Very disturbing results from Virginia’s Standards of Learning tests show that Richmond Public Schools are failing their students.
WTRV reports, “On the seventh-grade math SOL, data shows that zero RPS students passed the SOL and just 13 percent of students in Petersburg passed it. Compare that to Chesterfield, where 83 percent of seventh graders passed the math SOL this past school year.”
Zero? Not one student passed the seventh-grade math SOL. That’s hard to believe.
Cleary the numbers are worse than normal due to pandemic shutdowns that never should have been forced on schools as kids were never considered high risk for Covid.
The article from WTVR includes a quote from School Member Jonathan Young, who said, “This is a failure by every adult that contended that remote learning was a worthy substitute for in-person.” Agreed.
But even then, those SOL numbers are very poor. Public schools need a lot of work in Virginia.
Freeing state-run education from unfunded federal government mandates will certainly help. The best way to achieve that is abolish the federal Department of Education. Rep. Thomas Massie has a bill that will do just that, it’s one sentence.
At the state level, Republicans in Virginia have the opportunity to implement a parent-student centric education system which doesn’t allow teachers unions and DC bureaucrats to control local-run schools. This is the time to make Virginia’s schools better. Governor Youngkin was pretty much elected because Terry McAuliffe and Randi Weingarten really dropped the ball on education policy. Democrats offered a government-teacher centric idea for education, which voters rejected. Parents made it clear on Election Day that they want to have a say in the way local-run schools teach.
Governor Youngkin has appointed five members to the nine-member Board of Education, giving his administration a narrow majority. He has also appointed a new state superintendent. The people are in place and the mandate is clear. Virginia’s students can’t afford to miss this opportunity.
When Democrats want to remove James Madison and George Washington as Founders and replace them with critical race theory, then you know things are bad. Had McAuliffe won last year, then that would be the reality. Imagine that while Richmond students are failing at math.
