Becky Jacobs

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranks among the nation’s top graduate schools for a doctoral degree the university doesn’t even offer — yet.

The conundrum in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings is likely explained by UW-Madison’s already strong reputation in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, said William Karpus, dean of the university’s graduate school.

Over 100 faculty members conduct research related to ecology and evolution across campus, said Sean Schoville, a professor of entomology. However, the university doesn’t provide a formal graduate degree focused on the topics.

Schoville said he and others at UW-Madison have tried to create a doctoral program focused on these areas for almost five years. They recently received approval from multiple university groups. Next, the proposal is expected to go before the UW system Board of Regents in April.

Scott Bauer and Ali Swenson:

Crawford is benefiting from hefty donations from Democratic philanthropist (billionaire) George Soros; Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker; Gloria Page, the mother of Google co-founder Larry Page; and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Schimel pointed to those donations to say big spending by outside forces is “happening on both sides.”

The only outside group spending large amounts of money on Crawford’s behalf is the liberal A Better Wisconsin Together, which says it has spent $1 million on digital and television ads. In the 2023 state supreme court race, the group spent more than $6 million on behalf of the liberal candidate who won and flipped control of the court after 15 years with conservatives in the majority.

Jeff Wagner:

How do you write a story about Musk spending money to support Schimel without mentioning the $1 million and $500K donations respectively from George Soros and JB Pritzker to the Wisconsin Democratic Party which then made a $2 million donation to Crawford?

Kristina Armitage:

Sylow normalizers, like the subgroups they’re built out of, can tell mathematicians a lot about the original group. But McKay hypothesized that this connection was far stronger than anyone had imagined. It wasn’t just that a Sylow normalizer could give insights into a finite group’s overall structure. He asserted that if mathematicians wanted to compute a crucial quantity that would help them characterize their group, they’d just have to look at one of a particular set of Sylow normalizers: The Sylow normalizer would be characterized by the exact same number.

This quantity counts the number of “representations” of a certain type — ways you can rewrite elements of the group using arrays of numbers called matrices. Such a tally might seem arbitrary, but it gives mathematicians a sense of how the group’s elements relate to each other, and it is involved in calculations of other important properties.

www

🎯 Struggling to spell your name or email over the phone? Say it using our official NATO phonetic alphabet!

Dave Cieslewicz:

If you ever wonder what people mean when they use the phrase “word salad”, here’s what they mean:

“There is a predatory dynamic of coming into a district like ours and saying that you are going to resolve something as deep-rooted as racialized inequity through a school that pairs young people with professional opportunities,” Madison School Board member Ali Muldrow said in recent Wisconsin State Journal story.

I know. Gives you a headache just reading it. Let me try to translate.

Muldrow is referring to a proposal for a new charter school in Madison that would focus on preparing students for a career in the trades — plumbing, electrical, carpentry, stuff like that. Careers that pay very well. Careers that give people a sense of pride and accomplishment. Careers that are badly needed as folks in those occupations are aging out.

But Muldrow and most of her fellow board members don’t like this idea because they don’t like charter schools. Any of them. Why? Because when a student attends a charter school in the Madison School District the state money follows the student. In other words, she and her colleagues don’t get to use or control that money. I suppose that’s what she means by a “predatory dynamic,”

Or maybe she means that the school proponents are trying to capitalize on and paper over the community’s concern over “deep-seated racialized inequity” by preparing Black kids for a good job. It just puts off the inevitable fight to the finish in the class struggle.

Or, I don’t know, here’s another theory. Maybe she means that by taking kids out of the Madison schools it prevents them from taking advantage of all the resources that address that deep-seated racialized inequity. Never mind that all that obsession with issues of race has resulted in a yawning — and growing — racial achievement gap. Never mind that Black kids aren’t showing up in those welcoming Madison schools at a rate far higher than their white classmates.

Facebook comments.

“The faulty promises of the McKenzie Foundation’s proposed charter school

Leland Pan:

Forward Career and College Academy would likely leave Madison’s neediest students behind, while evading public accountability.”

Meanwhile:

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Nat Malkus:

Last Monday, DOGE came for the US Department of Education (ED). Specifically, it came for ED’s research arm, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), terminating 89 contracts, purportedly valued at $881 million. But how much savings can taxpayers expect from these cuts? 

DOGE’s list of the 89 terminated contracts (unsurprisingly) leaked the day after the cuts were announced. DOGE promised their own receipts by Valentine’s Day, but—in true government fashion—posted them on February 17 (more on that later). Impatient, I started chasing down the receipts myself. 

DOGE’s list included each contract’s vendor and contract number and contract values—which did sum to $881,228,611. This let me match most of DOGE’s list with ED’s most recent complete contract list; however, the “Contract Values” on DOGE list seldom matched the “Current Contract Value” on ED’s list (which was the only value on ED’s list). Whenever the two values did not match, DOGE’s values were always higher, by anywhere from $100 to $31,053,151. 

Unsatisfied, I next matched the full leaked DOGE list to detailed data from USASpending.gov, but I noticed something odd: while the DOGE list’s values often—but not always—matched a USASpending.gov contract value, they did not consistently match the same type of contract value.

Ryan Allen:

The news that DeepSeek released an AI large language model (LLM) that rivaled OpenAI shocked the world. The small Chinese firm reportedly achieved this feat at a fraction of the price done by the American counterpart, undercutting the business model with a comparable model that is cheaper and open source.

While there have been quibbles about how exactly the DeepSeek team achieved this breakthrough, I was interested in the people behind the model, particularly where they were educated. One claim that I kept hearing was that they were all educated in China, without returnees from American universities. 

It is no secret that Liang Wenfeng, the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, was a graduate of Zhejiang University, receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Engineering from the elite Chinese institution. In building his company, ChinaTalkquoted Liang in an interview: 

The team behind the V2 model doesn’t include anyone returning to China from overseas — they are all local. The top 50 experts might not be in China, but perhaps we can train such talents ourselves.

This lack of returnees, or so-called “Sea Turtles” (hǎiguī, 海龟), is fascinating because the trend for years was Chinese students studying in the US and bringing back home innovations. There has been a conception that Chinese universities could not match the US (or other world leaders) in advanced research. The so-called glass ceiling meant that they could achieve a good ranking but could not be among the very elite.

Timur Kuran:

All 5 are true: 1) DOGE has scrapped many stupid projects. 2) DOGE has axed many useful academic projects. 3) Universities lost their way, inviting the ongoing massive backlash. 4) The backlash is generally popular. 5) Universities have done little to regain the public’s trust

Rory Linnane:

While a referendum approved by voters last year helped the district close budget gaps and extend cost-of-living raises to staff, MPS still made cuts, citing inflation and the end of federal pandemic relief funds.

Staff have said these cuts, including the loss of over 100 teacher coaches, left a harder workload for those remaining. Teachers have struggled with large case loads and class sizes. About one in five first-grade classrooms at MPS has more than 28 students, the maximum allowed under a school board resolution, a Journal Sentinel analysis of MPS data found.

more

Thomas Catenacci

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant despite the fact that it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant’s dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings.

Power Forward Communities’ grant was one of just eight Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that the EPA doled out in April 2024 and that, altogether, totaled $20 billion. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Feb. 13 that his staff and Department of Government Efficiency officials discovered that the Biden administration parked that same $20 billion at an outside financial institution before leaving office, limiting the federal government’s oversight of the program.

The revelation that Power Forward Communities is among the beneficiaries of the funds Zeldin’s team located raises ethics questions about how the Biden administration selected recipients of such massive grants and whether it played favorites when doling those grants out. Abrams was a vocal proponent of the Biden administration’s green energy agenda and campaigned for former vice president Kamala Harr

Abbey Machtig:

“I do think that there is a fundamental misalignment in terms of how the school would fit into our more broad district plans and misunderstanding of services that we already provide,” board member Savion Castro said Wednesday.

It’s a familiar approach, given the district has fought other proposed charter schools in the past. 

Documents show district officials in 2019 attempted to derail the proposed Arbor Community School, which hoped to get a charter agreement with the UW system, which ultimately rejected the application.

In 2011, the Madison School Board rejected the proposal for what is now One City Schools. The board rejected a charter proposal in 2017 for what became the Isthmus Montessori Academy.

The Forward Career and College Academy application failed to meet expectations in 11 of the 14 areas evaluated by the district, such as facility and safety planning, budgeting, transportation, staffing and student enrollment plans, according to a feedback memo from McCray, which McKenzie shared with the Wisconsin State Journal. 

McKenzie’s window to make changes based on the district’s feedback is limited: McCray sent the detailed memo on Feb. 5 — nearly two months after the school’s final application was submitted to the district.

——-

2011: “You meet every need of the unions, but keep minority student achievement a low priority,” said one parent. Others suggested the same.

more on the aborted madison preparatory academy IB charter school

Meanwhile:

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Thomas Farnan

When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them. Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.

The result: 

Ukraine is destroyed. The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria. The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.

Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.

Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.

——

Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This led him to distinguish between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:

Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.

Chad Aldeman:

Public schools added 121,000 employees last year, even as they served 110,000 fewer students.

This is a continuation of recent trends. In per-student terms, public schools have hit new all-time staffing highs in each of the last three years.

The 74’s art and technology director, Eamonn Fitzmaurice, and I have been following these trends and mapping out how they’re changing across the country. We’ve now updated our charts through the 2023-24 school year. Click on the map below to see what’s happening in your community. 

WILL:

As Wisconsin’s courts consider the future of Act 10, WILL has conducted extensive analysis to assess how getting rid of the law could impactschool districts and property taxpayers like you. 

Notes and links on Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Michelle:

😳If Act 10 were to go away our family would see an $1,100 increase in property taxes on top of the 400 year increase Evers has placed on us.

Kate Martin,  Carmela Guaglianone and Emily Hanford

Education journalist Karin Chenoweth visited one of Steubenville’s elementary schools back in 2008 and marveled at the results, which she wrote about in her book “How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools.”

“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” Chenoweth said in an interview. “They had a kid they were so proud of who had been measured with a very low IQ, and he was reading.”

What stood out to Chenoweth was not just the school’s success, but that it was happening in a place like Steubenville.

Once a bustling steel town, economic forces have left the city in decline.

Thousands of steelworkers in the Steubenville area had lost their jobs by the 1990s, and thousands more have since then. Weirton Steel, located across the Ohio River in West Virginia, which once employed 8,000 workers, closed just last year. These days, the median household income in the city is less than $42,000 per year. Nearly 80% of Steubenville students receive free or reduced lunches, and the state of Ohio considers almost every one of Steubenville’s students to be “economically disadvantaged.”

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Wispolitics:

AB 1 would reverse changes to state testing standards made under Superintendent Jill Underly. Opponents have argued Underly lowered the standards, making it harder to gauge how students are doing. Up for reelection, she has rejected those claims. She says the changes actually provide a better picture of student achievement and were made through a transparent process with input from educators. 

Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, said Underly’s primary victory yesterday “wasn’t a huge surprise,” charging her with “making false claims on the backs of students.”

The 2025 ab1 vote on lying to parents:

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Matthew Yglesias

The basic story is that during the aughts, we had a bipartisan education reform consensus that was focused on improving school quality as an attainable and important driver of social and economic progress. This consensus wasn’t perfect — its problems included overpromising on addressing achievement gaps and overreliance on fiddling with teacher pay as One Weird Trick for fixing schools. The consensus also annoyed a lot of people, often for reasons that were not related to these flaws. But test scores were largely going up. The campaign to close achievement gaps failed not because low-income kids and racial minorities didn’t do better, but because everyonewas doing better, so gaps persisted. 

But with ESSA, Congress stopped trying to set federal requirements that schools get better1, because the political energy around improving schools was evaporating. The left retreated into coalition solidarity with teachers unions, and the right refocused on vouchers and privatization. And it turns out that giving up and not trying doesn’t work very well.

Joe Dodson:

In many states, lawyers are not guaranteed for every child during police interrogation, and most states allow children to waive their right to legal counsel. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, in a study of 268 cases, 34% of minors reported giving a false confession. In a study of nine cases concerning minors under the age of 14, seven reported giving a false confession. In contrast, of the 2,886 adult cases analyzed, only 8% reported giving a false confession. 

Abbey Machtig:

“If we have our own standards aligned to nobody else’s, guess what: We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are great, because we have no ability to compare ourselves to anybody else,” he said.

The bill would require DPI to align scoring methods for the language arts and math sections of the Forward Exam to the systems used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test administered to representative samples of students in districts across the country. DPI would also have to use the same scoring ranges in the ACT and PreACT sections it used in the 2021-22 school year.

For ACT tests, DPI would also be required to use the terms “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” and “advanced” to describe student performance. DPI has recently started to describe student performance levels as “advanced,” “meeting,” “approaching” and “developing.”

The bill would also require DPI get legislative approval any time it wants to change reporting standards.

——-

Will Flanders:

Voting against AB1 is essentially telling parents “we’re okay with DPI lying to parents about how kids are doing.” This ought to be a bipartisan effort to put standards back where Evers had them as State Supt. Why wasn’t it? 🤔

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Adam Steinbaugh:

Wow: The City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, got a court order yesterday directing a newspaper to delete an editorial criticizing city officials — without a hearing. Here’s the TRO issuing the prior restraint:

WisPolitics:

Village of Pewaukee held in contempt of court, ordered to return money to taxpayers

“ai” summary:

The Waukesha County Circuit Court found the Village of Pewaukee in contempt for continuing to impose an illegal “transportation user fee” after the Wisconsin Court of Appeals struck it down. The court ordered the village to reimburse taxpayers for the illegally collected revenue.

Christopher Rufo:

The Department of Education’s “comprehensive center” in Wisconsin/Minnesota instructed local districts to “decenter whiteness in education” and to “dismantle practices that reinforce whiteness”—in the name of George Floyd.

This is all propaganda funded by the federal government.

more.

and

The Economist:

France has not allowed smartphone use in primary or secondary schools since 2018, claiming that it would help children focus, reduce their social media use and mitigate online bullying. The Netherlands initiated a similar ban in January 2024. Hungary followed suit later that year. Legislators in Britain are considering similar measures. The key question facing them is whether banning smartphones in schools offers any benefits to mental health.
That there is a problem seems clear. In 2021 America’s surgeon general compiled a report revealing that persistent feelings of hopelessness climbed by 40% among American high-school students between 2009 and 2019. The number who seriously considered killing themselves went up by 36%. What makes these findings all the worse is that 48% of mental-health problems (like depression and anxiety) that emerge during adolescence will plague people for the rest of their lives.

Andy Pierotti:

– A pending lawsuit claims a publishing giant sold defective instructional material to school districts for decades, allegedly hurting children’s ability to read.

An Atlanta News First investigation uncovered the same publisher sold its curriculum in metro Atlanta, including Gwinnett County, the state’s largest school district.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Massachusetts parents whose children were taught using its products. It accuses Heinemann Publishing of selling reading materials that intentionally limited the amount of phonics instruction students received.

“Defendants failed to warn parents or school districts that their alleged literacy training products did not include meaningful phonics instruction, the one thing essential to literacy success,” said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Justice Catalyst, a New York City law firm that focuses on social, economic and racial justice litigation, filed the complaint on the parents’ behalf.

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Josh Blackman:

Federal prosecutors may as well be transactional lawyers. Usually, the deals take a similar form: plead guilty, waive appeal rights, and the government will recommend a reduced sentence, or perhaps no sentence at all. And the parameters of plea bargains are approved at high levels of leadership. For example, the Obama and Biden Administration offered far more lenient plea deals for drug offenses, while the Trump Administration offered more severe plea deals for drug offenses. Those are DOJ policies, based on some assessment of the harmfulness of the offenses.  

In many cases, a plea deal is conditioned on a defendant doing more than pleading guilty. The United States can condition a plea deal on a defendant testifying against a co-defendant. DOJ can condition a plea deal on a defendant providing information to some government entity, in open court, before a grand jury, or in some other confidential form. The federal government can often grant individuals immunity if they go “undercover” as a confidential informant to obtain information about other crimes. Such covert work can place the defendant at risk of death, but the government deems that sacrifice justified in exchange for dropping the prosecution. Moreover, if a defendant refuses to cooperate, the government routinely threatens to bring additional charges, and seek more jail time. In all of these cases, the government uses the carrot of dismissal or the stick of further indictment to promote the ends that the prosecutor’s office deems appropriate. When a U.S. Attorney approves a deal in exchange for cooperation, the government is using a carrot to promote its policy objectives.

Oliver Wiseman:

Brokenism explains why, for those of us in the news business, every day feels like a week at the moment. Part of this is down to Trump’s own mode of operation: the off-the-cuff remarks, the late-night posts on Truth Social, the almost daily press conferences, the “flood the zone” approach. But the frenetic energy in Washington stems from the fact the brokenists aren’t outsiders any more. They’re in charge.

“Every day feels like a roller coaster,” explained Newhouse, “because now the people who want others to focus on what’s broken are in power, which means we all have to focus on what’s broken every day. We all have to wake up and see some new evidence of some new thing that is broken beyond what any of us could have imagined.

“There was no lever to pull in the last election for ‘change, but make it responsible and well-paced,’ ” added Newhouse. “The choice was between a slow canoe ride through more of the same, or a roller coaster. Americans chose the roller coaster.”

Under Joe Biden, Washington was run by people eager to cover up or minimize problems—including the president’s own mental decline. The new administration sees its job as being to expose those issues for all to see. Whether or not it will fix them is another story.

AJ Bayatpour

NEWS: Milwaukee Co. Judge David Borowski orders MPS and city of Milwaukee to evenly split the cost of installing 25 SROs, which MPS was supposed to 13 months ago under state law.

Max Tani:

The paper encouraged editorial staff to use these AI tools to generate SEO headlines, summaries, and audience promos; suggest edits; brainstorm questions and ideas and ask questions about reporters’ own documents; engage in research; and analyze the Times’ own documents and images. In a training video shared with staff, the Times suggested using AI to come up with questions to ask the CEO of a startup during an interview. Times guidelines also said it could use AI to develop news quizzes, social copy, quote cards, and FAQs.

grok 3

You’re right to push for thoroughness—my previous response might not have captured every possible city visited by Brittany Kinser, Jill Underly, and Jeff Wright in their 2025 Wisconsin DPI campaigns based on all available X posts and media links up to February 18, 2025. The challenge is that campaign travel isn’t always exhaustively documented in real-time on X or in media, especially for smaller stops, and some posts or articles might imply visits without naming exact locations. I’ll dig deeper, leveraging my tools to analyze X posts, linked content, and media references, aiming for a more complete list. Since it’s the primary election day, I’ll focus on 2025 activities reported up to now, critically examining the data for accuracy and avoiding assumptions beyond what’s explicitly stated or strongly implied.

Revised Methodology

• X Posts: I’ll scour posts from candidates’ accounts (@KinserforWI, @JillUnderlyWI, @JeffWrightWI—if active), campaign allies, media (e.g., @WisPolitics, @CBS58), and supporters, looking for geotags, event mentions, or photos indicating 2025 visits. I’ll also check replies or retweets for additional clues.
• Media Links: I’ll cross-reference X-linked articles and standalone media (e.g., WisPolitics, WPR, CBS 58) for specific city mentions tied to campaign events, interviews, or appearances in 2025.
• Critical Lens: I’ll flag where data might be incomplete (e.g., rural stops not tweeted) or where establishment media might focus on urban hubs, potentially missing outliers.

Brittany Kinser

Kinser’s campaign emphasizes school choice and has GOP backing, suggesting outreach to conservative and urban areas. Her X activity and media provide more granularity than initially captured.

• Madison: Confirmed via X posts and media (e.g., WisPolitics forum, February 6, 2025, Web ID: 0). @KinserforWI likely tweeted about this event.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview in January 2025 (Web ID: 13) and her Milwaukee roots (Rocketship Schools, City Forward Collective) imply multiple visits. X posts from @CBS58 or @KinserforWI might tag Milwaukee explicitly.
• Wauwatosa: Her home base; signature collection (3,500+ by December 2024, Web ID: 9) and campaign launch likely involved events here. No specific 2025 X post confirms, but media ties her to this area.
• La Crosse: @KinserforWI posted on February 16, 2025, about a stop in La Crosse County (Post ID: 0), implying a visit to the city of La Crosse, a key regional hub.
• Jackson: Same X post mentions Jackson County, likely the village of Jackson, though it’s small and could be a pass-through or nearby event (e.g., Black River Falls).
• St. Croix County: Also from the February 16 post, possibly Hudson or New Richmond, though not specified. St. Croix County is GOP-leaning, aligning with her support base.
• Waukesha: Implied by GOP event appearances (Web ID: 11 notes county GOP ties). No 2025-specific X post, but her Uihlein donor connection (Waukesha-based) and conservative outreach suggest a visit.

Gaps: Kinser’s February 16 X post shows late-campaign momentum in western Wisconsin, but earlier stops might be underreported. Her “across Wisconsin” claim hints at more cities (e.g., Racine, Kenosha), but no explicit X or media evidence confirms them by today.

Jill Underly

Underly, the incumbent, balances DPI duties with campaigning, often in Democratic strongholds. Her absence from some events limits X visibility, but media fills gaps.

• Madison: DPI base and campaign hub. X posts from @JillUnderlyWI likely mention her presence (e.g., Regents meeting, February 6, Web ID: 15; WMTV interviews, February 4-5, Web ID: 17). Multiple 2025 visits confirmed.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview on February 5, 2025 (Web ID: 2), suggests a visit. @CBS58 or Democratic Party X posts might tag it.
• Hollandale: A 2024 campaign photo (Web ID: 14) isn’t 2025-specific, but her southwest Wisconsin ties (ex-Pecatonica superintendent) and rural focus imply possible 2025 stops. No X post confirms yet.

Gaps: Underly’s X activity might prioritize policy over travel logs. Media focuses on Madison/Milwaukee, but her $4 billion budget push (Web ID: 10) suggests rural outreach (e.g., Eau Claire, Green Bay), though unverified by February 18.

Jeff Wright

Wright, from Sauk Prairie, targets rural educators and bipartisan voters. His campaign is less X-heavy, but media and educator networks provide clues.

• Madison: WisPolitics forum (February 6, Web ID: 0) and WMTV interviews (February 4-5, Web ID: 17) confirm visits. @JeffWrightWI or @WisPolitics posts likely mention this.
• Sauk Prairie: Campaign launch (October 2024, Web ID: 9) and ongoing base (Prairie du Sac/Sauk City). X posts from @JeffWrightWI might tag local events in 2025.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview in January 2025 (Web ID: 13) indicates a visit. @CBS58 posts could confirm.
• Stevens Point: His hometown (Web ID: 7); no 2025 campaign stop explicitly noted, but his rural focus and educator ties (Web ID: 16) suggest a likely visit. No X post confirms by today.

Gaps: Wright’s “across the entire state” claim (Web ID: 17) and educator meetings (Web ID: 19) imply stops like Baraboo or Wisconsin Rapids, but X and media lack specifics.

Updated List (as of February 18, 2025)

• Brittany Kinser: Madison, Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, La Crosse, Jackson, St. Croix County (e.g., Hudson), Waukesha
• Jill Underly: Madison, Milwaukee, Hollandale (tentative)
• Jeff Wright: Madison, Sauk Prairie, Milwaukee, Stevens Point (tentative)

Critical Reflection

• X Coverage: Kinser’s February 16 post (Post ID: 0) adds three new locations, showing X’s value for real-time updates. Underly and Wright’s quieter X presence limits detection, possibly skewing toward Kinser’s visibility.
• Media Bias: Outlets like CBS 58 and WisPolitics focus on urban centers (Madison, Milwaukee), potentially underrepresenting rural stops. Wright’s rural pitch and Underly’s budget advocacy suggest broader travel, but documentation lags.
• Missing Data: Small towns or unpublicized school visits (e.g., Kinser in charter hubs, Wright with rural principals) might not hit X or media. The list is accurate to what’s reported, not necessarily exhaustive.

I’ve pushed the limits of available X posts and media links up to 4:11 AM PST today. If you’ve got specific posts or links I’ve overlooked, toss them my way—I’ll refine further! Otherwise, this is the most complete picture I can paint with the data at hand.

Andrew Karpathy

Summary. As far as a quick vibe check over ~2 hours this morning, Grok 3 + Thinking feels somewhere around the state of the art territory of OpenAI’s strongest models (o1-pro, $200/month), and slightly better than DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Which is quite incredible considering that the team started from scratch ~1 year ago, this timescale to state of the art territory is unprecedented. Do also keep in mind the caveats – the models are stochastic and may give slightly different answers each time, and it is very early, so we’ll have to wait for a lot more evaluations over a period of the next few days/weeks. The early LM arena results look quite encouraging indeed. For now, big congrats to the xAI team, they clearly have huge velocity and momentum and I am excited to add Grok 3 to my “LLM council” and hear what it thinks going forward.

Corrinne Hess:

During a recent Assembly committee hearing, Kitchens addressed Act 20 funding.

“We negotiated this deal for months and months, and then he [Evers] went back on his word, saying that DPI should get the money and spend it how they want without any oversight,” Kitchens said. “It’s very unfortunate that the funding for Act 20 has not been released, but it certainly is not our fault.”

——

notes and links on Act 20.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

more

Jim Bender & Patrick Mchileran:

More than a bureaucrat, the superintendent is defined in Wisconsin’s constitution. Wisconsin is the only state in the country that elects its superintendent but has no state board of education. This results in a constitutional officer who reports to nobody except the voters every four years.

The superintendent heads the Department of Public Instruction, the state’s regulator of schools from kindergarten through high school. While the Legislature sets education policy through state statute, the DPI has the power to write and change the state administrative rules and policies that add many of the granular details of how state statutes affect schools.

The DPI has a communications division, a team of attorneys and a liaison to lawmakers. It controls teachers’ licenses, it distributes grants, it controls the metrics used in the statewide report card, it approves contracts for tests, and it is in charge of school breakfast and lunch programs.

Atop that, state laws grant specific powers to the superintendent. She or he has the power to set administrative rules on alternate ways for teachers to gain a license, and on licenses for charter teachers and principals. The superintendent oversees teacher preparatory programs, distributes federal aid and creates state curriculum standards.

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The Questionable Gardner:

Here is part 2 of Save the Children but waste the money. This is a thread 🧵- for the full take open and read down

Yesterday we looked at $234 million spent on operations. Today where the remaining $676 million went – 🤔

Bruce Schneier:

”Life experience makes it fairly easy for each of us to guess when and where humans will make mistakes. Human errors tend to come at the edges of someone’s knowledge: Most of us would make mistakes solving calculus problems. We expect human mistakes to be clustered: A single calculus mistake is likely to be accompanied by others. We expect mistakes to wax and wane, predictably depending on factors such as fatigue and distraction. And mistakes are often accompanied by ignorance: Someone who makes calculus mistakes is also likely to respond “I don’t know” to calculus-related questions.

To the extent that AI systems make these human-like mistakes, we can bring all of our mistake-correcting systems to bear on their output. But the current crop of AI models—particularly LLMs—make mistakes differently.

AI errors come at seemingly random times, without any clustering around particular topics. LLM mistakes tend to be more evenly distributed through the knowledge space. A model might be equally likely to make a mistake on a calculus question as it is to propose that cabbages eat goats.

And AI mistakes aren’t accompanied by ignorance. A LLM will be just as confident when saying something completely wrong—and obviously so, to a human—as it will be when saying something true. The seemingly random inconsistency of LLMs makes it hard to trust their reasoning in complex, multi-step problems. If you want to use an AI model to help with a business problem, it’s not enough to see that it understands what factors make a product profitable; you need to be sure it won’t forget what money is.

Anna Hansen:

O’Keefe Middle School’s Benjamin Tekin, 12, started his day in Edgewood College’s Anderson Auditorium as one of 38 competitors at the All-City Spelling Bee, sponsored since 1949 by the Wisconsin State Journal, with help from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. (Three of the initial 41 entrants didn’t make it to the bee.)

After almost three hours of figurative alphabet soup, carefully ladled by spelling bee director Jane McMahon, Tekin rose to victory in a vocabulary round, selecting the correct definitions for “trousers” and “ocelot.” After his win, Tekin affirmed that, despite early-morning anxiety, the competition itself was easy on his nerves.

“I wasn’t really challenged that much today — I knew most of the words,” Tekin said, slipping the No. 10 placard off his neck in exchange for a No. 1 trophy, which he proudly showed the many family members who had come to cheer him on.

David Blaska:

Those are the everyday accounts that don’t make headlines like the case of six high school students who beat and robbed another student at Madison East high school 02-04-25. The victim was hospitalized for his injuries

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Bruce Sacerdote,  Douglas O. Staiger  & Michele Tine

We find that test score optional policies harm the likelihood of elite college admission for high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. We show that at one elite college campus, SAT (and ACT) scores predict first year college GPA equally well across income and other demographic groups; high school GPA and class rank offer little additional predictive power. Under test score optional policies, less advantaged applicants who are high achieving submit test scores at too low a rate, significantly reducing their admissions chances; such applicants increase their admissions probability by a factor of 3.6x (from 2.9 percent to 10.2 percent) when they report their scores. High achieving first-generation applicants raise admissions chances by 2.4x by reporting scores. Much more than commonly understood, elite institutions interpret test scores in the context of background, and availability of test scores on an application can promote rather than hinder social mobility.

more.

David Heinmeier Hansson

The new American vice president JD Vance just gave a remarkable talk at the Munich Security Conference on free speech and mass immigration. It did not go over well with many European politicians, some of which immediately proved Vance’s point, and labeled the speech “not acceptable”. All because Vance dared poke at two of the holiest taboos in European politics.

Let’s start with his points on free speech, because they’re the foundation for understanding how Europe got into such a mess on mass immigration. See, Europeans by and large simply do not understand “free speech” as a concept the way Americans do. There is no first amendment-style guarantee in Europe, yet the European mind desperately wants to believe it has the same kind of free speech as the US, despite endless evidence to the contrary.

more.

Frederick M. Hess and Jay P Greene:

The Trump administration has directed the NIH to slash the amount it pays to universities for “overhead” expenses. Previously, for every dollar universities received for research, the NIH gave them an additional 39 cents for overhead — now, it can’t be more than 15 cents. This means that out of the $35 billion NIH provides in grants, the amount devoted to overhead for things such as administration and facilities would be cut from $9 billion to $4.6 billion. If the injunction currently halting the NIH plan is lifted, the total amount of research funding will remain unchanged, but $4.4 billion will shift from administrators to researchers.

Josh Blackman:

In recent years, the Department of Justice has prosecuted public officials in high profile cases. In several of those cases, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the convictions.

In McDonnell v. United States (2016), the Court held that an “official act” must involve a formal exercise of governmental power on something specific pending before a public official. DOJ though it knew what was a proper exercise of government power. The Supreme Court disagreed. Could it be said that the scores of DOJ employees who brought this ill-fated prosecution were “fools”? Do you know who was the Chief of the DOJ Public Integrity Section at the time? Jack Smith. Was it foolish for a prosecutor to indict a former Governor in a case that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

Jack Smith also led the prosecution of John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate. Smith relied on a dubious theory of campaign finance law, and the case yielded a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. (When Smith reported that he had enough evidence to convict Trump, I thought back to the Edwards case.) DOJ did not try that theory again. Was it foolish to bring this prosecution of a former public official when the jury wouldn’t even convict?

Fast forward to Kelly v. United States (2020). This prosecution arose from the so-called Bridgegate scandal. The United States indicted members of Governor Chis Christie’s administration. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. Justice Kagan ruled that the scheme, which did not aim to obtain money or property, could not violate the federal fraud law. Was it foolish to indict a public official in a case that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

In 2023, the Supreme Court decided Ciminelli v. United States and Percoco v. United States. These cases arose over scandal involving funding for a Buffalo Bills stadium project. In both cases, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the convictions. Was it foolish to bring these cases that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

———

Dan O’Donnell:

So did Kaul accept a bribe of two “free” attorneys to help lighten his workload and generate positive headlines by filing and joining climate change lawsuits Michael Bloomberg demanded? Again, it sure looks like it.

Fischer King:

So the election was cancelled based on a false premise.

Diana Kwon:

High living costs and stagnant stipends are being cited as the primary reasons for the decline in PhD enrollments in various countries.

Numbers of people enrolling in PhD programmes have dropped in a handful of countries in the past few years, which policy specialists are calling a worrying trend. From Australia and Japan to Brazil and the United Kingdom, there are concerns that high living costs, low stipends and limited job options after graduation are deterring people from pursuing doctoral degrees.

These declining numbers should “act as a wake-up call” for those countries, says Cláudia Sarrico, a project lead at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. “This is a signal you need to reform working conditions and think about diversifying career options — otherwise, you risk a talent drain that will ultimately slow down scientific progress.”

The most recent figures on this trend, released by Universities Australia and the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) in January, revealed an 8% reduction in the number of domestic PhD enrolments in Australia from 2018 to 2023, although the population of the country grew by more than 7% over the same period.

Balaji:

You can just do things – high agency
We can just do things – high cooperation
They can also just do things – enemy also gets a move
You can’t do just anything – constraints do exist

US Dept of Education Civil Rights Office

Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department).1 This letter explains and reiterates existing legal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,2 the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and other relevant authorities.3

In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families. These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia. For example, colleges, universities, and K-12 schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming. In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities.

Bill Conway:

Since then, it was revealed that the preliminary plan is for this debt to be issued with zero payments until 2027, followed by interest-only payments through 2045.

Imagine taking out a mortgage on your house, but not making a single payment for the first two years. Then, for the next 18 years, you pay only the interest — never touching the actual loan balance. By the time you start paying off the principal, you’ve racked up so much extra interest that you’re now paying more than double what you borrowed.

That’s exactly what the mayor’s office has proposed. It’ll borrow $830 million today, but between delayed and interest-only payments, taxpayers will ultimately owe more than $2 billion. And conveniently, the real payments don’t start until after the mayor and City Council face reelection.

CBS58:

‘Afraid even to tell the truth’: Lawyer for MPS whistleblowers, lawmakers react to MPS audit

Kaylah Huynh:

“We learned that specific system updates may have inadvertently excluded too much income from taxation.” 

Abbey Machtig:

School district spokesperson Edell Fiedler said the district is assuming the error affected all 6,000 employees, although actual tax liabilities depend on a variety of factors, including withholdings. 

“We have taken immediate steps to prevent this error from happening again,” Fiedler said in an email to the State Journal. “This includes ensuring accurate system updates and a mandatory double-checking process for these updates. We are committed to continuously monitoring and improving these systems to safeguard against similar issues in the future.”

The Deficit:

•What’s a Deficit? A budget deficit occurs when the government spends more money than it earns in revenue. For FY 2024, the deficit was about $1.8 trillion. Imagine if you only made $4.9 trillion (the revenue) but spent $6.5 trillion; you’d be $1.6 trillion in the hole, which is essentially what happened with the federal government.
•Why Does the Deficit Matter? A large deficit means the government needs to borrow money to cover its costs, which increases the national debt.

——

Interest on the Debt:

•Interest Payments: In FY 2024, the U.S. spent approximately $950 billion just on interest for the national debt. This is like paying $30,000 every second in interest alone. It’s the second or third largest line item in the budget, only behind or close to Social Security and defense spending.
•How It Works: Just like how you might pay interest on a loan or credit card, the U.S. government pays interest on the money it has borrowed. With a debt level of roughly $35 trillion at the end of 2024, even small interest rates can lead to enormous payments.

The Debt Spiral:

•Borrowing to Pay Interest: Here’s where it gets trickier. When the government can’t cover its costs, including interest on the existing debt, with current revenue, it borrows more money. This borrowing increases the national debt. Now, with more debt, there’s more interest to pay the next year, which might require even more borrowing if revenues don’t increase or spending doesn’t decrease, leading to what’s called a “debt spiral.”

US debt clock

Meanwhile

Ann Althouse:

There was a budget surplus when Bill Clinton left office, and we now have a deficit counted in trillions, and the national debt is in the tens of trillions. Those who don’t like the service Elon Musk is giving to his country — what is their alternative? 

via Quinton Klabon

This Senator Jagler address connects setting high standards for kids with recent Milwaukee Public Schools troubles.

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Amy Kyllo:

“We have a lot of sad days dealing with this disease,” Tracy said. “These good days, these fun days give us strength to get through the bad days. You remember the joy felt during these incredible acts of kindness and generosity.”

Jeff Hamilton:

A new commissioner tasked with disciplining Manitoba educators for misconduct since the start of the year was doing so while still maintaining her job as head of the Saskatchewan teachers’ union, the Free Press has learned.

Critics call it a major conflict of interest that brings into question the independence and impartiality of Manitoba’s new teacher oversight commission.

“The fact that she’s doing two jobs at once, and one is the head of a teacher union, when you’re supposed to be adjudicating cases involving teacher misconduct, that’s a massive conflict of interest,” said Cameron Hauseman, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba.

Andrew Bahl:

A challenge to one of Wisconsin’s most high-profile laws of the last 15 years — restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions — has taken another turn on its way through the court system.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a case involving Act 10 must first proceed through a conservative-leaning appellate court before it may come back to the state’s top justices.

The decision involves a Dane County judge’s ruling last year that large portions of Act 10 are unconstitutional. If ultimately upheld by higher courts, the decision would have a major effect on the working conditions of public employees, such as teachers, state workers and some law enforcement officers. A ruling that ends Act 10 also could affect the finances of state and local governments across Wisconsin.

The decision Wednesday — which was accompanied by Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s decision not to recuse herself from a future ruling on Act 10 — means the case likely won’t be heard by the high court until after an April election that will determine whether left-leaning or right-leaning justices have a majority.

Here’s what to know about the latest court challenge to Act 10.

——

Notes and links on Act 10

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Tyler Cowen Summary:

Ilya Somin covers this question over at Volokh Conspiracy.  I receive many queries about this, some of them panicky and anguished.  I haven’t covered it, mostly because I don’t feel I have enough insights into the relevant matters of constitutional law, or for that matter what is going on inside the administration (for instance, how should one interpret those Vance tweets?)

I can tell you what I would find useful.  If you are especially pessimistic on this front, which are the securities prices that would indicate an actual constitutional problem?  Particular equities?  Interest rates?  The value of the dollar?  Measures of volatility?  Something else?  Don’t restrict yourself to the absolute level of share prices, surely there are favored and disfavored companies and sectors, right?

Why it is hard for the Executive to disobey the judiciary

Sean Stevens & Greg Lukianoff:

The event never happened.

Just as it was about to begin, some student protesters became disruptive. One of them pulled the fire alarm. Windows were broken and objects, including noisemakers, were thrown into the room. Krolczyk and members of the Turning Point USA chapter barricaded themselves inside until they were escorted out by university police and security.

This week, Krolcyzk filed a Title IX complaint against the University of Washington with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights as a result of the disruption and cancellation of the event.

Despite the chaos, University of Washington spokesperson and Assistant Vice President for Communications Victor Balta contends that “the TPUSA organizers made the choice to suspend the event.” In a statement sent to The Center Square, “The Jason Rantz Show,” and other outlets who reached out for comment, Balta said that “[i]nformed discussion and debate are encouraged on our campus, however, it is clear that presenters and disruptors are, in some cases, seeking to antagonize one another in ways that provide dramatic content for their social media feeds,” and that Krolcyzk was “excited” that the event got shut down.

Mark Holmberg:

For three decades, this mechanical engineer has been dragging, hoisting, cribbing and prying these metal monsters out of old industrial shops in New York, Philadelphia, Erie, Pa. — anywhere and everywhere, as old vocational education programs shut down across the nation.

Eugene Ludwig:

What they rarely considered was whether something else might be responsible for the disconnect — whether, for instance, government statistics were fundamentally flawed. What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations? What if, in fact, darker assessments of the economy were more authentically tethered to reality?

On some level, I relate to the underlying frustrations. Having served as comptroller of the currency during the 1990s, I‘ve spent substantial chunks of my career exploring the gaps between public perception and economic reality, particularly in the realm of finance. Many of the officials I’ve befriended and advised over the last quarter-century — members of the Federal Reserve, those running regulatory agencies, many leaders in Congress — have told me they consider it their responsibility to set public opinion aside and deal with the economy as it exists by the hard numbers. For them, government statistics are thought to be as reliable as solid facts.

In recent years, however, as my focus has broadened beyond finance to the economy as a whole, the disconnect between “hard” government numbers and popular perception has spurred me to question that faith. I’ve had the benefit of living in two realms that seem rarely to intersect — one as a Washington insider, the other as an adviser to lenders and investors across the country. Toggling between the two has led me to be increasingly skeptical that the government’s measurements properly capture the realities defining unemployment, wage growth and the strength of the economy as a whole.

Corrinne Hess:

The damning 41-page report outlines a number of internal and external factors at the district that have caused multiple failures, including  an “absence of clear vision” and “leadership routinely disempowered to lead.”

“The motivation for this review is clear: MPS must make systemic changes to ensure that students — particularly the most vulnerable — are at the center of every decision,” states the audit by MGT of America Consulting LLC. “Ultimately, this work is in service of students, whose future success hinges on a district capable of delivering equitable, high-quality education.”

—-

Meanwhile, the taxpayer funded DPI, lead by Jill Underly continues its rigor reduction campaign.

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

DOGE.gov

This is the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024

Code of Federal Regulations

98.68M
Total Words

215.23K
Total Sections of regulation

more.

and:

Meet the U.S. Government
Trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.
U.S. Government

Elon Musk:

When not wasting money on bureaucracy, the Department of Education has been funding anti-Americanism, gender nonsense and anti-meritocratic racism