Education in Virginia
The first attempt was a move in 1619-1620 by the London Company to begin a school to educate Indian children in Christianity.
The second attempt, known as the "East India School", was meant to educate white children in the colony of Virginia.
Unlike Northern and Western states influenced by the ideas of Horace Mann, public education was not required under the Virginia state constitution until 1870, after an innovation in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868 (although paying for such education became controversial in the next decade).
After the American Civil War, the Peabody Foundation distributed funds to help construct field schools, as later did the Rosenwald Foundation, which established Rosenwald Schools in Virginia and other Southern states to assist in educating African Americans.
Church groups also established schools, especially to educate Native Americans and remote mountain communities.
Before $45 million in appropriations during the administration of Governor John S. Battle, per pupil expenditures and teacher salaries both remained below national averages, and the state ranked last nationally in percentage of high school age children actually attending high school, and next-to-last in college age children going to college.
During the 2008 General Assembly session, Governor Kaine backed $22 million expansion to increase the accessibility of pre-k education for at-risk four-year-olds.
[citation needed] Public K–12 schools in Virginia are generally operated by the counties and cities, and not by the state.
[18] Nine high schools in the Northern Virginia region are ranked in the top 100 nationwide by Newsweek magazine.
[21] Virtual Virginia (VVa) is the Department of Education's system for providing online courses to students.
[22] This program got its start in the 1980s, when AP courses were offered through satellite schools to students in Virginia, mostly to those in rural areas without many other education options.
The school is run through Desire2Learn, a web-based course management system which presents the lesson material through a web browser.
It includes objectives to help students acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes believed necessary for further education and employment.
[31] No Child Left Behind was designed to hold schools accountable for students' proficiency, as determined by testing procedures.
[33] "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP), which is meeting the target proficiency ratings, must be met by the schools annually.
[33] If two consecutive years pass where a school does not meet AYP, then they get labeled as "needing improvement", and supplemental services may be offered.
NCLB also has implications for teachers, by putting a lot of pressure on the educators in the public school system to get the required proficiency results.
[34] Some have also argued that NCLB legislation prevents the teaching of civics, because the curriculum is so focused on other content areas.
This could be detrimental, because the foundation of the public education system was to help students develop into productive citizens.
[37] Virginia law requires each public college or university to publish the amount of its fees separate from its tuition.
On May 26, 2010, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell withdrew the state from the second round of Race to the Top funding.
[49][50] Although McDonnell supported the Race to the Top program during his campaign for governor,[51] McDonnell later went on to claim that the Race to the Top rules precluded participating states from adopting more rigorous standards in addition to whatever multi-state standards they join.
