"A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste ..."

After all the commotion -- and the silencing -- of Kim B. Gray's effort to inform her board about the troublesome new benchmarks of the revised waiver of the NCLB requirements that the Virginia Department of Education finagled from the U.S. Department of Education, it appeared that the School Board members were willing to give Supt. Yvonne Brandon and her administration a free pass when it came to presenting information concerning the dismal SOL scores recently released by VDOE.   But, after an 8-1 vote, with Evette Wilson (9th District member) casting the lone vote against having the presentation, the board decided to hear what the administration had to say.  

After everyone on the board properly thanked Victoria Oakley and her staff for their presentation, no one asked a single probative question about the results.  No one asked why Richmond had the second worst 6th-grade Math SOLs in the state.  No one asked why only 3 (three!) percent of the sixth-graders at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School passed the math test.  No one asked why only 7 (seven!) percent of the sixth-graders at Henderson Middle School passed the math test.

Not one question.  More to the point, not one answer.

Undaunted by the efforts of her colleagues and RPS administrators to silence her, Gray promised after the meeting that she will persevere and not only ask hard questions, but expect some honest answers when the School Board meets on Tuesday (Sept. 4, 2012). 

Here are the 2012 6th grade math scores, by division.  Richmond is the yellow bar.  Red bars, from the left, are Petersburg(!!), Hampton, Norfolk, and Newport News.  (Many thanks to John R. Butcher for this and all other graphs on the SaveOurSchools.rva blogsite.)


(Click HERE to see more SOL scores or scroll down to previous posting on the SaveOurSchools.rva blogsite).