Find out how Cooch took $55,000 from the disgraced "U.S. Navy Veterans Association," in apparent exchange for his promise to get the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs (which had "notified Thompson's group that it no longer qualified for an exemption from state registration requirements") off the group's back. Can we say "pay-to-play?" Find out more.
As Virginia is preparing for budget battles at both the state and local levels, one of the big issues that will be discussed is teacher salaries. That's because for localities like Fairfax County, there have been pay freezes in effect for the last several years (though they did get a one percent cost-of-living increase last year). Most of the teachers I know could definitely use a little more money, but haven't complained too much about the pay freeze because they're simply thankful to have a job in this economy. Plus, nobody goes into teaching to get wealthy.
With that being said, Northern Virginia is a very expensive place to live. It therefore shouldn't be too surprising that a recent survey by the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers found that salary impacts job satisfaction for many local teachers.
Seventy-six percent of teachers said they agreed "very much" or "somewhat" that "teacher satisfaction is primarily dependent on salary" in a survey conducted by the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, one of two district teachers' unions.
That was significantly different from teachers' responses to a similar survey last year, when nearly 70 percent said the relationship between happiness and pay was "weak" despite a two-year freeze on raises and cost-of-living adjustments.
Considering the results of this survey, teachers will probably be pleased to hear that a lot of school board members have made teacher pay a big issue and Superintendent Jack Dale is expected to request a pay increase in his 2013 budget proposal. They shouldn't get too excited, however, because I still expect a pay increase could face a lot of opposition.
This morning, Bob McDonnell released his plan to supposedly shore up the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). In fact, McDonnell's proposals are more of the usual smoke, mirrors, accounting tricks, and utter evasion of responsibility that have characterized his entire governorship to this point (how he can be popular simply boggles the mind; at best, you could argue the guy's accomplished absolutely nothing).
In response to McDonnell's latest irresponsibility, Virginia Democrats are piling on. According to Sen. Donald McEachin's (D-Henrico) office:
{McDonnell's proposal} is yet another effort to impose more of a burden on local governments, which are already strapped and which are responsible for critical vital services like public education, public safety, and public health. Local governments cannot afford to absorb this. To use an overused expression, it is an 'unfunded mandate.'"
As Ben points out at NLS, "local governments {have} only two options to meet this massive unfunded state mandate- raising property taxes or slashing county spending on schools, police, fire, parks and other local needs." Meanwhile, Ben adds, the VRS is "a disaster from the General Assembly underfunding it," and now instead of actually raising the money to properly fund it, McDonnell and the Republian'ts are "passing the buck on to localities." Disgraceful.
For his part, Del. Scott Surovell (D-Mt. Vernon) weighs in with several points (and questions). First, "how is {McDonnell} gonna pay for this?" Second, "We're giving an extra $200M to Higher Ed, Jacking up VRS contributions, taking $110 [million] from General Fund to pay for roads, and now fully funding VRS?" Third, that inevitably means "Cut healthcare for kids & low-income seniors (Medicaid)." Fourth, Surovell notes that Republicans claimed "there wasn't a problem" with VRS at all. Hmmm. Surovell concludes:
Crossposted at ProgressVA. Over the weekend, the Washington Post took a hard look at the virtual school company K12 Inc., which is based in Virginia. Popular with conservatives, their controversial virtual classrooms allow students to take lessons at home without physically going to a school. The firm is controversial because their students don't perform as well as those enrolled in public schools even though the company receives the same amount from the state, per pupil, as brick and mortar schools.
While the entire article is worth reading, near the end the piece shares how the politically savvy company got things done in Virginia: they gave a lot of money to Bob McDonnell. The Post reports, "McDonnell has received $55,000 in campaign contributions from K12 or its executives since 2009, including a $15,000 payment to his political action committee this month." For that he, "successfully promoted legislation to authorize full-time virtual schools in 2010. K12 was the only private company present during talks to craft that legislation." That legislation is based off templates written by the conservative, corporate-front group ALEC.A full list of K12's campaign contributions can be found here on VPAP.org.
The old adage, that in politics "timing is everything", has new poster boy: Terry McAuliffe. By the roll of the political dice, he has been given a once-in-gubernatorial-election cycle opportunity. It is similar to opportunities given - and immediately taken - by Chuck Robb, Jerry Baliles, Doug Wilder, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. It is, of course, possible that their seizing the moment didn't matter. It might also be unimportant that such an opportunity proved to be a fundamental ingredient in the political image built by Robb and Warner, the two Democrats who wrested the Governor's Mansion from a Republican. But as philosopher Yogi Berra said, some things are just "too coincidental to be a coincidence." ,
What is this unique opportunity being presented to Terry as 2013 gubernatorial cycle begins, with Democrats unfortunately at their weakest point in the two-party era in terms of winning back the Governorship? We will get to it shortly, although careful observers of state politics already know.
First let's set the political landscape.
POPULAR SITTING GOVERNORS HAVE A BIG SAY IN WHO FILLS THEIR SHOES Assuming Governor Bob McDonnell keeps his current popularity, the 2013 Republican gubernatorial candidate will start with at least a hard 5-7 point advantage over the Democratic nominee, although a nasty nomination battle between Bill Bolling and Ken Cuccinelli could significantly change this metric. The most popular Governors in the modern era - Chuck Robb, Mark Warner and George Allen - were all able to help push their chosen successors across the finish line, as all had served with them in statewide office. The one-term gubernatorial limitation appears to make swing voters want to give a popular chief executive a "second" one through a surrogate able to credibly claim he was part of a successful Administration.
It is also no surprise Robb, Allen and Warner all wrested the Governor's Mansion from the other party. This allowed them to come into office with a clean state and new, fresh energy. Such a situation gave them a unique opening, which they shrewdly took. Like them, McDonnell has a high rating because he has appeal to middle-of-the-road independents, and less-than-super-partisan Democrats. In our increasingly polarized politics, having bipartisan appeal is worth a lot of votes. But it has to be earned through deeds, not words. This gave Robb, Warner and Allen a unique power at the time: right now, McDonnell is on track to have it too.
THE SECRET SAUCE OF WINNING DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATES It is important to note that Mark Warner is the only Democrat in the modern era to win the Governorship without having been either Lt. Governor or Attorney General first. He had, however, run a very credible losing race against incumbent Senator John Warner, meaning he didn't get stuck with the "liberal" label, allowing him to then hook up with former Governor Allen on an important statewide education initiative. This helped further establish Warner's middle-of-the-road credibility, since Republicans don't join with "liberals" for those kinds of things.
The Warner-Allen thing is seldom remembered, but it points to a crucial aspect of winning for a Democrat not at all appreciated by the party's grassroots activists: all the gubernatorial winners knew they needed a form of public, Republican/conservative validation. The word "needed" is used advisedly. The only gubernatorial winner in the state's history regarded as a "liberal" by key swing voters was Doug Wilder. But his election defies all the rules anyway, so it just is what it is, perfectly logical yet mathematically impossible.
Starting with Virginians for Robb - the political vehicle then used by well-known conservatives to put their stamp of "he ain't one of them liberals" on a gubernatorial candidate - the Democratic candidate has always needed such a dimension to a winning campaign. Four years later, a split in the GOP led to Republicans for Baliles, a small group but sufficient, with Robb's continued crossover strength, to help give the Democratic nominee a landslide win. It also helped that Baliles was generally depicted in the media as the "conservative" in the Democratic nomination race against "liberal" Dick Davis. Silly stuff, but such things do matter.
Virginians and local governments feeling the pain as McDonnell passes along state obligations while calling for even more cuts.
Just a day after Governor McDonnell's Education Department admitted that federal stimulus funds saved or created at least 7,715 Virginia teacher jobs threatened by state budget cuts, Pass The Buck Bob took to CNN to brag about the "billions of dollars" he has cut from education and health care.
In the video, McDonnell tells CNN host Erin Burnett "we've cut billions of dollars out of the budget the past couple years in education and health care." He continues by declaring "I think we're on the right track.
"Governor McDonnell's insistence that gutting education, public safety and health programs on which struggling Virginians depend begs the question: whose side is he on?" said ProgressVA Executive Director Anna Scholl. "McDonnell gives his biggest donors hefty tax breaks while he cuts billions of dollars from our schools and police and fire departments."
The Richmond Times Dispatch reports that Virginia's localities are bracing for more budget cuts and even less support from the state government. With Governor McDonnell still unable to find funding, he is continuing to shirk responsibility and pass the burden from the state down to the local level. Chesterfield is one such locality:
"Education funding is especially worrisome to Chesterfield officials, who don't know what to expect from McDonnell and the General Assembly.
County Administrator James J.L. Stegmaier said, 'The biggest vulnerability we have is the apparent failure of the commonwealth to find solutions to its fiscal difficulties, and the tendency of the commonwealth to shift their budget problems to the local level.'
For example, localities are wary about state discussion of possibly requiring counties to maintain their secondary roads, using money from state maintenance funds for cities and towns.
And they're concerned about funding of the retirement plan for teachers, which has dropped below 60 percent in its funded status as the state deferred hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions last year in order to balance the budget."
There's a stark contrast here: 1) on the one hand, a dedicated and effective advocate for public education in Fairfax and beyond (that would be Janet Oleszek); 2) on the other hand, a Tea Party/Kookinelli favorite (that would be John Cook) who's busy fundraising with a governor who's slashed education funding - and hinted at more to come. If you care about public education, the choice here couldn't be clearer: Janet Oleszek for Braddock District Supervisor!
Governor McDonnell Comes to Fairfax To Fundraise For John Cook
Oleszek demands to know John Cook's position on McDonnell's cuts to public education
In response Janet Oleszek- endorsed this week by the Fairfax Education Association- released the following statement:
"Governor Bob McDonnell has spent his first two years in office cutting state support for public education and making local taxpayers in Fairfax pick up the bill. In 2010, Governor McDonnell called for $730 million in public education cuts- before eventually winning $646 million in cuts. Earlier this year, Governor McDonnell called for another $50 million in cuts to public education as well as announcing a $140 million dollar sales tax diversion that Politifact reported would have almost certainly come from public schools.
Yesterday the Governor attended the State Board of Education meeting and hinted at even more potential cuts to come next year.
John Cook needs to put our Fairfax County Public Schools first- not himself. I call on him to reject any money raised from this event until the Governor will pledge no more cuts to public education in his upcoming budget."
Has everyone in Stafford County gone bananas? No, really?
This story is so ludicrous; I don't even know where to begin. According to myFoxdc.com, a Colonial Forge High School student was "handcuffed and placed in a police car for running down the sidelines during halftime at a [High School] football game" in a banana suit this past Friday.
I'm so glad that Sheriff Jett (R-Stafford) is taking my article on increased crime in Stafford County so seriously. Clearly, the Banana Man posed an imminent danger to the community and it was necessary to handcuff him and throw him in the back of a squad car. This isn't exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the post. He wasn't arrested and no charges have been filed, but I hear that Eric Olsen (R-Stafford) is on the case - that's after he finishes returning the illegal campaign donation.
Anyone around schools has seen the desperate lengths to which educators and parents are now going attempting to maintain programs, both academic and extra-curricular.
While at the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action last weekend, I encountered a woman who had had a biting letter published in a local newspaper. I have her permission to publish it in its entirety, which I will do. We cannot, however, link to or in any way directly reference the publication in which it appeared. I do want to offer that publication kudoes for having the courage to print the letter, which I now present to you:
Thinking outside the box
The problem with school financing is that we haven't gotten creative enough. While in college, my son earned $100 each month by donating plasma. If a bloodmobile could be deployed monthly to each public school, its staff could pump in an extra $30,000 to $40,000 annually. ["Senate approves budget with big cuts to education," NWTuesday, April 19.]
For "frills" like music, art and PE, we would need to be more creative. Establishing a Teacher Organ Program (T.O.P.) could be a win-win.
Here's how: For every organ a teacher donates, wealthy philanthropists interested in education reform make a tax-deductible donation to the school.
Just picture - smiling teachers in hospital gowns with their principals displaying $50,000 checks while thankful recipients of a lifesaving kidney look on. This would give "Race to the T.O.P." a whole new meaning!
With moves the Legislature is making, principals could utilize organ harvesting as a viable funding stream into the foreseeable future. Without due process, a principal could rate a few veteran teachers unsatisfactory, moving them to the top of the layoff list. This would make room for new teachers who still had both kidneys intact!
While I realize this proposal wouldn't address the entire shortfall, in today's climate, it feels like the type of out-of-the-box thinking that just might fly.
...perhaps you will enjoy the contents of the following email from Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools:
Dear Rethinking Schools friends,
Monday's New York Times reports that Scholastic, Inc. has dramatically revised its practice of partnering with corporations to produce curriculum it distributes to teachers.
In May, after a Rethinking Schools article critiquing its pro-coal "The United States of Energy" curriculum, and an effort led by Rethinking Schools and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Scholastic pulled the curriculum from its website and admitted that it had erred when it partnered with the American Coal Foundation. But it failed to end its "InSchool Marketing" program, and even continued to distribute biased curriculum like "Shedding Light on Energy," which it produced for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy.
...A DEMOCRATIC CHIEF EXECUTIVE IS TRYING TO HELP POOR KIDS FROM BEING RIPPED OFF BY THE SYSTEM; AND ONCE AGAIN, A TOP DEMOCRATIC OFFICIAL IS SUING TO STOP HIM!
by Paul Goldman (DPVA chair, 1990-1993)
What do the first African-American Governor and the first African-American President now have in common? Let me explain how it may look to strong backers of both men. I have seen this up close; perception is important in politics, particularly today when turnout is so important in close elections. Anyone who thinks this kind of perception can't grow is wrong, especially in today's climate, where the polls show huge cynicism about politics on all sides.
"They've decided that total war is the way to go" the Huffington Post reports, quoting a college association official on the lawsuit that Democratic Party Chair Brian Moran's lobbying organization has filed against the Obama Administration.
No, this isn't an SNL skit, but it will be part of a Republican press release at some point. We know the Virginia GOP is cheering him, since Republicans have attacked President Obama for the same thing.
Let's be clear what's at stake here: The President is trying to protect students, African-Americans, veterans, and single moms from being ripped off by practices the NAACP has said "ruin students' lives," as well as poor African-American communities. Brian Moran's clients disagree with this assessment.
Jonathan Kozol is a distinguished author and educator. In this blog post by Anthony Cody, he participates in a conversation you ALL should read. Let me offer this to whet your appetite. Anthony asks "Why have you decided to participate in the Save Our Schools March on July 30th?". Here is Kozol's answer:
-I'll be in Washington for S.O.S. because I'm sick of begging members of the Senate, even those among them who have been my friends for years, to move two inches in the right direction. I'm tired of complaining. And I'm too old to bite my tongue and mute my words out of politeness and respectfulness for politicians who tell me in private that they share my views about the practices and policies that demean our teachers and threaten the survival of our public schools, but then refuse to stand up and denounce these policies in public.
The following letter was sent to Brian Moran on July 12, 2011, by former Director of Nursing Betty G. Kenley and her husband, Dr. James B. Kenley. The letter references this Richmond Times-Dispatch story, in which DPVA chair/for-profit "college" industry head Brian Moran claims: that public schools are heavily subsidized, while a for-profit school "pays taxes" (putting for-profits at an unfair advantage, apparently); that students at public schools are more interested in "various and sundry other activities" than specifically in getting an education; and that for-profits are at a disadvantage because they don't have "'wonderful sports teams like Virginia Tech and U.Va.' to attract students." Yes, this guy really is the head of the Democratic Party of Virginia. Hey, don't blame me, I didn't support him! Anyway, with that, enjoy the letter (bolding added by me for emphasis).
The Honorable Brian J. Moran
Chair, Democratic Party of Virginia
Dear Mr. Moran
It is embarrassing to us that our Chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia appears so ill informed about a serious problem and supports the continuation of some schools that do not meet minimum Virginia nursing standards. "Schools Are Under Scrutiny" in the Richmond Times Dispatch on Sunday, June 26, 2011 is the article we reference.
You spoke as a Democratic Leader. From the article it sounds like most members of the Democratic Party support this view. We caution you in this assumption. Many nurses are democrats and care about the quality of their profession. We believe you may have implied that the Democratic Party supports nursing schools who repeatedly fail to meet the state regulations. Is this a democratic value?
We found your remarks appalling. State colleges do not make profits and therefore can charge less. Furthermore, the University of Virginia receives 6.3% of its budget from the state general fund and most people would not consider that the university is "heavily subsidized" as you stated.
Your remarks centered on cost and we would urge you to become more knowledgeable of the educational programs. Your lack of knowledge about nursing was evident. Value is a function of quality and cost. We have attended the Board of Nursing hearings, which are open to the public, regarding some of these nursing schools. It is shocking. Many lack stable faculty, in addition some lack equipment and supplies. The percentage of graduates passing the licensing exam is low and unacceptable since the minimum standard is 80%. Would you choose these graduates to care for you or your family? As consumers of health care we are concerned about the quality of our graduate nurses in Virginia and hope that you would be too.
We urge you to spend a day at one of these hearings and experience the dedication of these nurses in maintaining standards that were established in order to protect the public.
Sincerely,
Betty G. Kenley, MSN - Director of Nursing, Retired
James B Kenley, MD MPH
P.S. As a Virginia Democratic friend of mine put it, this letter and the comments by Brian Moran in the Richmond Times-Dispatch article "prove that it is untenable for Brian Moran to hold these two jobs simultaneously, and he needs to resign from one or the other immediately." In addition, "By speaking out in this way in Richmond's leading newspaper, he is engaging in what amounts to lobbying the many members of the RTD audience who are part of the Virginia government, thereby violating the spirit if not the letter of the Virginia law that says that the head of a Virginia political party cannot be a lobbyist."
Now that the Richmond School Board/Richmond Public Schools have corrected their numbers, it turns out that the SAT "Mean District Score" for the Richmond Public School District has dropped from 954 for reading and math (combined) before, to 820 (also combined) after the change (Also note: Keep in mind that most Richmond public school seniors don't take the SATs, just the ones who think they can go to college, thus skewing the scores higher than they otherwise would be).
This could prove to be a seminal moment in the effort to improve Richmond Public schools. The decision to go from 954 to 820 appears to be one of the results of the recent School Board/RPS Administration annual retreat. They apparently realized that RTD columnist Michael Paul Williams and Delegate Joe Morrissey were trying to help them, not hurt them.
As we know, the School Board/RPS Administration had been insisting for years in counting the Maggie Walker Regional School SATs as part of the Richmond School Division SAT scores. Richmond resident John Butcher, aka crankytaxpayer.org, has been pointing out this situation for years.
To paraphrase Mr. Williams, the use of Maggie Walker SAT numbers was an "obvious" mistake that couldn't stand up to scrutiny, once exposed to the light of day by Mark Holmberg, WTVR ace reporter, and further revealed by RTD reporters Will Jones and Jeremy Slayton.
The School Board and the Superintendent made the right decision here.
So, which would you prefer as your Attorney General: 1) a science-denying, homophobic, lawsuit-crazy, far-right-wing extremist, ideological hack like Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli; or 2) someone who focuses on real issues like the following?
Jack Conway, the attorney general of Kentucky, is leading a national inquiry into the practices of for-profit colleges.
[...]
As chairman of a committee of state attorneys general reviewing the industry, I can say that our bipartisan group is interested in violations of state consumer protection statutes. The federal government must answer for why funds to the industry continue to expand, with increased defaults and little accountability.
Recent evidence has uncovered aggressive recruiting tactics designed to pressure students into enrolling, with one investigation indicating that for-profit recruiters are taught a series of questions called the "pain funnel" to entice students into signing. These are the kinds of abuses that attorneys general are uniquely positioned to investigate and stop.
Read that last sentence again, then ask yourself: why is Ken Cuccinelli wasting his time, and taxpayer money, on his politically-driven witchhunts, instead of cracking down on real problems like the egregious for-profit "education" industry (or, perhaps, the despicable Massey Energy, which is headquartered in Richmond)? Again, wouldn't you rather have a real Attorney General instead of the embarrassment we've got here in Virginia? I know I would.
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste" is what the United Negro College Fund has been saying for years. Except, apparently, if you are a kid from a family with very modest incomes in Richmond.
By Paul Goldman
Why did the RTD leadership throw its top columnist - Michael Paul Williams - under the bus this morning? As we say in the South, if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, and ducks like a duck, then...well, you be the judge. I report, you decide, as Mr. Ailes might say.
The Richmond school system needs to stop perpetuating the charade that its ranks include the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School. On its website..., [the] Richmond school district also use[s] the 2009-10 SAT results for the school at Lombardy and Leigh streets in calculating its district mean scores...[This] is misleading, disingenuous and wrong. The school district should immediately place an asterisk by Maggie Walker and note that it is a regional school. And Walker's scores should not be used in calculating the school district's mean score." [Emphasis added].
In fact, the true mean SAT scores in Richmond would be several hundred points LOWER if the politicians and their appointees had to tell the truth and not claim the achievements of students they don't teach -- in a school they don't run, no less. Indeed, they're counting the scores of students WHO CAN'T EVEN ATTEND A RICHMOND CITY PUBLIC SCHOOL, because they live don't live in Richmond!
How big is this difference between the true SAT mean score and the phony one?
Historically, the education issue, not the jobs issue, has been the big winner for Democrats running statewide in Virginia. Is 2013 shaping up the same way? Yes it is: in 2013, education is going to be Job #1 her in Virginia.
Why? Here is my calculation. In 2012, three things can happen to set up the 2013 GUV race.
(1) Jobs don't come back and the President loses in 2012. Very bad news for Democrats, setting up the Republicans to get credit for making the economy turn around in 2013. Fair or unfair, the guy in the White House takes the hit, goes with the territory.
(2) Jobs come back, both the national GOP and the President get credit, as does Governor McDonnell. This may also be unfair, but the President will have cut some deals to get legislation, etc. and thus he is helped by staying bipartisan through 2012.
(3) Jobs don't come back, but the President wins anyway.
All three scenarios in terms of the jobs issue play to the advantage of VA Republicans in 2013. If the economy and jobs come back, then things look good in Virginia, McDonnell's image goes up, and we are in a Robb/Allen/Warner situation: where the approval rating of a Governor of one party elected to replace the previous Governor of another party is high. This leads voters to give the Governor a "second term" by electing his hand-picked choice. So, a jobs comeback - which we badly need, regardless - helps Democrats in 2012 and Republicans in 2013.
But if the jobs don't come back, the Democrats will take the blame since we control the White House through 2012 at least. Even if Obama loses, the public will still blame him as they still blame Bush (which is one reason Obama wins next year even the unemployment rate is high).
PolitiFact.com brags about its fearless Truth-O-Meter, saying it was created to ensure an honest discussion of the top issues facing the Commonwealth. Well, according to our leading local/state elected and appointed officials, there is nothing ore important to this Commonwealth's future than the education of our children.
Yet, PolitiFact.com refuses to touch arguably the biggest untruth told in Virginia politics, one that especially burdens the state's most vulnerable citizens. Why is the Truth-O-Meter turned off for this issue?
"A Virginia high school diploma tells admission officers at colleges, universities, and career and technical schools that the bearer is ready for the rigors of post-secondary education."
Our leaders have spent and are spending $hundreds of millions of dollars to produce statistics to prove this claim. Is there any crueler action by government against a child than misleading her or she about the true nature of their education?
"Diploma to Nowhere" was the title of the Gates-funded study. According to this report:
"A high school degree no longer demonstrates that a graduate is college ready."
The folks at PolitiFact.com can continue to play "gotcha" with any candidate of any party for any office in Virginia. But if they truly want to improve Virginia, then they need to use their Pulitzer Prize credentials to explain why our top officials at the local and state level continue to claim something about such a fundamental issue that is simply not true (and they know it).
Yesterday, my Facebook status ran: If you want a potent reminder about how all politics is local, just get involved in your local school board race.
That is more true than ever this morning.
School board races are, to my mind, the most overlooked political races on the election calendar, but often the most contentious, the most personal, and the most intense. Here in Fairfax County, we don't have primaries to get party endorsement, preferring the facade that school board races are "non-partisan." What this really means is that only a handful of people are deciding who gets the resources and backing from each party, which is pretty undemocratic if you ask me.
School board races are personal because they impact two of the most important things in our lives -- they are about our children, who will spend large parts of their lives under the care of and living out the educational philosophies of those whom we elected and those subsequently hired. There is no issue too small for parents to care about, and boy, we do! And they are also about our local economics and stabilizing housing prices, which are most people's most reliable asset for building wealth. Fairfax's reputation for excellent schools is a huge draw for families looking for a place to buy a home and spend their money locally for many years. (I moved into Fairfax County because I wanted my son to attend Robinson Secondary not only for it's great academic reputation, but also its theatre program.) Anything that we feel diminishes our schools has the potential to hurt our children and our financial bottom line. That's pretty powerful stuff!
The title is not a mistake. In the New York Times, we finally see coverage of a phenomenon some of us have been writing about for year. The piece begins by telling about a small committed group of apparently grass roots organized teachers who testified before the Indiana legislature and wrote an op ed asking to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform - one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, "They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers' union lobbyists." They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.
The purpose of Blue Virginia is to cover Virginia politics from a progressive and Democratic perspective. This is a group blog and a community blog. We invite everyone to comment here, but please be aware that profanity, personal attacks, bigotry, insults, rudeness, frequent unsupported or off-point statements, and "trolling" (NOTE: that includes outright lies, whether about climate science, or what other people said, or whatever) are not permitted and, if continued, will lead to banning. For more on trolling, see the Daily Kos FAQs. Also note that diaries may be deleted if they do not contain at least 2 solid paragraphs of original text; if not, please use the comments section of a relevant diary. For more on writing diaries, click here. Thanks, and enjoy!
This morning, Bob McDonnell released his plan to supposedly shore up the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). In fact, McDonnell's proposals are more of the usual smoke, mirrors, accounting tricks, and utter evasion of responsibility that have characterized his entire governorship to this point (how he can be popular simply boggles the mind; at best, you could argue the guy's accomplished absolutely nothing).
There's a stark contrast here: 1) on the one hand, a dedicated and effective advocate for public education in Fairfax and beyond (that would be 
...perhaps you will enjoy the contents of the following email from Bill Bigelow of Rethinking Schools: 
...A DEMOCRATIC CHIEF EXECUTIVE IS TRYING TO HELP POOR KIDS FROM BEING RIPPED OFF BY THE SYSTEM; AND ONCE AGAIN, A TOP DEMOCRATIC OFFICIAL IS SUING TO STOP HIM!
this is the first in a series of diaries about the 
Now that the Richmond School Board/Richmond Public Schools have corrected their numbers, it turns out that the SAT "Mean District Score" for the Richmond Public School District has dropped from 954 for reading and math (combined) before, to 820 (also combined) after the change (Also note: Keep in mind that most Richmond public school seniors don't take the SATs, just the ones who think they can go to college, thus skewing the scores higher than they otherwise would be).
So, which would you prefer as your Attorney General: 1) a science-denying, homophobic, lawsuit-crazy, far-right-wing extremist, ideological hack like Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli; or 2) someone who focuses on 
by Paul Goldman
by Paul Goldman
Yesterday, my Facebook status ran: If you want a potent reminder about how all politics is local, just get involved in your local school board race.
originally posted at 
