FROM THE EDITOR: Spotsylvania Schools and the Cignetti Effect
Leadership is crucial to success in K-12 education. Spotsylvania has struggled with leadership in recent years; it now holds advantages and it's time to press them. Not undercut them.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Email Martin
In the history of college football — if one can call today’s game “collegiate,” but that’s a different column — there has never been a turnaround story like the one that Indiana University wrote over the past two seasons
Curt Cignetti took over a program that had never tallied double-digit wins since starting football over a century ago and promptly went 11-2 in 2024, then 16-0 in 2025 and won a national title.
Now, every college in America is either looking to hire Cignetti, or find the next Cignetti-like coach who can perform a miracle at their school.
Enter Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama — not the football teams, but the states’ public-school systems. Over a period of three years, they’ve pulled off a Cignetti-sized turnaround in reading and math scores that has the attention of the New York Times, top education researchers Tom Kane at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and Sean Reardon at Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project, and the Urban Institute among others.
These states’ successes have researchers trying to understand what these Deep Red states are doing right, and how they can replicate it.
One key that is cited repeatedly — leadership.
“A common thread in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana,” Kristof wrote, “has been strong educational leadership, which in turn is able to impose a coherent strategy statewide. … In these states, everyone is rowing together.”
Virginia’s Mississippi Miracle
Virginia doesn’t need to look South for answers to educational success. While the New York Times isn’t writing about the state — yet — the Old Dominion has its own version of the Mississippi miracle.
The Comprehensive Instructional Program is a consortium of some 70 districts in the state that relentlessly focus on measurement and high expectations, and as a result have become some of the highest-achieving school districts in Virginia. (Read the Advance’s feature-length story about the program from 2024.)
Many of these are in Virginia’s most rural areas. Wise County, where the program began, has consistently ranked as one of the most successful districts in the state. Tucked into Virginia’s southwest corner, Wise County regularly posts SOL scores in the Top 5 despite having students mired in poverty, families struggling with the fallout of the opioid epidemic, and the county lacking the kind of financial support that students in Fairfax, Arlington, and other wealthier Northern Virginia districts enjoy.
Colonial Beach is also part of the CIP, and before coming to Spotsylvania as superintendent, Clint Mitchell effected a significant turnaround there using CIP’s approach.
“During the 2023-2024 school year,” CIP Director Matt Hurt told the Advance in an email, “Colonial Beach Public Schools realized greater improvement in student outcomes than any other division in the CIP consortium. Overall, the … CIP consortium posted a two-point improvement in 2024 over the previous year. Colonial Beach’s overall pass rate improved by nearly ten points. To put that in perspective, the division (Greensville County) that realized the greatest gains in the state in 2023 posted a 9-point improvement.”
That success had as much to do with Mitchell, however, as it did CIP. Prior to coming to Colonial Beach, he had achieved similar results in other high-poverty schools.
Spotsylvania, in short, has a proven leader who knows how to get the results that everyone in the county wants. But it requires leadership throughout the system — especially in the schools.
Right now, Spotsylvania has an advantage in that area, if the School Board doesn’t undermine it with a potentially disastrous budget decision.
Leadership Matters
At last week’s School Board meeting, new School Board member Larry DiBella expressed concern that Spotsylvania’s starting pay for assistant principals and principals was considerably higher than for people in the same positions in Stafford County.
“There are several categories,” DiBella said, “where we are well above market, particularly with our assistant principals, our principals, and some of the central office level staff.”
This was based on reviewing salary scales showing that some building leaders in Spotsylvania are starting out as much as $19,000 higher than their Stafford colleagues.
DiBella’s proposal was to find savings there and redistribute it to fill shortages in some teaching areas.
“The only way we’re going to get savings from doing that,” said Vice Chair Belen Rodas, “is if we’re decreasing what we’re paying our current employees.” Those decreases, according to DiBella, would be in the neighborhood of 20%.
Asked if that’s what he was suggesting the district do, DiBella agreed. Belen made clear her objection.
“I disagree very strongly,” she said. Her argument revolved around reducing salaries for people who have made life decisions predicated upon receiving that income.
Though a strong argument against this type of cut, it’s the potential impact on the schools themselves that is more troubling.
Teachers are at their most effective when they have building leaders who are highly skilled, deeply experienced in what it takes to educate students, and involved in the day-to-day work of supporting teaching.
That was Board member Carol Medawar’s argument, who commented, “Teachers leave because of ineffective leadership. Period.”
Press the Advantage
In more than 20 years of writing about education, and in my few years teaching in the classroom, let me second Medawar’s comment. Leadership does matter.
In Wise County, where CIP started, turnover is rare among teachers and administrators. Not because pay is great. Not because it’s an easy place to work. But because leaders are focused, engaged with teachers, and support them at every level.
As noted in my piece about Wise County two years ago:
What’s different in Wise County — and other counties that have successfully adopted CIP — is the culture within the district itself. In Wise County, that means empowering people at every level to do their jobs as they see fit by supporting them in the ways they need supporting.
Leadership at the building level is the difference between this happening and not happening.
Under the disastrous leadership of Kirk Twigg and then Lisa Phelps, the county bled a lot of talented people. To be successful going forward, it’s going to need to attract top leaders to the county.
Paying higher salaries at the front end attracts stronger applicants and gives the district an advantage in competing for top leadership with Stafford — where housing costs are considerably higher than in Spotsylvania — and counties around us, which can’t pay as well.
Now is the time to press that advantage, not threaten administrative leaders with Draconian salary cuts of 20%.
The Cignetti Effect
No one would suggest cutting Cignetti’s pay after the two seasons he has just completed. Nor would they support slashing the salaries of assistant coaches in order to pour more funds into paying NIL dollars to players.
The Hoosiers have a significant advantage in the world of college football, and they’re going to press it.
Much the same is true in Spotsylvania. The school system has a proven leader in Mitchell. And it has in its salary scales an opportunity to attract the leaders at the building level who can take the school system from good to great.
For the first time in years, the district is rowing in a good direction. It’s important this Board not start rowing in a different direction.
Leadership matters.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
