Oh, Jeez, the Virginia Department of Education has just issued a press release proclaiming that 81% of Virginia’s 1,825 public schools are now fully accredited, partly “as the result of improved performance students on Standards of Learning tests.” The 81% figure represents an improvement from 78% the previous year.
Now, it’s entirely possible that some of the top-down efforts initiated by state educational officials actually helped. It’s also possible that the efforts of teachers and administrators paid off. But we won’t know for sure because of recent revelations of how some administrators and some teachers have been gaming the system. The public has no way to know if these incidents are isolated incidents or are the tip of a very ugly iceberg.
If you haven’t been paying attention to Bacon’s Rebellion over the past week or two, let me refer you to some source material:
“Gaming the SOLs: Alexandria Edition”
“When Is a School Not a School? When It’s a Program”
“We Were Encouraged to Make the Student Fail”
And on a similar subject, let us note the VDOE indifference to non-SOL cheating at the local level, as documented here:
“Halt the School Cheating Epidemic”
“VDOE on School Cheating: It’s Not Our Problem”
— JAB
