Virginia School Privatizers are Fibbing with Figures
- Marianne Burke (PhD) and Vanessa Hall
- Mar 18
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 19
Data Busting Project 2025's Daily Signal
When 4 Public Education began, we knew that one major effort would be dispelling disinformation, but we had no idea how much disinformation would be churned by those whose interests were aligned with school privatization and/or who were intent on undermining the reputation of one of the best school districts in the nation, Fairfax County. But here we are.
The latest of thousands of disinformation pieces about Fairfax County is one by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora published in Project 2025’s Daily Signal. She has authored over 100 hit-pieces about Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), and has appeared on Fox and other conservative media shows multiple times.
On March 2, she published commentary that “Virginia’s Largest Public School District Is Unraveling” using many recycled talking points of her previous pieces; however, this time she added new “data.” Unfortunately, since she didn’t actually source any of her statistics, we are left to assume she is citing data from multiple studies by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, specifically: school enrollment projections and Virginia School data.
But, as the phrase goes: show us the data, or it didn’t happen. In other words, we can’t tell if she made up her numbers, and in fact, careful evaluation found serious flaws in her analysis, as identified in Marianne Burke’s analysis.
By all accounts, Lundquist-Arora is an employee of Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), so her constantly published opinions about public schools should be placed in the context of her employer’s political agenda which includes privatizing public funds for private education. In fact, her employer is known as an “anti-feminist” group that is committed to a war on public schools, which you can learn more about in Vanessa Hall’s analysis.
If Lundquist-Arora feels so negatively about FCPS that she thinks it is “unraveling” despite increasing scores, one might ask:
Why is Lundquist-Arora committed to educating her three children in FCPS if she feels so strongly that FCPS is “unraveling”?
Why are parents of more than 180,000 other students continuing to send their kids to FCPS year after year?
Why are FCPS test scores some of the highest in the country?
Why are FCPS students courted by universities around the country?
The answer: her commentary is part of a complicated disinformation campaign about public schools with the end goal to privatize public education funding. As the Intercept noted in 2022, Lundquist-Arora’s group, IWF, represents another “set of special interests: billionaire donors.” Learn more in Hall’s analysis.
Common tactics for spreading disinformation for political purposes include cherry-picking data or selectively reporting information, failing to put the information into context, suggesting cause and effect relationship using spurious correlations, biased polling or sampling, visual manipulation of graphs, etc. and gaslighting to try to convince people to believe misinformation. In this Daily Signal piece, a number of these tactics are fully evident.
Selective Reporting (Cherry-picking): Including only data that supports a specific, often partisan, viewpoint while ignoring contradictory evidence. For example, her commentary ignores the key component of the study: birth rates have been declining for the last 18 years. Additionally, it misrepresents another trend cited by the Cooper Center that enrollment numbers have recovered somewhat since the great pandemic decline. In fact, there were about 500 more students enrolled in FCPS in 2024 compared to 2023. Other specific issues:
Why choose Loudoun and Arlington as comparisons? Is it because both have seen increases in population in the last 10 years due to demographic changes? Public School enrollment across Virginia is expected to decline in coming years, mainly due to the declining birth rate.
Lundquist-Arora conveniently ignores that Loudoun, Fairfax, Arlington, and Virginia are all projected to have declining enrollment in the next 5 years.
It is easy to see by using another graph from this group that Fairfax County has a larger aging population than either Loudoun or Arlington, and a larger share of Fairfax residents being past their childbearing years can lead to lower enrollment in public schools.
Lack of Context: Presenting numbers without historical or background data, such as failing to adjust financial figures for inflation. In this case, Lundquist-Arora fails to compare FCPS to Virginia as a whole where FCPS continues to outshine other schools, as shown here in Burke’s analysis.
Spurious correlations (i.e., All correlation is not causation): This occurs when two trends happen at the same time and they are incorrectly considered to be cause and effect. Casting all blame for school enrollment changes (or county demographic changes) on management or policies of a school district is old news and such a tired complaint as it is surprising that people still believe it. For example, increasing populations may be indicative of growth unrelated areas such as industry, housing development, etc. Not everything is related to or caused by school districts.
Gaslighting: This is the deliberate sharing of misinformation to deceive the public, often for political advantage. This tactic was used by the Youngkin administration in their quest to privatize Virginia’s public schools but their radical claims were exposed by 4 Public Education in 2023. It seems that Lundquist-Arora is employing the same tactic in her commentary to help lobby for privatization (see Burke’s analysis) and push for radical right policies that restrict trans student rights, inclusion, and the teaching of truthful history.
It bears repeating, “If FCPS is “unraveling” why is Lundquist-Arora so committed to educating her three children in it, much less why are parents of more than 180,000 other students doing the same?”
If one were making a nonpartisan point, one might suggest ways to improve schools and then offer to work with the schools to implement improvement. On the other hand, if one were committed to partisan politics, then one might offer only one solution, like vouchers, and spend inordinate time writing biased commentary supporting that point. Of course, in this case, Lundquist-Arora is a proponent of vouchers. In contrast, many Virginians are concerned that the voucher scheme initiated last summer as part of HR1 will harm public schools by diverting public education funding and undermining public education as a public good.
In Virginia and the nation, there is a broad commitment to public education, limited support for school vouchers, and significant opposition to school privatization from educators, parents, and the public. This is not the first, nor will it be the last, time that 4 Public Education felt compelled to address disinformation spread by dark money bad actors. No matter what, we are honest about our agenda, and will say it with our whole chest:
We support public schools!
Please find companion pieces here by Marianne Burke and Vanessa Hall:
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