Virginia Tomorrow

Here’s a task for the checklist of the new Secretary of Education.

Free Maggie Walker!

The Richmond-based Governor’s School may be the best high school in the country that isn’t counted as a school in most national rankings.

And it’s all our fault.

Holly Prestidge in the RTD has the story today, but Carol Wolf first told me about this a number of months back.

Here’s the backdrop.

Virginia has some of the highest performing schools in the nation.

The Thomas Jefferson High School for Math and Science is routinely ranked the Number One School in America.

It provides students with a fabulous education.

And it is a great economic development tool for Fairfax County to be able to tell potential businesses that their children might have an opportunity (it’s a competitive entry) to attend the best high school in the country.

In the Richmond area, the regionally-based Maggie Walker Governor’s School serves a similar purpose.

I don’t think that there is any doubt that it would be considered a top 10 or at worst a top 20 school in the country as well.

But in many recent rankings (which often rely on reported test scores), Maggie Walker never rates.

For one amazing reason.

Officially, we do not report Maggie Walker’s test scores as a separate school.

It’s as if Maggie Walker does not exist!

The test scores of its students are officially allocated back to the schools they might have attended if they did not enrol in Maggie Walker.

My guess is that the practice probably dates back to some bargain that was necessary to get the regional buy-in to create the school in the first place- -school systems probably agreed to send their kids to Maggie Walker only if they didn’t lose the capacityto count some of the best and the brightest in their own numbers.

A sentiment that’s perfectly understandable.

But there has to be a better way to do this than to pretend that Maggie Walker isn’t a school.

As we think about linking education to Virginia’s economic development efforts, wouldn’t it be great to have 2 high schools in the nation’s top ten?

Wouldn’t this impress businesses thinking of relocating?

Talk about misplaced humility.

But most of all

It’s not fair to the kids who take great pride in their accomplishments.

Why should they be told that their school doesn’t count?