Editor’s Note: “If You Had Read the Paper…” is a new feature in which every day a member of the AltDaily team reads the Pilot, The Daily Press, and other local news, and gives you links to–and his or her take on–that day’s most interesting news.

Testing problems found at fourth Norfolk school

As dull as this headline sounds, the fact is that the Pilot has uncovered a local story that has real whistle-blowers, a real pattern of deception, and potentially real harm. Even though this story doesn’t feel weighty to me at first glance, when I read it I can see why the Pilot ran it as the top story, again. In a paper that routinely runs AP wire stories on the front page, this school test debacle is the most incisive bit of local news writing that they have going on at the moment, so it deserves to be recognized. Bravo.

Hi Big Brother.

So according to this series of stories in the Pilot, it looks like Norfolk schools have been working hard to raise their average scores on standard tests by telling the dumb kids to “stay in the gym” when they are given. Since the SOL scores play a role in accreditation, it’s not surprising that the schools take them very seriously—maybe seriously enough to cheat. But I have to wonder, is the Norfolk school district alone in this practice? There must be other school districts around the country where the same thing is happening, and if that’s the case, then the whole bedrock of standardized testing as a way of measuring school performance could be called into question. So, good job, Virginian-Pilot, for putting this on the radar! (Now, maybe you could write a more compelling headline…)

Former VA governor candidate bids to buy closing Franklin Mill

Pilot reporter Josh Brown is on back the “really awesome green projects that someone promised to build” beat again. Last week it was an Atlanta-based developer declaring that he would buy the idled Ford F-150 plant in order to make… solar panels and wind turbines or something (the guy didn’t really seem sure which it would be). This time it’s our old friend Terry McAuliffe, the man Virginia Democrats didn’t want to be governor, who apparently has enough money to ride in and save 1,000 paper mill workers from unemployment by turning the soon-to-be-closed Franklin Mill facility into a “biomass energy site.”

Now, don’t get me wrong: I would be extremely pleased to see either of these proposals become reality, but neither of Josh Brown’s recent articles mention the craziness of two years ago, when a couple of companies were bidding to build biodiesel and ethanol factories in South Norfolk. Both of those projects turned out to be airburgers that got some people excited, but then quickly unraveled when it was revealed that the leaders were all bluster. I’m skeptical now of anyone who claims they can build and operate a green-power industrial project when their primary previous experience is running for political office or building suburban retail developments. In other words, I’m not getting my hopes up yet.

‘Soft costs’ are way out of line, CEO says

Apparently there’s a lot of overhead in our local light rail project. Like, a LOT of overhead: 40% of total costs, as opposed to the 15-18% you’d expect. That’s according to the new project leader Philip Shucet who was called in to replace the previous CEO who was apparently throwing pencils at the ceiling tiles while his employees used up all the office paper by photocopying their butts.

This is beginning to make me angry. The rest of Hampton Roads is scrutinizing the Tide construction, waiting to decide if they will step up to extend the line into their cities. If HRT screws the pooch on this one, it’s going to make an uphill battle into the Battle of the Crater. I guess Shucet needs to put the old regime in the pillory for a while, in order to show he’s making a clean break from their permissive and lax oversight. I hope he can pull it together and turn this into something that our sister cities won’t dismiss as a failure—the economic opportunity to unite the region with an effective public rail system is just too big to pass up.

Pollution ‘diet’ suggested for Bay

Scott Harper, the Pilot‘s environmental superstar reporter, covered the Blue Planet Forum panel discussion held at Nauticus last night. Since I happened to be there too, I can say that I agree with Harper’s decision to lead his story with the comments of Chuck Fox, the Obama administration’s top advisor on the Chesapeake Bay. Fox was the most dynamic speaker of the evening—he butted heads with one of the other headliners, Dennis Treacy of Smithfield Foods, on the subject of regulation. Maybe the biggest piece of news, however, was the size of the audience—the auditorium was mostly filled even on a cold, rainy night with snow in the forecast. That says to me that Hampton Roads, or at least a significant part of it, cares about the Bay and the Environment. That’s good news.