Austin Berg:

“When we first wrote to your clients on October 2, we extended the opportunity to avoid litigation by publishing the audits to members, consistent with CTU’s Constitution. One week later, you requested the names of our clients, ostensibly to confirm their membership. As a professional courtesy, we complied.”

“The retaliation from CTU against our clients was swift. That evening—during a delegate meeting where one of our clients was introduced as a candidate for the Pension Board—CTU’s President attacked our clients by name, associating them with ‘Project 2025’ and baselessly labeling them as ‘extreme right wing.’”

“Most concerningly, it is our understanding from a whistleblower that, on Friday, one of our client’s in-school union reps received an ‘apoplectic’ call from someone at CTU insisting that they try to stop our client from pursuing this lawsuit. If true, this represents a drastic escalation of CTU’s intimidation tactics.”

More.

CTU spends just 17 cents on representing teachers.

They spend the rest on administration, politics and other union leadership priorities.

Kayla Huynh

Less is clear with the district’s plans for the $100 million referendum, which would fund day-to-day operating costs, such as salaries and programs. Approving this referendum alone would hike property taxes on the average home by over $300 in the first year, the district estimates. 

By 2028, the operations referendum would permanently raise the average homeowner’s property taxes by nearly $1,050 annually. That cost could be on top of hundreds of dollars annually for the district’s facilities referendum and a $22 million property tax increase sought by the city government. 

On Sept. 30, the Cap Times asked district spokesman Ian Folger to further clarify the district’s goals for the operating referendum. Folger said the district is currently using one-time sources of funding to pay for about $47 million in operating costs, such as staff salaries. Money from the referendum could fund those expenses, he said.

The referendum could also help fund recent pay raises approved by the School Board. District staff received a 2.06% increase to their base wages under a deal negotiated in September between the district and the teachers’ union. Under that agreement, employees would receive another 2.06% pay bump if the $100 million referendum passes.

The total increase would be 4.12% — the maximum base wage increase allowed by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. Folger previously told the Cap Times that the total increase would cost the district nearly $13.3 million.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Glenn Reynolds:

America is facing a competence gap as both government agencies and private companies repeatedly reveal a laughable inability to perform their basic tasks.

The Secret Service, whose multiple failures in securing former President Donald Trump’s July rally in Butler, Pa., are frankly hard to believe at this point, is one example. (Nor is the Butler event the Secret Service’s first embarrassment.)

So is the US Navy, whose ships keep colliding and catching fire.

American military engineers, who 80 years ago built entire floating harbors to support the D-Day invasion in Europe, now can’t install a workable floating pier in Gaza.  

A federal program to build EV charging stations around the country is floundering. Nearly three years after legislation was signed to create 50,000 charging stations, only seven had been built —unimpressive results for $7.5 billion.

Patrick Eddington and James Craven:

Growing police power has gravely distorted interactions between cops and citizens. Officers arrive with not just a gun and body armor but with wide-ranging legal immunities and both the privilege and training to lie to you during questioning.

Now they want to force you to unlock your phone.

The amount of personal data we keep on our smartphones is almost immeasurable, a reality the Supreme Court recognized in 2014 when it ruled that police must comply with the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement to search your device. But your phone has a simpler safeguard: a password that, under the Fifth Amendment, you shouldn’t have to reveal unless the government overcomes your right against self-incrimination.

Christopher Rufo:

Let’s consider a selection of these excerpts from Harris’s book, beginning with one in which Harris discusses high school graduation rates. Here, she lifted verbatim language from an uncited NBC News report, with the duplicated material marked in italics:

In Detroit’s public schools, only 25 percent of the students who enrolled in grade ninegraduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis public schools and 34 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.Overall, about 70 percent of the U.S. students graduate from public and private schools on time with a regular diploma, and about 1.2 million students drop out annually. Only about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation’s largest cities receive diplomas.

There’s more. In another section of the book, Harris, without proper attribution, reproduced extensive sections from a John Jay College of Criminal Justice press release. She and her co-author passed off the language as their own, copying multiple paragraphs virtually verbatim. Here is the excerpt, with the airlifted material in italics and abbreviations, such as percentages and state names, treated as verbatim substitutions:

High Point had its first face-to-face meeting with drug dealers, from the city’s West End neighborhood, on May 18, 2004. The drug market shut down immediately and permanently, with a sustained 35 percent reduction in violent crime. High Point repeated the strategy in three additional markets over the next three years. There is virtually no remaining public drug dealing in the city, and serious crime has fallen 20 percent citywide.

Marc Benioff

Despite multiple requests, TIME has not been granted an interview with Kamala Harris—unlike every other Presidential candidate. We believe in transparency and publish each interview in full. Why isn’t the Vice President engaging with the public on the same level? #TrustMatters #TransparencyMatters #Leadership

More.

Hunter Gehlbach , Carly D. Robinson, Angus Fletcher

 individuals navigate perspectives and attitudes that diverge from their own affects an array of interpersonal outcomes from the health of marriages to the unfolding of international conflicts. The finesse with which people negotiate these differing perceptions depends critically upon their tacit assumptions—e.g., in the bias of naïve realism people assume that their subjective construal of a situation represents objective truth. The present study adds an important assumption to this list of biases: the illusion of information adequacy. Specifically, because individuals rarely pause to consider what information they may be missing, they assume that the cross-section of relevant information to which they are privy is sufficient to adequately understand the situation. Participants in our preregistered study (N = 1261) responded to a hypothetical scenario in which control participants received full information and treatment participants received approximately half of that same information. We found that treatment participants assumed that they possessed comparably adequate information and presumed that they were just as competent to make thoughtful decisions based on that information. Participants’ decisions were heavily influenced by which cross-section of information they received. Finally, participants believed that most other people would make a similar decision to the one they made. We discuss the implications in the context of naïve realism and other biases that implicate how people navigate differences of perspective.

Roy H. Perlis, MD, M; Katherine Ognyanova, PhD4; Ata Uslu, MS

Question  How did trust in physicians and hospitals change during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Findings  In every sociodemographic group in this survey study among 443 455 unique respondents aged 18 years or older residing in the US, trust in physicians and hospitals decreased substantially over the course of the pandemic, from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024. Individuals with lower levels of trust were less likely to have been vaccinated or received boosters for COVID-19.

Meaning  This study suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with a continuing decrease in trust in physicians and hospitals, which may necessitate strategies to rebuild that trust to achieve public health priorities.

Kelly Meyerhofer and Cleo Krejici:

The Wisconsin Technical College System has its own board and administrative staff. However, the system office said it does not keep a centralized database with salary information on its 16 presidents.

The Journal Sentinel collected salary information from technical colleges through public records requests to get a sense of compensation among public higher education leaders in Wisconsin in the 2023-24 school year.

Here’s six takeaways from our analysis:

Average technical college president compensation package outpaces regional UW chancellors

UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee are classified as Research 1 institutions, meaning their missions are not only to educate students with four-year degrees, master’s and doctorates, but to produce a high level of research. Remove both universities from the picture, and there are 11 comprehensive UW four-year universities remaining, with an average chancellor compensation package of $318,702.

WILL:

A calculator with current and future property taxes – notwithstanding other, ongoing assessment and mill rate increases.

Much more on Madison’s well funded K-12 $607,000,000 Fall 2024 tax & $pending increase referendums, here.

More.

A summary.

James Gordon:

The school has already raised $200 million in donations from several billionaires and high-profile figures including real-estate developer and GOP donor Harlan Crow and trader Jeff Yass who made a substantial $35 million contribution, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The fledgling school aims to counter what its backers see as rejecting Western values and lacking ideological diversity at traditional universities.

UATX’s mission is bold: to foster open debate, academic freedom, and a ‘fearless pursuit of truth,’ while blending classical education with entrepreneurial spirit. 

More.

Daniel Buck:

In a few years, the greatest disparity in American education won’t be rich versus poor or black versus white but low-tech versus high-tech schools. Affluent families will cough up tuition to secure a school with paper and pencils, in-person discussions, and hard-copy books for their children. Meanwhile, the rest of American children will spend their school days clicking through online learning platforms.

Indeed, surveys find that students already spend at least one hour of class time on screens per day, with 27 percent of students spending five hours staring into Chromebooks and iPads at school. Seeing as the average school day …

Te-ping Chen:

Aaron Rice has two logos tattooed on his left leg: one from the plumbing business he co-founded more than a decade ago, and another from the private-equity-backed company that recently bought it.   

Few businesses are as vital to their customers as local plumbing, heating or air-conditioning companies—especially in places like Tucson, Ariz., where Rice works and residents sweltered in 100-degree heat most days this summer.

David Brooks:

The former Magdalen College of Liberal Arts in Warner, which closed in May after 50 years as the state’s smallest college, is up for sale. The campus with eight buildings on 129 acres was put on the market this week for $5.5 million.

The sale, which comes as no surprise, raises a lot of possibilities. For example, the campus was mentioned at a recent meeting of the Warner Housing Advisory Committee as a possible location for senior housing since it includes a cafeteria, kitchen and activity area. The large parcel of land at the foot of Mount Kearsarge could prove particularly attractive to developers.

There is no set outcome for what happens when a rural college closes. The former Chester College in southeast New Hampshire shut in 2012 and is now a private boarding school; the owner of Daniel Webster College in Nashua, which closed in 2017, rents out several buildings to businesses; and Southern Vermont College, which closed in 2019, is going to become a hotel.

Magdalen College was founded in 1973 by three lay members of the Catholic church to impart core religious values and teach a rigorous liberal arts education. It operated in a former motel in Bedford until a wealthy donor allowed it to move to the Warner campus in 1991.

More.

Nadya Williams

Multiple recent stories offered more signs of what I consider to be an unfolding civilizational decline. First, a student in Hartford, CT, who had attended local public schools from age six, graduated from high school without knowing how to read or write. At all. She had used speech-to-text software to write her papers. After graduating on the honor roll, she is now enrolled at the University of Connecticut. She is also suing her former school district for educational neglect.

The same week in the Atlantic, Rose Horowitch reported on “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Professors she interviewed at top institutions—Columbia, Princeton, UVA—reported the same experience. Students’ ability to read complete books, cover to cover, has been eroded to nothing over the past two decades. Because some students—notably, at public middle and high schools—have not had the experience of reading books in their entirety, they arrive at college without possessing this skill. Some sheepishly reported to professors that they’ve never read a book in full before.

Rounding up the trinity, also the same week, a menswear editor on social media commented on the poor aesthetic of overcrowded home libraries in small spaces—such as those in which urban dwellers often find themselves: “In places where housing costs have skyrocketed, living with a giant collection of books can be unpleasant. At some point, I switched to digital where possible.”

Wisconsin State Journal:

But taxpayers deserve a more detailed accounting of how the extra $100 million would be spent. The district has been increasing staff despite flat enrollment and a projection for declining enrollment. Moreover, it already has a higher concentration of teachers and staff — one employee for every 6.4 students — than surrounding districts, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. 

Such a large request for additional taxing authority for operations should come with specific goals for achievement, such as higher test scores for students of color. Despite lots of effort and positions to improve academic outcomes for students of color over decades, scores on reading and math remain low.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Mark J Stern:

“I want to flag one case that’s really funny to me, Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas. It’s sort of like the chickens coming home to roost…”
“… for the Supreme Court. A few years ago, the court made up the ‘major questions doctrine,’ the principle that when an agency makes a decision that involves a ‘major question,’ courts have a free-floating veto to block it. Well, the 5th Circuit used this doctrine to blow up the entire system of nuclear waste storage in this country, possibly forever…. The 5th Circuit sided with Texas in this case, declaring that the commission is actually powerless to grant licenses for the temporary storage of nuclear waste offsite from the plant… not because federal law says the commission can’t do that… [but because] temporary storage is a ‘major question’ because it involves nuclear material. And… Congress has to come in and authorize it even more clearly….Because the question ‘has been hotly politically contested for over a half century.'”

More.

Andrew Billen:

Sir Jonathan Bate, Britain’s foremost Shakespeare scholar and a former Oxford college head, met scepticism this week when he insisted on a radio interview that while once his students would read three Dickens novels in a week, they now struggled to plough through one in three weeks.

A fellow Oxford academic wrote to The Times to point out that this feat would require 13 hours of concentrated reading a day. Speaking on Zoom from America, where he has taught since leaving his post at Worcester College, Oxford, in 2019, Bate admits that he was “partly exaggerating for rhetorical effect”.

“When I was at Cambridge only swots like me and Stephen Fry actually read all the books,” he said.

Nevertheless, during his eight years as provost of Worcester, he noticed a decline. “I talked to pretty well every student in the course about their time there, and there’s no doubt that they’d read a lot less,” he added.

Matthew Stanmyre

With a salary of $301,600, Teresa Segarra, 79, is the state’s fourth-highest paid superintendent, outearning the leaders of nearly 600 other school districts, according to the state’s salary database. She made an additional $22,036 for the fiscal year ending June 2023, tax filings show, pushing her total compensation to $323,636.

Jose Segarra, 79, earns $257,802 as the school’s business administrator, records show. Despite serving in a lesser capacity, he makes more than all but 22 superintendents in New Jersey, according to the state’s database.

Maria L. Varisco-Rogers Charter School, a kindergarten through eighth grade institution in Newark’s North Ward, has 570 total students. About 93% of its students are economically disadvantaged.

Tyler Cowen Summary:

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation minority staff (Committee), which oversees federal science agencies including NSF, analyzed 32,198 Prime Award grants NSF awarded to 2,443 different entities with project start dates between January 2021 and April 2024.

Rupa Subramanya

“Many policy decisions are ‘science-informed,’ meaning that factors in addition to science shape decision-making,” the Biden task force wrote. “These factors may include financial, budget, institutional, cultural, legal, or equity considerations that may outweigh scientific factors alone.” Going forward, the task force said, such “considerations” should play an important role in NSF grant decisions. 

An NSF spokesperson did not specifically address the committee’s report when I reached out. But they said the “NSF’s merit review process has two criteria—intellectual merit and broader impacts—and is the global gold standard for evaluating scientific proposals.” Their statement continued, “NSF will continue to emphasize the importance of the broader impacts criterion in the merit review process.”

The GOP members’ report said it searched for grant applications that used a variety of terms associated with social justice, gender, race, environmental justice, and individuals belonging to underrepresented groups. Some of the grant applications that received funding showed up in more than one category. 

Vladimir Kogan:

Chicago’s troubled school district has made national headlines recently—from the mass resignation of its appointed school board, which opposed the mayor’s efforts to borrow nearly $300 million at ruinous rates to give the teachers union a sweetheart contract, to the likely ousterof the district’s superintendent. But the city has also become a powerful symbol in the brewing battles over rightsizing efforts in the face of declining enrollment and expiring federal pandemic aid.

A decade ago, Chicago closed approximately fifty schools, one of the largest consolidation efforts in recent memory, and the consequences continue to be disputed. Much of this debate engages in selective cherry-picking of data and misleading interpretations of the evidence, giving rise to confusion about what (if any) lessons district leaders across the country should learn from Chicago’s experience.

A recent article by Thomas Toch and Maureen Kelleher, leaders of Georgetown University think tank FutureEd, suffers from many of the same problems. To understand the many things the authors get wrong about Chicago—as well as the few points they get right—it is important to examine the most important claims in their piece.

Gregg Easterbrook:

Does The Atlantic seriously think political lies are a brand new development? It’s depressing to see the top of journalism denouncing the First Amendment.

Chalk & Talk:

In this first episode of a two-part series, math professor Anna Stokke sits down with Dr. Brian Poncy, a school psychology professor at Oklahoma State University, who specializes in math interventions. His extensive research on basic fact fluency led to the development of a free math program called M.I.N.D, aimed at improving numeracy and computational skills.

In the episode, Brian stresses that we have a basic fact crisis where many students struggle with basic fact fluency, affecting their overall math proficiency. They discuss his research and effective strategies for teaching basic facts and computational skills.

Christopher Rufo:

The story begins in 2021, when the Biden administration signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) into law, allocating $3.8 billion in federal funds to Colorado. The City of Denver, which had declareditself a “welcoming city” to migrants, drew on this reservoir of money to launch its Emergency Migrant Response resettlement program, with the goal of housing and providing services to a massive flow of migrants.

Denver, in turn, signed multimillion-dollar contracts with two local NGOs, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, to provide housing and services to more than 8,000 predominantly Venezuelan migrants. These NGOs are run, respectively, by Yoli Casas and Marielena Suarez, who, according to professional biographies, do not appear to have previous experience in large-scale migrant resettlement.

Nevertheless, the city flooded them with cash. According to public records, between 2023 and 2024, ViVe Wellness and Papagayo received $4.8 million and $774,000, respectively; much of this funding came from the Migrant Support Grant, which was funded by ARPA. Then, in 2024, ViVe secured an extra $10.4 million across three contracts, while Papagayo received $2.9 million from a single contract to serve migrants; two of those five contracts were awarded to implement the Denver Asylum Seekers Program, which promised six months of rental assistance to nearly 1,000 migrants.

It’s unconscionable that 300k migrant children who were trafficked across the border are now unaccounted-for.

UBL

Last month, the UBL announced that it will deselect an extensive collection of foreign dissertations. We are happy to report now that The Internet Archive will be taking over this collection.

The dissertations were originally part of an exchange programme between (mostly European) universities until the year 2004 but were never catalogued on arrival. As Leiden University Libraries has limited space for growth in its stacks, it decided to deselect these dissertations, so that 3.2 km could be freed up for new acquisitions. The universities where these dissertations originally were defended informed UBL that they still have the dissertations and were not interested in receiving back the Leiden copy. The Internet Archive will now take over this collection from the UBL, and will take care of its future preservation and access. The UBL is pleased that The Internet Archive is able to give this collection of foreign dissertations a second life.

Eugene Volokh:

I don’t think that’s consistent with the First Amendment, even if limited to knowingly false statements of fact. The Supreme Court has held that “prosecutions for libel on government have [no] place in the American system of jurisprudence,” regardless of whether the government thinks it can show that the statements are knowingly false: Even outright lies that damage the government’s reputation are thus constitutionally protected. Likewise, the 3-Justice dissent in U.S. v. Alvarez concluded that,

Parker Baxter Michael J. Petrilli Amber M. Northern, Ph.D. David Griffith:

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Parker Baxter, Director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the University of Colorado, joins Mike and David to discuss his new report on the impact of Denver’s education reforms. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber shares a RAND survey on teachers’ experiences with school violence and lockdown drills.

Abbey Machtig:

In retribution for speaking publicly, MTI says, Terrell and Torres both submitted workplace bullying and discrimination paperwork with the Madison School District against all but one current MTI member who spoke at the board meeting. 

The employment relations complaint alleges that Terrell filed this paperwork “to influence the outcome” of the investigation into her behavior. The same staff who spoke out have now been subject to “prosecutorial interrogations” by the district staff, according to the MTI complaint.

District employees can be disciplined or fired if found to be in violation of the workplace bullying or discrimination policies. As a result, the employment relations complaint also names the Madison School District.

Terrell and Torres denied the allegations in their responses to the complaint, but confirmed they did submit bullying and discrimination complaints with the school district. 

Governor.Virginia.gov

Governor Glenn Youngkin, after being notified this afternoon that the Biden-Harris Department of Justice was filing a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia, released the following statement: 

“With less than 30 days until the election, the Biden-Harris Department of Justice is filing an unprecedented lawsuit against me and the Commonwealth of Virginia, for appropriately enforcing a 2006 law signed by Democrat Tim Kaine that requires Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls – a process that starts with someone declaring themselves a non-citizen and then registering to vote. Virginians – and Americans – will see this for exactly what it is: a desperate attempt to attack the legitimacy of the elections in the Commonwealth, the very crucible of American Democracy. With the support of our Attorney General, we will defend these commonsense steps, that we are legally required to take, with every resource available to us. Virginia’s election will be secure and fair, and I will not stand idly by as this politically motivated action tries to interfere in our elections, period.”

More.

In 2006, then Democrat Gov. Tim Kaine signed into law a common sense bill requiring Virginia to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls. It was the law then and it REMAINS the law now.

Dave Cieslewicz

And the racial achievement gap in Madison was far worse than the rest of the state. Statewide the gaps were 43% for English and 50% for math. About 60% of white students were proficient in English compared to 17% of Black students. About 64% of white students were proficient or better in math while only 14% of Black students achieved that level. 

But in Madison the gaps were 60% for English and 62% for math because the achievement levels were higher for white students than the state average and lower for Black students. About 74% of white students in MMSD were proficient in English compared to only 14% of Black students. Nearly 72% of white MMSD students scored proficient or better in math while only 10% of Black students were proficient. 

And this despite the fact that for over a decade MMSD has been obsessed with the racial achievement gap. And now the district wants Madison taxpayers to pour in another $607 million in two referendums on the November ballot. They want to exceed state taxing limits by that much while they promise no changes in performance. 

School board member Ali Muldrow spoke for the board when she claimed that the reason for Black underachievement was the district’s suspension policy. It’s true that far more Black students get suspended than white students, But Muldrow’s been on the board for six years and her views are echoed by the other board members. If she doesn’t like the suspension policy why didn’t she change it?

Jose Luis Espert:

No bruto. Hay que ahorrar y ahorrar toda la plata que se pueda en el Estado para que algún día se puedan eliminar (cheque y retenciones, etc.) impuestos y bajar otros (Ganancias, IVA, etc.) para que la gente deje de ser un esclavo impositivo. Mas libertad, no más gasto público.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

America’s Future:

If left as is, the rule sets the stage for the federal government to create a national database filled with the private data of Americans, enabling our government to restrict the movement of citizens, regulate and monitor everyday purchases, and even set about implementing a social credit system not unlike the system imposed in Communist China – a system capable of evaluating how their citizens live their lives, judging the degree to which they accept subjugation, and then granting or withholding rights or privileges based solely on their loyalty to the regime.

In essence, the rule regulates the federal government’s collection, retention, and use of American citizens’ personally identifiable information from the date of their first interaction forward.

For background, in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 9/11 Commission, formed by Congress, examined the attacks and our failure to prevent them.  In July 2004, the Commission delivered its report, concluding, in part, that automated information systems used by federal agencies to collect, analyze, and disseminate information in real-time were “woefully inadequate” to address ongoing threats and that the federal government “should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as drivers licenses.”

IRG:

Wisconsin’s 2024 test scores, out tomorrow, are inflated, biased, and unreliable.

How they got that way is the subject of “Testing Our Patience: How Wisconsin Lowered Standards, Widened the Achievement Gap, and Busted Its State Exams,” the latest Institute for Reforming Government Center for Investigative Oversight (IRG CIO) report. The report and supporting materials are located at reforminggovernment.org/test-score-changes. 

What Happened: Public records obtained by IRG CIO reveal DPI management knew its inflation of Wisconsin’s proficiency rates would come at a cost: wider achievement gaps for Black, special needs, and impoverished students, a bias toward schools serving high-income students, and a future where 93% of districts score 4 or 5 stars on state report cards.

Records also revealed that State Superintendent Underly criticized “nonsense going on with literacy” in June 2023, a week after critical Act 20 reading reforms were introduced.

Much more, here.

Joanne Jacobs:

As a math teacher in the early 2000s, Adrian Mims saw few Black and Hispanic students succeeding in Brooklin (MA) High School’s honors and advanced math courses. Disadvantaged students lacked foundational skills, study habits and confidence, writes Javeria Salman for the Hechinger Report.

Mims founded summer classes to prep students for eighth-grade algebra, honors geometry and eventually AP Calculus. His Calculus Project now works with roughly 1,000 students from 14 Boston-area districts, offering summer and after-school classes. Most come from Black, Hispanic and/or low-income families.

David Wakelyn:

A lot of California policymakers journeyed to Finland to see what was in their special sauce when they scored well on PISA a few years ago. Mississippi’s growth has been more durable. We have a lot to learn if we bring an open mind.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Cremieux

There are currently results from two studies, one from the University of Wisconsin (UW) and another from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). The evidence from these studies seemed to be in disagreement when their respective initial publications came out, and overall, the results do not convincingly support survival benefits from caloric restriction. A summary of both results was provided in a 2017 publication that did provide evidence supporting lower age-related morbidity rates for calorically restricted (CR) monkeys:

More.

Rather curiously, Bud Light takes on plagiarism in a recent short.

And.

Sonya Huang and Pat Grady:

Two years into the Generative AI revolution, research is progressing the field from “thinking fast”—rapid-fire pre-trained responses—to “thinking slow”— reasoning at inference time. This evolution is unlocking a new cohort of agentic applications. 

On the second anniversary of our essay “Generative AI: A Creative New World,” the AI ecosystem looks very different, and we have some predictions for what’s on the horizon.

The foundation layer of the Generative AI market is stabilizing in an equilibrium with a key set of scaled players and alliances, including Microsoft/OpenAI, AWS/Anthropic, Meta and Google/DeepMind. Only scaled players with economic engines and access to vast sums of capital remain in play. While the fight is far from over (and keeps escalating in a game-theoretic fashion), the market structure itself is solidifying, and it’s clear that we will have increasingly cheap and plentiful next-token predictions.

Nicholas Eberstadt:

With birthrates plummeting, more and more societies are heading into an era of pervasive and indefinite depopulation, one that will eventually encompass the whole planet. What lies ahead is a world made up of shrinking and aging societies. Net mortality—when a society experiences more deaths than births—will likewise become the new norm. Driven by an unrelenting collapse in fertility, family structures and living arrangements heretofore imagined only in science fiction novels will become commonplace, unremarkable features of everyday life.

Human beings have no collective memory of depopulation. Overall global numbers last declined about 700 years ago, in the wake of the bubonic plague that tore through much of Eurasia. In the following seven centuries, the world’s population surged almost 20-fold. And just over the past century, the human population has quadrupled.

Choose life.

Tressa Pankovits

Charter schools are public schools, free and open to all. Like traditional public schools, charter schools are prohibited from charging tuition, must not discriminate in admissions or be religious in their operation or affiliation, and are overseen by a public entity.

Much has transpired since the first charter school law was approved in 1991 by the state of Minnesota. Today, 46 charter laws have created about 8,000 schools and campuses. Cumulatively, they enroll 3.7 million students (around 7.5% of all public school students), according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ (NAPCS) Data Dashboard. NAPCS also reports that charter schools employ around 251,000 teachers. Around six out of 10 (58.1%) schools are in urban areas, with the others in suburbs (24.9%), rural areas (11.4%), or smaller towns (5.6%).

While there are many nuances, the primary difference between public charter schools and traditional district schools is their governance model. In addition to oversight from a charter school authorizer accredited by state statute, public charter schools are governed by their own nonprofit boards. Board members are normally selected for their strong community connections and their commitment to advancing the particular mission of their school or network of schools.

Bill Ackman:

This could be the worst violation of journalistic ethics ever during a presidential election. @60Minutes literally manipulated @KamalaHarris answer (after the public blowback of her answer from the preview release of the excerpt) by cutting, culling, and pasting her words.

Paul Vallas:

Something’s broken. One year anniversary since the Safe-T Act started and defendants released after their arrest have missed 67,416 court dates. This includes defendants charged with violent felonies in a justice system that is clearly not protecting victims of crime.

Eugene Volokh:

From yesterday’s decision in Moms for Liberty-Brevard County v. Brevard Public Schools, written by Judge Britt Grant and joined by Judge Barbara Lagoa:

For many parents, school board meetings are the front lines of the most meaningful part of local government—the education of their children. And sometimes speaking at these meetings is the primary way parents interact with their local leaders or communicate with other community members. No one could reasonably argue that this right is unlimited, but neither is the government’s authority to restrict it.

Joanne Jacobs:

The most satisfied — 70 percent — have a child in a parochial or other religious school, and non-religious private schools and homeschools are close behind at 65 percent. About half of those with kids in public magnets, charters, online schools and microschools are satisfied.

Support for school choice — especially parent-controlled Education Savings Accounts — is high, reports Colyn Ritter, citing EdChoice’s Schooling in America Survey. “About two-thirds of Americans support school vouchers, charter schools, and tax-credit scholarships. Support for ESAs is much higher at 76 percent.” Parents with school-age children are even more enthusiastic.

Support for school choice could help Donald Trump carry the swing states, predicts Corey DeAngelis, a choice advocate, in the New York Post.

Stephen Wolfram:

Time is a central feature of human experience. But what actually is it? In traditional scientific accounts it’s often represented as some kind of coordinate much like space (though a coordinate that for some reason is always systematically increasing for us). But while this may be a useful mathematical description, it’s not telling us anything about what time in a sense “intrinsically is”. 

We get closer as soon as we start thinking in computational terms. Because then it’s natural for us to think of successive states of the world as being computed one from the last by the progressive application of some computational rule. And this suggests that we can identify the progress of time with the “progressive doing of computation by the universe”. 

But does this just mean that we are replacing a “time coordinate” with a “computational step count”? No. Because of the phenomenon of computational irreducibility. With the traditional mathematical idea of a time coordinate one typically imagines that this coordinate can be “set to any value”, and that then one can immediately calculate the state of the system at that time. But computational irreducibility implies that it’s not that easy. Because it says that there’s often essentially no better way to find what a system will do than by explicitly tracing through each step in its evolution.

Quinton Klabon:

No. This is incorrect.

The Legislature specified certain amounts for certain things. Governor Evers’ partial veto put the money in 1 pot. Whatever.

But DPI then wanted to spend it on wrong stuff, which will waste tens of millions of dollars with no effect.

A deeper dive into taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI’s ongoing rigor reduction campaign

Dan Lennington:

Do No Harm has released its database of hospitals performing sex changes on children. There were 198 sex-change patients in Wisconsin between 2019-2023 who were minors. Here is the top list from Wisconsin:

Jerry Dunleavy:

“The Race & Culture unit… determined that while Dokoupil’s questions & intentions were acceptable, his tone was not… The Standards & Practices division… determined that Dokoupil had not followed the preproduction process where questions are run through Race & Culture.”

The Woke Mind Virus in the New York Times & Washington Post pic.twitter.com/ssYhpWB7Qq

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) October 10, 2024

WILL

This week, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) unveiled yet another change to how “proficiency” is measured on the state’s Forward exams. This change, not the first in recent years, makes it difficult to tell whether school districts are doing good work and hold them accountable: long-term trend lines can’t be constructed when the targets keep changing.

Worse, these specific changes seem designed to goose performance numbers—not because of sudden, dramatic improvement all across the state, but just by classifying things differently. DPI discarded the old categories of “Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, Advanced” and are now using “Developing, Approaching , Meeting, Advanced.” Apart from being less obvious to the user what these terms mean, introducing new terms gives them the excuse to redefine the boundaries for what falls into which category.

The results are shameless. For each school district, we tally what percent of students are “Proficient,” i.e. were graded in either the “Meeting” or the “Advanced” bucket for this year, and compared those percentages to the same statistic (the percentage of students districtwide graded in either “Proficient” or “Advanced”) from last year.

Districts on average boosted their Math proficiency statistic by 14.0 percentage points. The average district’s Math proficiency moved from 44% to 57%, with the crucial result that a majority are now proficient rather than failing proficiency. Meanwhile, the English Language Arts (ELA) proficiency numbers moved by almost as much, 13.2 points on average. Once again, the average district saw this proficiency rate cross the majority threshold, from 42% to 54%.

This really crystalizes the impact of WI’s new, lower standards: Someone could graduate high school “meeting” the new standards but not actually be ready for college.

And they wouldn’t know until it was too late to do anything about it.

Gaming the System: Wisconsin’s Forward Exam Scores Now Useless.

“These (Wisconsin DPI) revisions are a way to make post-pandemic school performance look better just by lowering standards, without improving student outcomes”

More.

——-

Ripple effects:

Lots of people are saying this is frivolous because firefighters should have to pass some test, but let’s go ahead and look at some test questions so you can see why this test is just way too hard.

This first one’s a doozy:

r/teachers:

What’s mind-boggling is that students DON’T EVEN TRY. At this, I also don’t care– I don’t get paid that great– but it still saddens me. Students used to be determined and the standard of learning used to be much higher. I’m sorry if you were punished for keeping your standards high. None of this is fair and the students are suffering tremendously for it.

And

HS teacher chiming it. It’s trickle up for us as well. If I were to impose any actual rigor or memorization requirements I would be out of a job due to the massive failure rate I would have.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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 Wielicki:

The first step in fixing our public schools… is getting rid of the administrative class.

“so the point is it was an existence proof, that there’s this entire universe of alternative cost structures that is out there”

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

WILL

Today, Wisconsin’s DPI released the 2023-24 Forward Exam scores for schools across Wisconsin.  In the past, WILL has referred to these scores–and the report card built from them–as creating a “Lake Wobegone” effect where everyone is above average.  But the changes made to the report card this year make the previous version of report cards seem like the pinnacle of accountability.  In this blog post, we will compare the new report card to the old and highlight how DPI’s unilateral power to make changes to the state’s school accountability system must be checked.

What has Changed?

We wrote about some of this in a previously when the changes DPI was planning first became public. In a closed-door meeting that required the signing of a non-disclosure agreement to get into, DPI altered both the labels for categories of Forward Exam achievement and the cut points for those categories.  The new labels are perhaps meant to be less “triggering” for kids, but they are also far less informative for parents. “Below Basic” is now “Developing.” “Basic” is now “Approaching.” “Proficient” is now “Meeting.” And “Advanced,” mercifully, will remain the same.  But far more insidious than changing the names of the categories were changes to what “proficiency” itself means. DPI took it upon itself to alter proficiency standards that have been in place in Wisconsin since 2012.  The new bar was expected to be lower, and that clearly has proven to be the case based on results released today.

“These (Wisconsin DPI) revisions are a way to make post-pandemic school performance look better just by lowering standards, without improving student outcomes”

More.

Sarah Scire:

Pop culture, viral dances, and comedy are big on TikTok. News and politics? Not so much.

A new report from the Pew Research Center finds that Americans on TikTok follow very few politicians, journalists, or traditional media outlets. In fact, the typical U.S. adult on TikTok follows zero accounts in those categories.

For the new analysis published Tuesday, the Pew Research Center used human coding and machine classification to look at a nationally representative group of 664 U.S. adults who use TikTok and the 227,946 unique accounts they follow. (Pew researchers have shared details on how they use OpenAI’s GPT model to tackle “rote” research tasks before.) Journalists, traditional media outlets, and politicians each accounted for less than half of 1% of the followed accounts.

Jay P. Greene, PhD

It should come as no surprise that educators tend to be more liberal than the general public. But it is less well-known just how liberal they are, how much professors differ from K-12 teachers, and how much the ideological inclinations of educators vary across states.

In this analysis, we examine 437,783 campaign contributions made by K-12 teachers and university professors during the 2022 election cycle to gain a better understanding of the political orientation of the people who teach our children. The results show that university professors lean much more to the left than do K-12 teachers, and this monolithic support for Democratic political candidates among professors hardly varies with the partisan composition of the state in which they are located. While decidedly liberal, K-12 teachers are less so than professors, and the extent of their leftward tilt tends to vary with the partisan make-up of each state.

Aaron Sibarium:

The dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, Jerlando Jackson, plagiarized extensively over the course of his career, according to a complaint filed with the university on Thursday, lifting text without attribution and raising questions about his fitness to lead one of the top teacher training programs in the country.

The complaint includes nearly 40 examples of plagiarism that span nine of Jackson’s papers, including his Ph.D. thesis, and range from single sentences to full pages. It adds to the allegations of research misconduct already facing the embattled dean, who was a coauthor on several papers implicated in complaints against diversity officials earlier this year, including Harvard University’s chief diversity officer, Sherri Ann Charleston.

“Jackson has failed all ordinary standards of academic honesty,” said Peter Wood, the head of the National Association of Scholars and a former provost at Boston University, where he helped lead plagiarism investigations of faculty and alumni. “As long as he remains as a dean, the university has no legitimate basis to hold students and faculty to basic standards of intellectual integrity.”

Holly Korby:

Recent research suggests that the number of students seeking help with academics is growing, and that over the last couple of decades, more families have been turning to tutoring for that help. Private tutoring for K–12 students has seen explosive growth both nationally and around the globe. Between 1997 and 2022, the number of in-person, private tutoring centers across the United States more than tripled, concentrated mostly in high-income areas like Brentwood. Many students are also logging onto laptops to get personalized digital tutoring, with companies like WyzAnt and Outschool reporting they’ve enrolled millions of students for millions of hours in private, video-based learning sessions that students access conveniently from home. Market reports estimate the digital tutoring market was worth $7.7 billion globally in 2022, with projections of a compound annual growth rate of nearly 15 percent from 2023 to 2030.

Increasingly, public schools are also offering tutoringto help students catch up on learning they might have lost during the rocky years of school closures and mass quarantines. This tutoring, often embedded into the school day, is mostly provided by nonprofit companies and paid for with Covid relief funds.

While some of tutoring’s rise can be explained by the pandemic and associated learning loss, experts say families are increasingly willing to go outside of school to add academic time to students’ days—and pay a hefty price for it—for a variety of reasons. These include the ease of education technology, declining trust in schools and instructional quality, and shifting attitudes around personalization—the “For You”-ification of our modern digital lives that’s bringing big changes to how families view education.

Douglas MacMillan, David Ovalle and Aaron Schaffer

Hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected to a crime by facial recognition software, a Washington Post investigation has found, but many never know it because police seldom disclose their use of the controversial technology.

Police departments in 15 states provided The Post with rarely seen records documenting their use of facial recognition in more than 1,000 criminal investigations over the past four years. According to the arrest reports in those cases and interviews with people who were arrested, authorities routinely failed to inform defendants about their use of the software — denying them the opportunity to contest the results of an emerging technology that is prone to error, especially when identifying people of color.

John A. List  & Haruka Uchida

An unsettling stylized fact is that decorated early childhood education programs improve cognitive skills in the short-term, but lose their efficacy after a few years. We implement a field experiment with two stages of randomization to explore the underpinnings of the fade-out effect. We first randomly assign preschool access to children, and then partner with the local school district to randomly assign the same children to classmates throughout elementary school. We find that the fade-out effect is critically-linked to the share of classroom peers assigned to preschool access—with enough treated peers the classic fade-out effect is muted. Our results highlight a paradoxical insight: while the fade-out effect has been viewed as a devastating critique of early childhood programs, our results highlight that fade-out is a key rationale for providing early education to all children. This is because human capital accumulation is inherently a social activity, leading early education programs to deliver their largest benefits at scale when everyone receives such programs.

Erica Portnoy:

Teens between the ages of  13 and 17 are being tracked across the internet using identifiers known as Advertising IDs. When children turn 13, they age out of the data protections provided by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Then, they become targets for data collection from data brokers that collect their information from social media apps, shopping history, location tracking services, and more. Data brokers then process and sell the data. Deleting Advertising IDs off your teen’s devices can increase their privacy and stop advertisers collecting their data.

What is an Advertising ID?

Advertising identifiers – Android’s Advertising ID (AAID) and Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) on iOS – enable third-party advertising by providing device and activity tracking information to advertisers. The advertising ID is a string of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your phone, tablet, or other smart device.

Andy Kessler:

Sixty years ago this month, the Free Speech Movement was born at the University of California, Berkeley. How is that working out?

In mid-September 1964, Berkeley’s dean of students banned tables and political activity along the Bancroft strip, a 26-foot stretch of university-owned sidewalk near Telegraph Avenue down from Sproul Plaza. I walked around the area last week and found, almost paradoxically, a capitalist BMO Bank, a Marxist-glorifying César Chávez Student Center and a techno-optimist Open Computing Facility.

Berkeley’s 1964 students protested the table ban. On Sept. 30, five students were cited. More than 400 insisted that they were also responsible and should all be cited too. They then staged their first sit-in inside Sproul Hall, Berkeley’s administration building. The next day, tables were set up outside Sproul Hall. The police were called and arrested Jack Weinberg. Some 200 students surrounded the police car. Speeches began as thousands assembled. Mario Savio emerged as a Free Speech Movement leader.

With the cop car still surrounded by late afternoon on Oct. 2, 500 police officers were on hand at the university. A six-point agreement was reached with the university president, and the protests ended. As is typical of universities, committees were formed. A six-week ban on tables was instituted and Mario Savio and others were suspended. But by mid-November, the tables were back, and 3,000 students marched around campus.

Scott Bauer:

Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.

“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road … I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”

The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powersshould be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.

Sarah Parshall Perry

Judge Conti wrote:

“In elementary school, it is constitutionally impermissible for a school to provide teachers with the unbridled discretion to determine to teach about a noncurricular topic—transgender identity—and not to provide notice and opt out rights based on parents’ moral and religious beliefs about transgender instruction, while providing notice and opt out rights for other sensitive secular and religious topics.”

Judge Conti found that the school had violated:

• The parents’ 14th Amendment parental rights & familial privacy rights;
• The parents’ 14th Amendment Equal Protection rights;
• The parents’ 14th Amendment Due Process rights; and
• The parents’ 1st Amendment free exercise rights.

Jennifer Berkshire:

Massachusetts voters loathe the obsessive focus on standardized testing in our schools – and that is a bitter pill for our policy elites to swallow. Fear mongering from media & edreform inc over this ballot ? appears to have been utterly ineffective

Meanwhile, reducing rigor continues at the taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI.

Austin Berg:

Four members of the Chicago Teachers Union have filed a lawsuit against the CTU, demanding that the union produce an audit after failing to do so for four years.

Under CTU’s Constitution and Bylaws, Article VI, Section 1(d), the union is required to “furnish an audited report of the Union which shall be printed in the Union’s publication.”

Elizabeth Schumacher:

The Council for German Orthography (RdR) caused a stir amongst grammar perfectionists on Monday when it announced that as of 2025, an apostrophe used to indicate possession will be considered correct.

Since 2004, the RdR has been considered the leading source on Standard High German spelling and grammar, and is relied on for school textbooks in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

In English, possession of an object is almost always implied by use of an apostrophe, as in: Henry’s Bar, Bloomingdale’s department store.

More.

Nicholas Garton and Danielle DuClos

If the referendum next month passes, one proposal estimates a homeowner with a property value of $457,000 would pay about $3,330 in taxes to the city — a $313 increase from the current year.

If the referendum fails, the other budget proposal estimates the same homeowner would pay around $3,100 — still an $83 increase. Although the city’s overall tax rate would decline, a nearly 8% increase in average home values could lead to higher payments for homeowners.

Without funding from the referendum, Rhodes-Conway also proposes the city add an “infrastructure special charge” of $76 per year to a typical single-family home. The fee would generate about $10 million annually citywide which, paired with cuts and dipping into budget reserves, would help fill the city’s financial deficit next year.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

Sarah Krouse, Dustin Volz, Aruna Viswanatha and Robert McMillan:

A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized network wiretapping requests.

For months or longer, the hackers might have held access to network infrastructure used to cooperate with lawful U.S. requests for communications data, according to people familiar with the matter, which amounts to a major national security risk. The attackers also had access to other tranches of more generic internet traffic, they said.

Ed West

As the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges explained, on why he preferred this language more than any other: ‘English is both a Germanic and a Latin language. Those two registers — for any idea you take, you have two words. Those words will not mean exactly the same. For example if I say “regal” that is not exactly the same thing as saying “kingly.” Or if I say “fraternal” that is not the same as saying “brotherly.” Or “dark” and “obscure.” Those words are different. It would make all the difference—speaking for example—the Holy Spirit, it would make all the difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about the Holy Spirit or I wrote the Holy Ghost, since “ghost” is a fine, dark Saxon word, but “spirit” is a light Latin word.’

He was correct, and without this French and Latin influence our language would be far poorer. For that we should be thankful, grateful and appreciative.

John Sailer:

Fisher Derderian writes about how this has happened with the National Endowment of the Arts, which is giving out out $12M to NGOs that show their commitment to “equity.”

Dan Lennington:

The Quotes: WILL Associate Counsel, Skylar Croy, stated, “All law students deserve an equal shot to compete for prestigious post-law school employment. No one should assess them based on the color of their skin—especially not the ABA and especially not judges. Instead, they should be considered based on their individual talents and knowledge of the law. We will continue to challenge race-based programs to reach WILL’s goal of complete race neutrality.” 

Additional Background: Most judges hire a recent graduate as a “law clerk.” These jobs are often considered a golden ticket to a successful legal career. For example, six of nine current U.S. Supreme Court justices once clerked for the Court.  

Christopher F. Rufo, Christina Buttons:

The best way to understand the migrant crisis is to follow the flow of people, money, and power—in other words, to trace the supply chain of human migration. In Charleroi, we have mapped the web of institutions that have facilitated the flow of migrants from Port-au-Prince. Some of these institutions are public and, as such, must make their records available; others, to avoid scrutiny, keep a low profile.

The initial, and most powerful, institution is the federal government. Over the past four years, Customs and Border Patrol has reported hundreds of thousands of encounters with Haitian nationals. In addition, the White House has admitted more than 210,000 Haitians through its controversial Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), which it paused in early August and has since relaunched. The program is presented as a “lawful pathway,” but critics, such as vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance, have called it an “abuse of asylum laws” and warned of its destabilizing effects on communities across the country.

The next link in the web is the network of publicly funded NGOs that provide migrants with resources to assist in travel, housing, income, and work. These groups are called “national resettlement agencies,” and serve as the key middleman in the flow of migration. The scale of this effort is astounding. These agencies are affiliated with more than 340 local offices nationwide and have received some $5.5 billion in new awards since 2021. And, because they are technically non-governmental institutions, they are not required to disclose detailed information about their operations.

Zachary R Mider and Nic Querolo:

At 1 p.m. on certain Saturday afternoons, hundreds of foreign-born professionals from all over the US converge on a small city in central Pennsylvania. They assemble in a high-rise office building, where they sit through four hours of college classes. Then they return to the airport and head home. 

What’s drawing these students to Harrisburg University of Science and Technology is not the prospect of landing a good job. A majority already have one. Nor is it the prestige of a Harrisburg degree. If they’re lucky, they won’t ever graduate.

Susan B. Porter, Timothy N. Odegard, Emily A. Farris & Eric L. Oslund:

The importance of having a highly qualified teacher in every classroom is an educational necessity. Determining which teacher characteristics define teacher quality and measuring their impact on student outcomes has offered mixed results. This study explored the effect of teachers’ knowledge of language and literacy on their students’ reading outcomes in foundational skills and reading comprehension. Data from 9,640 students and 512 classroom teachers in 112 schools were analyzed using multi-level mixed effects modeling to account for the nested data. After controlling for student and teacher-level variables, results showed that teachers’ knowledge of language and literacy reliably predicted students’ spring foundational skills scores, but not reading comprehension scores. These findings support the idea that more knowledgeable teachers generate students with more favorable reading outcomes. Implications are discussed in addition to directions for future research.

Liam Beran:

As part of her answer, Pellebon said that “‘affordable housing’ is not affordable.” The audience of around 40 people erupted into applause.

The reaction at the Sept. 19 forum reflects just how expensive and inaccessible housing has become in Dane County, Wisconsin’s second-largest county. The county’s severe housing shortage has forced action from a state flagship university looking to house its ever-growing student population and challenged local employers hoping to grow their ranks. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway in 2023 called a lack of housing the “defining problem of our region right now.”

According to Dane County’s 2024-28 housing roadmap, one in four Dane County households are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their gross income to pay for housing. Renters are affected too: In 2022, Dane County’s median monthly rent, $1,258, was $266 dollars above the statewide average, according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

Nadia Scharf:

The Unified School District of De Pere is under investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction after board member Melissa Niffenegger accused the district’s reading curriculum and its director of curriculum and instruction, Kathy Van Pay, of violating Wisconsin law.

“That is retaliation. You are retaliating against the board for disagreeing with you,” board member Brandy Tollefson said.

According to a report Van Pay read Monday night, Niffenegger, who was elected to the board in April 2023, insisted the district was using three-cueing, a curriculum model that violates Act 20, the state’s new literacy law that requires young elementary students to get “science-based” reading curriculum with a focus on phonics.

Three-cueing is teaching strategy that uses context, structure and letters to identify words.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

John Johnson:

It is galling to hear a politician justify deliberately making test scores incomparable to previous years as a way to reduce “confusion.”

More:

Questions we will asking: Why changes were made? Why move to lower standards ? (Even @GovEvers disagrees with this) Why make it impossible to track data from previous years? And just what about act 20 does the superintendent find to be nonsense?

Colleston Morgan:

We @CityForwardCol have been clear: DPI’s changes are bad for students & families. This is just one reason why

Abbey Machtig:

But the results of last year’s Forward Exam can’t be compared to previous years after the state lowered the score students must achieve to be considered proficient or advanced, and they highlight yawning racial achievement gaps. 

According to the data, which is from testing done last spring, about 51% students statewide who took the Forward Exam either met or exceeded grade-level expectations in English/language arts. In math, about 53.2% of students met that standard.

Using the old standards, in 2022-23, about 39% of students performed at proficient or advanced levels on the Forward Exam in English/language arts. Forty-one percent of students scored at those same levels on the Forward math test. But the changes to portions of the Forward Exam make it hard to compare the new results and scores from previous years to track student achievement trends over time. 

Rep.Barbara Dittrich:

Parents, do not be deceived by the DPI’s manipulation of achievement levels. This only hurts our struggling students further. And for heavens sake, follow @GhaleonQ for clear answers on what’s really happening in our schools!

Last year less than 40 percent of students were considered ‘proficient‘

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

David Blaska:

The canary in the coal mine has already died when a city’s schools are in decay. So we must double down on school choice, aided by vouchers that allow the state’s school district contribution to follow the student to the school of his/her family’s choice.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Will Flanders:

Perhaps most egregious are the changes in districts where everyone knows that schools are failing kids. Milwaukee’s proficiency still looks low at 23.4% in ELA. But now they can tout that it’s gone up 8% in one year.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Paul Vallas:

Pritzker should revive School Finance Authority to take financial control of schools, approve contracts, audit programs, provide direction. Pursue a Consent Decree to remove obstacles to improving schools & provide poor parents with school choice. Here are the reasons. READ MORE.

•CPS spends $30K per student and has increased spending by 46% since 2019 despite a 9% drop in enrollment, yet only 1 in 3 read at grade level and 1 in 6 in math.

•There is now ONE full time employee for every 7.6 students in the school district as CPS has added over 9,500 full time budget positions and almost 7,800 actually filled positions since 2018.

•Half of the districts full time employees (over 22,000) are not teachers and there are over 7,500 district employees not even assigned to schools.

Kayla Huynh:

The raises require the school district to dip into its day-to-day operating budget, even though Solder warned the board “we do not have clearly sufficient ongoing revenues” to pay for the recurring expense.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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 Nobel Committee

This year’s two Nobel Laureates in Physics have used tools from physics to develop methods that are the foundation of today’s powerful machine learning. John Hopfield created an associative memory that can store and reconstruct images and other types of patterns in data. Geoffrey Hinton invented a method that can autonomously find properties in data, and so perform tasks such as identifying specific elements in pictures.

More.

James Rushmore:

Our latest Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) results show that the university has done significant work on “disinformation” for the State Department. But of what sort? Back in January, Gabe Kaminsky of The Washington Examinerreported that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) had given three direct awards to ASU. But the redacted documentsuncovered by Kaminsky don’t explain the purpose of the awards. 

Last month, the House Committee on Small Business released a report that details the lengths to which the GEC has gone to evade congressional oversight. The committee sent the GEC a subpoena in June, only to be told that it would take the State Department another twenty-one months to produce the requested documents. 

What might be underneath those redactions? According to the committee:

The Global Engagement Center (GEC), an interagency body housed within the U.S. Department of State (State), circumvented its strict international mandate by funding, developing, then promoting tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.

Advance Illinois:

This report shares new analyses on the impact of EBF on K-12 education resource equity and remaining gaps between current funding levels and full, adequate funding. The data are striking and underscore the need for the state to honor the commitment it made in the EBF legislation to invest at least $350 million in our schools through the new formula each year. This investment is critical to support long-term school improvement and close longstanding funding disparities.

Jordi Perez Colome:

Question: How does it feel to be an AI influencer?

Answer. I hate that description. I’ve been on social media for a long time, and I’m a compulsive sharer. But I don’t take money from any of these AI companies or do sponsorship deals. I talk to them because it’s interesting. I’m a tenured professor, I can say whatever I want. It’s strange to see companies trying to manipulate me by showing me their stuff, but I don’t have the infrastructure of an influencer. I worry that that influencer title smears everything together. There’s a difference between public intellectuals, researchers, and critics. It would be better if we had more classes of thinking.

Q. You recommend spending three sleepless nights to master AI.

Wirepoints:

Chicago’s pensions remain in bad shape and are getting worse. For perspective, three of the city’s plans have only enough money to pay out less than four years of benefits. And the latest official reports from the city’s pension plans and those of its sister agencies show a total pension debt of $52 billion, up from $42 billion just five years ago. The city’s shortfall exceeds the pension debt of 46 of the nation’s 50 states and imposes the worst costs per capita of any major American city, by leagues.

The Pension working group’s recommendations can go only in two directions. The group can either get serious about tackling the pension problem, or it can choose to continue the decades of public policy malpractice that got Chicago into this mess. We hope those involved will heed some sage advice — from right here in Chicagoland — and choose the former.

Nadim Sadek:

So long as you can articulate your notion, AI can make a decent stab at producing an artefact to represent your creativity. It’ll make music to your command. Write words. Produce an image. Whatever you’re trying to conceive and give birth to, AI disintermediates the historic imperative of “crafting”. It takes your ideas and makes them evident. Others can see what you intend. People can relate to what you wish to convey. 

Matt Beienburg:

With literacy rates declining in public schools across the nation, the last thing we need is for families to read fewer books to their children—yet Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is pushing parents to do just that. With the help of a new lawsuit, parents are fighting back.

For years, Arizona families have bought books and other school supplies through the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account. But when former special-education teacher Velia Aguirre and home-school mother Rosemary McAtee tried to use ESA funds to buy books for their kids this summer—including “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See,” “Little People Who Became Great” and “Where the Red Fern Grows”—they ran into trouble. A July decree from Ms. Mayes prohibited such purchases unless the families could cite a pre-established curriculum requiring these books.

These and other purchases—such as math workbooks, copies of the periodic table, geography puzzles, pencils and other school supplies—had been permitted in the ESA handbook approved by the State Board of Education. All fall under the new regulatory umbrella. This overreach by the state restricts parents’ ability to provide basic learning materials for their kids.

Jeff Richgels:

Wright’s campaign said he has received the recommendation of the Wisconsin Education Association Council Political Action Committee.

Wright is the first announced challenger to incumbent Jill Underly, who took office in 2021.

More

WEAC PAC asked for input on Wright for state superintendent, and liberal judge Susan Crawford for Supreme Court. The PAC did not ask for feedback about supporting Underly

Underly is wrapping-up her first term as state superintendent. She announced her re-election bid last month. 

But she has proven unpopular during her first four years in office. 

Republican lawmakers have criticized Underly for focusing too much on LGBTQ issues, and not focusing enough on reading and math.

Kayla Huynh:

Two principals have been removed from their positions at Southside Elementary School, according to an email sent Monday to families by Madison schools Superintendent Joe Gothard.

In the email obtained by the Cap Times, Gothard says Principal Candace Terrell and Assistant Principal Annabel Torres are not serving at the school “until further notice.” 

The Madison Metropolitan School District launched an investigation into the two administrators in May after 24 current and former staff members lodged a 39-page complaint the previous month. As first reported by the Cap Times, staff said Terrell and Torres had for years created an untenable working and learning environment at the school.

Students who misbehave were taken out of class, isolated from their peers and given no instruction — in some cases for weeks at a time — a dozen current and former staff members told the Cap Times in May. The staff said they’ve faced disciplinary consequences for speaking out, causing many to have nightmares, seek therapy or quit altogether.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Andrew Rotherham

Can we get back to a place where Coates is free to write people are free to challenge, and life just goes on? A DEI strategist b/c someone asked hard questions?

& problem, of course, is that if CBS News does this, how is average non-profit exec expected to have a backbone?

Quinton Klabon:

State test scores, out tomorrow, are inflated, biased, and unreliable. DPI knew achievement gaps for Black, low-income, and special-needs students would grow.

Superintendent Underly criticized “nonsense going on with literacy” while Act 20 negotiations occurred.

And

So, why lower them? Because they were killing the vibes.

Superintendent Underly wanted them changed in JANUARY 2023. She thinks the national college-ready standards set by Governor Evers make them look bad.

and

That is all bad enough, but pressing buttons without knowing why is even worse.

Superintendent Underly asked what Proficient and Advanced meant, choked on change data, and argued @NAEP_NCES @GovBoard @EdNCES ARE ILLEGITIMATE, though (awesome) DPI staff are on their task force.

and

Well, when critical Act 20 reforms came out, the Superintendent wrote, “And with all this other nonsense going on with literacy I want to make sure we’re not throwing more fuel onto this fire.” NONSENSE?!

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Parents defending education

In 2020-21, as many schools across America were shuttered because of COVID-19, parents were sitting at home working virtually, alongside their children learning virtually, and they began to realize that classroom education was no longer focused on math, science, history, English, and other subjects that would prepare young
students for success. Now, children were being taught that America was systemically racist, that they were either the oppressors or the oppressed, and that it was their responsibility to call out micro-aggressions and systemic racism and to look down on the now-hateful idea of legal equality for all. They were being taught that racism permeates every aspect of society and that no matter your biological sex, you can be a boy, girl, both, or neither. And they were told that any dissent from this orthodoxy would be met with discipline and social ostracization.

Fearing for their children and aware of the limited time that young students have to learn critical skills in the public school system, parents spontaneously mobilized to protect the integrity of taxpayer-funded public education. They utilized every legal tool at their disposal, from lawsuits and efforts to recall elected officials to simply voicing their opposition to school board members who often seemed committed to ignoring their constituents, to prevent public education from becoming woke indoctrination.

While this movement grew across America, it reached its peak in Virginia, where school systems had not only embraced these divisive concepts but began the process of forcing students as young as five years old to share bathrooms and locker rooms
with members of the opposite sex. Teachers who protested were suspended, and parents who spoke out were mocked, vilified, arrested, and verbally attacked by the very elected officials who represented them.

Isaak:

Month 1: Last September, I was deep into my math undergrad. It was pretty dry. I was looking for some fun non-math side project. I flirted with French, Russian, archery, parkour, and Japanese. But those didn’t ignite my passion. I happened to watch a snippet of the anime Demon Slayer in an obscure Chinese fan dub. Ironically, this caught my attention. I also had lots of Chinese friends, so why not learn a little Mandarin? Oh my, I had no idea how obsessed I’d end up with this “little” side project.

Berkeley had a breakneck-speed Mandarin beginner class. I loved it. Within a week, we learned pinyin. We learned the tones. We learned to read. We learned to write. Then started talking immediately, every single day. Talking in horribly horribly broken Chinese, but nevertheless having conversations. I learned the very most important survival vocabulary, like: I am Isaak and Yes, I live in America and Sorry, no, I’m not a basketball player for the Golden State Warriors.

www

Here you can find a list of charts categorised by their data visualization functions or by what you want a chart to communicate to an audience. While the allocation of each chart into specific functions isn’t a perfect system, it still works as a useful guide for selecting chart based on your analysis or communication needs. 

Wall Street Journal:

Any illusion that Mayor Brandon Johnson has a steady hand on the wheel in the Windy City was put to rest on Friday when all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education resigned amid a pressure campaign from City Hall. That’s a no-confidence vote, Chicago style.

Chicago is in the middle of negotiating what is likely to be a costly new contract with the Chicago Teachers Union, Mayor Johnson’s largest campaign contributor. Since the Chicago school district can’t afford the hefty raises and benefits CTU is demanding, the mayor has suggested that the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) take out a $300 million short-term, high-interest loan to cover the shortfall.

More.

Robert McMillan & Jenny Strasburg:

Kurtaj was arrested a third time and charged with hacking, fraud and blackmail. Authorities said that while at the Travelodge, he broke into Uber and taunted the company by posting a link to a photo of an erect penis on the company’s internal Slack messaging system, then stole software and videos from Rockstar Games. Stolen clips had popped up in a “Grand Theft Auto” discussion forum from a user named teapotuberhacker and stirred a frenzy.

As officers collected evidence, the teen stood by, emotionless, police say. During his stay, he was polite and shy, said Susanne Langford, the hotel manager. “He was very quiet, didn’t interact with people much,” she said. Langford, who has a son with autism, said she recognized traits of it in Kurtaj.

Police knocked on his mother’s door to tell her that they’d just arrested her son again. For years, according to court records, she had struggled to keep her son on a path that provided schooling and other support. He had limited social skills and trouble developing relationships, records say—and ultimately looked for approval in the booming world of cybercrime.

Rachel Blevins:

YouTube just removed my entire channel, claiming I violated their “Hate Speech” policy. 8 years of tireless work, and 63,000 subscribers gone. I know it doesn’t come as a surprise given YouTube’s recent crackdown, but I’m still devastated.

My last video with @s_m_marandi hit 100,000 views in 12 hours (a new record for my channel). Joining the special club with @MarkSleboda1, @Glenn_Diesen, @DD_Geopolitics and others, who have challenged the U.S. narrative on Ukraine, and been deleted by YouTube.

I attempted to appeal, and it was denied within minutes.

Barton Swaim:

Why American politics in the 21st century is marred by incivility and mistrust is the subject of more books and essays than any normal person would wish to read. The premise underlying most of them is that it’s a left-right problem: The right hates the left and the left hates the right, only the reasons for the hatred vary according to the author.

But what if it isn’t a left-right problem at all? What if the acrimony and loathing that animate our politics have more to do with class than ideology, more to do with educational status than any set of views on culture and policy?

The assumption that the nastiness of our politics is chiefly a matter of warring ideologies wouldn’t explain, for one thing, the mindless rage currently evident on elite campuses. These are places dominated by a confederation of left-progressive worldviews, yet the acrimony issuing from them is ferocious: occupations of quads and academic buildings, chanting mobs in the grip of antisemitic lunacy, assaults on Jewish students, flag-burning exhibitionism, dizzying varieties of “intersectional” preoccupations glomming onto the cause of anti-Zionism, and on and on.

Melissa Korn and Matt Barnum:

The bulk of Bloomberg’s millions have gone to a remote college-counseling program. Bloomberg Philanthropies, the ex-New York City mayor’s charitable arm, also invested in the American Talent Initiative, a group of college presidents that aimed to attract 50,000 more lower-income students to schools with high graduation rates.

Bloomberg Philanthropies now says the college counseling has had “minimal” impact, according to a presentation shared with The Wall Street Journal. And the American Talent Initiative has shelved its big goal after falling off track.

“We think we have moved the needle. We have not solved the problem,” said Howard Wolfson, who leads Bloomberg Philanthropies’ education work.

Behind the spending is Michael Bloomberg’s belief—a belief shared by other large donors and nonprofits—that the path to economic mobility runs through America’s leading colleges.

One reason these programs haven’t found strong success is that scalable, lower-cost strategies—such as distributing packets about colleges or encouraging students to work with counselors online—struggled to get through to students. Several studies have found that more-intensive, in-person college counseling programs tend to be more effective.