schoolinfosystem.org
Someone asked me yesterday why schools aren’t mainly open in San Francisco (despite 30 cases in city of 896K yesterday (& they test), <10 hospitalizations) or California (hundreds of thousand of tests done, 1400 cases in state of 40 million, lowest case rate in nation). — Monica Gandhi MD, MPH (@MonicaGandhi9) April 27, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will […]
Patrick Marley: Congress is showering Wisconsin and its local governments with $20 billion in help because of the coronavirus pandemic, a report released Friday shows. Since last year, Congress has passed five major spending bills to address COVID-19 and its toll. The two biggest ones cost more than $4 trillion, deepening the federal deficit but […]
George Korda: Being disgorged annually from schools across the Volunteer State and the United States is a virtual army of young people with limited or no education or skills, rendering them incapable of prospering – or economically surviving – in a 21st century economy apart from being supported by taxpayers. Add to that figure the […]
Yascha Mounk: What has the pandemic told us about the state of our political institutions and the state of our economic institutions? Have you changed your mind about what’s working, or what’s not working, in light of the experience we’ve had over the last months? Tyler Cowen: Let’s focus on the United States. Our early response, […]
Tara Bahrampour, Harry Stevens and Adrian Blanco: The birthrate has also dropped, and life expectancy has dipped in the past couple of years — a reversal that has been driven by factors such as drug overdoses, obesity, suicide and liver disease and that sharply accelerated last year during the pandemic. The extent to which the […]
WILL: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) issued a letter, Monday, to Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Superintendent, Dr. Carlton Jenkins, urging the school district to address the racial segregation employed at Madison West High School for Zoom conversations on current events. This is the second occasion in the last year where WILL has warned […]
Noah Smith: A “Sputnik moment” is a historical reference to the launch of the first orbital satellite in October 1957. Though this was a triumph for humankind, it also triggered a panic in the United States, as we realized that the Soviet Union had a level of technical competence we hadn’t yet achieved (and which might be […]
Tracy Beth Hoeg,, Monica Gandhi and Lillian Brown First, classrooms have thankfully been found — in studies examining schools in multiplestates — to be places of limited disease transmission, compared with communities at large. The rate of transmission within schools from individuals who test positive has been estimated to be on the order of 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent (and this includes people […]
John Roach: I worked with Caire when he headed the Urban League of Greater Madison and on his effort to launch Madison Prep, the earnest but quixotic attempt to address Madison’s embarrassing racial achievement gap. The failure to launch that school was a bitter blow. And the gap has remained unchanged. Madison Prep failed because […]
Elizabeth Beyer: The district is still reeling from a significant drop in enrollment due to COVID-19 during the 2020-21 school year and, despite the passage of an operating referendum in November, operating revenue is expected to be up only 0.8%, less than the annual cost of living adjustment. Any additional funding the district may get […]
For the last (and actually only) diversity session I attended before leaving The Intercept, the highly-paid outside consultant emailed everyone before saying employees would be divided by race into different rooms (white room & POC room) and it was shocking. Now it’s standard: https://t.co/0c6YmFMCX0 — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 23, 2021 Top donors, 2019-20:@GeorgeSoros: $490,000Facebook […]
Mark Jeftovic: I’ve been reading Peter Turchin’s “Ages of Discord”, which tries to look at patterns of societal strife that he found in previous, pre-industrial civilizations such as Rome and France, and examine how it holds up in a post-industrial era. It bears some resemblance to other cycle theories like Strauss and Howe’s “Fourth Turning” […]
County: “We don’t have authority over the school board.” School board: “We follow the county’s mandate to avoid confusion.” Experts: “We don’t make policy – we just provide information.” Policy makers: “We’re just following the advice of the experts” It’s all circular. — Jennifer Cabrera 😀 #ForgetYourMask (@jhaskinscabrera) April 20, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County […]
An LA school district, @ccusd, has paused asymptotic surveillance testing due to major problems including all their positives actually being false positives. cc: @TracyBethHoeg @MonicaGandhi9 pic.twitter.com/wklGD4qFwX — Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) April 20, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly […]
Jordan Morales: Switching now to MPS, we see that according to the Department of Public Instruction’s 2018-19 Report Card, 71% of Black or African-American students had a “Below Basic” score in mathematics. Indeed, only 10% of Black students had either a proficient or advanced understanding of mathematics. Meanwhile, only 30% of white students scored “Below […]
Jeremy Tate: Upon learning to read while enslaved, Frederick Douglass began his great journey of emancipation, as such journeys always begin, in the mind. Defying unjust laws, he read in secret, empowered by the wisdom of contemporaries and classics alike to think as a free man. Douglass risked mockery, abuse, beating and even death to […]
Amanda St. Hilaire: For students struggling through the last year of pandemic learning, GPA is not just a number. “Before we got kicked out of school, my grades was top-notch,” said Maleak Taylor, a Milwaukee Public Schools 11th grade student. His eyes were smiling behind his mask as he logged into his virtual classes. “After […]
Phil Magness: Huge discovery this morning showing data malfeasance involving Imperial College and Neil Ferguson. Almost exactly 1 year ago I wrote an article on how a team of researchers at Uppsala University had adapted Ferguson’s UK model to Sweden, and yielded preposterous results – e.g. a prediction of over 90K dead if they did […]
Robert Pondisco: If there’s one lesson education policymakers might have learned in the last twenty-five years, it’s that it’s not hard to make schools and districts do something, but it’s extremely hard to make them do it well. There has always been at least a tacit assumption among policy wonks that schools and teachers are […]
Bari Weiss: I was planning to publish a roundup today of the many thoughtful responses to Paul Rossi’s essay. I’m going to save that post for Sunday, because I was just sent this letter that has my jaw on the floor. It was written by a Brearley parent named Andrew Gutmann. If you don’t know […]
Institute for Reforming Government, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin, Federation for Children School Choice, Wisconsin Action ExcelinEd in Action, Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy Badger Institute, FreedomWorks and Building Education for Students Together: Dear Governor Evers, Speaker Vos, Majority Leader LeMahieu, and State Superintendent Stanford Taylor, […]
Kelly Meyerhofer: State law restricts program eligibility to African American, American Indian, Hispanic and some Southeast Asian students. WILL argues the program criteria amounts to racial discrimination — which is prohibited by the state constitution — because students who are Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, North African, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, or white don’t qualify. “It’s hard to […]
Samantha West, Alec Johnson and Rory Linnane: Tricia Zunker said she knows school board presidents sometimes have a target on their backs. It’s part of the job, she said. But as Zunker led the Wausau School District board over the past year, she said, “People were so cruel, you’d think I personally brought the pandemic […]
David Dahmer: As president, Reyes has been the face and often the spokesperson of the Madison School Board during some very trying and challenging times including the COVID-19 pandemic and the canceling of in-person classes, the hiring of new MMSD superintendent twice (Dr. Matthew Gutierrez rescinded his acceptance of the job before MMSD started over […]
Molly Beck: One of the most influential lawmakers over the state budgeting process said he wouldn’t support increasing funding for the state education agency because its new leader elected Tuesday was heavily backed by Democrats and teachers unions. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, made the statement just an hour after Pecatonica School District Superintendent Jill […]
AFC: Parents and families have been on a rollercoaster when it comes to K-12 education in the time of COVID-19. A new poll from Real Clear Opinion Research finds overall support for school choice is increasing as parents need more options than ever. Major findings: – 71% of voters back school choice. This is the highest level […]
Molly Beck: The $797 million allocated for Milwaukee amounts to $11,242 per student — the second-highest distribution of COVID-19 relief funding. On the lowest end, the McFarland School District in suburban Madison will receive $107 per student, according to an analysis released by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Republicans who control the state’s budget-writing committee […]
Scott Girard: Madison Metropolitan School District high schools plan to move away from “standalone honors” courses for freshmen and sophomores in the next few years, with an Earned Honors system expected to replace them. The goal, MMSD leaders told the School Board Monday, is to bring rigor to all classrooms for all students and give […]
In the last year, I’ve gone from lightly supporting vouchers programs to vociferously supporting the complete, utter, and eternal destruction of public schools. https://t.co/30ffPiZoeK — Hans Fiene (@HansFiene) April 5, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline […]
Kareem Weaver: Where is the humility? Where is the institutional courage to admit mistakes and move forward? Individuals in leadership positions often derive their credibility from being the most knowledgeable person in the room, the unquestioned oracles of knowledge. This moment in education, however, requires leaders who will publicly position themselves as the best learners, […]
There are no hidden complexities that could possibly explain this misalignment of social priorities. #openschools@GavinNewsom pic.twitter.com/GfPCXWEq8b — Jeanne Noble (@JeanneNoble18) April 3, 2021 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which pushed Dane County this week not […]
Jessica Holmberg: Gov. Evers recently signed two bills that increase public school choice in Wisconsin. SB 109 and SB 110 specifically aim to remove barriers to accessing Wisconsin’s largest school choice option, the Open Enrollment Program, by expanding access to virtual schools. The program allows over 65,000 students to access a public school district outside their own without living […]
Transcript [Machine Generated PDF]: Deborah Kerr: [00:43:53] Um, whose turn is it to go first? Okay. That’s fine. Yeah, we’re pretty good at figuring this out. Um, [00:44:00] so that’s one thing we can do. Um, yes, I support the FORT. I fo I support the Praxis test. So you gotta think about something. Why […]
John Bailey: One year after nationwide public school closures, a growing body of medical research and the firsthand experiences of school systems worldwide can provide a sound basis for determining a reopening strategy. This report examines the collective findings of more than 120 studies and considers their implications for current decisions. These studies cover a […]
Mengchen Dong: Status holders across societies often take moral initiatives to navigate group practices toward collective goods; however, little is known about how different societies (e.g., the United States vs. China) evaluate high- (vs. low-) status holders’ transgressions of preached morals. Two preregistered studies (total N = 1,374) examined how status information (occupational rank in […]
Alex Nextel: Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said it’s “premature” to determine if schools can resume in-person instruction this fall, despite a growing body of evidence that shows students can safely return to the classroom. In a Wednesday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, Cardona said the rate of COVID-19 transmission in a community would play […]
Milwaukee Press Club [Machine Translation]: [00:31:11] If we had had the opportunity to, um, put restrictions on what businesses were open and closed as we did earlier in the pandemic. One of the things that is true about Wisconsin, That is not true about nearly all of the 49 other States is that because of […]
Caitlin McFall: But due to a lack of teachers willing to come back before April 14, high needs pupils, including homeless, foster and special needs students, will not be able to get into classrooms ahead of time, the newspaper reported. “At this time, we simply do not have enough staff who opted in for in-person […]
Scott Girard: “Madison was a person that benefited off of the exploitation of Black bodies, and those who embarked in such acts of racism should have no influence in today’s culture,” Berry wrote. “Expecting Black students to attend a school named after a slave owner is anti-Black.” [Glendale Elementary will be renamed for Virginia Henderson] […]
Tom Knighton: Look, I’m not a huge fan of public education. While I agree we need some kind of education, I’m not sure public education is the way to address it. There’s no accountability for bad systems and no options for those displeased with their schools. Yet the law requires some degree of education for […]
Scott Girard: [I have received 3 text messages and a door knock from a paid lit drop person, for one of the candidates. Guess?] 13-1 Special interest $pending for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Jill Underly, running against Deborah Kerr. In that same forum, Kerr outlined a plan to decentralize the Department of Public Instruction by […]
Laura Meckler: The first federal data on education during the pandemic finds nearly half of public schools were open for full-time, face-to-face classes, with White children far more likely than Black, Hispanic or Asian American students to be attending in person. The data suggests the nation is both close to a goal set by President […]
Matt Smith: Milwaukee Public School teachers would return to the classroom next week ahead of a phased-in return of students learning in April under a plan that will go before the school board Tuesday evening. The plan calls for in-person instruction four days a week, with Wednesdays set aside for cleaning when students would remain […]
Commentary on Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district current governance practices, in light of long term, disastrous reading results. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage […]
Joanne Jacobs: Homeschooling has more than tripled since schools closed a year ago, reports the Census Bureau. About 3.3 percent of U.S. families with school-aged children were homeschooling pre-pandemic. That rose to 5.4 percent in the first week of April. By the first week of October, 11.1 percent were homeschooling. For Black families, the change was […]
Maciver News: Everything you thought you knew about education is being redefined as racist in Madison Schools. During this workshop last week, Madison schools teamed up with UW-Madison to root out anything they consider to be “white, western thought” and talk about how they’re replacing it. 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School […]
Matt Piper Madeline Heim: Even though the state budgeted $75 million to trace the virus’ path, its health department chose from the earliest days of the pandemic to reveal little about outbreak locations. Then, during last fall’s surge, the state’s most powerful business and manufacturing group sued to make doubly sure nobody but the state could access those […]
Douglas Newby: I have left for last this tax advantage, which is the most obvious economic reason Fortune 50 companies and individual families are moving from Los Angeles to Dallas. A fourth generation Angelenos family who belongs to the most prestigious Los Angeles beach club, have their children in the finest preparatory schools, and live […]
Mike Antonucci: A majority of only one group was able to cite some positive benefits. “Those who work at a school or college are far more likely than other government employees to report positive benefits from the pandemic,” Rasmussen reports. “By a 60% to 36% margin, those who work in education report positive benefits.” Related: Catholic schools will […]
Pew Research: Most young people are at little risk of dying from the coronavirus. But a new Pew Research survey shows that they are disproportionately bearing the consequences of heavy-handed pandemic lockdowns and isolating government restrictions. Pew finds that an astounding 32 percent of young adults aged 18 to 29 report experiencing high levels of […]
Scott Girard: The Madison School Board is expected to vote Monday on a controversial proposal that would minimize the importance of seniority in layoff and reassignment decisions. Madison Metropolitan School District administrators have pushed for the change, which would prioritize culturally responsive practices and student learning outcomes instead of the experience-based system in place now. They see it […]
Joanne Ingram, Christopher J. Hand and Greg Maciejewski: Studies examining the effect of social isolation on cognitive function typically involve older adults and/or specialist groups (e.g., expeditions). We considered the effects of COVID‐19‐induced social isolation on cognitive function within a representative sample of the general population. We additionally considered how participants ‘shielding’ due to underlying […]
Benjamin Lesser, MB Pell and Kristina Cooke: A few weeks after San Francisco’s school district moved to remote learning last year in hopes of halting the spread of the coronavirus, Kate Sullivan Morgan noticed her 11-year-old son was barely eating. He would spend days in bed staring at the ceiling. The mother formed a pod […]
Chris Rickert: Fourteen districts eventually responded with at least some of the data. The county’s two largest and most racially and socioeconomically diverse, Madison and Sun Prairie, required the newspaper to file public records requests for the data. To date, they remain unfilled. In Madison, students could be marked present simply by exchanging messages with […]
Edward Peter Stringham: One year ago, between March 13 and 16, 2020, began what most of us would agree were the most difficult days of our lives. We thought our rights and liberties were more or less secure or could only be hobbled on the margin. We took certain things for granted, such as that […]
Daniel Bice: No one has been a bigger promoter of public schools during the race for state school superintendent than Jill Underly. That was, no doubt, a large part of the reason that Underly, the Pecatonica school superintendent, has won the endorsement of state and local teachers unions. But back when it was her decision to […]
Bill Osmulski: The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) is planning to make sweeping changes to how it handles teacher layoffs, and wokeness could become the biggest factor in who stays and who goes. All teachers would be scored in five weighted categories, according to the school board’s current draft proposal. Most of the weight would […]
Jonathan Chait: It is entirely possible that when we look back at the coronavirus pandemic decades from now, we may see the gravest catastrophe as a generation of schoolchildren whose formative years were irrevocably stunted. Even if the year and counting of public-school rollback has not done as much damage as the death toll itself, […]
Kirabo Jackson & Claire Mackevicius: We use estimates across all known “credibly causal” studies to examine the distributions of the causal effects of public K12 school spending on test scores and educational attainment in the United States. Under reasonable assumptions, for each of the 31 included studies, we compute the same parameter estimate. Method of […]
Philippe Lemoine: • A year ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit most of the world, there was arguably a good case for lockdowns. The initial growth of the epidemic implied a high basic reproduction number, which in turn meant that unless transmission was reduced the virus would quickly sweep through most of the population because […]
Scott Girard: The Report: WPF highlights five areas for policymakers to consider: • Elevate teacher diversity as a top education priority • Target state investments to support both individuals and institutions • Provide flexibility and rigor in teacher preparation and evaluation • Require districts and teacher training programs to demonstrate greater transparency and accountability for […]
Caitlin Flanagan: The Dalton parent is not supposed to be on the wrong side of a savage inequality. She is supposed to care about savage inequalities; she is supposed to murmur sympathetically about savage inequalities while scanning the news, her gentle concern muffled by the jet-engine roar of her morning blowout. But she isn’t supposed […]
Samantha West: In one Wisconsin school district, two in five high school students failed a class during first semester. In another, the fall failure rate was four times what it had been in recent years. Almost all of the 60 school districts responding to a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin survey reported that more high school students failed […]
University of Michigan: For teens, pandemic restrictions may have meant months of virtual school, less time with friends and canceling activities like sports, band concerts and prom. And for young people who rely heavily on social connections for emotional support, these adjustments may have taken a heavy toll on mental health, a new national poll […]
John Hilliard: After a year turned upside down by COVID-19, some Massachusetts school districts are looking ahead to summer and how they can use the traditional time off as a chance to expand educational opportunities interrupted during the pandemic. School officials in Framingham, Chelsea, and Fall River said they hope to offer families and staff […]
WISN-TV: One year after the pandemic started, students in Milwaukee still haven’t returned to classrooms, and a teachers’ union leader is signaling that educators may need to see additional safety measures, beyond vaccinations, in order for them to return. Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, is holding classes virtually. The district has a […]
Wispolitics: State superintendent candidate Deb Kerr called for all K-12 schools to reopen for in-person instruction, claiming “the science is clear” such a move is kids’ best interest. Meanwhile, Kerr’s opponent Jill Underly slammed her for lying about the science behind reopening schools. At a Saturday news conference on the Capitol steps, Kerr warned the […]
Andrew Reed: In a world seemingly beset by problems, Steven Pinker has made a career out of focusing on the positive. For the past decade, the Harvard professor turned celebrity intellectual has been spreading the good news about human progress. Pinker has written two bestsellers on the subject and won the praise of thinkers and […]
Jeffrey Carter: Most of the time when I read or listen, it’s highly educated people positing theories and desiring more centralized decision making. They usually aren’t threatened by technology. Sure, universal basic income is a great idea but I don’t need it and it will cost me little to implement it. Most of these arguments […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Unity School District in northwestern Wisconsin made the decision to remain open and continue with extracurricular activities at the beginning of the year in concert with a number of other districts in rural Polk County. “Certainly, things look different,” Robinson said. “There’s been a lot of streaming events because we have to limit […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Mark Wirtz, a third-grade teacher at Hawthorne Elementary, said he was a bit frightened to return to the classroom. “I’m really concerned about fellow staff members, really glad we are getting vaccinated, but I’m concerned about how my fellow staff members are feeling,” he said before being whisked away for his injection. “I […]
Alan Borsuk: This means her children have been learning virtually for a year now while she has been teaching in person. As a generalization, most suburban schools have been open for in-person education, in some cases for the whole school year, in some cases since around mid-year. Also as a generalization – and almost no one disputes this – in-person […]
Dylan Brogan: District officials are refusing to release a 2020 report detailing an investigation into a former Madison East High School educator. David Kruchten allegedly placed hidden cameras in the hotel bathrooms of students he was chaperoning on school trips. Students found these cameras concealed in smoke detectors, alarm clocks and air fresheners while at […]
Freedom House: The impact of the long-term democratic decline has become increasingly global in nature, broad enough to be felt by those living under the cruelest dictatorships, as well as by citizens of long-standing democracies. Nearly 75 percent of the world’s population lived in a country that faced deterioration last year. The ongoing decline has […]
Doree Lowak: “But, unfortunately, teachers who opted [to work remotely] still aren’t coming in, so kids go in to learn on Zoom while wearing a mask,” she said, referring to the teachers who received permission in September to be remote for the whole year. “They could have a math teacher ‘watching’ the class while the […]
John Bailey: One year after nationwide public school closures, a growing body of medical research and the firsthand experiences of school systems worldwide can provide a sound basis for determining a reopening strategy. This report examines the collective findings of more than 120 studies and considers their implications for current decisions. These studies cover a […]
James Freeman: At the same time, shutdowns necessitated massive government spending of borrowed money to offset the loss of normal economic activity. So U.S. children were handed a massive additional debt burden at the same time their ability to generate future income was reduced. In the last year the United States has added more than […]
CJ Szafir: Billions in savings for taxpayers: Since 2011, Act 10 has saved taxpayers over $13 billion, according to the MacIver Institute. The sky didn’t fall on public education. A study from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which I co-authored, showed that Act 10 had little or no impact on student-teacher ratios, the number of licensed teachers, […]
Rory Linnane: Deborah Kerr, one of two candidates competing to lead the state Department of Public Instruction, said she would move or rehire most of the agency’s over 400 employees away from Madison and into offices around the state. “Under DPI’s current model, agency staff are plucked from the Madison area, and that’s not inclusive […]
Nick Triggle: The impact of NHS Test and Trace is still unclear – despite the UK government setting aside £37bn for it over two years, MPs are warning. The Public Accounts Committee said it was set up on the basis it would help prevent future lockdowns – but since its creation there had been two […]
Stacey Lennox: Congrats to Stanford Law and Policy Lab. They have identified the problem but are pursuing an epic failure with their solution. It seems the top-tier school has finally figured out that tying children to failing schools by their zip codes systematically oppresses black and brown children. President Trump knew that when he called school […]
Kyle Koenen & Libby Sobic: The state has already received $2.0 billion in stimulus funding under the federal CARES Act and is expected to receive billions more in the latest round of stimulus. While the Department of Administration has developed a dashboard displaying CARES Act funding allocations, this tool fails to keep the public adequately […]
Felicia Gans: In the latest push to get Massachusetts students back into classrooms full time this year, state education officials announced Tuesday that middle schools will be required to reopen full time on April 28. The forced return to in-person classes comes just days after state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley was given the authority to […]
Alec Macgillis: In many parts of the country, particularly cities and towns dominated by Democrats, concerns about virus spread by children has resulted in all sorts of measures: closures of playgrounds, requirements that kids older than 2 wear masks outdoors, rigid restrictions on campus life at colleges that reopened. “We should be more careful with kids,” wrote […]
Libby Sobic: WILL is hosting a conversation with three Wisconsin private school leaders about educating their students through the pandemic over the last year. On March 18, 2020, Wisconsin K12 schools were forced to close their doors and switch to virtual learning. Over the next 12 months, school leaders worked to navigate local and state […]
Scott Girard: A slate of controversial proposed changes to teacher layoff rules in the Madison Metropolitan School District was back in front of the School Board Monday night. District administration has proposed making seniority just 10% of the decision of who to lay off, a significant change from the current system that relies entirely on seniority. The […]
Mark Seidenberg: Reading researcher and author Dr. Mark Seidenbergtalks with people working to improve literacy outcomes in the US and other countries. Teachers, school system administrators, activists, parents—and readers!—confront the hard questions about how to address low literacy outcomes, especially among children with other risk factors, such as poverty and development conditions such as dyslexia. Dr. Molly […]
Parag Khanna: Did we realize in the 1990s that it would be us who turned to shit? Here’s what neither political scientists nor geopolitical scholars sufficiently gamed out as it was happening: The wicked brew of trade globalization and outsourced manufacturing, industrial policy fueled technological innovation, and rent-seeking financial capitalism–and how those forces not only […]
R. F. Savaris, G. Pumi, […]R. Kunst: A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second wave of cases in Europe, in regions that were considered as COVID-19 controlled, may raise some concerns. Our objective was to assess the association between staying […]
Shannon Whitworth: Let us not forget that prior to the pandemic panic, Wisconsin already had the largest achievement gapbetween white and Black children in the nation. This gap will only get worse as schools across the state continue with in-person instruction while MPS students struggle to connect virtually, and in many ways educate themselves. Inner-city students […]
Chris Rickert and Logan Wroge: “I didn’t know we were so behind in this pandemic as a nation,” she said. “I never thought we were going to be here a year into this.” For some schools outside of Madison, it hasn’t been anywhere near a year. Many private and religious schools reopened to full-time, in-person […]
Lucy Kellaway: Next week it will all be over. Nine million children in England will put on their uniforms, which most of them have not worn since December, and head back to school. Nine million mothers or fathers will heave a sigh of relief at no longer having their Zoom calls interrupted by having to […]
James Vaznis and Felicia Gans: The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted on Friday to give Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley the power to force districts to bring students back to the classrooms full-time, a move that aims to put student learning and wellbeing back on track after a year of epic disruptions. The […]
Chris Papst: IA shocking discovery out of a Baltimore City high school, where Project Baltimore has found hundreds of students are failing. It’s a school where a student who passed three classes in four years, ranks near the top half of his class with a 0.13 grade point average. Tiffany France thought her son would […]
Arnstein Aassve, Guido Alfani, Francesco Gandolfi, Marco Le Moglio, Guido Alfani and Marco Le Moglie: Recent studies argue that major crises can have long‐lasting effects on individual behavior. While most studies focused on natural disasters, we explore the consequences of the global pandemic caused by a lethal influenza virus in 1918-19: the so‐called “Spanish Flu.” […]
Natasha Singer and Kellen Browning: Before the University of Idaho welcomed students back to campus last fall, it made a big bet on new virus-screening technology. The university spent $90,000 installing temperature-scanning stations, which look like airport metal detectors, in front of its dining and athletic facilities in Moscow, Idaho. When the system clocks a […]
Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine: The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the country into an economic recession and an unprecedented restructuring of our work and social lives. Early on, some likened the public health crisis to a blizzard, imagining that people would stay home, cozy up with their romantic partners and make babies. These […]
Mitchell Schmidt: Officials with the World Dairy Expo, the largest convention and exposition in Dane County, are exploring venue options outside the Madison area for this year’s event, due to local COVID-19 restrictions. Currently, Dane County, which has been home to the event for more than 50 years, remains the planned host for the expo. […]
Charles Lipson: This week, Matt Meyer did what many parents long to do. He dropped off his kid at school. That’s unusual in Berkeley, California, where he lives, because the schools there have been closed for a year, and the teachers’ union adamantly opposes their reopening. Parents like Mr. Meyer who can afford private schools, […]
Empower Wisconsin: An email from MTI faculty representatives urged teachers to report to the district before 8 a.m. last Thursday that they had COVID-19 symptoms. “I’m sure we all feel exhausted, or have consistent headaches, not really feeling our usual energetic selves. Are you picking up what I’m putting down here?” the email states. “We need them […]