Mark Lilla:

It is that so many are learning nothing at all. And here he lays responsibility at the feet of the American educational establishment, which has, in the words of one scholar, been turning the “meat of academic subjects into meatloaf.”

One of the peculiarities of the American educational system, compared with those in other democracies, is that most public school districts prefer hiring graduates with degrees in education rather than in specific academic subjects like history and physics. This leads to a greater focus on the methods of teaching, expressed in jargon phrases like “inquiry-based learning,” than on acquiring particular knowledge. Traub found a real allergy among public school educators to memorization of vocabulary, chronology and narrative — the elemental material out of which reality-based opinions and arguments can be formed.

In some places, fear of running afoul of politicized parents seems to have made some teachers gun shy about raising certain subjects. In Ron DeSantis’s Florida, Traub reports, parents at one Miami school received a notice that their first graders would need a signed permission slip to “participate and listen to a book written by an African American.”

In other states, too many teachers just seem to have abdicated their responsibilities out of despair, convinced that their students are no longer capable of reading whole books or remembering what they read. “History has been pushed to the side within social studies because there’s too much reading and writing,” as one frustrated teacher in Illinois puts it, on the verge of tears. “That creates too much stress, and it makes the kids feel bad about themselves.”

——-

A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Christopher Huffaker:

If you’re governor of the state that effectively introduced universal public school education in the United States, the one thing you want to avoid is losing the state’s ranking as having the smartest kids in the country.

Massachusetts is the richest, most highly educated state, where the nation’s first public school was founded and home to Horace Mann, the 19th-century reformer known as the Father of American Education. And, for the past two decades, governors could brag how students from Massachusetts have consistently beaten every other state on all four main tests on the Nation’s Report Card.

But now that perch atop the education hierarchy is in jeopardy, as the edge Massachusetts has long held over the nation is shrinking dramatically: Test scores have been sliding for nearly a decade and many students here have not recovered from the pandemic as much as in some other parts of the country.

Retraction Watch:

The retraction notice published today states first author Kevin Ng was responsible for the manipulation in the paper, including manipulated data in several figures. At the time of the experiments, Ng was a Ph.D. student at the Francis Crick Institute in London under the supervision of co-corresponding author George Kassiotis. 

According to Ng’s OrcID profile, he is now a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University in New York. We were unable to find a current email address for him, and he did not respond to a message sent via Instagram. 

The Francis Crick Institute’s integrity team “was made aware of concerns” regarding the study after it was published, according to a statement sent to us by Kathryn Ingham, research communications and public affairs lead for the organization. Ingham declined to comment on the origins of the concerns. The corresponding authors on the article — Kassiotis, Charles Swanton, and Julian Downward, all affiliated with the Crick Institute — agreed with the retraction, according to the statement, which is now published online. 

The investigation found “no evidence of malpractice by other authors,” according to the Crick statement. The corresponding authors did not respond to our question on how the manipulation went unnoticed by the other 48 authors on the paper, and forwarded our request to Ingham.

Becky Jacobs:

A century later, WARF continues to license and patent campus discoveries, helping to bring research from UW-Madison to the world for commercial use. 

“Our mission has really kind of stood the test of time,” said Jeanine Burmania, the research foundation’s senior director of intellectual property and licensing. 

The nonprofit — which is separate, but partners with UW-Madison — has grown and evolved since its beginnings. Today, WARF manages more than 3,000 active technologies and over 670 commercial licenses, with a $3.29 billion investment portfolio.   

“WARF’s support has really been enormously valuable for UW-Madison, from investing in innovations that become spinoff companies, to creating pathways for promising new cancer treatments, to the support that we get every year,” Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin said during a campus meeting in December. 

The organization is set to provide $206.9 million in total support to UW-Madison and the Morgridge Institute for Research this school year, including $50 million toward research projects and nearly $36 million for faculty, graduate students and staff. 

Ben:

This is part of where Delcy Rodriguez’s track record as a more pragmatic leader comes into play. It is funny that Venezuela is so deeply in the hole and screwed up that the massive improvement is that she’s hired economic consultants from Rafael Correa’s Ecuadorian government. He’s not exactly the gold standard for responsible management in the region, but in Venezuela “not totally insane management” would be a regime change of its own.

Zooming out and considering this in terms of the Trump-Monroe Doctrine, there may eventually be some payoff for the US in having more allies who can flood the world with cheap energy when we want them to. That’s supposed to be the deal with Saudi Arabia, but then they just didn’t do it when the Ukraine War broke out because of Biden/Kashoggi beefing.

I leave you with a profound irony, the kind that only geopolitics can provide. As Latin America freaks out about the first outbreak of open war between states in a very long time, we can recall that the most recent person to threaten this was… Nicolas Maduro. He planned to invade Guyana in 2023. Why? For oil.

Jared Walczak:

One particularly momentous policy choice has the potential to strip the founders of some of the world’s largest companies of their controlling interests and force them to sell off a significant portion of their shares. This could send stock prices plummeting to the detriment of tech employees and investors of all stripes, including ordinary workers whose 401(k)s would take a beating if Silicon Valley founders had to offload their shares in a hurry.

The poorly drafted initiative creates many scenarios in which tax liability would be vastly more than 5 percent of net worth, but this analysis focuses on six of them:

Valuation can be based on voting interests in a company when they exceed actual economic stakes.
Assessment rules for privately held businesses can substantially overvalue them.
Draconian underpayment penalties for taxpayers and potentially ruinous penalties for their appraisers encourage substantial overstatement of the value of privately held businesses to avoid a dispute with tax authorities.

Presumptive drafting errors on anti-avoidance rules result in taxing significantly more than the amount of the transfers.

Provisions regarding spousal assets and indebtedness to relatives would tax a nonresident spouse’s assets and, in the event of a divorce, would tax the California resident on formerly held assets that had been obligated to the ex-spouse in a divorce settlement.

Deferral regimes have eligibility limitations and impose additional costs, and run the risk of taxing wealth that might no longer exist.

——-

more.

Ann Althouse summary:

Students from both Madison East and West high schools have walked out to protest against ICE at the state Capitol.

I’d estimate there’s 200-300 students between the first floor rotunda and second floor bridges above pic.twitter.com/xnMjqEAsmo— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) January 14, 2026

———

more.

———

A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Sabine Martin:

WILL filed a similar complaint a year ago in January 2025, claiming UW-Madison had at least 60 race-based scholarships during the 2024-25 school year.

“For example, the Alliant Energy/Erroll V. David Achievement Award requires an undergraduate student to be ‘from one of the following underrepresented groups: African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian, Southeast Asian, or from a racial or ethnic group traditionally underrepresented in the field of engineering or business,’” the civil right complaint says.

UW-Madison has reviewed its scholarship distribution and uses a “pool and match” process to comply with the law, university spokesperson John Lucas said in a statement.

Through that process, the university offers a student funding based on “merit, need, major, GPA, or a variety of other non-identity based characteristics,” according to the UW-Madison website.

The Office for Civil Rights hasn’t notified UW-Madison of the complaint, but the university will cooperate with any review, Lucas said.

WILL:

During the 2024-25 school year, WILL discovered that UW-Madison offered at least 60 race-based scholarships to students, excluding many white and Asian students from even applying for these scholarships. To hold these actions accountable, WILL filed a federal civil rights complaint against UW-Madison in January 2025. In March 2025, the Trump Administration opened an investigation on UW-Madison’s race-based practices.

The following month, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, stated during a legislative hearing, “Nobody is getting a scholarship from UW Madison on the basis of the racial preference.” This is the same chancellor who authored a memo calling to rebrand DEI initiatives, later criticized by WILL.

Sloan Rachmuth:

This is a golden arrangement.

For North Carolina’s working and middle-class families, the cost of this arrangement is both direct and diffuse.

The most obvious impact is the inflated cost of care. Despite their tax benefits, nonprofit hospitals routinely charge commercial insurance plans, and their patients, the same, if not higher, prices than for-profit competitors. This drives up premiums and out-of-pocket costs, especially for families whose income disqualifies them from subsidies but cannot absorb $1,500 ER bills without financial strain.

The indirect burden is equally damaging. 

Every dollar these hospitals avoid in taxes is a dollar unavailable to counties and municipalities who maintain roads, fund schools, and staff police departments. When a hospital system sits tax-free on hundreds of millions in prime downtown property, the rest of the tax base picks up the slack.

In theory, the trade-off is justified: nonprofit hospitals are expected to provide charity care — free or reduced-cost services for those who can’t pay. In practice, many spend far less on such care than they receive in tax breaks. 

The result is a net outflow of public wealth into privately governed institutions with little oversight.

Librarian of Celaeno:

But what is more interesting to me than the specifics of this particular death are the circumstances surrounding it, the thought-world of the leftist agitators who seem so willing to risk their lives and safety to prevent the police from arresting criminals. It’s not surprising that a woman died, nor that the reaction was so strongly gender-coded. The anti-ICE protests have a strongly feminine character to them, and the widespread support for violence among liberal woman is manifestly the driving force behind them:

The refusal of liberals and the left to accept the results of legitimate elections and wage war on the will of the people despite claiming validation on exactly those grounds is simply another facet of the great post-Enlightenment war on civilization on the part of those who claim a mandate to remake society according to their notion of progress. This force is the most destructive in human history, an endless cycle of revolution and anarchy going back to 1789, with antecedents. It manifests in different modes in different places, according to the nature of those receptive to it, but everywhere bears the same character, a deadly and intractable pride rooted in a (and resulting in further) distortion of the soul, such that any connection to tradition and transcendence is rejected in favor of the imposition of theory by force of will.

Glenn Reynolds:

Here at home, leftists are trying to resurrect the Black Lives Matter strategy against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement — even  though black Americans are conspicuous by their absence this time around. 

Now, it’s mostly middle-aged white women eager to taunt, threaten and obstruct lawful enforcement raids targeting criminal illegal aliens. 

But the big news is that the raids are happening at all. 

We were told for decades that we couldn’t do anything about illegal immigration — at least not without a big pork-filled, amnesty-laden “bipartisan” bill. 

But now the border is basically closed, and those in the country illegally are being shipped out.

Crime in Washington, DC, Memphis, Tenn., and other cities was out of control. Trump sent in the National Guard to fix it. 

Sometimes the mere threat of sending the Guard was enough to get local authorities to fix crime problems for themselves — something they could have done all along, but mysteriously didn’t.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reported this week that up to 10% of the federal budget is lost to fraud annually.  

“Defender of the Republic:

For years, Americans have been told that NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) are benevolent, independent charities doing work the government “can’t.”

The truth is more complicated and more dangerous.

Many NGOs today function as unelected extensions of government power, funded by taxpayer money, shielded from transparency, and largely immune from voter accountability. When abused, this structure can exacerbate fraud, enable money laundering, and distort public policy all while appearing charitable on paper.

Now before you start questioning my reporting…isn’t about attacking charity.
It’s about exposing a systemic loophole that thrives in darkness.

An NGO is a private organization, usually structured as a nonprofit (often a 501(c)(3)), that is not part of government but frequently works with government.

Key characteristics:

• Not elected
• Not subject to voters
• Often tax-exempt
• Eligible for government grants and contracts
• Often shielded from public records laws

In theory, NGOs provide services.

In practice, many have become pass-through entitiesfor public money.

Fraud doesn’t require criminal masterminds.
It requires opacity + incentives + weak enforcement.

NGOs provide all three.

Samir Ruiz:

We discuss

• Why the NIH used to fund 60% of grant applications, and now funds just 10%
• How “soft money” forces researchers to fund their own salaries
• How distributing lots of small grants wastes everyone’s time
• How block grants could fund more breakthrough science
• Why researchers don’t get their first independent award until their mid-40s

Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood, Shadrach Strehle, and Jasper Placio for their support in producing this episode.

For a printable PDF of this interview, click here:

Chris Rickert:

The Madison School District will host three forums later this month to get public feedback on plans to rebuild two middle schools and a combined elementary and middle school.

The forums will take place in the existing schools’ buildings and run from 5:30 to 7 p.m.:

Orchard Ridge Elementary/Toki Middle School, 5602 Russett Road; Jan. 27 in the cafeteria

Cherokee Heights Middle School, 4301 Cherokee Drive; Jan. 28 in the library

Sennett Middle School, 502 Pflaum Road; Jan. 29 in the cafeteria

The schools make up Phase 2 of the district’s plans to rebuild or renovate 10 schools across seven sites — funded by a $507 million referendum voters approved in November 2024.

PAY ATTENTION WHEN YOUR TOWN KEEPS RAISING TAXES – Here is what may get their attention.😂😂

A town keeps raising taxes, so a resident shows up to speak, wearing an English lord’s wig. Instead of protesting, he sarcastically supports the increases and says, “If you can’t pay… pic.twitter.com/90T9ARx5li

— BelannF (@BelannF) January 14, 2026

——-

“The role of the commoners is to serve as Tax Milk Cows: to work and labor and toil at their dreary jobs to earn money to give to you.

Your role is to spend their money with wild abandon.”

——-

So…in case you missed it. The California State Auditor released their 2025 report. $281 Billion in Unemployment Fraud since the beginning of the pandemic. A $1 trillion dollar shortfall in funding the California pension system. The Governor’s office is refusing to release details on where the $25 billion in homeless spending went.

——

30 October 2025 Madison School Board approves a $668,000,000 budget for 25,557 “full time equivalent” students.

Via Rafael Gomez.

Perry Stein:

In April, Bondi rescinded a Biden-era policy that prevented officials from searching reporters’ phone records when trying to identify government personnel who have provided sensitive information to news organizations.

Bondi said in an internal memo at the time that the media should not be afforded such protections, noting leaks of government information during the Trump administration.

“This conduct is illegal and wrong and it must stop,” she wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

But Bondi said that the Justice Department would search reporters’ communication records only when other investigative methods had been exhausted. The search warrant and seizures appeared to be Natanson’s first interaction with investigators.

——

grok summary of 1971, 2013 and more recent government searching reporters activity.

David Slichter

The rise of accountability programs was perhaps the most noticeable change in American education during the 1990s and early 2000s. We measure how these programs affected students’ long-run outcomes. We find increases in income, occupational skill level, and attainment, though the labor market effects are insignificant in most specifications. A typical accountability regime with high-stakes testing in seven grades increased attainment by 0.1 years. Last, the pattern of occupational skill usage does not support concerns about teaching to the test. Our results suggest that accountability was more likely beneficial than harmful for students’ human capital.

Erin Gretzinger:

Residents can stay updated on the referendum projects by checking the district’s dedicated website, Superintendent Joe Gothard said. The district recently hired a new member to its communications department who has a license to fly a drone, which Gothard said he hopes will help the district share progress on the projects as construction gets under way.

“The bottom line is, we just want to make sure that the questions that the community has, we have answers for,” Gothard told the School Board Monday. “If you’re hearing things, get them to the right people so that we can respond in a way that shows that commitment and earns that trust.”

———

A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Joan Westenberg:

When you write a blog post, you’re creating a standalone document with a permanent URL. It exists at a specific address on the web, and that address doesn’t change based on who’s looking at it, when they’re looking at it, or what algorithm has decided they should see next. The post is there, stable, waiting for whoever wants to find it.

Compare this to a tweet (by God I’ll not call them “X’s”) or a Facebook post, which exists primarily as an item in a feed, algorithmically sorted, personalized to each viewer. Your post might appear at the top of someone’s feed for an hour and then disappear into an infinite scroll of other content, never to be seen again. The platform has no interest in whether your post is found next week or next year; it has a vested interest in keeping users scrolling through new content right now.

When I write a blog post, I’m writing for an imagined reader who has arrived at this specific URL because they’re interested in this specific topic; I can assume a baseline of engagement; I can make my case over several thousand words, trusting that anyone who’s made it to paragraph twelve probably intends to make it to paragraph twenty.

When I write for social media, I’m writing for someone who is one thumb-flick away from a video of either a hate crime or a dog riding a skateboard. Everything I produce has to compete, in real-time, with everything else that could possibly occupy that user’s attention. The incentives push toward provocation and emotional activation. The format actively punishes nuance, which means that a thoughtful caveat reads as weakness and any acknowledgment of uncertainty looks like waffling.

Michael Moritz:

Meanwhile, public service workers gained more power in the mid-1970s when schoolteachers were granted the right to strike — followed, in 1977, by the rest of the workforce. Today, they are organised into 21 different bargaining units. Two examples of this concentration of power are the catastrophic 1999 legislative decision to give state employees a retroactive pension increase and the fact that 40 per cent of California’s General Fund must be spent on K-12 education — a tribute to the strength of the teachers’ union. Yet the standard of public education in California trails the national average.

In addition, the state is responsible for around $200bn of unfunded pension liabilities for state employees. Unlike their private sector counterparts, state employees don’t have to plan for their own retirement as their plans are guaranteed by the state. Those Californians without a retirement safety net are also on the hook for more than $85bn in associated retiree and health benefits for state workers. In 1961, the state contributed about $5 per employee per month to cover the same bills.

It would be one thing if, even with the highest taxes in the country, the state had delivered for its citizens — but it has failed on almost every count. California has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, its highest homeless population, its highest median housing prices, and its highest gas and electricity prices (save for Hawaii). Tragically, student tuition fees at what was once a beacon for public education, the University of California, Berkeley, have risen from about $1,000 a year in 1980 to about $17,500 today.

Anthony Man, Scott Travis

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday excoriated the Broward School District for a “laundry list of failures” and suggested it’s been so impervious to reform that placing it in receivership might be an option to fix it.

“Honestly, it’s been a disaster. Let’s just be honest, it’s been a disaster in many different ways. It is really run more to benefit the entrenched interests, particularly the school unions, rather than the parents and the students,” DeSantis said at a news conference.

DeSantis said the School District is an entity that is impervious to reform efforts, and raised the possibility of drastic action by the state.

“But there’s a handful of spots around the state where, you know, maybe thrusting some of these entities into receivership may be the best way going forward. I think you could work things out pretty quickly, but I tell you it’s tough. It’s been really tough. And when people want to reform, you end up having, running into a brick wall. It’s been very difficult,” DeSantis said.

The governor made his comments in response to a question at a news conference at Broward College in Davie, where he and his appointees appeared to tout what they described as reductions in insurance premiums that would benefit homeowners.

Darel Paul:

Walz’s announcement marks a remarkable fall. A September 2025 YouGov poll ranked Walz fourth in Democratic voters’ willingness to support for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination, higher than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders. Five percent of Democrats even called Walz their “ideal choice,” a level surpassing former presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. Walz was exceptionally busy last year keeping his name in the news and his face before activists. He spoke at the California and South Carolina Democratic Party annual conventions, held town hall events in Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, and Wisconsin, and attended a fund-raiser in Montana. He appeared on podcasts. He offered himself as the Democrats’ flag-bearer against Trump and Trumpism.

Yet it is clear now that seventy-nine-year-old Donald Trump will outlast sixty-one-year-old Tim Walz. The Minnesota governor’s political career fell victim to the follies and failings of contemporary American politics, shortcomings to which Walz himself contributed. The immediate cause of the governor’s downfall was, of course, a welfare fraud scandal that has cost the state and federal governments at least $1 billion with speculation that the tally could grow to a stunning $9 billion. That scandal highlights the central role that private nonprofits play in delivering public goods and services in America. The inability of the state government to prevent the fraud highlights the power that the NGO sector exercises in the contemporary Democratic Party. Yet Walz’s fall is not simply a story for the American left. It is also a tale of run-away partisanship and the cultural conquest of American politics by Walz’s nemesis. Tim Walz rose to prominence in 2024, after all, off his emulation of Donald Trump’s internet-friendly, insult-rich, profanity-laced attack-dog political style. Fighting fire with fire made Walz a beloved figure on the progressive left, but it also made him a singular target of the president and his supporters. Walz reveled in the national attention without measuring the cost of such relentless criticism, for it is precisely that white-hot spotlight which made the fraud scandal politically relevant and ended Walz’s career. 

Scott Johnson:

ITC appears to be organized as a 501(c)(4). Indivisible has organizational arms set up as a 501(c)(3), a (c)(4), and a PAC. The Indivisible Project appears to be Indivisible’s 501(c)(4) arm.

Back to Isabel Vincent: 

Indivisible is an offshoot of the Indivisible Project in Washington, DC, which bills itself as a movement to defeat the “Trump agenda,” and received $7,850,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2018 and 2023, according to public records.

The controversial group was also behind recent pro-Venezuela protests and “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration throughout the country last year.

Tahmineh

The Western liberal media is ignoring the Iranian uprising because explaining it would force an admission it is desperate to avoid: the Iranian people are rebelling against Islam itself, and that fact shatters the moral framework through which these institutions understand the world.

Ideally, to cover an uprising is not just to show crowds and slogans. It requires answering a basic question: why are people risking death? In Iran, the answer is simple and unavoidable. The people are rising up because the Islamic Republic of Iran has spent decades suffocating every aspect of life—speech, work, family, art, women, and economic survival—under a clerical system that treats liberty as a crime. There is no way to tell that story without confronting the nature of the regime.

——

I grew up in Iran at the height of oppression. My world was ruled by fear, censorship, and silence. @jk_rowling books showed me a universe where courage beat fear. That kind of storytelling saves minds and lives in ways people in free countries rarely understand.

——-

Ex-Minneapolis officer who killed Justine Damond sentenced to 12.5 years

——

And I like the NYT’s correction at the bottom: “An earlier version of this article misstated how much consumers spent on beef tallow in 2025. It was $9.9 million, not $900 million.” That’s kind of a never mind correction. They wrote this whole article about the hot new business that is beef tallow and then it turned out to be on 1.1% of what they thought it was!

Chris Rickert:

Madison’s four main public high schools have been honored for their students’ high rates of participation and success in Advanced Placement courses, the Madison School District announced Tuesday.

The College Board, which administers AP programs nationally, named West, East, La Follette and Memorial high schools to its “honor roll” based on the percentage of seniors who took at least one AP exam, earned a score of 3 or higher on an AP exam, and took five or more AP exams during high school, including at least one in ninth or 10th grade.

“This is a meaningful milestone for our district,” Tim Peterson, district director of assessment, said in a news release. “Having all four comprehensive high schools earn a place on the AP School Honor Roll at the same time speaks to years of intentional work to expand access, encourage participation and support students once they’re enrolled in these courses.”

…

More than 2,000 students completed more than 4,500 AP exams districtwide last spring, the district said in the news release. More than 80% of those exams received a score of 3 or higher on a 5-point scale, it said.

Scott Johnson:

Dr. Sidney Bondurant has written to provide relevant background to “The supremacy of Mississippi.” Dr. Bondurant writes:

I read your Power Line post on Mississippi’s Literacy Based Promotion Act and the progress made in reading and math in our elementary schools. This act was passed during the administration of Governor Phil Bryant. I was Governor Bryant’s legislative liaison at this time. Laurie Todd-Smith, Ph.D., was the governor’s education policy advisor and we were the two primary “lobbyists” for the governor at the state legislature. Laurie is now working in the Trump Administration and I am retired. Governor Bryant now heads up a business development firm and I serve as a consultant to that firm.

It was not an easy sell. But most of the opposition came from the Democrats and not the Republicans. The public school lobby (district school superintendents, “The Parents Campaign,” the teachers’ union, and the mainstream media) fought against us vigorously. Black Democrats were the most vigorous. One told me that he automatically suspected that any proposal affecting public schools from white Republicans had some nefarious purpose. Charges of RACISM! were shouted on the House floor. I was told by one of those against the bill that I was trying to hold back black third grade kids to punish them. When I tried to explain that the retention part of the bill was to provide intensive help to those kids so that they had a better shot at success he would not believe me.

On final passage in the 122-member House there were 16 NO votes, all Black Democrats except for one white Democrat and two white Republicans. There were several Black Democrats who did vote for it here).

I told Governor Bryant when he signed the bill that I thought that act would be the most significant of his administration. The improvement in the education of Mississippi’s citizens will lead to economic benefits for the state and its citizens that will bring about the most positive changes since the Civil War.

Thank you for bringing attention about this subject to your readers.

Yours truly,

Sidney Bondurant, M.D.

——-

A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.”

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Jeffrey T. Denning∗ Rachel Nesbit† Nolan Pope‡ Merrill Warnick:

Average grades continue to rise in the United States, prompting discussion about the pos-sibility of grade inflation. However, we know very little about the consequences of gradingstandards for students. We study how grade inflating teachers affect students. First, we extend,develop, and validate teacher-level measures of grade inflation. We construct two measures ofgrade inflation, one that measures average grade inflation and another that measures whetherteachers are more likely to give a passing grade. These measures pass forecast bias tests com-mon in the teacher effects literature. We show that grade inflation is distinct from teachervalue-added, with grade inflating teachers having moderately lower cognitive value-added andslightly higher noncognitive value-added. Next, we consider the effects of grade inflation onfuture outcomes. Passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back, increaseshigh school graduation, and increases initial enrollment in two-year colleges. Mean gradeinflation reduces future test scores, reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school,reduces college enrollment, and ultimately reduces earnings.

Next, we consider the effects of grade inflation on future outcomes. Passing grade inflation reduces the likelihood of being held back, increases high school graduation, and increases initial enrollment in two-year colleges. Mean grade inflation reduces future test scores, reduces the likelihood of graduating from high school, reduces college enrollment, and ultimately reduces earnings.

——-1

More.

Nathaniel Hansford Last

There has been much discussion over the last 5 years on an alleged reading crisis in the United States and the western world (Hanford, 2022). The argument has essentially been that reading achievement scores are falling and that Balanced Literacy is to blame (Hanford, 2022). However, in my opinion the state of Math instruction and test scores is actually far, far worse. In this article, I will review the evidence that there is a systemic problem with Math Achievement.

The Decline

When the power goes out, stores close. It’s not because the lights go out. It’s because the average cashier can no longer calculate how much change to give, without the computer. This is not an isolated problem or weird quirk of our modern times; it’s a phenomenon that reflects a decline in overall Math ability.

———

2014: 21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math

How One Woman Rewrote Math in Corvallis

Singapore Math

Discovery Math

Connected Math (2006!)

Math Forum 2007

Washington Post:

The Supreme Court has the chance this week to save women’s sports, allowing states to restore a level playing field for girls by excluding biological men and thereby correcting one of the worst excesses of America’s cultural revolution.

Sarah Mervosh

Kindergartners arrived not knowing their letters from their numbers. After a few years in school, they were still far behind. A decade ago, just 12 percent of Hazlehurst students were reading on grade level.

Today, Hazlehurst has clawed that figure to 35 percent. And Mississippi has emerged as one of the best places in the country for a poor child to get an education.

Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.

Poverty remains a driving factor in student achievement, and wealthy states like Massachusetts still have the highest share of students proficient in reading and math.

But adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.

“If you want to ask the question, ‘Which states are helping kids coming from difficult circumstances learn as much as they can?’ Mississippi is now doing much better than many other states, including wealthier states in affluent progressive areas,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank.

Mississippi’s gains have been confined mostly to the early years, where the state has focused its efforts. The system revolves around standardized testing, and the gains have not always persisted. By raw scores, Mississippi eighth graders still rank 41st on national tests for reading, and 35th for math.

Yet Mississippi has figured out something almost no other state has, and it has involved far more than just changing the way reading is taught, the most common explanation for its success.

Even as schools elsewhere have focused on issues like school funding, social justice and mental health in recent years, Mississippi schools like Hazlehurst have made academics their North Star.

———-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Becky Jacobs:

Students are on track to take classes in a new humanities building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall. And the athletics department plans to finish an indoor football practice facility next to Camp Randall Stadium this summer.

As those two projects wrap up in 2026, Wisconsin’s flagship public university also plans to break ground on a visitor and education center at the Lakeshore Nature Preserve, near Picnic Point.

Here are details about what campus and community members can expect from the new buildings:

HHS:

In the latest development of Operation Nightingale—a scheme that created an illegal licensing and employment shortcut for aspiring nurses—fraud-related charges have been filed against 12 defendants for their roles in selling fraudulent nursing diplomas and transcripts. In Phase I of Operation Nightingale, 30 defendants were charged and convicted by plea or at trial in 2023. According to court records, the defendants conspired to sell false nursing credentials—diplomas and transcripts fraudulently obtained from Florida-based nursing schools—to aspiring Registered Nurse (RN) and Licensed Nurse Practioner/Vocational Nurse (LPN/VN) candidates. Purchasers of the bogus documents used them to qualify for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX), commonly known as the nursing board exam. Candidates who passed the exam became eligible for licensure in various states, and once licensed, obtained employment as nurses across the United States.

Abdoulaye Ndiaye:

This article is for undergraduate, master’s, and early-career professionals who regularly contact me for career advice about:

• What do economists do?
•  Is a PhD worth it?
• How do you prepare and apply?

Most of these students are first-generation students seeking answers to the above questions, career advice, or mentoring. However, I am unable to respond personally to all of their individual inquiries, so I decided to address many of these common questions in this article. In this piece, I will focus more on applying and preparing for a PhD in Economics.

Corrinne Hess:

Ploeger was removed from her position following Gilkey-Meisegeier’s arrest.

Sun Prairie Police Chief Kevin Warych said an incident in April involving Gilkey-Meisegeier and a student resulted in the dean being placed on administrative leave. But the allegations were not reported to either the Sun Prairie Police Department or the Dane County Child Protective Services as mandatory reporting laws require.

Another incident involving a different Sun Prairie School District staff member was also not reported by Ploeger, Warych said.

“Protecting children is not a priority, but it is our duty. It is the foundation of our work,” Warych said.

Ploeger’s attorney, Jason Luczak, preempted the announcement with a 2 p.m. press conference in Milwaukee. Ploeger was not in attendance.

“Her heart was always in the right place, and she was always trying to do the right thing for the children and trying to manage the situation,” Luczak said. “And frankly, there was no intent she had to protect someone. Her biggest priority has been to protect kids.”

Michael Kovrig:

After 1,800 days in mostly solitary confinement, the iconic voice for free speech faces more years as a political prisoner—unless advocacy and pressure can bring clemency

Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of “foreign collusion” and “sedition” after a national security trial that dragged on for more than two years. A mitigation hearing is scheduled for January 12; sentencing will follow, with life imprisonment possible. The New York Times, BBC, SCMP, and other media have extensive features on Lai this week.

DataRepublican (small r)

All long-lasting institutions drift toward it. Systems seek equilibrium and optimize for survival. Over time, survival becomes flattened as preserving internal coherence rather than fulfilling an external purpose. Once that happens, the institution closes itself off from external falsification.

The system no longer asks, Is this true? It asks, Is this compatible with what we already produce?

The current unrest in Minnesota is an example of an order that has reached equilibrium through mutual dependency between antagonistic subsystems.

After the Cold War, the Western world organized itself around a single moral injunction: Never again. Never again fascism. Never again totalitarianism. Never again a unified ideology capable of subordinating it to a single vision of man.

To prevent another Nazi Germany or another Soviet Union, the post–Cold War order built immunity to totalitarian ideologies.

Grand narratives were treated as dangerous. Politics was re-engineered away from totalizing visions and towards norms and institutional mediation.

For a time, this worked.

Maya Tekeli and Jeffrey Gettleman

Danish doctors put intrauterine devices into Greenlandic girls as young as 12 without their consent or knowledge. Some women were given injections that they claim left them infertile for life. When victims complained about severe pain, doctors refused to help, leading some to remove the IUDs themselves.

These were among the findings from a scathing report, released Tuesday, on Denmark’s past policy of forcing contraception on women and girls in Greenland, a practice that Danish officials now admit was wrong.

The report was based on personal testimonies, medical records and historical documents. Of 410 cases described in detail, 349 involved health complications.

Denmark colonized Greenland more than three centuries ago, and the gigantic island in the Arctic Ocean remains a Danish overseas territory. In the 1960s and 1970s, and to a lesser degree in the decades that followed, Danish doctors implanted IUDs in thousands of Greenlandic women and girls, in many cases without their permission.

Andrew Michta:

How did we get here? Simply put, our political class failed to appreciate why the United States triumphed over the Soviet Union. We won not because of the power of liberal ideals—though they were important additional enablers of American foreign and security policy against the Soviets—but because in 1947, when the Cold War competition was fully joined, our country possessed a massive industrial base, the global reserve currency, the largest gold reserves, half of global GDP, a navy larger than all the world’s navies combined, an expanding population and rapidly growing middle class, and a monopoly on atomic weapons.

True, over the course of the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union (the latter for a period aligned with communist China), the balance began to shift somewhat. The economies of war-ravaged Europe and Asia recovered, and the relative power position of the United States would never approximate where the country was in 1947. Nonetheless, there was little question that in terms of the power indices of the era, America had an unmatched edge in every aspect of technology, research and development, manufacturing, and overall wealth when compared to its adversary. Few in the captive nations of Eastern Europe doubted that American free-market capitalism, and what the West represented more generally, was superior when it came to both wealth and freedom. What kept them mouthing communist slogans was the reality of being occupied by the Red Army and dragooned into the Warsaw Pact against the very America (and West) they admired. But we won largely because America’s hard power was undergirded by our unmatched industrial base and R&D institutions.

Yet we failed to grasp that the Soviet Union did not implode because the liberal democratic ideal overpowered the tenets of communism. Few argued at the time that we had won because our adversary could not match our industrial base and innovative research universities and labs—especially as we moved into the digital age—and that henceforth it should be the government’s sacred duty to preserve and protect advantages that took generations to build. The implosion of the Soviet empire was greeted by Washington’s intelligentsia as an ideological triumph par excellence. In a bizarre replay of the Bolshevist fiction about the universality of Marxist dogma, our elites post-1990 seemed certain that a new globalist age had dawned in which America’s sui generis history and political tradition would first claim a universal quality and ultimately dissolve in the new global order. At think tank conferences, political science conventions, and increasingly in government and Congress, our elites succumbed to the temptation to view 1990 not as marking the end of a long twilight struggle in which the nation’s industrial base and military alliances had ultimately carried the day, but rather as the culmination of an inexorable drive toward the fulfillment of a grand universalist promise. Francis Fukuyama’s thesis was transformed into the equivalent of now-discarded communist teleological reasoning, only this time built on liberal clichés, not Marxian canon.

J.D. Tuccille:

On November 3 of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule change allowing its agents to gather and store more biometric data on anybody associated with applications for “benefits” including family visas, Permanent Resident (green) Cards, and work permits. The DHS summary of the rule states, in part:

DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define “biometrics;” codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an “extraordinary circumstances” standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment…

According to the proposal, the purpose of gathering biometric data, including fingerprints, photographs, signatures, voice prints, ocular images, and DNA (which is heavily emphasized by DHS) is “identity management” to verify that people are who they say they are.

Tyler Cowen:

First, I gave a talk at University of Austin and also had some meetings there, including with students.  My talk was a practical guide on how to use AI to offer courses that a college or university otherwise cannot afford (especially important for smaller institutions).  I believe they will be putting it online.

My general sense was that U. Austin undergraduates are on a par with undergraduates at top five schools.  I do not think on the technical side they would compete with Stanford or MIT, but more generally…they were very impressive and asked excellent questions with real curiosity.  And seemed politically saner than typical Ivy League cohorts, though without being “mono” in any particular direction.  Here is Arnold Kling on UATX and its students.

Rahm Emanuel:

Mississippi went from 49th to 9th in their reading scores – known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama adopted the same (phonics) model and are seeing similar gains for their kids. It works. What are we waiting for?

We need the courage to stand by our kids. China is not holding back America’s kids. That’s on all of us. It’s time to put American children first.

———

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Alexander Shut:

Madison and its former city clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.

That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.

That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.

Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuitseeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.

The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.

In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”

Juan Siliezar,

A new study from researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health highlights a push from private equity investors into autism therapy centers across the nation.

Private equity firms acquired more than 500 autism therapy centers across the U.S. over the past decade, with nearly 80% of acquisitions occurring over a four-year span.

That’s according to a new study from researchers at Brown University’s Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research.

Study author Yashaswini Singh, a health economist at Brown’s School of Public Health, said the work highlights how financial firms are rapidly moving into a sensitive area of health care with little public scrutiny or data on where this is happening or why.

“The big takeaway is that there is yet another segment of health care that has emerged as potentially profitable to private equity investors, and it is very distinct from where we have traditionally known investors to go, so the potential for harm can be a lot more serious,” Singh said. “We’re also dealing with children who are largely insured by Medicaid programs, so if private equity increases the intensity of care, what we’re looking at are impacts to state Medicaid budgets down the road.”

Washington Post:

If the union really cares about justice, it should focus on teaching students how to read and write.

Usually New Year’s resolutions are a chance to ditch bad habits and make a change for the better, but the Chicago’s Teachers Union (CTU) is choosing to buck that convention as they resolve to more of the same in 2026. The union posted this week on social media that its resolution is to “speak truth to power” and committed to “defending Black and brown and immigrant communities who are targeted by federal agents,” as well as “fighting back against an administration trying to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and roll back civil rights protections.”

Those are lofty goals in a school district that can hardly teach kids to read and write. In 2025, 43 percent of Chicago’s third through eighth grade students were reading at grade level. Only 27 percent were proficient in math. Those are fundamental deficits that haunt kids into high school. In 11th grade, only 40 percent were proficient in reading and 25 percent in math on the ACT.

It’s hard to believe the union has students’ best interests at heart when its bosses continue to ignore the biggest problems. Poor test scores endure despite lower standards. Last summer, the state of Illinois lowered proficiency benchmarks on reading and math scores.

Effective instruction starts by showing up. For the fourth year in a row, chronic absenteeism among students stayed stuck near 40 percent, about 16 points higher than in 2019. Teachers are also playing hooky, with about 43 percent of educators missing 10 or more days of school, compared to 34 percent statewide. Teacher absences are a top predictor of student success.

Chad Aldeman:

Texas’ Alpha school combines AI with content mastery and innovative approaches to motivating students. It could be a model worth studying.

I spend my time looking at ways to improve public schools. So why have I been fascinated by a private school charging $40,000 a year in tuition? 

The AI-fueled Alpha program claims its students grow academically more than twice as fast as the national average, with only two hours of learning per day. Initially, I was skeptical. But after I read a parent review and a profile of school founder Mackenzie Price and principal Joe Liemandt, and listened to Liemandt on podcasts, I was intrigued both as a parent and as an education policy wonk. 

Alpha started as a small private school in Austin, Texas, in 2014 but now operates a growing network of 18 locations. Its AI tools are also in use in specialized gifted and talented programs, sports academies and a Montessori-like elementary school. As the network grew, it drew the attention of Liemandt, an Austin tech billionaire, who not only decided to send his kids there but stepped away from the industry, became the school’s leader and now says he plans to spend $1 billion to transform education. 

How? Mainly through its technology-enabled, personalized “two-hour learning” model. Alpha points to NWEA MAP Growth gains that are, on average, 2.6 times as large as other similarly scoring students make. In 2024-25 for example, the main Alpha campus had, depending on the grade level, 67% to 90% of students meeting their growth targets in math and 65% to 100% of students meeting their targets in English. 

Pieter Snepvangers:

People hated that four letter word’: Middlesbrough’s anger as Labour scraps Eton-backed free school

Scheme to help brightest children from deprived backgrounds scuppered by ‘socialist ideology’

They call Brian Sexton’s grandson the “talking calculator”. He is only nine years old, but his family takes it in turns to quiz him and watch and admire as he turns out the correct answers.

“He can do the square roots of any number you like,” Sexton beams. “He can multiply 117 by 144 by building the blocks in his head and then counting them back. Genius.”

Until last month, his family dreamt that he might one day go to Eton’s free sixth form college that was poised to open in the heart of Middlesbrough.

The proposed school, which was fronted by Eton College and Star Academies, a multi-academy trust, was expected to enrol 480 of the brightest pupils from deprived backgrounds and offer them a world-class education for free.

Although the school was approved in 2023 by the previous government and set to welcome its first 240 pupils last September, Labour entered office and immediately paused plans while it carried out a review.

Charles Murray

I recently published an autobiographical book, Taking Religion Seriously, about my decades-long evolution from agnosticism to eccentric Christianity. One of the many beliefs that I acquired during that evolution—to my surprise—is that I should not decide when to end my life. It was surprising because for years I not only approved of assisted suicide but was ready to take advantage of it myself. Since early in our marriage, I had an ongoing joke with my wife about her responsibility if I got old and was mentally losing it: She was supposed to know when the time had come to “put the white powder in my gin.” Suicide properly done, with help if necessary, seemed to me a good thing.

Now, when I read that New York will legalize assisted suicide, I am of two minds. As a policy analyst, I admire the bill that Governor Hochul will sign. It requires evidence of mental competence and voluntary initiative. It is limited to people with a clinically diagnosed disorder that gives them fewer than six months to live. The law requires that the person put the pill or potion in his or her own mouth and swallow it unassisted. 

As policy, it’s about as well crafted as such a law can be. As an option for me, no thanks. I’m going to stick it out.

Why? My answer is personal, but, writing as someone turning 83, facing death in a comparatively few years, I hope that it might also be useful to others.

Washington Post:

That’s a bold claim by the prosecutor. Political speech — including speech about elections, no matter how odious — is strongly protected by the First Amendment. It’s not unusual for politicians to take factual liberties. The main check on such misdirection is public scrutiny, not criminal prosecution.

Of course fraud is a crime. But that almost always involves dissembling for money, not political advantage. Smith’s attempt to distinguish speech that targets “a lawful government function” doesn’t work. Most political speech is aimed at influencing government functions.

Smith might think his First Amendment exception applies only to brazen and destructive falsehoods like the ones Trump told after losing the 2020 election. But once an exception is created to the First Amendment, it will inevitably be exploited by prosecutors with different priorities. Imagine what kind of oppositional speech the Trump Justice Department would claim belongs in Smith’s unprotected category.

Smith also said he makes “no apologies” for the gag order he tried to impose on Trump during the prosecution. The decision to criminally charge a leading presidential candidate meant the charges would feature in the 2024 campaign. Yet Smith fought to broadly limit Trump’s ability to criticize him or the prosecution in general, claiming such statements would interfere with the legal process.

Erin Gretzinger:

A proposed independent charter school in Madison has passed the first stage of the approval process to apply for charter status with the Universities of Wisconsin’s Office for Educational Opportunity, which has authorityunder state law to authorize and oversee new charter schools in the state

North Star Preparatory is seeking to provide a tuition-free high school that would be based on Madison’s north side. The school would serve students in 9th through 12th grade.

The school has until Jan. 12 to submit an application to begin the second phase of the approval process, according to Mark Pitsch, a Universities of Wisconsin spokesperson. Pitsch said the Office for Educational Opportunity hadn’t received the school’s application as of Thursday.

North Star Prep seeks to “promote punctual graduation, enhance engagement and develop career and community readiness,” according to its website. 

“Our mission is to reignite students’ passion for education by offering personalized, career-focused learning experiences that inspire, build skills and foster resilience,” the website says. “We are dedicated to providing the tools, support and guidance needed for all students to achieve on-time graduation and confidently pursue their future careers.”

While a board of directors page on the website says its members are “coming soon,” recent board meeting minutes list Nikole Sconiers, Rea Solomon and Kate Maselter as the founding members of North Star Prep.

———

Charters that operate outside of the taxpayer funded Madison K-12 system are not subject to its governance practices. The Madison school board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school in 2011….

———-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

heritage:

The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman—is its cornerstone.

As the most essential institution in society, every good thing in society flows from the family. Getting married, starting a family, and building a legacy are not just personal choices. They are the American Dream. The natural family—virtuous, faithful, and growing—is the center of American life. Stay-at-home moms are heroes, and involved fathers are vital. Both shape tomorrow’s leaders.

The weakening of the family as the cornerstone of our country has led to a loneliness, commitment, and demographic crisis that endangers both the American Dream and America’s place in the world. Conservatives can no longer stand by as the American family breaks down. We must propose bold, novel policy solutions that encourage family formation. Marriage and parenthood should not just be possible but should be desirable again. We seek an America where a husband, his wife, and their children are protected by law, encouraged by government, and supported by societal institutions so that they may prosper in peace and security, and pass on our heritage to subsequent generations.

More.

Matt Stoller:

A few days ago, Hunterbrook, a short-seller funded media outfit, released an investigative report showing what looks like a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation by the three largest health insurance companies. The allegation is that CVS, UnitedHealth Group, and Cigna are supposed to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for their patients. But instead, they collude with those pharmaceutical companies to force higher drug prices, and split the profits with them. It’s not a new charge. The Federal Trade Commission included this alleged scam in its complaint filed against these companies in September of 2024.

Chris Rickert:

Prosecutors will charge a former Sun Prairie West High School principal with two counts of failing to report child abuse, the city’s police chief said Friday.

The charges against Jennifer Ploeger come after a lengthy investigation sparked by allegations against a former West dean of students, Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier, who over the summer was brought up on state and federal child sex crime charges.

Under state law, teachers are mandated reporters, meaning they are required to immediately report suspected abuse or neglect by phone or in person to the local child protective services division, typically located in a county’s human services department.

Matt Barnum:

Learning declines have been substantial and pervasive.

Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.

Despite a small handful of relative bright spots, these declines have been remarkably widespread. Eighth grade math scores fell in almost every single state during this period; no states saw increases. Although schools that were closed longer during the pandemic tended to experience bigger declines, even those that quickly reopened have been hit hard by learning loss.

Insurrection Barbie:

“COPAL’s own statement thanks Omar and Klobuchar for their leadership and notes that these federal dollars will be invested in worker organizing and community power on Lake Street.”

Susan Du:

As the federal government broadened immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities, a network of neighborhood activists ramped up pushback by keeping tabs on ICE agents and lending aid to families in hiding.

Comunidades Organizando El Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL) launched its rapid response arm a year ago in response to President Donald Trump’s re-election, seeded by a $1 million grant from the Bush Foundation. More than 10,000 people have registered for its trainings, said Edwin Torres DeSantiago, manager of COPAL’s Immigrant Defense Network. Other organizations are offering variations.

While dramatic clashes between ICE and protesters have gotten the most attention, it’s the smallest aspect of a wider movement, Torres DeSantiago said. 

“It is after, before and the prolonged support that we provide to families navigating these dark days,” he said.

JD Vance:

The gaslighting is off the charts and I’m having none of it. This guy was doing his job. She tried to stop him from doing his job. When he approached her car, she tried to hit him.

A tragedy? Absolutely. But a tragedy that falls on this woman and all of the radicals who teach people that immigration is the one type of law that rioters are allowed to interfere with.

John Robb:

The larger organizational context for the incident.

These earlier incidents would have led to daily reminders at briefings, warnings from everyone, legal authorization (it’s assault with a deadly weapon), and specialized training (how to respond with deadly force, building muscle memory).

In short, the moment the car surged forward and pushed that agent with her bumper, the response was predictable.

Jonathan Turley:

During the Cold War, Soviet communists referred to American liberals as “useful idiots,” armchair revolutionaries who spouted proletarian slogans at cocktail parties. Zohran Mamdani and his newly appointed cadre engage in chest-pounding about their intentions to “seize the means of production” while living off their parents or working friends in high society.

Today, they are often young people who joined communist coffee klatches in college under the tutelage of academia’s “radical chic.”

They often reveal little actual historical or philosophical knowledge, which is an advantage if you are going to call for the replication of one of the least successful political theories in history.

Daniel Friedman:

One thing I have not seen a lot of discussion of is why Amy Klobuchar would consider leaving the Senate to run for governor when she is a top contender to replace Chuck Schumer as the leader of the Senate Democrats.

Klobuchar is the only political figure in Minnesota popular enough and powerful enough that her entrance into the race can prevent a contested Democratic primary, which would be a disaster for the Democrats.

Josh Brooks:

What the Right Wants: Psychotic leftist domestic terrorist tries to kill ICE agents! We should use more force.

What the Left Wants: Fascist NAZI psychopaths are murdering women and children! We should use more force.

Who actually wins: Minnesota politicians and bureaucrats who can spin this into a riot and continue to avoid accountability for fraud. Federal politicians who can use the flames to continue to avoid accountability for a billionaire child sex trafficking ring.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk

Glenn Greenwald:

She was one of the lead lawyers in the key suit against the Biden Administration for violating the 1st Am by coercing Big Tech to censor critics and dissent.

and:

A primary theme of right-wing politics throughout the 1990s and into 2000s (not GOP politics, but right-wing politics) was vehement opposition to armed federal agents on US soil acting against US citizens (things like WACO and the Randy Weaver shootings illustrated that).

Then a GOP administration exploited 9/11 to create DHS, and now armed federal agents under DC’s control on US streets, operating against Americans, is a staple of right-wing politics.

——-

A chronological account of the standoff between the Trump administration and the state of Minnesota over fraud allegations and immigration enforcement.

Erin Gretzinger:

For over a decade, Sarah Elmore has encouraged students at Madison’s East High School to reach for the stars as a counselor for AVID, a college and career readiness program that stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination.

The AVID framework is used at thousands of schools across the country to help close opportunity gaps for students after high school. The program provides students support services and mentorship to help them pursue academically rigorous courses and prepare for college or the workforce.

Elmore works with about 350 students at East High, helping them connect with opportunities outside of the classroom and navigate their post-graduation options. This school year, she was recognized for that work in being named the inaugural recipient of Counselor of the Year for AVID’s Global Achievement Awards. AVID launched the awards this year in honor of its 45th anniversary.

“Sarah’s work shows exactly why AVID matters,” Mary Jankovich, the Madison school district’s executive director of college, career and community readiness, said in an announcementabout the award. “She helps students build the skills, confidence and vision they need for life after high school, and she does it with such heart. This award reflects the difference she makes every day.”

Olivia Herken:

The bill, SB120, was first introduced last March, and a companion bill was passed by the Assembly later that month. The legislation would require all Wisconsin school boards to adopt two policies, one on how a school keeps records of a student’s preferred name or pronouns, and another on how school staff may address a student.

Specifically, the record-keeping policy would require a principal to sign off on a student changing their name or pronouns on official school records, and the student must provide documentation that they legally changed their name. School boards would also need to establish an appeals process to challenge name and pronoun changes, and allow parents to weigh-in on the decision if the student is a minor.

School boards also would need to adopt a policy that prohibits school employees from referring to a minor student by a name or pronoun that doesn’t align with the student’s biological sex without written authorization from that student’s parent or legal guardian. The bill states that these protocols wouldn’t be needed if a student wanted to go by a shortened nickname or by their middle name.

Although the bill is likely to be vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers if it passes the Senate, the legislation would require school boards to adopt the policies by July 1, ahead of the next school year.

——-

Wispolitics

——-

meanwhile:

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Dawn Baumgartner:

“And we’re just trying to understand — was there something going on here, from the institutional standpoint, that maybe was too dangerous. Obviously, COVID was a significant world event. And we are the body over the UNC System, and so (we’re) taking a look at those things,” he said.

UNC spokesperson Kevin Best said Thursday when asked about the status of the legislature’s request that nothing has changed since its statement to The N&O in June, which was that due to state law, “any request made to an agency employee by Commission staff and any communication between Commission staff and an agency employee is confidential.”

“The University deeply values and appreciates its partnership with the General Assembly and is committed to legal compliance and transparency,” Best said.

U.S. Right to Know’s request denied by appeals court

According to the Court of Appeals decision, U.S. Right to Know describes itself as “an investigative research group that promotes transparency for public health, [which] has been investigating the origins of COVID19 and the virus that causes it.” The group requested public records of Baric’s work and associations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, told The N&O in an email that they are “disappointed” in the Court of Appeals result and are evaluating their “legal options and potential next steps.”

Jenna Rae:

Milwaukee Public Schools recently hired a senior financial officer from Minneapolis who was placed on administrative leave just days after his appointment, according to district documents and reports.

Ibrahima Diop, who served as the senior financial officer for Minneapolis Public Schools for the last decade, was hired by Milwaukee Public Schools on Dec. 18 as the Deputy Superintendent of Operations with an annual salary of $240,000.

However, this past Friday, the Minnesota Reformer reported that Diop and two other senior leaders in Minneapolis were put on administrative leave after the school board learned leaders failed to submit necessary financial paperwork to the state as the district faces a $25 million budget shortfall.

The situation mirrors Milwaukee Public Schools’ own financial challenges. In May 2024, MPS also failed to submit its financial records to the state, and the state threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars.

Arthur Brooks:

“DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies…policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.”

Two decades on, DEI programs have come under attack. Some of this criticism has involved a political backlash, but some has involved research questioning their effectiveness. As far back as 2016, Harvard Business Review published an article titled “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” showingthat, as generally practiced, DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies. Last year, psychologists reviewing the literature found that these policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.

Chris Rickert:

Sun Prairie School District administrators didn’t do enough to investigate allegations that now-former West High School Dean of Students Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier was having inappropriate relations with female students, an independent investigation has found.

jennifer Van Laar

Out of the $140,329 in monetary contributions Betty Lieu for School Board received between 2018 and 2023, 33 percent is from the campaign accounts of Ted Lieu and a handful of California politicians:

• $5,000 Asian American Forward PAC
• $13,000 Former CA State Treasurer John Chiang
• $2,500 CA Asm. Evan Low (who’s now running for Congress)
• $3,400 Former CA Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon
• $500 CA Asm. Ben Allen
• $22,913 Ted Lieu for Congress

Betty Lieu for School Board doesn’t have to file contribution reports for 2024 until after June 30; from FEC records, we know that Ted Lieu for Congress contributed another $2,000 to his wife’s campaign in January 2024, bringing his campaign’s total transfers to $24,913.

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more

Susan Crabtree:

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman went to jail for their varsity blues college admissions scandal but ZERO accountanility for Ted Lieu.

Megan Messerly and Diana Nerozzi:

At least 70 alumni of Claremont’s fellowships over the last decade serve in President Donald Trump’s administration, a POLITICO analysis found.

At least 70 participants in Claremont’s small suite of fellowships over the last decade hold or have held posts in President Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a POLITICO analysis of fellowship lists, LinkedIn profiles, and other public biographies.

Trump’s budget director Russ Vought, White House legislative director James Braid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s adviser Michael Needham and CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis are all graduates of Claremont fellowships.

“It is no secret that the first Trump administration suffered from the lack of a prebuilt network,” Ryan Williams, Claremont Institute’s president, told POLITICO. “In our small way, we have been a reliable piece of that larger network which the president has now built over the last several years.”

Long viewed as an intellectual home for a strain of conservatism skeptical of globalism, hostile to the administrative state and rooted in a close reading of the Founding Fathers, Claremont for decades operated more at the margins of Washington’s governing mainstream.

That began to change with Trump’s ascent, with Claremont’s rise in Washington over the last decade closely tracking the president’s. Even before his first election, some Claremont conservatives — or “Claremonsters,” as they’re sometimes known — saw Trump as an unlikely but effective catalyst to transform Washington. Its leaders made an early bet that his disruption would create space for their ideas to take root in government — and it’s paid off.

In Trump’s Washington, Claremont occupies a niche that few other groups attempt — a hybrid of political philosophy, training and personnel cultivation.

Lindsay Ellis:

The “talent is everywhere” mantra adopted by U.S. employers when the job market was white hot is giving way to a more traditional entry-level recruiting strategy: hire from a few select universities.

Instead of one or two passes through 45 to 50 schools each year, GE Appliances now attends four or five events each semester at a slimmer shortlist of 15 select universities that includes Purdue and Auburn.

Bill, a financial technology firm, is focused on recruiting heavily from colleges near its corporate offices in San Jose, Calif., and Draper, Utah.

And McKinsey, the white-shoe consulting firm that expanded its recruitment efforts well beyond the Ivy League in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, recently removed inclusive language from its career page that said, “We hire people, not degrees.”

Gary Rushkin:

Today, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled against our efforts to compel the University of North Carolina to disclose roughly 50,000 pages of documents, mostly of Prof. Ralph Baric, mostly about his work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possibly containing clues about the origins of COVID-19.

Even though the NC Court of Appeals agreed that the NC Public Records Act “is intended to be liberally construed” and “exemptions must be construed narrowly,” it held in support of a broad reading of the university research exemption, and against our efforts to make these documents public.

We are disappointed in today’s result. We believe that the public has a right to know where the Covid pandemic may have come from. We believe that the University of North Carolina, as an institution of higher learning, should help the public understand the lessons of the pandemic, and not obscure or bury them.

We are evaluating our legal options and potential next steps. #FOIA

usrtk.org/wp-content/upl…

Wilson Times:

A North Carolina court’s decision to shield UNC virus research under public records exemptions exposes deep transparency gaps and strengthens calls for a constitutional Sunshine Amendment.

Quinton Klabon:

• 75,126, +1,236 more than 2024
• 9.5% of all students attend outside district
• +2,554 applications, +448 rejections
• out up: Two Rivers, Portage, Baraboo, Marshfield
• in up: Westosha Union, Ripon, Middleton
• highest/lowest counts below

——-

Where Have All The Students Gone? 1995-2024

Anna Stokke:

The EMS Online Lecture Series on Mathematics Education starts next week!

🗓️ Friday, 9 January 2026 – 19:00 CET

🎙️ Anna Stokke – Why foundational math skills matter and how to improve them

▶️ Watch on YouTube (live): youtube.com/c/EuropeanMath…

ℹ️ Info: euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lectu…

from Sorting to Strategic Agents
(2022) pdf, print, school program

This book was written to support what was, during its operation from 2020-23, the most advanced high school math/CS track in the USA. It culminated in high school students doing masters/PhD-level coursework (reproducing academic research papers in artificial intelligence, building everything from scratch in Python).
“One of the best parts of reading Justin Skycak’s textbook for Eurisko (which covers a vast array of topics) is the number of times you go “Oooh here’s that cool algorithm I’ve vaguely heard about… wait that’s it? That’s the core idea? I did not expect you can explain it so simply!” If art is knowing what to leave out, this book is a masterwork.” — Julian

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more.

By Toluwani Osibamowo

Texas is now the first state in the U.S. to eliminate American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, ending the state’s 42-year-long reliance on the national organization.

The Texas Supreme Court issued an orderTuesday finalizing a tentative September opinion, asserting the ABA should “no longer have the final say” on which law school graduates can take the bar exam — a requirement to becoming a licensed lawyer in each state.

“The Court advised that it intends to provide stability, certainty, and flexibility to currently approved law schools by guaranteeing ongoing approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA,” reads the order signed by all nine justices.

The change means law school graduates who want to practice in Texas are no longer required to attend an ABA-accredited school. The power to approve those law schools now rests solely with the state’s highest civil court.

Melissa Whitler:

Three senior leaders in the finance department of Minneapolis Public Schools have been placed on administrative leave, according to two people with knowledge of the personnel decisions, just as the district begins its annual budget process. 

Administration of the state’s fourth largest school district placed the three leaders on leave Friday, according to the two people familiar with the moves. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The officials placed on leave are Ibrahima Diop, senior finance officer; Tarior Chapinduka, executive director of finance; and Aaron Gilbert, controller. 

When reached by phone, Gilbert would not confirm her employment with the district and would not provide further comment. Diop and Chapinduka did not respond to voice messages left seeking comment.

Donnie Belcher, executive director of communications, said the district could not comment on the personnel changes due to personnel privacy laws.

The school board is set to vote Tuesday night to designate certain financial authorizations to Senior Executive Officer Ryan Strack. These designations were previously held by Diop.

The removal of finance department leadership comes at a crucial time for the district. The district expects a $30 million gap between its revenue and expenses next school year, or roughly 4% of the annual budget. . This deficit comes despite the district cutting more than $70 million in expenses during its last budget cycle, and voters approving a $20 million increase to the district’s operating capital levy in 2024.

The district failed to complete its annual financial audit by the state deadline of December 31. The district’s auditor, Bergen KDV, told the board on December 9, 2025, that the delay was because the district’s finance department had failed to provide the necessary information on time. The auditors expect to finish by the end of January.

Quinton Klabon:

35% means schools are spending ~$2,480,000,000 just on special education this year, ~$19,300 per student (plus ~$16,500 general).

36% would be ~$2,420,000,000 and ~$18,800.
37% would be ~$2,360,000,000 and ~$18,400.

Per student costs rose over $1,000, way over inflation.

Texas Comptroller

The Bond, Tax, and Project Database contains:

• a table with basic bond-related information;
• a details report for each individual submitted bond proposal that was voted on; and
• a downloadable spreadsheet containing bond-related information throughout Texas.

Each submitted bond proposal that has been voted on is reported once to the Texas Comptroller (Government Code, Chapter 403).

The Comptroller is required to develop and maintain a database containing current and historical information on taxes imposed and bonds issued.

Select Committee on the CCP:

The Department of Education has released a new online portal where the American people can see how much foreign money is being given to American universities. The portal – which is online at foreignfundinghighered.gov – lists China as the fourth biggest foreign contributor, giving more than $4 billion to American universities. China moves to second on the list when including an additional $1.9 billion from Hong Kong.

“Secretary McMahon and the Trump administration have done tremendous work to bring transparency to our universities. Through this portal we can all see that China has given nearly $6 billion to our nation’s universities in order to transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent to China,” said Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar. “Passing the SAFE Research Act and the DETERRENT Act will protect students and the taxpayer-funded research being done on our nation’s campuses.”

The top three recipients of money from mainland China were New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. The top three recipients of money from Hong Kong were Harvard, Yale University, and Stanford.

America 250

Learn about the Presidential 1776 Award: a history competition of a lifetime, supported by resources from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation that covers the road to independence and the ideas that shaped our nation.

Luis Garicano

I am often approached by students and other young people for advice about their careers. In the past, my answers were often based on a piece of advice I myself got from Bengt Holmstrom: “when in doubt, choose the job where you will learn more.” In the last few years, there is a new variable to consider: the likelihood that artificial intelligence will automate all or large pieces of the job you do. Given that, what should a student choose today? The answers below are motivated by a book on artificial intelligence and the organization of work on which I am currently working with Jin Li and Yanhui Wu.

One way of thinking about this is that all knowledge work varies along one important spectrum: messiness. On one end, there is one defined task to execute, say helping clients fill their taxes. You get the expenses and payslips on email, you use some rules to put them on a form, you obtain a response. Over time, you become better at this task, and get a higher salary. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a wide bundle of complex tasks. Running a factory, or a family, involves many different tasks that are very hard to specify in advance.

James Hankins:

You are right. We don’t expect the book will be usable in unionized public schools. It’s written for classical schools, where students have a much larger vocabulary, more discipline, and a higher level of reading comprehension. The book can be read by 11th-12th graders and college students. There is a “young readers” edition in the works for the lower grades, and we are organizing summer seminars for classical school teachers to help them teach the book.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Carmen Nesbitt

About half of Utah’s third-graders are not reading at grade level, according to a new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Neither are nearly half of Utah’s kindergarteners through second graders, the study found.

The analysis, commissioned by the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, comes about two weeks before the start of Utah’s next legislative session and “underscores the urgent need for coordinated early literacy initiatives,” a news release on the report states.

Third grade marks a crucial moment in a child’s academic career and future success, the report notes. That’s because after third grade, reading becomes the primary way students are expected to absorb information across all subjects. 

Those who have not mastered it risk falling behind. And the report notes many Utah students who are not proficient readers are moving on to the next grade.

“Children shape Utah’s future, and their ability to read proficiently by the end of third grade plays a central role in the opportunities they have,” the report states.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Enjoyiana Nururdin, Erin Gretzinger and Olivia Herken:

Two of the board’s seven seats are up for election, and both races are poised to be contested. Board members serve three-year terms.

Seat 6 incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham faces Daniella Molle, a qualitative researcher at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Seat 7 incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen is being challenged by Dana Colussi-Lynde, an operations manager at CDW, a Fitchburg-based information technology company.

——-

Chris Rickert:

Over the last five years, eight elections for the board have been uncontested, three have been contested, and one featured an incumbent running against a registered write-in candidate.

——-

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Jonathan H. Adler:

Today’s New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court’s decisions are increasingly tilted toward the interests of the rich, and suggesting that this may play a role in rising economic inequality. Here’s how the NYT story begins:

Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first, required of all federal officials, is a promise to support the Constitution. The second, a judicial oath, is more specific. It requires them, among other things, to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”

A new study being released on Monday from economists at Yale and Columbia contends that the Supreme Court has in recent decades fallen short of that vow.

The study, called “Ruling for the Rich,” concludes that the wealthy have the wind at their backs before the justices and that a good way to guess the outcome of a case is to follow the money.

The study, “Ruling for the Rich: The Supreme Court Over Time,” by Andrea Prat, Fiona Scott Morton, and Jacob Spitz, was posted as an NBER working paper, and has not yet been peer-reviewed or (to my knowledge) accepted anywhere for publication. But that did not stop it from getting a the full-article treatment in the NYT.

Having looked at the study, I don’t think it does much of anything to reliably substantiate its claims. It is both conceptually muddled and poorly executed. At most it shows that (surprise!) Republican Supreme Court nominees have become more conservative over time (a point I made to the Times), but that is hardly a revelation.

The biggest problem with the study’s design is its adoption of overly simplistic conceptions of what makes a decision “pro-rich” or “pro-poor.” Here is what the authors say they are doing:

Erin Gretzinger:

At the end of the semester, the UW-Madison students presented their findings to school district leaders in the Doyle Administration Building. Superintendent Joe Gothard thanked the students for their work, emphasizing the importance of better understanding the families opting out of enrolling in Madison’s schools and 4K programs.

“This is what we do in this room right here,” Gothard told the students. “We talk about these factors all the time, so it’s really great to have some new ideas about ways that we might present and think about our own practices.”

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Timothy Martin:

South Korea’s infamously difficult college-entrance exam can open the door to a promising future—but just 3% of students who took it recently landed a top-tier score for English, half of last year’s rate. A top official overseeing the test’s creation resigned in disgrace.

Colleges typically look only at a student’s test score when choosing whom to accept or reject. The pressure is so great that some superstitious students avoid washing their hair or trimming their nails as the single exam day every November approaches—fearful knowledge might slip away. The roughly eight-hour test covers various topics such as math, Korean history and English.

To get a top-tier result for English, a student with a perfect score on the listening section could miss no more than three of the test’s 28 reading-comprehension problems. These are the five toughest, according to EBS, South Korea’s public education broadcaster. See how you would fare.

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