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Virginia schoolchildren can reach high academically and make great grades, do well on their SATs, show leadership and commitment to their schools and communities with extracurricular activities and volunteer work -- and still not get into one of the state's premier public universities. The recession has forced states, including Virginia, to cut deeper into already reduced public support for higher education, and schools that can are making up some of the lost revenue by accepting more out-of-state students, who pay much more to attend. The resulting shattered dreams of some of Virginia's finest young adults make for a tempting target for legislative intervention. Tuesday, we'll write that when lawmakers convene in January, they should resist the urge to ride to the rescue.

For Monday: The Roanoke County library committee that reviewed a controversial library book came up with an excellent recommendation. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" is age appropriate for high school juniors and seniors. You can read their well-reasoned explanation here.

Roanoke County board member Jerry Canada also offered sound advice to a fellow board member who wanted to keep it off the shelf: "If you really, really want to know what that book is about, I challenge you to read it cover to cover and see if it changes your mind."

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is a strong defender of First Amendment rights when he sits on the court; not so much, perhaps, when he's out from behind the bench.

The New York Times reports that the student newspaper at a private school in Manhattan was unable to publish a timely account of a talk Kennedy gave to high school students in October "due to numerous publication constraints." The constraints proved to be a request by Kennedy's office to approve the story before it ran to make sure that quotes attributed to him were accurate.

That's not real-world journalism in a society with a free press. Yes, journalists want their stories to be accurate. Fact-checking is a routine part of reporting and editing. But handing a story over to a source for editing is a constraint on journalists' ability to report accurately -- not what someone wished he had said, or meant to say, but actually said.

The justice declined an interview, so it's not clear whether he knew of the request by his office -- which, by the way, returned the story, with quotations "tidied up," for later publication.

We talked a bit this morning during the editorial board meeting about a U.S. Department of Education study that found a third of states, including Virginia, lowered education standards, which helps them meet requirements of No Child Left Behind.

We're going to look into the report some more and discuss again next week.

• The report (2+ meg pdf)
• A news story summarizing the findings

On Virginia, specifically, the researchers found that Virginia's Grade 4 and Grade 8 reading standards are well below what the federal government considers basic proficiency.  In Mathematics, the commonwealth meets the Grade 4 basic proficiency but not the Grade 8.  (Note: There are some margin of error issues one these, so maybe Virginia barely meets some of the basic proficiency levels.)  On none of these is the commonwealth even close to what the feds consider "Proficient."

Part of the discussion is whether states should voluntarily subscribe to national standards.  That conversation is underway, but details on that must be worked out.

On a sort-of-related topic, the Virginia State Board of Education is accepting comments on proposed revisions to the English and Science Standards of Learning.

• English revisions
• Science revisions

Good news: Evolution and the Big Bang survive in the revisions as required learning for Virginia's young people.

If you want to comment on the revisions in person to the State Board of Education, there will be five public hearings in the next couple of months. The two for Southwest Virginia will take place in Max Meadows and Lynchburg both on Nov. 30 at 7 p.m.  See here for details.

Congratulations to Jessee Vasold, William and Mary's first transgendered homecoming queen (and first at any Virginia university as far as I know). Congratulations, too, to the student body at one of Virginia's premiere public institutions of higher education for their bold choice.

Vasold identifies as "gender-queer," a catch-all term for those who identify with something other than traditional male or female gender roles.

Perhaps it inspired their football team, who crushed James Madison 24-3.

To make sure every child graduates

Schools alone can't teach your kids. Parents, most of it is on you.

If you haven't yet looked at today's Horizon front, please take a few moments now to read, "Students achieve if 'fathers kick their butts,'" then rejoin us here.

The message delivered by Patrick Welsh, an English teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, is powerful and should be repeated in every home until it sinks in: Parents have the greatest influence in determining whether their children will do well in school.

Read more.

Wednesday, we'll laud Virginia Tech for its management of an international resource management project that won a Nobel for one of its researchers, and applaud the university's success in winning a multimillion-dollar federal grant for the university's bioinformatics institute. Both are pointed reminders of the important role research has to play in the lives of ordinary people, and the wisdom of investing in it.

For Friday we'll write about the controversy at William Byrd High School where one parent objected that the school's library carries the novel, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," by Stephen Chbosky. The parent's child did not check out the book nor was he assigned to read it.

The county policy requiring three librarians to read, review and recommend whether the book should be reshelved is underway. We find it troubling that a teacher might be in trouble for recommending a book found in the library.

Investing in higher ed

Virginia underfunds its colleges and universities at the cost of its economy.

Transportation might get most of the attention in Richmond, but Virginia underfunds other core government services, too. Higher education has been the ugly stepchild of the state budget for years.

The well-respected Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia recently released an in-depth analysis of higher education's economic impact on the state. It offers fresh evidence that when lawmakers shortchange higher education, they harm the commonwealth.

Read more.

The Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia today released a detailed analysis of what higher education does for the Virginia economy. For example, every $1 the state invests in higher education yields $1.39 in state revenue and $13.31 in Virginia gross domestic product.

We're writing an editorial for Tuesday in which we will run down some of the benefits and urge state leaders to take this information seriously when they return to Richmond. Everyone knows that transportation is underfunded, but the underfunding of higher education in recent years is equally tragic and misguided for the commonwealth's economic future.