice of classroom assignments.

And it has apparently solved, if such a thing is achievable, the ACLU’s objections to single-sex schools detailed in The Great Gender Debate.

Next time I will offer a concept for the voluntary implementation by school divisions of single-gender and co-ed classrooms in co-ed public schools across Virginia.

It will serve as the basis for a definitive study to provide the evidence needed to solve the debate.

Updated Dec. 19 at 15:20 to add the discussion about Woodbridge Middle and to eliminate the discussion about ed schools.

109 Comments

Posted in Children and Families, Education (K-12)

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Hardest Job in Virginia: Making Aaron Spence Look Good.

Posted on December 7, 2023 by | 16 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

We tried to warn you, Loudoun County.

We told you that Virginia Beach School Superintendent Aaron Spence was trouble. That he was one vote away from being sacked by the newly elected Beach school board when he decided to bolt for greener pastures. That he was a devoted wokester.

We even pointed to his wife’s crude New Year’s Tweet from January 2020 where she hurled a profanity at then-President Trump as she posted a photo of herself draped over her greasy-looking husband.

Spence was pressured to apologize. And he did, twice.

The Fun Couple is your problem now, Loudoun.

Shoot, the new school year was barely underway before news broke that Spence failed to inform parents – FOR 20 DAYS – that kids were overdosing on fentanyl in one Loudoun high school. He dodged pesky reporters and television cameras with the nerve to ask why he delayed.

In short, Spence is a public relations nightmare.

So it should come as no surprise that the superintendent’s brought one of his old mouthpieces up from Virginia Beach to run interference for him.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education (K-12)

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Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part Three – Vital New State Roles

Posted on December 7, 2023 by | 11 comments

By James C. Sherlock

A compilation from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

I have found in 18 years of reporting on education in the Commonwealth that each school, each school division and each region is to some degree its own ecosystem.

Taking the example of chronic absenteeism, an individualized assessment of causes could be attempted:

  • if a single school‘s chronic absenteeism can be adjusted statistically for differences in its demographics (race, ethnicity, economic status, English learners, IEPs, etc.) to its division norms, and
  • if that school is a statistical outlier from its division good or bad.

But those are very big if’s because of the complex algorithm that would be required for comparing.  And the results would apply only to that specific school.

I have sometimes compared divisions‘ statistical performances on absenteeism and SOL pass rates against state norms, but usually at the extremes.  There are too many variables to sort among the bulk of them.  At the division level, the variables are as great as at the school level.

Regional differences are there, but causes are hard to pin down beyond differences in demographics and cultures.

That said, and to some degree for that reason, I offer two new state roles for improving school attendance:

  1. marketing, which is either not now done at all or done ineffectively, to increase parents understanding of the value of school; and
  2. investigations and enforcement, which are done sporadically across the state.  That is because of both the time and expertise investigations take and current laws that require schools to involve the court system in enforcement.

Those recommendations are not budget neutral.  This is a budget year.  They are tailored to draw Democratic support.  The time for them is now.

Given the time necessary to prepare proposals, it will likely take a special session to address them.

The chronic absenteeism crisis, appropriately designated by the Governor, rates one.

Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections and Law Enforcement, Demographics, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance

Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part Two – Restructure for Balanced Debates

Posted on December 6, 2023 by | 37 comments

By James C. Sherlock

Lisa Coons, Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction

I have watched the public sessions of the Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force.

The structure of the task force, and its proceedings, have been fatally flawed.

That panel has been dominated by the progressive worldviews of Attendance Works and FutureEd.

I offer as evidence the “resources” for the first meeting on October 24th.  Every single one uses Attendance Works or FutureEd for its expert assessment.

Then consider the agenda, discussion guide and this slide deck used on November 7th to set the stage for deliberations.

Such meetings have not encouraged debate, but rather have seemed to suffocate it.  The process as it exists seems destined to coronate failed progressive ideas.

Progressive pressure reached the point that a member of the panel, Dr. Keith Perrigan, Washington County Public Schools Superintendent and President of the Coalition of Small and Rural Schools of Virginia, on November 7th felt it necessary to apologize in advance for seeming to be an “ogre” to the rest of the panel.

Because he spoke in favor of enforcement of truancy laws.

The Task Force needs to change that environment and the makeup of the task force or they will get more of what Virginia has already experienced using progressive approaches: chronic absenteeism.

Continue reading →

37 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Education (K-12)

The Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part One – Failed Advice

Posted on December 5, 2023 by | 92 comments

Lisa Coons, Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction

by James C. Sherlock

Governor Youngkin, in response to the real crisis in our schools, has established a Chronic Absenteeism Task Force led by the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction.

The Task Force is supported by the non-profit Attendance Works.

Attendance Works so dominates VDOE’s Attendance & School Engagement page that it can be deemed a key component of the home team.

That organization has teamed with FutureEd to write an updated Attendance Playbook (Playbook). The version at the link is a post-Covid update of an earlier edition that has been followed by VDOE in policy development since at least 2015.

The resulting complex and school-resource-heavy multi-tiered approach to improving attendance has proven inadequate to the task.

  • Using a baseline year of 2015-16, chronic absenteeism among all students statewide did not decline in a statistically significant way under the new program;
  • Group-to-group ratios and gaps in absenteeism statistics remained the same; and
  • Absenteeism rates doubled together for all groups after COVID.

A compilation from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

Home team policies have failed.

That is possibly because no Playbook policies provide evidence for improving attendance that has met the standards of the federal Department of Education’s (DOE) Institute of Education Sciences (IES) What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).

Which is DOE’s home team.

The rigorous standards of WWC are required by DOE guidance Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments (Using Evidence) for a reason.

“The Department emphasizes the use of evidence-based activities, strategies, and interventions (collectively referred to as “project components”) in the design of education programs from pre-kindergarten through adult education.”

“The Department’s WWC uses rigorous standards to review education research, offering evidence of effectiveness on a wide range of project components.”

“Organizations should select project components that are supported by the most rigorous evidence
available, consider the needs of the learner population being served, and consider the ability and
capacity of the organization to implement.”

They work.

Continue reading →

92 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Education (K-12)

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Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Four – Chronic Absenteeism, Social Promotion, VTSS and UVa’s Ed School

Posted on December 2, 2023 by | 19 comments

by James C. Sherlock

There is a rule: nothing else schools do will matter much for kids who are chronically absent.

In Charlottesville, it is the Black children who dominate the chronic absenteeism statistics.

Their SOL performance validates the rule.

The process for preventing and dealing with chronic absenteeism within the school system is so lengthy, bureaucratic and “progressive” (literally and figuratively) that it has failed Black children starting in kindergarten.

Absenteeism and social promotion are recipes for educational failure.

They also contribute directly to the breakdown of order and discipline in schools, as kids who are frustrated and lost in class act out first in disruptive, and then destructive ways.

Yet CCS schools allow runaway Black chronic absenteeism without truancy charges and engage in wholesale social promotion of Black students who do not have the academic skills to learn in the next grade.

Lest they be labeled racist.

What they get are racist outcomes. Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Culture wars, DEI, Discipline and Disorder, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12)