Thursday, May 19, 2022

What Glenn Youngkin is Going to Tell Us

Today Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is scheduled to unveil his 90 Day Achievement Gap Report on Virginia Education at a press conference. 

He will say 

After two years of the deepest pandemic in 100 years students are behind in their learning; graduation rates have dropped; and discipline issues are up. He will say that local school districts and their teachers have failed our children. 

He will say

The way to fix the learning loss and graduation

   rates his data points reveal is 

More money and supports to private schools

Opening more charter schools,

Teaching students to do a job at the local company 

Doubling down on More testing, More data collection, and More harsh discipline in public schools.. 


He will say 

His Education cabinet and his new replacements on the Board of Education will implement these education salvation policies for Parents of Virginia.


He will Not tell us


Schools did not create the pandemic. 

After two years of chaotic upheaval, loss of family members, and disrupted life rhythms, of course students do not test well, and some have had to go to work or become caregivers rather than focusing on their studies.  This is not the fault of Virginia’s parents, students, or the schools in our communities.  


Learning with a few early childhood exceptions does not have an expiry date.  

Whether a student learns their multiplication tables this year or next year, does not alter their ability to learn them. If we leave the schools to their jobs and support them well, our kids will recover any learning they missed.


Our families will rebound 

If our communities and children are supported with the care, consideration and the schools they deserve. The worst thing you can do to all of us is to test more, punish more, and separate us into broken up enclaves suspicious of our neighbors.


Mr. Youngkin will not tell us

            All the recommendations he is presenting were tried for 20 years in other states and failed.

He is simply doing what his job training taught him to do-  Sow distrust, Disrupt the system;  take it over; sell off the assets. He was trained this is the way to make himself, and his wealthy mostly out of state friends, richer at the expense of Virginia and her parents and children.