We need more Charter Schools in Virginia
Last week we reported that the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy had announced the results of a survey they conducted with the Black Alliance for Educational Options on the issue of school choice.
The survey highlighted the concerns of parents in Petersburg, Norfolk and Richmond, and their desires for greater educational options.
In other news, Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” report, Virginia was recognized of their 4th best in the nation ranking. This is good news for Virginia, but as we have said before, general state-wide rankings sometimes fail to recognize the challenges faced by individual students, or even individual regions of the Commonwealth.
This week, Chris Braunlich, of the Thomas Jefferson Institute, has another insightful article in Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia Needs More Charter Schools. We have written about the need for, and benefits of, charter schools before, including Richmond’s own struggles to form a new charter elementary school.
Mr. Braunlich writes:
Virginia educators are justifiably proud of their ranking – 4th best in the nation – according to Education Week’s annual “Quality Counts” report.
The Old Dominion scored far higher than the national average on every indicator, earning an A in the important “standards, assessments and accountability” category.
But in shouting huzzah, we run the risk of overlooking clear pockets of failure.
Consider the systems of Norfolk, Richmond, Roanoke and Petersburg, which seem unable to break out of a spiral of academic failure. All have five or more schools failing to meet state accreditation. In some cases, the schools have been on a watch list for years, and in the case of Petersburg the number of failing schools actually increased. There, 53 percent of seventh graders cannot read on grade level and the response has been typical for bureaucracies: a five-year series of “Memoranda of Understanding,” promising corrective actions that have either not taken place or have not worked.
