Consider that F.D.R. first seized the reigns of the federal bureaucracy by moving the Bureau of the Budget — the precursor to today’s Office of Management and Budget or OMB — into the executive office. Under the stewardship of Harold D. Smith, the Budget Bureau centralized agencies’ legislative requests to Congress while embedding beachheads in each agency tasked with aligning the federal bureaucracy to F.D.R.’s New Deal agenda. This included moving disfavored agencies out of D.C., developing accounting and auditing system to automate clerical work, overhauling duplicative statistical systems, and forcing through agency-wide reorganizations. As one Congressman said at the time, “We grant the powers and Harold Smith writes the laws.”
“At first we were just trying to understand the drastic changes that took place while no one was in school during COVID,” says one of the mothers, Vanessa Calagna. “It was like we were trying to put a puzzle together. And then we were trying to ring the alarm.”
Those changes involved a heightened emphasis on racial equity and antiracism, including a district commitment to “dismantle structures rooted in racism” and seek “more equitable outcomes for all students.”
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Among the moves made in the interest of equity was an initiative by Newton’s two celebrated high schools to combine more students into “multilevel” classes. Rather than students being divided into separate classes by level, students at varying levels would learn together — even in math, science, and languages. The goal: to break the persistent pattern that white and Asian students predominated in “honors” classes while Black and Hispanic students tended to be clustered in less-challenging “college-prep” classes.
The three mothers compared notes and found that many of their concerns dovetailed.
They wanted to know whether the multilevel classes and other new policies — such as denying advanced math students the chance to skip ahead a year — hurt students academically. They also worried that the schools’ newer approaches to race and other identities emphasized differences rather than commonalities. And that equity was being defined as “equal outcomes” rather than fairness.
In 2020, the FCPS school board decimated the admissions requirements for the number one high school in America, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology (TJ). FCPS put equity at the heart of consideration, obliterating merit. In just three years, TJ went from the leading school in the country to number 14. The drop will continue now that the last class of merit-based admission students graduated in 2024.
Recent national reporting has revealed that FCPS participated in the selling every aspect of TJ, America’s top STEM high school, to the Chinese Communist Party for $3.6 millionover a 7-year period. Intellectual property sold to China included curriculum, student research projects, floor plans and detailed photographs of laboratories – all intended to assist China in “cloning” TJ. China now has several Thomas Schools throughout their country, intended to compete with the American school.
JANUARY 2025 – Automatic voter registration programs are adding foreigners to voter rolls new data show. Records obtained by the Public Interest Legal Foundation have revealed failures in Oregon and South Dakota to keep foreigners off voter rolls in the 2024 Election in these two states.
For years, PILF has warned that automatic voter registration (AVR) invites error. It is promoted as a streamlining concept to cut down on paperwork at the DMV. It is supposed to increase voter registration rates. Each of these promises sound admirable, but there is a catch: those tasked with executing AVR aren’t experienced in election administration and inevitable significant errors occur.
At its essence, AVR forces department of motor vehicle clerks into the role of making determinations of voting eligibility. Non-English speakers are routinely confused by the paperwork at DMV, and then their names and addresses are automatically sent to the voter roll. If DMV clerks make errors logging noncitizen customer information, the same. can happen. Both scenarios were disclosed shortly before
could it fix the journal cost disease? The USA publishes the most high quality science of all countries, though this is mainly due to the large population size, and not because American scientists are particularly productive. So given its dominant role, USA could try to do something about the issue, just as Elon Musk did for internet free speech by purchasing Twitter.
Perhaps the first idea you have is that open access for federally funded research should be mandatory. It sounds good. The public is sponsoring the research, so it is absurd they can’t read it. The journals found a nice way to game this system too. Open access fees. If you want to publish in a high ranked journal (e.g. Nature), and you want the paper to be readable by anyone, you can choose to pay a fee for this. How much is the fee? Well, whatever Nature says it is (right now it’s $12,290!). How could you decline, after having just gotten lucky enough to get accepted in one of the ‘best’ journals in the world? Who pays the fee? The tax payer of course (taken out of the research funding). So this solves only half the issue as the oligopoly still has a way to milk endless money but at least everybody can read the science.
Ironically, LLMs have only themselves to blame for this discovery of one of their limits. “The reason why we all got curious about whether they do real reasoning is because of their amazing capabilities,” Dziri said. They dazzled on tasks involving natural language, despite the seeming simplicity of their training. During the training phase, an LLM is shown a fragment of a sentence with the last word obscured (though technically it isn’t always a single word). The model predicts the missing information and then “learns” from its mistakes.
Louisiana, never known for education excellence was the big winner on the 2024 NAEP when it comes to progress in the last few years, writes Chad Aldeman. “It was the closest state to recovering from COVID-related declines in 8th grade reading and math, and it was the only state in which fourth-grade reading scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019.”
“Over the last 10 years, Mississippi is the only state to make gains across all performance levels in fourth-grade reading,” he writes. “While the bottom was falling out in most states, with the scores of low-performing students falling 10 or 20 or even 30 points, the scores of the lowest-performing students in Mississippi rose 9 points.” As a result, Mississippi ranks 7th in fourth-grade reading overall, and is “#1 for low-income students, #3 for Black students, and tied for #1 for Hispanic students.”
A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics.
The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy.
The group — dubbed the Classroom Social Compact Committee — was convened by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra in February during a moment of both hand-wringing and soul-searching over the state of free speech on Harvard’s campus.
And its report comes amid a wider push from faculty to bring students back into the classroom amid complaints that students underemphasize academics and seek out easier courses.
“Many Harvard College students do not prioritize their courses and some view extensive extracurricular commitments as a more fulfilling, meaningful, and useful allocation of their time,” the report’s authors wrote. “Most faculty view student curricular disengagement with alarm.”
The committee, led by History professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 and Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, was tasked with developing guidelines for student engagement and classroom dialogue. Its seven members conducted more than 30 listening sessions and reviewed 11surveys of students, faculty, and alumni, including undergraduate course evaluations.
FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra endorsed the committee’s recommendations in a letter to Jasanoff and Laibson, writing that they “promise to bring us closer to a learning environment that is worthy of Harvard and aligned with what are emerging as our shared aspirations as a faculty.”
In late 2023, Nebraska’s Luke Farritor became the first to free a Greek word from its prison: papyrus charred into a lump of carbon by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.
But the Husker undergrad and Lincoln native was far from finished. On Feb. 5, the Vesuvius Challenge named Farritor, Youssef Nader and Julian Schilliger the co-winners of its $700,000 Grand Prize for deciphering at least four passages of text, each 140-plus characters long, from digital scans of a seared scroll.
Choosing the best AI assistant for your work isn’t only about these ever smarter models, but also the tools and features that help you get things done. You will judge an AI not about how well it can do your job, but how many tasks you can offload to it.
“Every job is a bundle of tasks,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford University economist and the founder of the AI-at-work consulting company Workhelix. “When you analyze jobs at that level, you can really make headway as to whether technology can help.”
What tasks you can outsource to these assistants depend on your job, your workflow and, most importantly, the AI’s capabilities. Yep, it’s a lot like hiring—you want the candidate with the right skills.
Deep thinker
I asked Claude to organize a list of contacts into a spreadsheet—then it immediately followed up with, “I can also help create email templates for reaching out to these contacts.” The perfect Lumon employee: fully focused, efficient and cheerful. (I see you “Severance” fans.)
It’s hard to tease out all the factors driving this trend, but one is probably migration to, and employment growth in, the Sunbelt and right-to-work states. The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus held that public workers who refuse to join the union can’t be forced to pay “fair share fees,” providing an added economic incentive to opt out, though there is no huge jolt in the trend line.
It’s still worth keeping the hard figures in mind, since union membership drives inevitably make splashy headlines when they target brands such as Starbucks. For all of that organizing activity, not to mention President Biden’s four years of being “the most pro-union President in history,” the shrinking of Big Labor hasn’t stopped.
American companies are in a crisis of broken talent filters. We reflexively screen for the same stale credentials: Ivy League degrees, FAANG experience, “prestigious” employers. It’s a modern version of the credentialist bureaucracy that has crept into every American institution. And just like in government, this risk-averse checkbox mentality is making our companies dumber and less competitive.
The problem is twofold. First, outdated proxies poorly predict real capability. A self-taught programmer who has shipped multiple products often has more relevant skills than someone with years of Java maintenance at a big tech company. An electrician turned entrepreneur who has built and scaled a successful local business typically has sharper business instincts than an MBA who has only analyzed case studies.
Second, and more damaging long term, we have no good systematic way to discover & assess exceptional people who don’t fit the “typical” mold. We know our country is filled with these people – we’ve backed many of them. But finding them is too dependent on chance encounters and personal networks – most haven’t had a fair shot to demonstrate their ability. For too long most corporations have spent their time checking outdated credentialization boxes and virtue signaling instead of building the Meritocratic Infrastructure to discover and empower America’s best talent.
Mississippi is now #1 in reading among Black children while Wisconsin is #41 among all 41 states reporting scores for Black children. We have a lot more money in our state than they do in Mississippi. In Madison, we have even more. What is up with this? Our public school advocates need to stop blaming Scott Walker for ACT 10 and start looking “within” at our strategies and where we make our investments, and not.
Scott Walker, we were dealing with a horrendous achievement gap and four decades of advocacy to overcome it.
Twenty years ago, Mississippi was either dead last or battling for the bottom in reading with Georgia, Louisiana and Washington, DC.
Wisconsin – we have always been at or near the bottom among reading and math among Black children. ARE YOU NOT TIRED OF THIS?
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) and the Baraboo School District for denying a student access to school-sponsored athletic programs. The WIAA’s transfer rules, deemed arbitrary and infringing on student rights, were challenged for giving a private entity control over taxpayer-funded co-curricular activities. WILL argues this violates the law and hinders students’ growth and development.
Here are the ten most substantial points from the legal complaint:
1. The Weigels are suing WIAA and Baraboo School District over WIAA’s “Transfer Rule” preventing their daughter Macy from playing varsity softball.
2. WIAA is alleged to be unlawfully exercising governmental power by acting as the sole gatekeeper to high school athletics without statutory authority.
3. Macy Weigel transferred from private Community Christian School to public Baraboo High School when her family could no longer afford private tuition due to a younger sibling’s serious illness.
4. The family lost approximately $60,000 in annual income when Emily Weigel left her teaching job to care for her sick child.
5. WIAA denied both the initial waiver request and subsequent appeal for an “extenuating circumstances” exception, with the Board of Control voting 8-3 against.
6. The complaint argues WIAA violates the private non-delegation doctrine and Article X, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution regarding supervision of public instruction.
7. Every public high school in Wisconsin belongs to WIAA, accounting for about 80% of its membership.
8. The plaintiffs argue WIAA’s decision was arbitrary and capricious, providing no rational justification for denying the exception.
9. WIAA’s transfer rules require students entering 11th and 12th grade to play non-varsity for one calendar year after transferring.
10. The lawsuit seeks both temporary and permanent injunctions to allow Macy to participate in varsity athletics.
Brief Summary:
This is a lawsuit filed by the Weigel family against the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) and Baraboo School District. The core issue is WIAA’s enforcement of its transfer rule preventing Macy Weigel from playing varsity softball after transferring from private to public school due to financial hardship caused by a sibling’s illness. The lawsuit challenges WIAA’s authority to regulate high school athletics without statutory authorization and argues their denial of an “extenuating circumstances” exception was arbitrary. The case raises constitutional questions about private organizations exercising governmental power over public education.
After review, this summary and key points accurately reflect the main elements of the legal complaint while capturing both the specific situation and broader legal arguments presented.
The director of the Dane County Regional Airport was routinely unavailable to make key decisions about the airport, neglecting messages from her staff as well as representatives of Southwest Airlines who had reached out about starting service at the airport, according to documents obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal.
Kim Jones’ leadership of the airport grew so poor in recent years that three top airport officials complained to county leadership, leading to a 3-month investigation in 2023 that corroborated 12 complaints against Jones.
At a time when the airport was working to rebound from the pandemic, airport staff often waited weeks to get responses from Jones on airport business and never got a response while she was purportedly working from home, according to the investigation.
“There is a high level of frustration due to lack of communication, lack of time management, lack of vision, lack of organization, a status quo attitude and because no one feels heard,” the airport officials wrote in their complaint. “When staff have tried to move the airport forward, it is always met with resistance.”
Kennedy was one of two schools in the school district that failed to meet expectations on last year’s state report card. Results from the latest state tests show nearly three-quarters of third through fifth graders at Kennedy are not meeting grade-level standards in reading and math.
Wisconsin is leasing the 77,000-square-foot building through April 1, 2026, for $25,000 per month used, an athletic department spokesperson said. That includes four months this season — December through March. A public records request for the lease submitted Jan. 13 hasn’t been answered.
Clack Bell said proceeds from Wisconsin’s lease payments are going to be donated back to the track program.
Indoor track installation Workers prepare the running surface at the Badgers’ temporary indoor track and field training facility in the town of Arlington.
Beynon Sports raced to install a track surface in the facility in December and January. It includes a 200-meter oval track and a 91-meter straightaway for runners, according to a Wisconsin spokesperson. A runway for pole vault, long jump and triple jump and equipment for high jump are part of the setup.
Putting the track and equipment in the temporary facility cost $400,000, according to a Wisconsin spokesperson, and only some of it can be used again once the Badgers’ temporary use is over.
University administrators could barely keep up with the latest; on Tuesday they rushed to reassure students receiving federal financial aid that they could continue registering for spring semester classes despite an order freezing all federal grants —a directive the White House summarily revoked Wednesday afternoon. A few hours later, the White House announced foreign students who’d participated in pro-Palestinian rallies last year could have their visas revoked.
America has financed a current account deficit that bloated to US$1.2 trillion in 2024 by selling tech stocks to foreigners. Tech stocks, meanwhile, are trading at valuations not seen since 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite began a descent that wiped out 75% of its market capitalization by 2002.
Could a tech crash turn into a funding crisis for the United States if expectations sour on the revenue prospects of artificial intelligence? The January 27 crash in AI-related stocks in response to cheaper and better Chinese competition raises troubling questions. These questions have the undivided attention of every equity investor in the world.
Five teenagers are accused of attacking a Fridley High School varsity basketball player with a tire iron during a game at Robbinsdale Cooper High School on Tuesday night
The charges are as follows:
Yahya Abdul Khanyare, 18
Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon.
Dursa Muktar Mohamed, 18
Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
Fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle
Ayub Mohamed Ali, 19
Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
Salman Abdurashid Mohamed, 16
Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
Mubashir Nasir Ali, 18
Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
In Minnesota, a second-degree assault charge carries a maximum of seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine.
According to the criminal complaint, New Hope police responded to Robbinsdale Cooper High School on Jan. 28 following reports of an assault during a boys’ basketball game.
Authorities said a juvenile male was seriously injured after being attacked on the visiting team’s bench. The victim was struck on the head with a metal tire iron, punched, and almost stabbed with a knife.
Today’s blog is in the category of You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up.
The Madison Metropolitan School District has some of the worst test scores in the state. It has a horrible truancy problem. Its racial achievement gap is comparable to the Grand Canyon. For the most recent year when statistics were available there were around 800 police calls to Madison schools. Despite all that, voters still approved two referenda in November, which will increase taxes on the average home by over $1,600.
And what did the School Board just vote to spend $100,000 on? New logos for the high schools. Here’s the quote from the State Journal story:
On Monday, the School Board also approved a nearly $100,000 contract with a Kentucky-based firm for districtwide branding and design changes. The firm’s goal is to help position Madison schools as a “destination” school district, according to a memo from Senior Executive Director for Communications Edell Fiedler.
“The rebrand will have a districtwide impact as it will be used to build the district’s brand through various ways including signage, print, digital, clothing and textiles,” Fiedler wrote in a memo to the board.
SWC seeks to unite with constituents on campus to fight against unwarranted austerity that harms university’s core missions.
February 1, 2025 – Columbia University proposes cutting incoming PhD cohorts in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences by up to 65%, according to faculty sources. Columbia University’s austerity measure furthers its ongoing divestment from its educational mission to maximize revenue from fossil fuels, military weapons, and Columbia’s real estate empire.
Student workers are critical to teaching and research at the University. They serve as preceptors of Core Curriculum classes, which the university advertises as the “defining element of a Columbia College education”; as teaching assistants, offering students much needed individual attention given Columbia’s large class sizes; and as members of research teams making cutting edge discoveries. With up to 65% fewer graduate student workers, undergraduates will be stuck in larger classes and receive less feedback. The University will suffer a marked decrease in research output.
There is no financial need for funding cuts. The endowment has grown from $13.6 billion in 2023 to $14.9 billion at the close of 2024. In terms of operating activities, it reported nearly $305 million in net cash flow in the past fiscal year alone. Executive salaries at Columbia have likewise skyrocketed. According to the latest available data, former President Lee Bollinger earned $3,865,304 in total compensation in 2021, gaining a 61% pay bump during the first year of the COVID pandemic.
PhD workers of Columbia, on the other hand, gained 3% yearly increases in salary between 2021 and 2024. A fourth of the aforementioned 2024 surplus of $350 million would be enough to support an additional 1,000 PhD workers at living-wage level. The University has the ability to truly commit to its avowed values by paying its workers a living wage and expanding, not retrenching, the educational and research workforce.
“The university’s entire investment strategy is itself a choice—
In a letter sent from the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, families of the Latin School of Chicago are calling on the Board of Trustees to address serious misconduct that has gone unaddressed at the school for too long.
The letter details our concerns that certain current and past officers and trustees of the school have persistently failed to discharge their fiduciary duties, resulting in serious physical and mental harm to students and causing possibly irreversible harm to the reputation and financial sustainability of this once highly respected institution. We are also calling for a fully transparent and independent investigation, which is necessary to fully address misconduct at the Latin School and to restore both its reputation and its ability to deliver on its charitable mission.
If you are a former or current student, a parent, or a former employee or trustee, we need your help. We ask that you read the letter, included below, and use the contact button on this website to provide any helpful information in this effort.
The plan by this country’s largest school board to rebrand schools named for Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas and Sir John A. Macdonald shows how remarkably out of touch its staff and politicians are.
At a time when our national identity is under threat, where tax dollars are stretched to the limit, the Toronto District School Board says it will spend precious education dollars removing the names of three historic figures.
Schools are supposed to teach facts about history to young, impressionable minds. This shows a shocking lack of knowledge of Canada’s past and history professors have questioned the validity of this move.
Without Macdonald, there would be no Canada. He forged this country into one unit with his vision for a cross-country railroad. He steered the nascent country through chaotic times and supported Indigenous people with immunization programs and food relief plans. Macdonald’s laudable goal was to educate all children in every part of the country.
When the Trump administration imposed tariffson various imports in 2018, the stated purpose was to boost US industries and punish foreign exporters. But rather than hurting foreign exporters, the economic evidence shows it is American firms and consumers hardest hit by the Trump tariffs. The tariffs resulted in higher prices for a wide variety of goods that US consumers and businesses purchase. The Biden administration has continued and even increased many of the Trump tariffs—drawing some attention as inflation rises. And while tariffs do raise prices for American consumers, their impact on economy-wide inflation is relatively small.
According to Northfield Mount Hermon, Mitchell arrived as a scholarship student from “an unheated house in a small town” on Cape Cod. He thrived academically, rising to class valedictorian. Athletically unremarkable, he honed an acumen for logistics by serving as student manager of the football team. (For one away game, he forgot to bring balls. At the apoplectic coach’s behest, Mitchell resorted to “borrowing” some from the opponent’s sidelines.)
Like all students—on scholarship or not—he was required to work 10 hours a week in the dining hall, cleaning dormitories or doing other jobs around campus. He earned degrees at Yale and New York University. During a long career at Pfizer, he became president of global manufacturing.
Mitchell credited the school with casting the template for his life. Would his exceptional talents have germinated anywhere? Would his story have been different had the scholarship been contingent on his race or sex?
Mr. Trump signed an executive order ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” in government hiring. Such preferences, he wrote, diminish “individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination.”
That roster sums up Mitchell, whom I met briefly in New York in 2022. He was courtly and modest, exhibiting no hint of his accomplishments. Mr. Trump could learn something from his self-effacing approach.
Between 2006 and 2016, he served on Northfield Mount Hermon’s board of trustees. No school building is named for him.
He donated his time and expertise behind the scenes and parachuted in anonymously with money to help with building and maintenance emergencies. In keeping with his wishes, much of his bequest will go to scholarships for students and support for teachers.
As Democrats examine why Kamala Harris lost and how the party should change course, education policy should be a top issue. But few party leaders are talking about it.
Many voters are still unhappy with Democratic support for excessive school closings during the pandemic. Too many elected officials, pandering to teachers unions, kept schools closed well past the point when it was clear that in-person classes could safely resume. Children paid a terrible price, and they are still paying it.
This week brought more bad news. On the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress, a test that functions as a national report card, student scores hit new lows. One-third of eighth-grade students in the U.S. are reading at a “below basic” level. Fourth-graders fared even worse: 40% were below basic. The divide between high-performing and low-performing students, which is correlated with family income, has widened.
This is a disaster for our country and our ability to compete internationally. First and foremost, it is a disaster for our children, especially in low-income areas. Many of them are being condemned to lives of minimum-wage jobs, government dependency and, tragically, prison.
There was a bright spot in the NAEP scores. In the four localities and states where Bloomberg Philanthropies has been most active—supporting charter schools, high standards and system accountability—students bucked the national trend: Their test scores went up. We’ve shown what works in raising student achievement levels, and we have the data to back it up. But instead of pursuing these proven strategies, Democrats have been fighting them.
In New York, the teachers union has fought to maintain a cap on the number of charter schools, which have dramatically raised achievement levels, even as student waiting lists grow longer. Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature have refused to repeal a law prohibiting longstanding charters from receiving the same kind of rental assistance that newer charters do. The state also gives charters far less funding than traditional schools, discriminating against their students.
Long before DEI became a thing, a Brooklyn-based Jewish bakery offered its own playful take on diversity in a now-iconic series of subway ads. The ads featured a variety of people—a Native American man, a robed choirboy, a white cop, a black child—all enjoying sandwiches over this now-famous tag line: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye.”
That ought to be the message of Catholic Schools Week. The 4,731 Catholic grade schools and 1,174 secondary schools now celebrating do a superb job educating their students—with the National Catholic Educational Association reporting 99% of their high-school students graduating on time and 85.2% going on to four-year colleges.
Now may be their moment. Covid literally brought home to ordinary moms and dads what their kids were being taught in public schools. They also saw how resistant those schools were to any accountability—Attorney General Merrick Garland even sicced the FBI on parents who showed up for school-board meetings. But while the teachers unions cheered on the school closings, Catholic school students were in their classrooms. The contrast launched a parents revolution.
The Authors Guild — one of the largest associations of writers in the US — has launched a new project that allows authors to certify that their book was written by a human, and not generated by artificial intelligence.
Certification is currently restricted to Authors Guild members and books penned by a single writer, but will expand “in the future” to include books by non-Guild members and multiple authors. Books and other works must be almost entirely written by humans to qualify for a Human Authored mark, with minor exceptions to accommodate things like AI-powered grammar and spell-check applications.
Post-secondary staff on Prince Edward Island say they aren’t surprised that over a third of Maritime university students report having a disability.
The number of students with disabilities could even be higher than the reported number, since some students with disabilities aren’t registered to receive accommodations, said Sandra Griffin, manager of accessibility services at UPEI.
“Without these accommodations, students will often struggle, experience lower grades, sometimes fail courses entirely because they haven’t used the accommodations that they’re eligible for or that they need in order to demonstrate their learning,” Griffin said.
The number of university students who report having a disability has grown across the country, with Maritime institutions leading the way, according to the Canadian University Survey Consortium.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LACSD) committed wholesale abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases in 2023, violating a specific rule against searching the data to run background checks for concealed carry firearm permits.
The sheriff’s department’s 6,789 abuses made up a majority of the record 7,275 violations across California that were reported to the state Department of Justice (CADOJ) in 2023 regarding the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS).
Records obtained by EFF also included numerous cases of other forms of database abuse in 2023, such as police allegedly using data for personal vendettas. While many violations resulted only in officers or other staff being retrained in appropriate use of the database, departments across the state reported that violations in 2023 led to 24 officers being suspended, six officers resigning, and nine being fired.
CLETS contains a lot of sensitive information and is meant to provide officers in California with access to a variety of databases, including records from the Department of Motor Vehicles, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, Criminal Justice Information Services, and the National Crime Information Center. Law enforcement agencies with access to CLETS are required to inform the state Justice Department of any investigations and discipline related to misuse of the system. This mandatory reporting helps to provide oversight and transparency around how local agencies are using and abusing their access to the array of databases.
That’s the bottom line from the 2024 National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) report released on Wednesday. Fourth and eighth grade reading scores declined by two points on average since 2022—roughly as much as they did between 2019 and 2022. Some 33% of eighth graders scored below “basic” on the reading exam—a record low.
Eighth-grade math scores remained about the same as two years ago but were eight points lower than in 2019. The sliver of good news is that fourth-grade math scores increased by two points since 2022, but this doesn’t make up for the five-point drop between 2019 and 2022. The takeaway: Even with children back in school full-time, they still aren’t learning.
Worse, the achievement gap increased. High math performers in both grades scored better last year while low performers did worse or the same. Test scores for students scoring at the 75th and 90th percentiles in reading have marginally improved since 1992, but they’ve declined for students at the 10th and 25th percentiles.
Neither Brunner, McNulty nor Poulos responded to the Journal Sentinel’s questions.
The district has had several security incidents this year: a parent confronting a student, a threat, a student punching out a classroom window. If elected, how would you address the district’s safety and security practices?
Henderson: In these tough times, our teachers, staff, and first responders must be aligned on response standards to respond to unique situations. I believe our leaders did the right thing by responding to these incidents as quickly as possible and ensuring personal safety. However, we saw an opportunity for improvement in communications. It is the duty of the district to ensure every parent receives timely, pertinent communications related to their children’s safety at school. This can be balanced with the very reasonable demand for student privacy. There absolutely is a suitable compromise that can be achieved in policy & practice.
Henning: Ensuring our children are safe is essential for their learning and growth. I am committed to making it a priority because I know it is for the families in our district. I will partner with the administration to thoroughly evaluate safety protocols, ensuring they are effective and well-understood. I will actively listen to staff to incorporate their insights and advocate for additional expertise if needed. Clear, consistent communication about safety measures will be my focus to build trust. I will champion training for crisis preparedness and foster a culture of respect and accountability, ensuring every child feels secure and supported.
Peterson: Student safety goes hand in hand with academic achievement in our public schools. Student violence prevention should be a collaborative effort between the administration and families. Parents and families need to take as much accountability ensuring that their kids are learning and practicing conflict resolution skills at home while teachers are encouraging them at school. Administration policy should be routinely reviewed to ensure that we are learning from past incidents and also meeting the present day safety climate which seems to be rapidly changing with external threats as well as internal concerns from cyber/physical bullying and student violence.
We study the electoral consequences of Wisconsin’s Act 10, a controversial law that weakened teachers’ unions and enabled flexible teacher pay. Exploiting variation in the timing of implementation of the reform across districts, we first show that it raised student test scores, reduced union revenues, and created winners and losers among teachers in terms of pay. We then show that the reform increased the vote share for the incumbent GOP governor by about 2 pp and lowered Democratic campaign contributions from teachers and unions. The electoral gains were driven by districts with ex ante stronger unions and more potential winners among teachers and students.
UW-Madison is asking its researchers to be careful with their federal research dollars, amid concerns over President Donald Trump’s efforts this week to freeze federal funding, at least temporarily.
Provost Charles Isbell, who oversees all academic operations, and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Rob Cramer offered guidance in a letter to UW-Madison vice chancellors and college deans.
Researchers shouldn’t hire additional people with federal funds and should limit purchases made with federal funds, the letter said, urging spending restraint until the university says otherwise and noting that even purchases researchers had planned on making should be reconsidered, including any goods or services, out-of-state travel or equipment.
In 1803, Samuel Taylor Coleridge sat in his astronomer’s study in Keswick, and wrote in his notebook his central Principle of Criticism:
never to lose an opportunity of reasoning against the head-dimming, heart-damping principle of judging a work by its defects, not its beauties. Every work must have the former – we know it a priori – but every work has not the latter, and he, therefore, who discovers them, tells you something that you could not with certainty, or even with probability, have anticipated.
It is the work of a writer for children to do the same for the world itself. Children have not yet built wide hinterlands: to them, the world is still opaque and full of necessary bewilderment. Those who write for children have the chance to point them towards beauty that they do not yet know exists: towards versions of joy that they have not yet imagined possible.
In being written for those to whom the world is new and strange, for those who are without economic power, and for those who need short, sharp, bold stories, children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning. But you cannot claim to be a magician and fail to produce the rabbit. Let us begin, therefore, at the beginning, with some beginnings:
Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration.
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In the 2023 fiscal year, the payment systems processed nearly 1.3 billion payments, accounting for about $5.4 trillion, nearly 97 percent made electronically, according to the Treasury Department. Every payment was made on time.
Lebryk’s departure is expected to be a shock to Treasury personnel, among whom he enjoys a sterling reputation. The lifelong bureaucrat joined the department as an intern in 1989 and spent three decades at the agency under 11 different treasury secretaries, serving as acting director of the U.S. Mint and commissioner of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, among other roles.
Years ago, an elected Madison School Board member dig into budget shenanigans, helped along by personal drive and some insider tips. Who runs taxpayer financed organizations?
In China, Liang Wenfeng is being celebrated as a hero this week, a digital David fighting America’s Big Tech Goliath, armed with a modest cluster of artificial intelligence chips and a small crack team of engineers.
His computational projectile was a series of papers released by his AI start-up DeepSeek, which appeared to show that it was possible to build powerful large language models with far fewer Nvidia chips than US rivals. Global investors wiped almost $600bn off Nvidia’s market capitalisation as a result, questioning whether pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into gargantuan AI computing clusters was necessary.
New report by leading semiconductor analyst Dylan Patel shows that DeepSeek spent over $1 billion on its compute cluster. The widely reported $6M number is highly misleading, as it excludes capex and R&D, and at best describes the cost of the final training run only.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn, who served as former Gov. Scott Walker’s chief legal counsel and helped draft the state’s landmark Act 10 law, said Thursday he will not participate in pending litigation seeking to overturn several components in the law.
Hagedorn’s decision to recuse himself marks a major blow to Republicans’ hopes of a favorable ruling in their quest to uphold the 2011 law that gutted public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin and altered the relationship between government workers and their employers.
Hagedorn, a conservative, wrote in the order that “recusal on this court should be rare — done only when the law requires it.”
“Going beyond that can create problems,” he continued in the two-page order. “We have seen how recusal can be weaponized by parties seeking a litigation advantage.
Gothard’s starting salary is $299,000, according to his contract with the district. He also gets at least a 2% pay increase each year of the contract, along with $25,000 each year in retirement contributions to a 403(b) account.
As superintendent, Gothard will lead the district through the design and construction of 10 new school buildings using money from the $507 million referendum voters approved in November. He also has pledged to advocate for increases to special education funding to state lawmakers and to be accessible to families, teachers, students and the general public
An inordinately high percentage of juvenile wards are unable to decipher accurately and fluently and write legibly and grammatically what they can talk about and aurally comprehend; a high percentage of wards are diagnosed learning-disabled, with no evidence to indicate any neurological abnormalities. Handicapped readers are not receiving the type of instruction recommended by experimental research; and reading teachers, as a result of preservice reading methods courses, have been denied a working knowledge of the reading programs and methods of instruction that are most successful in preventing reading failure as well as meeting the needs of handicapped readers. So as to remove the barriers to improved reading instruction and allow the handicapped readers to become proficient readers in the shortest time possible, it will be necessary to provide reading teachers with the opportunity to acquire a knowledge of the alphabetic principles that govern English spelling and become confident in using instructional programs that incorporate intensive, systematic phonics methods. Inservice training must come from private-sector literacy providers, because departments, schools, and colleges of education have not provided this type of instruction. a 38-item annotated reference list
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Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
NEW: Milwaukee Public Schools is late again in turning over required FY2023 financial reports to the state. @fox6now has learned the deadlines a year past due have sparked new delays:
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Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-
Teachers unions and their apologists continue to say the problem with public schools is funding. Yet, the more funding public schools get, the worse they are doing based on their own measures of success. More money correlates with more problems rather than solving them.
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Unions aren’t the boogeyman. We have no say in policy decisions. Stop with this nonsense.
Incompetent superintendents and school boards emphasizing SEL, equity, and “soft skills” instead of academics is what cause this.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the idea that individuals should be systematically evaluated and selected based on their ability rather than wealth, class, or political connections, led to significant changes in selection techniques at all levels of American society. The Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) revolutionized college admissions by allowing elite universities to find and recruit talented students from beyond the boarding schools of New England. Following the adoption of the SAT, aptitude tests such as Wonderlic (1936), Graduate Record Examination (1936), Army General Classification Test (1941), and Law School Admission Test (1948) swept the United States. Spurred on by the demands of two world wars, this system of institutional management electrified the Tennessee Valley, created the first atom bomb, invented the transistor, and put a man on the moon.
By the 1960s, the systematic selection for competence came into direct conflict with the political imperatives of the civil rights movement. During the period from 1961 to 1972, a series of Supreme Court rulings, executive orders, and laws—most critically, the Civil Rights Act of 1964—put meritocracy and the new political imperative of protected-group diversity on a collision course. Administrative law judges have accepted statistically observable disparities in outcomes between groups as prima facie evidence of illegal discrimination. The result has been clear: any time meritocracy and diversity come into direct conflict, diversity must take priority.
We show how to construct a ranking of U.S. undergraduate programs based on students’ revealed preferences. We construct examples of national and regional rankings, using hand-collected data on 3,240 high-achieving students. Our statistical model extends models used for ranking players in tournaments, such as chess or tennis. When a student makes his matriculation decision among colleges that have admitted him, he chooses which college “wins” in head-to-head competition. The model exploits the information contained in thousands of these wins and losses. Our method produces a ranking that would be difficult for a college to manipulate. In contrast, it is easy to manipulate the matriculation rate and the admission rate, which are the common measures of preference that receive substantial weight in highly publicized college rating systems. If our ranking were used in place of these measures, the pressure on colleges to practice strategic admissions would be relieved. We show how to deal with tuition discounts, alumni preferences, early decision programs, specialty schools, and similar issues.
In ordering U.S. schools to stop “indoctrinating” students in areas of race and sexuality or risk losing federal money, President Donald Trump singled out the Madison School District as promoting the type of policy his executive order seeks to stamp out.
The order, signed Wednesday, declares that federal money cannot be used on the “indoctrination” of children, including “radical gender ideology and critical race theory.” It says civil rights laws barring discrimination based on sex and race would be used to enforce the order, calling critical race theory an “inherently racist policy.”
In an accompanying “fact sheet,” the White House cited a Madison School District policy that urges schools to “disrupt the gender binary” by teaching students to embrace different gender identities. Another policy at Harrisonburg City Public Schools in Virginia requires teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns.
The examples are included under the heading, “Widespread indoctrination of gender ideology is a gross violation of parental rights.”
The Wisconsin State Journal could not confirm whether the phrase the White House objected to is included in any current Madison School District policy, although it is referenced in a 2020 lawsuit. District spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Science has backed up what many of us have long been saying: the library rocks. A study from the New York Public Library surveyed 1,974 users on how the library makes them feel and how it affects their lives, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.
The researchers’ analysis (which used positive psychology’s PERMA model, if that means anything to you) discovered that libraries are good for people, their well-being, and their communities. Not only that, but the positive societal impacts are more pronounced in lower-income communities, even more reason to make sure we’re funding and supporting libraries. Don’t let the ghosts of Reagan and Thatcher tell you otherwise, government can help people!
Some top-line statistics from the study:
– 92% of respondents reported feeling somewhat to very “calm / peaceful” after visiting the Library – 74% of respondents reported that their library use positively affects how equipped they feel to cope with the world – 90% of respondents reported that their Library use positively affects how much they love to learn new things – 88% of respondents reported that their Library use has supported their personal growth
It would seem that a new generation of students is in danger of not being illiterate, but un-literate. In other words, they can read, but they don’t read. Being un-literate means they are unable to develop a decent vocabulary, develop crucial creative and critical thinking skills, broaden the mind, and experience wider cultural and historical knowledge. In other words, they will be uneducated.
One of the primary reasons for the decline in book reading among college students is the explosion of digital media. Social media platforms, streaming services, and video content compete for students’ attention. Social media platforms offer instant gratification. Short, easily consumable content is more entertaining than a lengthy novel or textbook.
Students do consume “literature” but in formats that require less effort than traditional reading. Audiobooks allow the listener to tune in while driving, exercising or doing chores making it easy way out for those struggling to curl up with a good book.
They also have more reading than ever before. In the midst of a busy academic schedule, demanding extra curricular activities and a frenetic and possibly stressed social life, students are expected to keep up not only with classic literature, but also textbooks, research papers, lecture notes and online textual resources. It is easy to brand the resulting “reading fatigue” as another snowflake phenomenon, but it is arguable that there really is an increased quantity of reading demanded—much of it badly written, wordy, dry and obtuse. No wonder students lack the energy and enthusiasm to read for pleasure.
Following the success of the Chinese startup DeepSeek, many are surprised at how quickly China has caught up with the US in Al. However, China’s progress in algorithmic efficiency hasn’t come out of nothing. Chinese students have long outperformed others in math and programming at international olympiads
When it comes to producing outstanding performers in math and science, China’s secondary education system is superior to that of the West. It fosters fierce competition among students, a principle borrowed from the highly efficient Soviet model 7
In contrast, most Western schools discourage competition, prohibiting public announcements of students’ grades and rankings. The rationale is understandable – to protect students from pressure or ridicule. However, such measures also predictably demotivate the best students. Victory and defeat are two sides of the same coin. Eliminate the losers – and you eliminate the winners
For many students, motivation to excel in high school comes from treating it as a competitive game, striving to rank first against strong opponents.
Removing transparency in student performance can make school feel meaningless for ambitious teenagers. It’s not surprising that many gifted kids now find competitive gaming more exciting than academics – at least in video games, they can see how each player ranks
Telling all students they are champions, regardless of performance, may seem kind – until you consider how quickly reality will shatter this illusion after graduation. Reality, unlike well-meaning school policies, does have public grades and rankings – whether in sports, business, science, or technology.
Al benchmarks that demonstrate DeepSeek’s superiority are one of such public rankings. And more are coming. Unless the US secondary education system undergoes radical reform, China’s growing dominance in technology seems inevitable
notes and links on recent academic results and discourse.
Edunomics Lab analyzed ROI data from 2013-2024 (NAEP 4th grade reading and 8th grade math scores alongside per-pupil spending) to see which states have been more (or less) successful at leveraging dollars to deliver academic improvement.
The more unsettling phrase of the moment, though, should be kaizen — the Japanese concept of “continuous improvement” which once struck nervous awe into US corporate hearts and which China, one way or another, now looks to have quietly mastered. Partly by hiring Japanese kaizen masters undervalued in their own economy.
Kaizen first properly entered the international business lexicon in the 1980s, when American and European companies needed to understand why Japanese companies were beating them — in terms of both price and quality — on cars, consumer electronics and semiconductors. It suited both sides to identify the differentiator as a patient, distinctly Japanese, betterment of product and process.
The practical effects of kaizen were remarkable: they were among the prime reasons that Japan’s economy became huge in the 1970s and 80s, and why so many of its companies retain global competitiveness in a formidable range of manufacturing fields.
Before I make my policy argument, I’m going to describe three basic dynamics of AI systems that it’s crucial to understand:
Scaling laws. A property of AI — which I and my co-founders were among the first to document back when we worked at OpenAI — is that all else equal, scaling up the training of AI systems leads to smoothly better results on a range of cognitive tasks, across the board. So, for example, a $1M model might solve 20% of important coding tasks, a $10M might solve 40%, $100M might solve 60%, and so on. These differences tend to have huge implications in practice — another factor of 10 may correspond to the difference between an undergraduate and PhD skill level — and thus companies are investing heavily in training these models.
Shifting the curve. The field is constantly coming up with ideas, large and small, that make things more effective or efficient: it could be an improvement to the architectureof the model (a tweak to the basic Transformer architecture that all of today’s models use) or simply a way of running the model more efficiently on the underlying hardware. New generations of hardware also have the same effect. What this typically does is shift the curve: if the innovation is a 2x “compute multiplier” (CM), then it allows you to get 40% on a coding task for $5M instead of $10M; or 60% for $50M instead of $100M, etc. Every frontier AI company regularly discovers many of these CM’s: frequently small ones (~1.2x), sometimes medium-sized ones (~2x), and every once in a while very large ones (~10x). Because the value of having a more intelligent system is so high, this shifting of the curve typically causes companies to spend more, not less, on training models: the gains in cost efficiency end up entirely devoted to training smarter models, limited only by the company’s financial resources. People are naturally attracted to the idea that “first something is expensive, then it gets cheaper” — as if AI is a single thing of constant quality, and when it gets cheaper, we’ll use fewer chips to train it. But what’s important is the scaling curve: when it shifts, we simply traverse it faster, because the value of what’s at the end of the curve is so high. In 2020, my team publisheda paper suggesting that the shift in the curve due to algorithmic progress is ~1.68x/year. That has probably sped up significantly since; it also doesn’t take efficiency and hardware into account. I’d guess the number today is maybe ~4x/year. Another estimate is here. Shifts in the training curve also shift the inference curve, and as a result large decreases in price holding constant the quality of model have been occurring for years. For instance, Claude 3.5 Sonnet which was released 15 months later than the original GPT-4 outscores GPT-4 on almost all benchmarks, while having a ~10x lower API price.
First up, and arguably the most critical, are the reading wars. This topic shouldn’t be political, but welcome to 2025.
Expecting your child to learn to read in school shouldn’t be revolutionary, but don’t take it for granted in K-6.
I’ve watched two of my kids struggle through this nightmare at a fancy North Side Chicago private school. And just this weekend, I caught up with another family (an old friend from childhood) dealing with the same circus at a different North Side institution.
It’s a problem. And no number of Instagram-worthy reading nooks will fix it. Nobody cares about cute pillows if your kid can’t read the books on them.
If the school says phonics is “too rigid” or claims it’s outdated, they’re either uninformed or choosing ideology over proven science. Phonics isn’t rigid— it’s effective.
Here’s what to ask when touring schools:
Ask: “What’s your reading program?”
Good answer: Wilson or Orton-Gillingham (or something similar that is battle-proven).
Red flag: “Balanced literacy,” “whole Language”, “site reading,” or anything other than phonics (translation: your kid may need expensive tutoring).
More than 450,000 fourth and eighth graders, selected to be representative of the U.S. population, took the biennial reading and math tests between January and March of 2024.
Depressed student achievement was pervasive across the country, regardless of state policies or instructional mandates. Student performance in every state remained below what it was in 2019 on at least one of the four reading or math tests. In addition to state and national results, the NAEP report also lists the academic performance for 26 large cities that volunteer for extra testing.
An ever-widening gap
The results also highlighted the sharp divergence between higher- and lower- achieving students. The modest progress in fourth grade math was entirely driven by high-achieving students. And the deterioration in both fourth and eighth grade reading was driven by declines among low-achieving students.
“Certainly the most striking thing in the results is the increase in inequality,” said Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard University and vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP test. “That’s a big deal. It’s something that we hadn’t paid a lot of attention to traditionally.”
Wisconsin: 31st in reading, 17th in mathematics (averaging ranks, 🙃)
top R: LA, MS, MA, IN, GA, KY, CO, TX, SC, CT top M: MS, LA, MS, TX, IN, GA, NC, FA, SC, IL
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Want a different NAEP story? Mississippi is #1 in the country in 4th grade math and reading, #1 in the nation in 8th grade math, and #4 in the nation in 8th grade reading when NAEP scores adjusted for student demographics.
“Wisconsin’s performance in fourth grade reading was the lowest since at least 1992”
So @DrJillUnderly changed the state report cards because the NAEP tests are too rigorous and not a good indicator of success. But now she is citing the NAEP results (which highlight DPI’s failures!) to ask for more money for DPI. These people are truly shameless.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is a nationally representative sample of schools throughout the country that allows for an apples-to-apples comparison of students in each state, and some cities. Early this morning, the 2024 NAEP results were released. Not surprisingly, they paint a dim picture of student performance since the pandemic, both in Wisconsin and across the nation. Here are four main takeaways.
Dramatic Drops in Student Performance
Student performance in 4th grade reading in Wisconsin was the lowest that had been recorded since at least 1992. 4th grade math was at it’s lowest level since 2003. Despite spending more than $18,000 per student, not to mention huge amounts of federal funding entering the system during the COVID-19 pandemic, student outcomes have only gotten worse. This should be a five-alarm fire for the education establishment.
NAEP Results Clearly Show how DPI has ‘Cooked the Books’ with academic outcomes.
As we have discussed on several occasions, in 2024 DPI lowered the standards and cut scores for proficiency on the state’s Forward Exam for the most recent academic year. Proficiency was previously tied to the NAEP in reading and math—meaning that proficiency on the Forward Exam was comparable to NAEP proficiency. But now, that tie is broken, and Forward Exam proficiency has been dramatically inflated. The figure below shows the gap when it comes to 4th grade reading.
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Notes and links on the Wisconsin DPI and its Superintendent, Jill Underly.
That includes money provided directly to the DPI itself as well as dollars that are passed along to school districts or other agencies.
Among other things, the money has gone toward bolstering the state teacher workforce, expanding access to mental health services and providing free meals to students. Schools with large populations of low-income students also qualify for federal funds under Title I of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
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Federal dollars accounted for about a third of the $7.5 billion Universities of Wisconsin budget in the 2023-24 school year. Federal contracts and grants were the largest piece of that, contributing $1.6 billion for research and operations, while federal aid for 74,166 students tallied $736 million.
The UW system didn’t have figures available for how much student aid has been paid out this semester or what remained outstanding, spokesperson Mark Pitsch said. Federal grants are managed by each university and often come in the form of reimbursements, Pitsch added.
At UW-Madison, federal grants and contracts made up $776.7 million of the university’s nearly $5 billion budget in 2023-24. Half of the university’s $1.7 billion research enterprise comes from federal research dollars
Last night, the 2024 NAEP was released for Wisconsin and nationwide. The picture it pains of the state of education in America is bleak, and Wisconsin was no exception. Here is a 🧵of some key results.
Here in Oakland, we know what’s at stake when it comes to education—our children’s futures depend upon it. Too often, however, powerful institutions insert themselves where they aren’t needed, driven by misguided theories and oblivious to their disconnect from the very communities they claim to serve. This time, it’s Northeastern University using the legacy of Mills College to drive debunked methods that undermine students’ civil right to read.
Our country is in crisis: two-thirds of U.S. students aren’t reading at grade level, and illiteracy is as high as 95% in districts where parents lack the resources for private tutoring. We’re fighting a systemic, uphill battle, and there’s no end in sight so long as teacher preparation programs persist in arming new educators with literacy instruction methods that simply don’t work for most children. Northeastern’s 2022 merger with Mills College turned a legacy institution into a vehicle for ongoing community trauma and disenfranchisement, setting generations of children up for failure for years to come. Once a trusted ally in the fight for social justice, Mills is being used to advance practices that go against science. Adding salt to the wound, Northeastern recently unveiled plans to provide scholarships for Oakland students to attend college for free, a move that feels as much like a pacifier as it does a gift.
UW-Madison ranks sixth in the country for research spending, with $1.7 billion in funding for fiscal 2023. Nearly half of that funding came from the federal government, largely from the NIH, National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense.
To meet the demands caused by user growth, we’ve increased our moderation team to roughly 100 moderators and continue to hire more staff. Some moderators specialize in particular policy areas, such as dedicated agents for child safety. Our moderation team is staffed 24/7 and reviews user reports around the clock. This is a tough job, as moderators are consistently exposed to graphic content. At the start of September 2024, we began providing psychological counselling to alleviate the burden of viewing this content.
I haven’t always written the actual prompt, but instead have given you a précis of what I asked. I’ve put explanatory glosses/notes in parentheses and italics. Bear in mind (and this is really important, as per my general remarks below) that most of these prompts were just the start of a dialogue. If we had infinite time I’d include the AI’s responses but suffice to say that for the majority of the prompts listed below the answers or subsequent ‘discussions’ were helpful or illuminating.
OK strap in, this is going to be a really dull ride. Although I hope a weirdly interesting one. Maybe I’ll start a trend – I’d like to see more people doing this.
I launched POTUS Tracker during the Biden administration. Following President Biden’s June 2024 debate performance, which raised concerns about his ability to govern, I recognized the need to provide the public with a clear and reliable tool to monitor presidential actions and travels in real time.
A key goal of POTUS Tracker is to combat misinformation. Delays in reporting and a lack of accessible information leave room for speculation and disinformation to spread. By delivering fast, accurate updates directly tied to official sources, the platform helps ensure people have the facts they need to stay informed and confirm what they see on social media.
If billionaires are unduly influential by virtue of spending lots of money, then by the same metric the influence of bureaucracies or universities is a behemoth tidal wave.
The Pentagon alone spends 4 Elon Musks each year. Billionaire spending is a few drops in the bucket: 🧵
Below is a keyword search over a selection of active federal government grants. Each typed word is treated as an AND condition (i.e., all must match). This search runs in two passes per keyword: (1) exact keyword match, (2) prefix matches (i.e., other keywords that start with that string). For performance reasons, only the first 100 matching rows are displayed.
DPI has yet to fulfill a June 17, 2024, records request from IRG concerning their role in MPS’ late financial reports. Seven months later, it raises the question, what are they hiding?
THE QUOTE:
“The Institute for Reforming Government is calling on the Department of Public Instruction to immediately release IRG’s requested records,” said Jake Curtis, General Counsel and the Director of IRG’s Center of Investigative Oversight.“Continuing to keep the public in the dark surrounding MPS’s financial mismanagement is unacceptable.”
WHY IT MATTERS:
DPI’s correction-plan deadlines are apparently meaningless: MPS recently revealed that it had blown by finance deadlines DPI had reset for them after they failed to meet previous deadlines throughout 2023 and 2024. It is now 2025, and DPI still does not have MPS’ final paperwork. MPS is now scheduled to miss federal 2024 audit deadlines, and this backlog has put 2025 compliance at risk. What has DPI done to hold MPS accountable?
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature on Tuesday asked that a liberal state Supreme Court justice step aside in a pending case that seeks to overturn a 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most state workers.
If Justice Janet Protasiewicz agrees not to hear the case, the court would be deadlocked 3-3 between liberals and conservatives. The lawsuit has massive implications for union rights in the battleground state, the court would be deadlocked 3-3 between liberals and conservatives.
A Dane County Circuit judge last month overturned the bulk of the law, saying it violates equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into “general” and “public safety” employees. Under the ruling, all public sector workers who lost their collective bargaining power would have it restored to what was in place before 2011.
DeepSeek is censored, just differently than OpenAI. When I last used it, OpenAI still had woke, inclusive garbage that laced many responses. From my experience thus far, DeepSeek isn’t as blatant, but it blocks anything potentially negative to China and won’t answer a number of the questions I’ve asked it. Therefore, it only operates at China’s will, and it cannot be trusted. Neither can OpenAI, but still…
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is asking President Donald Trump to delay the implementation of a freeze on federal assistance, arguing Wisconsinites “are rightfully alarmed and concerned by this unprecedented decision” and are left scrambling.
Trump’s order freezing federal grants sent shockwaves through Wisconsin government on Tuesday as officials sought to understand how the move could impact agencies and infrastructure projects across the state.
Evers in a letter sent to Trump on Tuesday seeking more guidance about which programs in the state would be affected and pleaded for a delay.
“According to the memo, beginning at 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 28, the Trump Administration will begin indefinitely withholding federal tax dollars from Wisconsin that were already approved bythe U.S. Congress, leaving billions sitting in Washington, D.C. that help kids, families, and businesses in Wisconsin and across America every day,” Evers wrote. “With very few details and specifics available, virtually no time for ample review and consideration, and no direct communication to date, states are left to plan for the worst, and Wisconsinites and millions of Americans who are rightfully alarmed and concerned by this unprecedented decision are left scrambling.”
For over a week now, Donald Trump and the Justice Department have been flouting the law meant to shut down TikTok. The legislation was unambiguous and was passed by large, bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress; it was affirmed by a unanimous Supreme Court less than two weeks ago. And for the most part, both Republicans and Democrats have sat quietly by as Trump has waved away their previously stated concerns, as well as the constitutional powers and institutional prerogatives of Capitol Hill.
The TikTok ban was supposed to be a critical national security response to the threat posed by the Chinese government and its control over an app with 170 million users in our country. Shortly before the law went into effect, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a speech on the Senate floor that “without question, TikTok’s lethal algorithm has cost the lives of many American kids.” He announced that there would “be no extensions, no concessions and no compromises for TikTok.”
To fully understand just how remarkable today’s exchange with Colombia was, you need to understand how Washington DC has traditionally worked through these sorts of issues, and the different way it works now under Trump
This is a tale of two playgrounds. One is closing soon while the other – brand new – has stood empty for nearly a year, ringed with steel fencing to stop people from using it. Their stories aren’t the most important thing you’ll read today, but they illustrate something much bigger – the collapse and retreat of local government, and the profound effect it will have on our public spaces.
Under the measure, school boards in Wisconsin would be required by next year to adopt policies prohibiting the use of phones, tablets, laptops and gaming devices during instructional time. Districts would determine how schools would store the devices and enforce the rules, Kitchens said.
Students with disabilities would be allowed exemptions. Students would also be able to use phones during emergencies, to manage their health care or for educational purposes with a teacher’s permission.
Browse our publicly available repository of foreign government, U.S. government, and Pentagon contractor funding of the U.S.’s top 50 foreign policy think tanks going back to 2019.
Over a third of the top foreign policy think tanks in the U.S. publicly disclose little or no information about their funders. Yet, most think tanks provide at least some information about how they are funded. The Think Tank Funding Tracker allows users to explore these funding relationships for themselves. Start by searching for a donor or think tank below or use the browse function in the top right corner.
“essentially forced into the position of having to rely on clever theoretical approaches to computer calculations because of their lack of the most advanced computer systems.”
In conjunction with School Choice Week, Dairyland Sentinel provides this chronicle of this history of School Choice in Wisconsin
1990s:
An Idea Becomes Reality
The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) emerged in 1989 as a response to the dissatisfaction of Milwaukee families with traditional public education. Despite facing significant opposition, key figures like Governor Tommy Thompson, State Representative Polly Williams, State Senator Gary George, Susan Mitchell, and Howard Fuller fought for its establishment, leading to the creation of the country’s first voucher program in 1990.
Expanding Choices to Include Religious Schools
The ethos of educational choice is about trusting and empowering parents to select the best educational environment for their children. Initially limited to non-religious private schools, the 1995 amendment to include religious schools sparked debate. However, this expansion was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1998, broadening parental options.
Statewide Public School Choice
Open enrollment in Wisconsin public schools began in 1998 as a bipartisan initiative, offering parents the opportunity to send their children to schools outside their residential district. Since its inception, the program has required each district to publicize the number of available seats for open enrollment students, based on factors like student-teacher ratios and building capacities. Students could apply to up to three different districts, with districts having the discretion to evaluate applicants based on discipline history and truancy. If demand outstripped availability, a random lottery was conducted. The primary application window was established from February to April, with an additional late summer window for students affected by specific circumstances like violence or moving into the state.
