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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.

John Robb:

According to the owner of this site, 2024 will be America’s “last election” if Trump doesn’t win.
According to the major media and the party in power, this will be the last election if Trump is elected.

Abbey Machtig:

But the nationwide search for a new leader that ended with Gothard’s hiring wasn’t an inexpensive endeavor: The district spent more than $100,000 on contracts with consulting groups, catering, hotels and travel during the search, according to records provided to the Wisconsin State Journal via an open records request.

This is on top of Gothard’s starting salary of $299,000 a year, which puts him well ahead of the district leaders that came before him. Interim Superintendent Lisa Kvistad received $271,900 for her one-year contract with the district. Carlton Jenkins, who spent three years as superintendent before exiting in June 2023, received an annual salary of $272,000, according to his contract.

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?

Abbey Machtig:

The Wisconsin Newspaper Association Foundation is accepting submissions for the fourth annual editorial and cartoon contest as part of the Wisconsin Civics Games.

The contest is open to all Wisconsin high school and middle school students and aims to promote civics education and generate an interest in public service.

For the writing contest, high school students will be asked to write a column about the First Amendment in 500 words or less. Middle school students will be asked to write a letter to the editor on the same topic in 200 words or less.

For the cartoon contest, students can submit one editorial cartoon, also around the theme of the First Amendment.

Matt Johansen

Why it matters: The intrusion could give Chinese intelligence access to court-authorized wiretap requests and vast amounts of internet traffic, undermining U.S. law enforcement and intelligence operations. 

Key points:

• The attack targeted major U.S. broadband providers, including AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies (Source: WSJ) 
• Hackers may have had access for months to systems used for lawful wiretapping requests 
• The breach is considered “historically significant and worrisome” by U.S. officials

Sarah Stankorb

LifeWise Academy relies upon a 1952 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (Zorach v. Clauson) that allows students optional, off-campus released time for religious instruction, or RTRI. The Ohio-based nonprofit Bible education program has made the Buckeye State a hub for RTRI, and will reach over 600 school districts in 30 states this school year.

“People who believe in separation of church and state should love LifeWise and should love release time because it’s a beautiful manifestation of it,” LifeWise CEO Joel Penton said in an interview, underscoring that students in LifeWise are transported off-campus (often to churches or community centers), the program is independently funded, kids don’t miss core classes (LifeWise is held during specials like art, music, recess, or lunch), and there’s no state compulsion to attend.

Stephen J. Choi and Mitu Gulati:

Donald J. Trump’s presidency broke the mold in many ways, including how to think about judicial appointments. Unlike other recent presidents, Trump was open about how “his” judges could be depended on to rule in particular ways on key issues important to voters he was courting (e.g., on issues such as guns, religion, and abortion). Other factors such as age and personal loyalty to Trump seemed important criteria. With selection criteria such as these, one might expect that Trump would select from a smaller pool of candidates than other presidents. Given the smaller pool and deviation from traditional norms of picking “good” judges, we were curious about how the Trump judges performed on a basic set of measures of judging. One prediction is that Trumpian constraints on judicial selection produced a different set of judges.  Specifically, one that would underperform compared to sets of judges appointed by other presidents. Using data on active federal appeals court judges from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2023, we examine data on judges across three different measures: opinion production, influence (measured by citations), and independence or what we refer to as “maverick” behavior. Contrary to the prediction of underperformance, Trump judges outperform other judges, with the very top rankings of judges predominantly filled by Trump judges.

More.

Venice.ai:

Unrestricted AI image generators are platforms that allow users to generate images from text prompts without added content restrictions beyond what exists inherently within an AI model.

In contrast, many mainstream AI platforms place added restrictions on what types of content you can create. Because of this, an unrestricted AI image generator provides a broader range of possibilities compared to other AI platforms.

What is Venice.ai?

Venice.ai is an example of an unrestricted AI image generator. Venice doesn’t impose additional content restrictions beyond those already inherent within the open-source models that the platform uses. These unrestricted models make Venice.ai suitable for artists, designers, and content creators who require more flexibility and creativity in their work.

Zindzi Frederick:

The future of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is a subject of debate within the 2024 Legislative Council Study Committee on the future of the Universities of Wisconsin System.

The topic was brought up in the council’s meeting on Aug. 29 by Vice President for Administration at University of Wisconsin System James Langdon. Langdon distributed a written proposal to the other committee members, according to the meeting minutes.

Part of Langdon’s proposal focused on establishing UW-Madison as a separate state agency named the “University of Wisconsin” and providing UW with limited bonding authority, according to the meeting minutes.

In last month’s meeting Wisconsin Policy Forum President Jason Steingave a presentation regarding higher education governance. UW-Madison, out of its peer universities, is the only one that both reports to a larger governing board with statutory authority and is part of a comprehensive statewide system, according to the 62-page document.

Jamil Scott, Elizabeth Lane and Jessica Schoenherr:

Groups seeking to advance rights have often appealed to the Supreme Court. But the justices are hesitant to engage with such cases, especially when it means siding with a traditionally-unpopular group. Attorneys consequently look to make these cases more appealing. One way of doing this is identifying counter-stereotypical litigants, or litigants whose identities do not align with the expected beneficiaries of a decision. Counter-stereotypical litigants should change the conversation about who benefits from
a rights-affirming decision and increase support for the Court making that decision. Using survey experiments, we find that counter-stereotypical litigants can make a difference, but not universally. Our results show that Black male litigants increase support for overturning affirmative action while Asian American men decrease it. We also find that White female litigants draw broad support for upholding gun rights. These results suggest that attorneys must carefully consider identity politics when seeking to increase decision support.

One week later, two employees of the Foundation for Madison Public Schools (8 total employees according to them) staffed a table on the Capitol Square during the Saturday farmer’s market. The FMPS’s 2022 IRS form 990 (more from Propublica “tax exempt since 2002” EIN: 39-2043104) lists total assets or fund balances of $14,316,174 (up from 12,953,618 in 2021); revenues of $1,716,885 and expenses of 2,075,053 (loss of 358,168 vs a gain of 2,290,985 in 2021). Section IX lists expense details (including bad debts).

The Foundation for Madison Public Schools is apparently advocating for a large fall 2024 tax and spending increase referendum:

More:

“On four previous operating referendums, Madison voters opted to raise their school property taxes in perpetuity, so those tax increases never expire”.

“The irresponsibility of this (Madison School Board) is just hard to get your head around”.

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 Knapton:

Moderna has been rebuked by regulators after offering children cash to test the Covid vaccine…

Elias Ilin and Alvaro Sanchez:

The structure of the United States social safety net features phaseouts of public assistance as household income increases, which can function as an effective marginal tax on wage gains, commonly referred to as a “benefits cliff.” These so-called benefits cliffs create a disincentive for low-income workers, especially those with children, to accept higher-paying jobs or promotions. This paper describes how benefits cliffs can affect the financial resources of a single adult, one child family living in the District of Columbia (DC) and introduces the DC Career Mobility Action Plan (Career MAP) pilot program, which serves as a benefits cliff mitigation strategy
for participants.

Gabriella Hartlaub

After recommendations from a working group on Registered Student Organization code of conduct, the University of Wisconsin-Madison required student organizations to have an advisor listed and outlined consequences for organizations who do not participate 

The University of Wisconsin-Madison updated the Registered Student Organization (RSO) code of conduct in August to require RSOs have an advisor and mandate RSOs participate in disciplinary investigations. 

“RSO advising can be provided by a volunteer advisor chosen by or matched with the student organization; an assigned advisor provided by the departmental sponsor; or CfLI advising services,” an email sent to RSO contacts in early August said. 

The new policy — that went into effect Aug. 30 —  outlines consequences for organizations that disaffiliate from the university during conduct investigations and disciplinary action for any RSO that knowingly collaborates, cosponsors or in any way participates in any event with an RSO that has disaffiliated from the university during the conduct process.

John Smith:

To me, one of the greatest historical puzzles is why the Cold War was even a contest. Consider it a mirror image of the Needham Question: Joseph Needham famously wondered why it was that, despite having a vastly larger population and GDP, Imperial China nevertheless lost out scientifically to the West. (I examined this question at some length in this review.) Well, with the Soviets it all went in the opposite direction: they had a smaller population, a worse starting industrial base, a lower GDP, and a vastly less efficient economic system. How, then, did they maintain military and technological parity1 with the United States for so long?

The puzzle was partly solved for me, but partly deepened, when those of us who grew up in the ‘90s and ‘00s encountered the vast wave of former Soviet émigrés that washed up in the United States after the fall of communism. Anybody who played competitive chess back then, or who participated in math competitions, knows what I’m talking about: the sinking feeling you got upon seeing that your opponent had a Russian name. These days, the same scenes are dominated by Chinese and Indian kids. But China and India have large populations — the Russians were punching way about their weight, demographically speaking. Today, those same Russians are all over Wall Street and Silicon Valley and Ivy League math departments, still overrepresented in technical fields. What explains it? Are Russians just naturally better at math and physics?

WILL:

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has filed an Amicus Brief in the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a case against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA). WILL urges that because the WIAA has monopolized high school sports and has binding power over the public, including nearly 90,000 student athletes, their parents, and public school officials, it should be considered a state actor and bound by the state and federal constitutions.

The Quotes: WILL Associate Counsel, Skylar Croy, stated, “We cannot allow the WIAA to wield government power without the same limits imposed on the government itself. If the WIAA is going to control all high school athletics, it must follow our constitutions for the sake of our student athletes’ rights.”

Additional Background:  With the help of the state, the WIAA became the unifying institution that governs the athletic programming of every public high school in Wisconsin. Thus, any athlete, coach, or family who wants to be involved in high school athletics must comply with the rules implemented by the WIAA. This use of delegated state power over our public schools should lead the WIAA to be considered a state actor and be bound to our state and federal constitutions.

By  Sarah Karp and Nader Issa

The entire Chicago Board of Education is resigning, a stunning development after months of acrimony that clears the way for Mayor Brandon Johnson to appoint a new board that will follow his orders — fire schools CEO Pedro Martinez, make a contract deal with the Chicago Teachers Union and take a loan to cover a city pension payment and the teachers’ contract this year.

Johnson confirmed Friday in an exclusive interview that the expected resignations of all seven board members will come later this month. This was followed by a joint statement from the School Board and the mayor. WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times first reported the possibility of resignations on Monday.

The motives behind the mass resignations appear to be complicated. The board has seemed to back Martinez in clashes with Johnson at times but has also had its own concerns with Martinez’s performance, WBEZ and the Sun-Times previously reported.

Corrinne Hess:

But over three decades, the number of district buildings decreased by only 3.9 percent, despite a 29.1 percent drop over that period in MPS’ full-time enrollment, the policy forum found. 

“The overall trend suggests that the current number of publicly supported school buildings in the city may not be sustainable over the next decade, even taking into account the latest MPS referendum,” an August 2024 Policy Forum report states. 

More.

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?

Ashley Mowreader

Student Voice survey participants indicated a variety of reasons why they didn’t want to use AI tools. Some were disdainful of the technology as a whole, and others indicated it wasn’t appropriate to use in higher education.

When asked their top three concerns about using generative AI in their education, Chegg’s survey found students were worried about cheating (52 percent), receiving incorrect or inaccurate information (50 percent), and data privacy (39 percent).

“Whether you’re very leery of this for a variety of reasons—whether they be ethical, environmental, social, economic—or enthusiastic, I think we have to occupy the space for a while and recognize it’s going to be odd and complicated,” says Chuck Lewis, writing director at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

In a recently published study in Science Direct, University of California, Irvine, researchers surveyed 1,001 students to understand their usage and concerns around using ChatGPT. Among students who held concerns, the top themes were around ethics, quality, careers, accessibility and privacy or surveillance.

Some survey respondents indicated they were concerned about unintentional plagiarism or use of ChatGPT compromising their work, which could lead to consequences from their institution.

Mike Masnick:

These days, there’s a formula for articles pushing the unproven claims of harm from social media. Start with examples of kids harming themselves, insist (without evidence) that but for social media it wouldn’t have happened. Throw some shade at Section 230 (while misrepresenting it). Toss out some policy suggestions without grappling with what those policy suggestions would actually mean in practice, and never once deal with the actual underlying issues regarding mental health.

It’s become so easy. And so wrong. But it fits the narrative.

I enjoy Andrew Solomon’s writing and especially found his book, Far From the Tree, an exceptional read. So, when I saw that he had written a big story for the New Yorker on social media and teens, I had hoped that it would approach the subject in a manner that laid out the actual nuances, trade-offs, and challenges, rather than falling for the easy moral panic tropes.

Unfortunately, it fails woefully in that endeavor, and in the process gets a bunch of basic facts wrong. For all of the New Yorker’s reputation for its great fact-checking efforts, in the few stories where I’ve been close enough to know what’s going on, the fact-checking has been… terrible.

John Murawski:

A study published this week in a prestigious journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes a claim that’s almost unheard of on the pages of leading medical journals: systemic racism and implicit bias are not the self-evident explanations for a pervasive racial disparity. To be precise: black newborns aren’t dying at higher rates when they’re treated by white doctors.

The study, conducted by a Harvard economist and a Manhattan Institute researcher, purports to debunk a widely circulated 2020 study, also published in PNAS, which concluded that black newborns attended by a white physician suffer a “mortality penalty” and are twice as likely to die. That study garnered incriminating headlines in USA Today, CNN, Science News, NPR, and The Washington Post. It was also so influential that it was cited by Supreme Court Justice Brown Jackson in the high court’s 2023 affirmative action case, in which the American Medical Association and 44 other parties declared in their amicus brief: “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician is tantamount to a miracle drug.”

How could two teams of researchers look at the same data — 1.8 million childbirths in Florida between 1992 and 2015 — and reach diametrically opposite conclusions?

This time around, the researchers added one key variable that the 2020 researchers had overlooked — low birth weights — and the whole thing collapsed. The research design contained a fatal flaw, overlooking the fact that severely underweight babies, who have very high mortality rates to start with, tend to be treated by white doctors. Physicians who handle the most serious medical cases tend to see higher death rates.

Christopher Rufo:

Northwestern Law Review published a special issue featuring only black women. But, according to material unearthed in a new lawsuit, the issue was rife with plagiarism.

Michael T. Hartney and Vladimir Kogan

School board candidates supported by local teachers’ unions overwhelmingly win and we examine the causes and consequences of the “teachers’ union premium” in these elections. First, we show that union endorsement information increases voter support. Although the magnitude of this effect varies across ideological and partisan subgroups, an endorsement rarely hurts a candidate’s prospects with the electorate. Second, we benchmark the size of the endorsement premium to other well-known determinants of vote-choice in local elections. Perhaps surprisingly, we show the effect can be as large as the impact of shared partisanship, and substantially larger than the boost from endorsements provided by other stakeholders. Finally, examining real-world endorsement decisions, we find that union support for incumbents hinges on self-interested pecuniary considerations and is unaffected by performance in improving student academic outcomes. The divergence between what endorsements mean and how voters interpret them has troubling normative democratic implications

Joanne Jacobs:

High achievers know how to read, writes Horowitch. “But they struggle to muster the attention or ambition required to immerse themselves in a substantial text.” Like Melville’s Bartleby, they “prefer not to.”

Students are reading fewer “long and boring” books in middle and high school, I noted in a recent post. Common Core stressed using short informational texts, writes Horowitch. “Teachers at many schools shifted from books to short informational passages, followed by questions about the author’s main idea — mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests.”

The FIRE:

UPDATE: A federal judge has blocked California’s A.B. 2839—a law banning “deceptive” election-related digital content—on First Amendment grounds.

As U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez said, the law “acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel.” We couldn’t agree more.

OECD Education:

How much should countries spend on education?

More expenditure per student typically correlates with improved outcomes…

…but only up to a point, after which additional investment shows little impact on performance.

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?

Jeff:

Want to see the data? You can easily see results for the whole state or individual school districts by grade & student group here:
public.tableau.com/app/profile/jm…

Abbey Machtig:

Of those 13 successful referendums, Madison residents still are paying for five of them. If voters approve two proposals from the district in November that together total $607 million, that number would jump to seven.

Voters already have authorized the district to increase its spending limit by $72 millionthrough recurring, operating referendums approved during the past three decades.

Recurring school referendums, like those approved by Madison voters in 2020, 2016, 2008 and 1999, allow a district to exceed its spending limit permanently. Districts levy additional property taxes to generate this money, which are then sustained at that level in perpetuity.

How much are those adding to current property tax bills? Calculations are inexact. School finances are complicated and are affected by yearly property values, student enrollment and aid provided by the state.

But for the 2020 referendums, the district estimated owners of the average Madison home would be paying about $480 more in property taxes by the 2023-24 school year.

For the 2016 referendum, district officials at the time estimated the owner of an average-priced home would pay about $143 more in property taxes after four years.

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?

By Natalie Yahr

Teachers at three Madison Montessori schools have voted to be represented by a union, joining a short list of unionized child care workers in Wisconsin and becoming what may be the state’s first unionized private school teachers.

The 12-3 vote included all eligible staff from the three schools operated by Toad Hill Montessori Inc. — Toad Hill Children’s House, Toad Hill Toddler House and Blooming Grove Montessori — according to Andy Sernatinger, a business representative with Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 39, which will represent the workers. One vote was challenged by the employer and not counted. 

At the time workers filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board in September, 23 teachers were eligible, but Sernatinger said two teachers were fired and six quit. The union will represent around 20 staff, including a few who were hired too recently to be eligible to vote, Sernatinger said.

Nicholas Garton:

Other facility exemptions that would be removed under this fall’s proposal include elementary schools, middle schools, day care centers, nursery schools, places of worship and public safety buildings.

If the exemptions are removed, new developments and places seeking to expand parking could fall under the law. The law may also apply if an existing facility changes its function, such as a property transitioning from a restaurant to a retail business.

Aaron Garth Smith and Jude Schwalbach

Today, between declining birth rates, fiscal chaos, and competition from charter and private schools, public education bears little resemblance to what it was before the pandemic. These challenges will deepen in the coming years, and widespread school closures and staff reductions are likely. But the most daunting task will be convincing parents to enroll their children in public schools.

The birth dearth.

Nationwide, public school enrollment has declined by 1.2 million students—about 2.3 percent—since 2020. Research suggests that 40 percent of these students switched to private schools or homeschooling as parents grew weary of prolonged school closures, masking policies, and curricular battles. But demographics also played a key role, with about one-quarter of it attributable to a declining number of school-aged kids thanks to the birth dearth.

The number of births in the U.S. dropped by 17 percent between 2007 and 2023. This means that 720,000 fewer births occurred in 2023 than in 2007. This baby bust also extends to U.S. immigrants. In 2019, immigrant fertility rates dropped below replacement levels for the first time.

Additionally, some states have experienced significant student attrition because of domestic migration between states. For instance, California and New York lost nearly 342,000 and 244,000 students, respectively, between fiscal years 2021 and 2022 due to outmigration, according to Bellwether.

Emma Camp:

“The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly rejected government attempts to prohibit or punish hate speech,” reads a rundown on hate speech from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment group. “The First Amendment recognizes that the government cannot regulate hate speech without inevitably silencing the dissent and dialogue that democracy requires. Instead, we as citizens possess the power to most effectively answer hateful speech—whether through debate, protest, questioning, laughter, silence, or simply walking away.”

But that wasn’t Walz’s only error. A few seconds later, he said “You can’t yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test.” Again, this is incorrect. It’s a common misconception that shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre isn’t protected by the First Amendment—a myth that originates from a hypothetical used in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1919 Supreme Court opinion in Schenk v. United States. 

Holmes wrote that “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Not only was this a purely hypothetical example used to explain Holmes’ opinion, but the ruling itself was largely overturned 50 years later in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

“The real problem with the ‘fire in a crowded theater’ discourse is that it too often is used as a placeholder justification for regulating any speech that someone believes is harmful or objectionable,” Naval Academy professor Jeff Kosseff wrote for Reason last year. “In reality, the Supreme Court has defined narrow categories of speech that are exempt from First Amendment protections and set an extraordinarily high bar for imposing liability for other types of speech.”

——

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Natalie Winters:

Rep. Adam Schiff demands social media companies ramp up censorship of “misinformation and disinformation” ahead of the 2024 election.

Charles Murray:

Last week, Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”) and three-time recipient of awards for excellence in teaching, was stripped her of her chaired professorship, suspended for a year at half pay, and denied summer pay in perpetuity. Why? As far as I can tell, for telling her students the truth in the classroom and exercising her constitutional right to express her private opinions outside the classroom.

Penn’s administration doesn’t see it that way. In the words of the official letter sent to Wax, these punishments were justified by her “flagrant unprofessional conduct”: 

That conduct included a history of making sweeping and derogatory generalisations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status; breaching the requirement that student grades be kept private by publicly speaking about the grades of law students by race and continuing to do so even after cautioned by the dean that it was a violation of university policy; and, on numerous occasions, in and out of the classroom and in public, making discriminatory and disparaging statements targeting specific racial, ethnic, and other groups with which many students identify.

The specifics of the allegations against Wax can be found in a twelve-page letter written by the Dean of the law school, Theodore Ruger, in June 2022. I am suspicious of some of them, but most of the things she is alleged to have said sound like the Amy Wax I know. In each of our occasional encounters over the years, I have always had the same reactions. She is brilliant, entertaining, disconcertingly frank, and sometimes abrasive. Her style is not my style, but I have never known Wax to use invective or slurs when she is expressing her opinion. She is just really, really, blunt. 

Christopher Rufo:

Every nation has an operating ideology. In a country that hews faithfully to the principles embedded in its written constitution, that ideology is overt. In a tyrannical government, however, it is concealed, as the regime preaches one set of values in principle but pursues the opposite in practice.

Most Americans believe that our nation today lives up to its founding principle that all men are created equal. The letter of the law seems to provide for colorblind equality, according to which individuals are judged on their talents and virtues, rather than on their ancestry, religion, or place of origin.

This has not held true in practice, however. Most obviously, of course, was the long American history of slavery and disenfranchisement of African Americans. Since 1965, however, when Lyndon Johnson first implemented the policy of affirmative action in federal contracting, the United States has racially discriminated in favor of minority groups—maintaining discrimination, but changing the target.

He added that “we’re better journalists by any standard than The New York Times.”

Kyle Greenberg, Matthew Gudgeon, Adam Isen, Corbin L. Miller & Richard W. Patterson

This paper estimates causal intergenerational occupation transmission in the military using discontinuities in parents’ eligibility for service from the Armed Forces Qualification Test. A parent’s enlistment in the Army increases their children’s military service propensity by between 58% and 110%. Intergenerational occupational transmission rates vary by race and sex—they are highest for demographic groups whose parents gained the most economically from service and for same-sex parent-child pairs. Our findings provide new evidence on the mechanisms driving intergenerational occupation correlations and show that intergenerational transmission is an important channel for getting under-represented groups into high-quality occupations.

Hilary Burns and Mike Damiano

The group found that 51 percent of surveyed faculty and staff reported they would feel very or somewhat reluctant to lead a classroom discussion on a controversial topic. Likewise, 45 percent of students surveyed said they were somewhat reluctant or very reluctant to share their views on controversial issues in the classroom. With regards to academic work, 41 percent of faculty and staff said they were somewhat reluctant or very reluctant to research a controversial subject.

Bill Ackman on Harvard.

KEY FINDINGS:
1. Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.

2. The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).

David Blaska:

The Madison school board that a dozen years ago rejected Kaleem Caire’s proposed charter school catering to under-achieving minority students is now inflicting death by a thousand paper cuts to another proposal that thinks outside the box. Because of Woke politics.

Local real estate moguls John and Jo Ellen McKenzie want to prepare students for careers in the building trades, health care, info tech, and more. These are jobs that go wanting — and pay well — for all the K-12 emphasis of pushing students to go deep in debt for college degrees that don’t pay off.

But “the involvement of Paul Vallas … may also be a drawback for some board members. “I would say, personally, I do have some concerns about Vallas,” board member Maia Pearson said Monday. — Wisconsin State Journal

 Who is this nefarious Paul Vallas? 

Mr. Vallas only ran the public schools of Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Bridgeport CT. Was the budget director for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Vallas darn near got elected mayor himself in last year but lost a runoff to teachers union toady Brandon Johnson. And therein lies your dagger! Vallas is a critic of teachers unions. Which is why the McKenzies are seeking a charter, which would allow it to bypass teachers union/school board tentacles.

“The biggest obstacle to improving city schools is the Chicago teachers union,” Vallas wrote for the Illinois Policy organization.

——-

Much more on Paul Vallas.

The taxpayer funded Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school in 2011…

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?

Bradley Busch:

Retrieval Practice is one of the most well researched learning strategies. For some, it is often associated with older students preparing for their exams. But can it help young students learn both Maths and spelling?

Recent studies suggest that Retrieval Practice can be equally beneficial for younger learners, helping them to grasp foundational subjects. In this blog, we’ll explore how Retrieval Practice works, why it’s so effective and how you can implement it in your classroom to boost your students’ learning outcomes. Read on to learn more about…

Alex Demas

Kirk and Solomon’s claims are correct. Minnesota Department of Health documents show that eight infants were born alive during abortion procedures between 2019 and 2022, and, in 2023, Walz signed legislation that repealed most of a statute designed to protect infants born alive after an abortion attempt.

Born-alive infants in Minnesota.

Minnesota state law explicitly protected children born alive during abortion procedures since at least 1976 when the state legislature adopted Section 145.423. This statute determined that, “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law.” It also read, “All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.”

In 2015, the Minnesota state legislature passed additional legislation, signed into law by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton, intended to expand the state’s protections for born-alive infants. The Born Alive Infants Protection Act made minor terminology changes to the existing three subsections of Section 145.423, and added an additional six subsections including those covering civil penalties for medical personnel who did not provide adequate care, privacy protections for court proceedings related to born-alive infants, and the status of born alive-infants who survive following an abortion procedure. The act also formally defined “born-alive infants” as “every infant member of the species Homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”

Lizzie Presser

Maylia Sotelo arrived in a black Cadillac. It pulled down an alley by the Fox River, which cuts through the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. On that Tuesday evening in November 2022, she stepped out of a rear door and into another car. Maylia was 15 years old and slight, with a soft, girlish face and large, upturned eyes. For $50, she sold a man five “blues,” round pills stamped with “M30” that passed for Percocet. Narcotics investigators from the Brown County Drug Task Force were listening over a wire and, within minutes, their informant turned over his buy. Like every fake Percocet the task force seized that year, the pills were actually fentanyl. The officers, though, decided to let Maylia leave.

Maylia was comfortable around the business of drugs. Her childhood home had been a hangout for users and dealers; hollowed-out pens littered the floors, and strange men let themselves in at all hours. She had grown up with three older sisters, who had all been kicked out or left because of their mother’s violence. It fell to Maylia to protect Maliasyn, two years younger, from their mom’s unpredictable delusions. She would lose herself in uppers and opioids, start yelling out of nowhere or cry uncontrollably. Sometimes, she locked the girls in the house for days.

Before Maylia sold blues, she sold weed. She had been smoking since fifth grade. The first time she tried weed, she found herself laughing at nothing. “Why would I sit here being sad and sober when I can be high and happy?” she thought. She hated staying home, so after class, she took Maliasyn to a trap house where teens smoked blunts on the first floor and adults met in the bedrooms upstairs. The guys there, a couple of years older, were dropping out of school to sell weed. When Maylia was 13, she started dealing, too, because everyone was doing it.

Dan Proft:

A rather stunning and praiseworthy breaking of the ranks by Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court Iris Martinez. Per her analysis, the Pritzker Purge Law ending cash bail is a public safety disaster with 74% of criminal defendants failing to appear in court to face charges.

Laurel Duggan:

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the top public schools in the US, has seen a major decline in academic achievement since implementing new admissions standards in pursuit of racial equity in 2020.

In the days after George Floyd’s death, leaders began assessing the underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students at the magnet school, and discussed how to move “towards greater equity, to be clearly distinguished from equality.” Soon after, the school updated its highly competitive admissions process, replacing standardised tests with a holistic evaluation that rewarded students on the basis of having attended underrepresented middle schools and qualifying for free lunch — considerations that critics have called racial proxies.

School leaders had repeatedly complained that the student population, which was majority Asian-American, did not match the racial demographics of the surrounding area. After the implementation of new admissions metrics, the admission of Asian students declined from 73% to 54%. Critics, including parents of Asian students, have pointed to this statistic as evidence of discrimination.

Julian Assange:

But all of them were necessary because without them I never would have seen the light of day.

This unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame.

I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175 year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded, as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a freedom of information act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else. I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period when expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished.

I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the US government’s prosecution of me – its crossing the rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism – to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now.

Frank Jacobs:

It’s wise to reserve judgment on important figures until they’re dead. Only when they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil do their legacies begin to slot into neat categories, assuming their full cultural significance.

Yet, those neat categories often obscure as much as they reveal. We look back on famous past lives through the prism of those mostly fictitious compartments — labeling one as a scientist, another as a pirate — as if they were as neatly separated from life’s complexities as they are from us by time.

This graph perforates that temporal prejudice. Called “The Big Map of Who Lived When,” it shows us which historical figures were contemporaries. The co-aliveness of some of these figures may boggle your mind.

The most satisfying way to use this map is to look for long lives with short overlaps. Like a picture of a great-grandparent holding their great-grandchild, there is something poetic about two lives lived so far apart yet intertwining for a brief period.

Daniel Rothschild:

Costly signals are necessary to differentiate ingroups from outgroups, a designation that’s needed if we’re going to have, well, groups. But such signals are in perilously short supply at the moment. 

For example, it used to be that if one wanted to be a candidate of a political party, it was necessary to signal affiliation with that political party by being a member. This was not a particularly costly signal: All one had to do was change one’s voter registration or perhaps pay a nominal fee to join a local party chapter. 

By doing so, one foreclosed signaling either nonpartisanship or support for another party. The primary cost of being, say, a Democrat was the opportunity cost of being a Republican, a Libertarian, a Green, a non-inscrit. It was a clear way of differentiating who was, say, a Republican from those who were Not-Republicans, which is necessary if being a Republican is to mean anything. You could not simultaneously be a Democrat and a Libertarian, or an independent and a Republican. 

Nik:

One day, the principal ducked into Mr. Edwards’ class and could hardly believe her eyes. “How do you get over a dozen 9-year-olds to lean forward so attentively in their seats?” she asked him during recess. “It’s actually a lesson they taught me, Mrs. Declan,” he admitted. “As it turns out, life is not about finding someone with the answers and then trying to remember what they say. It’s about finding someone who’s not ashamed to fail in front of you—and then figuring out the answers together.”

Wall Street Journal:

Kamala Harris is still keeping most of her agenda incognito, but she gave a strong hint about its direction on Tuesday when she blessed the Democratic plan to blow up the Senate’s filibuster rule. This would turn the Senate into the House for the purposes of passing legislation, which means a wide open door for progressive priorities.

She’s couching this procedural coup as related only to imposing a national abortion law on all 50 states. But anyone paying attention knows that’s a ruse. Once the 60-vote filibuster rule ends for one piece of non-budget legislation, it will end for everything.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, recently said he wants to break the filibuster for a national abortion law and pass a bill that would impose California-style voting rules on all 50 states. Good-bye voter identification, and hello nationwide ballot harvesting.

It won’t stop there. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he wants to break the filibuster to restructure the Supreme Court. Sen. Bernie Sanders has recently given up on his former institutional objections and now favors 51 votes to pass his proposals.

Bryan Caplan:

However, instead of siding with X, the law, and Brazilians’ freedom of expression, the academics’ letter condemns Elon Musk for providing the only digital platform in Brazil that refused to censor speech deemed undesirable by some public officials. It seems the signatories believe that governments should be able to decide what their citizens can and cannot hear, and use all their might to silence criticism — essentially endorsing authoritarianism.

The letter portrays X as if it somehow controls over the flow of information in Brazil, rather than being just one of many platforms through which Brazilians access information. It also links X to the incitement of the acts of January 8, 2023, and suggests that its suspension is motivated by its refusal to block accounts involved in this instigation. However, as previously mentioned, X did not refuse to comply with any orders prior to April 2024.

Introducing the unfamiliar concept of “digital sovereignty”, the letter demands that “Big Tech companies cease their attempts to sabotage” Brazil’s “digital agenda”, which they urge the government to implement. It is unclear what this agenda is, but it appears to be a rehash of old industrial policy ideas, which usually create inefficiencies and losses for companies and consumers, while generating significant profits for well-connected businessmen. Even if this outcome does not materalize, there is a greater danger today: the possibility that the government is able to silence opposition, paving the way for an authoritarian regime.

Bill Ackman:

One of the world’s leading educational institutions

Harvard College Total Enrollment: 7,063

Faculty and Staff: 19,777

Endowment Assets: ~$51 billion

Total revenue: $6.1 billion

Total operating expenses: $5.9 billion

Total debt: $6.25bn

slides

KEY FINDINGS:
1. Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.

2. The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).

Matt Taibbi:

“Most eveyone here has been censored.”

Even the French dandies who were marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Hadens, John Brennan’s, James Clapper’s, Mike McFall’s, and Rick Stengel’s who make up America’s self-appointed speech police. In pre-revolutionary France, even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword fight to the death.

Our aristocrats pee themselves at a mean tweet.
These people have no honor, no belief, no poetry, no art, no humor, no patriotism, which is unique to them, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They are simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.

They may have one idea, and it’s not even an idea, but a sensation. Fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat. They’re afraid of each other. But they’re also terrified of everyone outside their social set, and they live in near constant dread of being caught with even one original opinion.”

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Ann Althouse:

NYT opinion columnist M. Gessen displays shockingly little concern free-speech values…

Alex Berenson.

Welcome to the new age of censorship.

Illinois Policy:

More than a dozen candidates filled out an Illinois Policy questionnaire to give voters a better idea of who is running for office. Read their answers below.

Of the more than 30 candidates running for Chicago school board, 14 filled out an Illinois Policy questionnaire giving voters a better sense of the names that will appear on their ballots.

Look below to see which candidates CTU is endorsing or funding as well as the candidates who pledged to not accept donations.

Dave Cieslewicz

The district used temporary COVID relief funds to pay for 110 permanent positions that they knew they couldn’t afford once the federal money went away. Now, they’re asking voters to pick up the tab. And if they don’t, will they cut the positions? No, they’ll pay for them out of reserves (see above). Also, the district has more positions than it had a decade ago while enrollment has declined by 7%. Along these lines the district gave teachers an 8% pay increase in 2023 while they were still awash in all that federal money — and again they knew full well that they couldn’t afford it. 

This is the same district that would use referendum money to replace schools that are at 50% of capacity with new, bigger buildings. A district that won’t even consider consolidation of facilities. And it’s a district that plans to fix a relatively small $3 million deficit in its school lunch program…. but take a decade to do it. 

There’s certainly some incompetence at work here, but most of all there’s arrogance.

——

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?