The Richmond Schools say they are "The Capital Choice in Education."  In fact, most Richmond schools should be required to post the same notice as the entrance to Dante's Inferno:

• NEW:  Cranky's Freedom of Information Act suit against the School Board.
   

• The school staff at Oak Grove Elementary cheated in the 2005 SOL testing.
   

• The Richmond SOL scores continue to lag and the Richmond SAT scores are a disaster.  The alternative assessment scores are similarly awful.
   

• Despite the aid of the state's crooked accreditation system, 12.5% of our schools are not fully accredited.  Richmond has one of the seven Virginia schools facing Year 5 sanctions for English and one of three facing Year 5 sanctions for math under the No Child Left Behind Act.  We have the only Year 6 schools in both English and math.
   

• One reason Richmond's school children don't score well is that they don't come to school and the State Board of Education is enabling Richmond's violations of the truancy laws.  One reason some of our kids don't come to school is that they have been suspended for not coming to school(!).  Some others have dropped out.
   

• Another reason for the awful scores, perhaps, is the disorder in our schools.  Another is that the School Board and the school administration themselves are doing a terrible job.  Yet another is that the Richmond school system encourages cheating by the teachers.  Another, it seems, is that some Richmond teachers are so inept that they cannot provide correct answers to students they are helping to cheat.
   

• To get those awful results, we pay $2,453 per kid more than Norfolk and $2,236 more than the State average (not counting debt service).  Most of the extra money is disappearing into the instruction budget, mostly in the elementary and middle schools, where it is doing no good.  As of '02, we also were paying for 592 unused seats (4% of the total) in elementary schools and 2859 unused seats (19% of the total!) in middle and high schools.
   

• The internal audit of the Exceptional Education program disclosed that the Board and the Superintendent were not in control.  The State, as seems to be its habit, did nothing.

• The frequent excuse for the high cost of the Richmond schools is a large number of special needs students.  Yet, the extra cost of special education students does not begin to explain the remarkably high cost of the Richmond school system.
   

• The State cooks the accreditation numbers.  They don't seem to be embarrassed by this fraud but the process has embarrassed the [former] Governor.

Indeed, the Richmond schools deliver the scholastic equivalent of capital punishment to our kids at a remarkably high cost.  If the schools can't do a decent job, at least they should be able to do the same lousy job for a lot less money.

Fame! 

• On June 26, 2006, the Governor's wife took to the Op/Ed page of the Times-Dispatch to criticize a T-D reporter and me for badmouthing Richmond and the public schools.  Of course I have a response.
   

• On January 2, 2007, they put my picture in the Times-Dispatch.  Fortunately, they didn't repeat that affront to good taste in the Web edition.