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Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

The tyrany of low expectations: Massachusetts’ Teachers Union Ballot initiative to eliminate high school graduation requirement

James Vaznis:

The ballot initiative would allow students to graduate “by satisfactorily completing coursework that has been certified by the student’s district as showing mastery of the skills, competencies, and knowledge contained in the state academic standards and curriculum frameworks in the areas measured by the MCAS high school tests.”

A small group of union activists, parents, and high school graduates filed a ballot initiative Wednesday, with the backing of the state’s largest teachers union, that would end a state provision requiring students to pass the MCAS tests to graduate, setting up a potentially costly election fight.

Currently, high school students must pass Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams in English, math, and science to graduate. More than 700 high school students a year typically don’t receive a diploma because they didn’t meet that requirement, according to state data. Instead, they received “certificates of attainment,” which are given to students who only satisfied local graduation requirements. However, many educators say a number of students who don’t pass MCAS ultimately drop out.

The ballot question is the MTA’s latest effort to end the graduation requirement. Earlier this year, the MTA and other unions had legislation introduced on Beacon Hill that would end the graduation requirement.

Groups, such as the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, have been aggressively fighting the unions’ efforts.

“MCAS is a crucial instrument for measuring students’ vital signs to make sure they’re getting the education they deserve and that they need to be successful after high school,” the business alliance said in a statement.

Notes and links on MTEL.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004–

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

$pending more amidst declining enrollment (no mention of spending growth over the years, now > $25k/student

Scott Girard

But the board also took a big leap of faith, one that will likely require the help of the Madison community, once again, with another operating referendum in fall 2024. It could be the third straight presidential election in which the Madison Metropolitan School District asks voters for more spending authority above state limits, funded by local property tax increases.

The 2023-24 operating deficit is $15 million, but that includes some ongoing costs covered by one-time COVID-19 relief funding that expires at the end of the year. Without that money, there’s a $27 million hole to dig out from to build the 2024-25 budget.

The alternatives to a referendum aren’t pretty. During a budget discussion Monday night at the board’s Operations Work Group meeting, outgoing Chief Financial Officer Ross MacPherson estimated that to balance the budget a year from now would require cutting more than 300 positions.

“It’s going to be north of 300 positions if we only go that way,” he said. “Otherwise we really have to look at cost reductions around entire programming or, heaven forbid, we look at our schools if we need to restructure somehow.”

Madison’s taxpayer supported budget information.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Ingrid Forsler and Carina Guyard

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

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

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

Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis

Harold Robertson:

The core issue is that changing political mores have established the systematic promotion of the unqualified and sidelining of the competent. This has continually weakened our society’s ability to manage modern systems. At its inception, it represented a break from the trend of the 1920s to the 1960s, when the direct meritocratic evaluation of competence became the norm across vast swaths of American society.

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.

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

Interesting “Wisconsin Watch” choice school coverage and a very recent public school article

Housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Journalism School (along with Marquette University), the formation, affiliation(s) and funding sources of Wisconsin Watch have generated some controversy. Jim Piwowarczyk noted in November, 2022:

“Wisconsin Watch, a 501(c)(3) organization that disseminates news stories to many prominent media outlets statewide and is housed at the taxpayer-funded UW-Madison campus, has taken more than $1 million from an organization founded by George Soros over the years. Wisconsin Right Now discovered that the group is still prominently pushing out stories by a writer, Howard Hardee, who was dispatched to Wisconsin by a Soros-funded organization to work on “election integrity” stories and projects.” When major media outlets like WTM-TV and the Wisconsin State Journal run stories by Wisconsin Watch or Hardee, they fail to advise readers that he’s a fellow with a Soros-linked group. The group says that “hundreds” of news organizations have shared its stories over the years, giving them wide reach.

The Soros family also boasts significant influence over American media. An analysis from the Media Research Center found numerous media outlets employ journalists who also serve on boards of organizations that receive large amounts of funding from Soros.

More recently, and amidst Wisconsin’s biennial budget deliberations including many billions ($11.97B in 2019! [xlsx] excluding federal and other sources) for traditional government K-12 school districts, Wisconsin Watch writer Phoebe Petrovic posted a number of articles targeting choice (0.797%!! of $11.97B) schools:

May 5, 2023: Considering a Wisconsin voucher school? Here’s what parents of children who are LGBTQ+ or have a disability should know. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 5, 2023: False choice: Wisconsin taxpayers support schools that can discriminate. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 20, 2023: Federal, state law permit disability discrimination in Wisconsin voucher schools. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

## May 22, 2023 via a St Marcus Milwaukee sermon [transcript]- a church family whose incredible student efforts are worth a very deep dive. Compare this to Madison, where we’ve tolerated disastrous reading results for decades despite spending > $25k+/student!

## May 23, 2023: Curious (false claims) reporting on legacy k-12 schools, charter/voucher models and special education via Wisconsin coalition for education freedom. (Focus on 99% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 31, 2023: ‘Unwanted and unwelcome’: Anti-LGBTQ+ policies common at Wisconsin voucher schools. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 31, 2023: Wisconsin students with disabilities often denied public school options via another Wisconsin Watch writer: Mario Koran. (Focus on 99% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

WI’s open enrollment program is one of the best in the country, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t limitations. When anti-#SchoolChoice folks use @WisconsinWatch articles to attack, they should also remember the same things happen in public schools. https://t.co/EwPIiwm7CU

— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 1, 2023

The free market roots of #SchoolChoice are often overlooked in today’s political debates. It’s important to remember that the goal of school choice isn’t the elimination of public schools, but rather the lifting of all ships by providing competition to the public school monopoly. https://t.co/t49It5boHq

— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 1, 2023

Related: Governor Evers’ most recent budget proposals have attempted to kill One City Schools’ charter authorization…… and 2010: WEAC $1.57M !! for four state senators.

June 2, 2023 Wisconsin Watch’s Embarrassing Campaign against Vouchers and Christian Schools

Oops:

“Wisconsin Watch isn’t nonpartisan in a way that a layman would understand the term. Rather, it’s nonpartisan because there isn’t a party far enough to the left to earn its support.” @LutherAbel1 dismantles Petrovic’s reporting.https://t.co/2U1miyLSv7

— Patrick McIlheran (@PaddyMacMke) June 2, 2023

In examining who Wisconsin excludes from school choice, we’ve seen how private voucher schools discriminate against LGBTQ+ students and those w/ disabilities.

Here, @MarioKoran examines how public schools reject kids w/ disabilities from open enrollment https://t.co/gsNYBO6ocX

— Jim Malewitz (@Jmalewitz) June 1, 2023

Yeah, @WisconsinWatch has long leaned left and can easily be similarly accused of avoiding introspection. Lol https://t.co/GBseKikRh6

— Chris Rickert (@RickertWisSJ) June 3, 2023

Their literal next piece (by a different reporter, true) was on inadequate special needs funding, so it’s suspicious to overlook that when critical of voucher schools and special needs.

The sexuality piece was bad journalism with unfounded logical leaps.https://t.co/A8WQgg2bdP

— Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) June 3, 2023

Why might civics minded have an interest in funding sources (such as Wisconsin Watch, WILL, ActBlue and so on)?

Two examples:

Billionaire George Soros is taking a stake in the Bernalillo County district attorney’s race, backing Raul Torrez with a $107,000 contribution to an independent expenditure committee.

George Soros, a multibillionaire who has only the most tenuous connection to Colorado, is paying for negative ads against incumbent District Attorney Pete Weir, a Republican, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the effort.

United Nations, Harvard, And Facebook-Google Launch Push For Censorship Worldwide

Michael Shellenberger

The United Nations is training people worldwide to demand censorship by social media platforms of their fellow citizens for “potentially harmful content.” At least one U.S.-government funded group, The Atlantic Council, is involved.

Our discovery of this shocking news comes on the same day that Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center announced its hiring of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden to oversee its advocacy of censorship at a global level.

Arden and her allies have used the 2019 Christchurch mosque killing of 51 people to demand greater censorship by social media platforms of disfavored speech.

“Ardern is known globally as a dedicated and effective leader in pursuing greater online platform accountability and content moderation standards through the Christchurch Call,” wrote Harvard, “a community of over 120 governments, online service providers, and civil society organizations…” (emphasis added).

Back at the U.N., its program is called “Social Media 4 Peace.” It is a pilot program for pro-censorship activists based in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Colombia, Indonesia, and Kenya. It is sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

It held its first online meetings for censorship workers in Kenya and Colombia this week and last.

The U.N. effort emphasizes research and “monitoring.” But, as in the U.S., the explicit goal is to pressure social media platforms to censor disfavored voices.

And the U.N. censors are going further than U.S. censors did. Some even demand censorship of “negative comments about public figures’ appearances.” Others require the power to censor “slang” that social media platforms might miss.

The Censorship Industrial Complex wants to censor “problematic content” on WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and other encrypted text messaging apps

Michael Shellenberger

Ever since journalist Matt Taibbi and I testified before Congress on April 10, critics of the Twitter Files have claimed that we were making a big deal about nothing. We were being paranoid, they said, to imagine that the U.S. government was involved in spying on ordinary Americans and demanding censorship. The various groups involved in what we called the Censorship Industrial Complex were merely “flagging” problematic posts for social media companies, said our critics. The platforms were by no means required to act on it.

Yet act on it, they did. As I noted in our video about CIA Fellow Renee DiResta, who oversaw the Censorship Industrial Complex’s effort to censor disfavored speech and disfavored users in 2020 and 2021, the social media companies responded to 75% of flagged posts and acted on one-third of them.

And now, new information has come to light that the censorship activists are trying to spy on and censor even supposedly encrypted text messages through apps like What’s App, Signal, and Telegram.

“There is currently no easy way to discover potentially problematic content on WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted platforms at scale,” lamented censorship advocates in a January 2022 Omidyar Foundation report. “One potential solution is to make use of misinformation ‘tiplines’ to identify potentially misleading or otherwise problematic content… On WhatsApp, a tipline would be a phone number to which WhatsApp users can forward potential misinformation they see to have it fact-checked.”

Screen time and the young brain – a contemporary moral panic?

In recent years, excessive screen time has been widely discussed not least in relation to children and young people. Parents are advised to limit the amount of time their kids spend using digital devices, such as smartphones, tablets or computers, and there is a wide selection of apps that parents can use to monitor and manage their children’s screen time. The arguments against spending too much time in front of different screens include fear of addiction, depression and other medical conditions, but also an increasing focus on how excessive screen time and constant connection affect social and cognitive abilities. Compulsory engagement with online technologies is assumed to make individuals absent- minded, easily distracted and indifferent to whatever goes around in the physical environment (Blum- Ross & Livingstone 2016; Kardefelt-Winther 2017). The latter debate emanates from the assumption that people, especially children and adolescents, are unable to control their impulsive behavior in relation to digital media. This inability among young people to resist their smartphones, although it might have negative outcomes, has sometimes been referred to as a contemporary moral panic in the media debate (c.f. Malik 2019; Orben, Etchells & Przybylski 2018; Therrien 2018).

Moral panics often occur when a new media technology is introduced and the users of these new media show disapproved forms of behavior, such as passivity or aggression. Historically there have been panic campaigns over a wide range of so-called low culture; comic books, rock ‘n’ roll, video nasties, et cetera, that is believed to degenerate in particular the younger generation due to violent or vulgar content (Buckingham & Strandgaard Jensen 2012; Carlsson 2010; Drotner 1999; Critcher 2008). Increasingly, though, the concerns in relation to new media technologies focus specifically on the use of the media rather than with any particular content. As Alicia Blum-Ross and Sonia Livingstone (2016; 2018) has shown, the term “screen time” indicates a homogenization of media activities that does not take different practices or modes of engagement into account, but only considers the amount of time spent online (see also Kardefelt-Winther 2017: 14). Indeed, the evidence cited in reports about screen time is dominated by short-time, quantitative studies that do not consider the broader life contexts of children. Additionally, in line with previous moral panics, they tend to focus on risks rather than on the opportunities of new media practices (Blum-Ross & Livingstone 2016: 13; Kardefelt-Winther 2017: 10). Other more qualitative inclined studies on children and media use have responded to this imbalance by highlighting the particularities of different media forms and uses as well as how parents react differently to advices on screen time depending on socio-economic and cultural factors (e.g. Blum-Ross & Livingstone 2016; 2018; boyd & Hargittai 2013; Clark 2012; Lee 2013; Livingstone, et al 2015; Livingstone & Byrne 2018). In this chapter, we wish to contribute to this body of research by questioning the dominant perspective on the impacts of excessive screen time on young people.

2023 Madison School Board candidates

If you’re still thinking about who to vote for in the Madison School Board election, @ssfp_news had me, @oherken and @telldylan join its students to ask the candidates some questions in a forum last Thursday evening. Watch it here: https://t.co/jgbiL3X989

— Scott Girard (@sgirard9) March 27, 2023

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Civics: Dutch political shakeup

John Lee Shaw

In last week’s provincial elections in the Netherlands, an insurgent party, the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), took the largest vote share in all 12 Dutch provinces.

This is a remarkable win for the farmers’ party. The BBB (BoerBurgerBeweging) was only founded in 2019. It was born out of sympathy for the widespread Dutch farmers’ protests against the government, a populist movement which is still going strong today. The party is focussed on issues related to agriculture and the countryside. Among its proposals are a ministry for the countryside and allowing farmers to have more say in matters of agricultural policy. It also hopes to reduce the power of the European Union in the Netherlands, saying that while the Netherlands should remain a member state, the EU should aim to be merely a trading bloc, not a federal superstate (if only).

This unlikely victory means much more than just local seats. The provincial councils determine the makeup of the Dutch senate, its Eerste Kamer (first chamber). The Eerste Kamer functions much like Westminster’s House of Lords. It scrutinises the governing lower house (the Tweede Kamer) and has the power to reject proposed legislation.

In May, the new crop of provincial leaders will elect the Eerste Kamer, with the BBB projected to gain 17 seats, the largest of any party. This has the potential to massively shake up Dutch politics – particularly so given the scale of the losses endured last week by the current ruling coalition, comprised of prime minister Mark Rutte’s VVD party, the centrist D66 party, and the Christian-democratic CDA and ChristenUnie parties. After a weak performance in the provincial elections, the coalition parties are projected to end up with just 24 senate seats in May, down from their current total of 32.

Madison school board forum tonight

The candidates on hand will include the two running for Seat 6 — former school district educator Blair Feltham and former Madison City Council candidate Badri Lankella — as well as Seat 7 incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen, who is running unopposed. The current representative for Seat 6, Christina Gomez Schmidt, is not running for reelection.

The general election will take place on April 4.

The forum is free and will run 7-8 p.m. in the auditorium at East High, 2222 E. Washington Ave. We also plan to livestream the discussion on captimes.com.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

K-12 tax & spending climate: Madison Projections show that “annual deficits could reach between $20 million and $30 million.”

Dean Mosiman:

Reyes, who said she’d seek five recommendations from Finance Department staff to address coming shortfalls, sees a different landscape. “I feel right now we are on the Titanic and we’re about to hit the iceberg,” she said. “We need a strong leader who’s going to be able to make some tough decisions.”

How’d we get here?

The candidates in the April 4 election disagree on why the city faces future budget deficits.

Reyes contends Rhodes-Conway has “mismanaged” city finances largely though the use of borrowing and one-time funds for operations. Asked for specifics, Reyes said the mayor is using federal funds to build the coming bus rapid transit (BRT) system but will not have the money to operate it.

“I think significantly what’s going to put us in this budget deficit is the bus rapid transit system,” she said.

Rhodes-Conway said Reyes doesn’t seem to have a grasp of how BRT and a coming Metro Transit redesign will work, contending that BRT — the backbone of the bus system — is replacing current service on main east-to-west and north-to-south routes and won’t add operating costs.

Madison taxpayers have long supported substantially higher per student spending than most K-12 school districts.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

restorative-justice-op-ed-1 Download

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Curious Legacy Media school “letter to the editor” policy

David Blaska:

Blaska’s Bottom Line asks a bunch of questions: The Wisconsin State Journal refuses to publish Blaska’s letter asking Madison school officials whether, after eight years, is Restorative Justice working?Especially considering we have another school board election on the April 4 ballot. Editorial page editor Scott Milfred complained: “It was long …” [It was 245 words — exact number as a letter fit to publish Sunday 01-29-23: “Our public schools deserve support.”] “and asked a bunch of questions, which was awkward for a letter to the editor.” Blaska responded that those are questions the newspaper should be asking and the school district won’t. Here is that letter.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“One of the best resources we have when it comes to making sense of these races – and those are oftentimes college kids”

Tate LaFrenier:

In a Zoom interview with The Michigan Daily, Galen Metzger, University of Denver student and prominent ET user, described ET as a community “where a whole bunch of nerdy 20-somethings routinely have the most accurate information and predictions about elections as a group.”

It’s difficult to dispute this. Twitter user @umichvoter (who, in a Zoom interview with The Michigan Daily, requested anonymity after being doxxed before) is a University of Michigan Class of 2021 graduate — yet in late August, they correctly predicted the makeup of the Senate and the margins in the House within a few seats, back when many outlets were handing control of Congress to the GOP.

And they’re just one example. Similar accounts have been cited by networks like TIME, AP, MSNBC and more, and have been recognized for their work by prominent figures such as Rachel Maddow.

Despite this, ET hasn’t been widely written about outside of its own sphere. The community has existed in some capacity since the early days of Twitter, but many active users seem to have gotten their start sometime between 2018 and 2020. Considering Gen Z’s increased voter engagement since 2018, this makes sense.

James Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, said in a Zoom interview with The Michigan Daily that Twitter was one of his main sources of election news.

“One of the best resources we have when it comes to making sense of these races,” Coleman said, “is people on (Election) Twitter … and these are oftentimes college kids.”

Deja Vu: Advocating the Elimination of Honors Classes in the Taxpayer Supported Madison School District

West math teacher Sigrid Murphy said that even more recently, in the 2020-21 school year, “30% of the students in geometry at West identified as white while 72% of the students in geometry honors identified as white.” The school’s overall enrollment that year was about 52% white students.

“Within the (West) math department, all of us are completely, 100% behind the district’s plan,” Murphy said.

Those opposed suggest eliminating the classes isn’t the solution — instead, preparing students earlier on in their school careers so they feel ready to take on a challenge is key. Lately, some have also pointed to low reading scores on standardized tests to show that the district may not be doing that.

Laurie Frost, who is part of a group of Madison residents that has pushed the district on literacy in recent years, wrote in an email to the School Board and district administration on honors last month that she is “as concerned about the race-based disparities in enrollment in our honors classes as you are,” but that she has “a different way of understanding why the disparities exist.

“Put simply, the race-based disparity in honors class enrollment is due to the fact that we are not preparing our students of color for honors classes in their pre-high school years,” Frost wrote.

Board president Ali Muldrow suggested the district needs to focus on what outcome it wants, “striving for greater inclusion for all at the most rigorous levels of opportunity for our district.” She, like Frost, pointed out that preparing students for success in advanced high school coursework needs to begin early.

“One of my problems with how we’ve had this conversation over and over again is that we create the achievement gap in elementary school and then we pretend to resolve it in high school,” Muldrow said. “I’m really curious how what we’re doing in elementary school and middle school is going to align with this approach in high school, or if we’re just going to kind of create classrooms where some kids are more successful in a variety of ways than others.”

Associate superintendent of teaching and learning Cindy Green said the district is working on early literacy, full-day 4K and access to the arts, among other initiatives, to do just that.

Another concern from some opponents to the plan has been whether or not classes will be rigorous enough. La Follette High School senior and student representative to the School Board Yoanna Hoskins said she completed earned honors for a history course, and it only required one additional piece of work from the rest of the class.

“It wasn’t hard or anything like that,” Hoskins said.

The plan’s timeline includes updating course catalogs and course selection cards in November 2022, a step Green said they have already taken.

Round and round we go: Once size fits all English 10 in the mid 2000’s.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Teacher union$ and $chool Board Governance: Californian edition

Mine Antonucci:

The California Teachers Association spent heavily on school board races in the state, distributing $1.8 million to 125 local affiliates, which were required by union policy to add almost $1 million more to the total.

That investment seems to have mostly paid off. California election results take weeks to finalize, but union-backed candidates are leading in 35 of the 52 races in which the state union spent the most money.

The biggest winner was Rocio Rivas, running for a seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District board. The union contributed more than $330,000 on her behalf.

The union supported Shana Hazan and Cody Petterson with $145,000, and they won seats on the San Diego Unified board.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“So Now What? The Path Ahead for Education in Wisconsin and the Nation.” November 17, 2022 Event

Marquette Law School:

Please join us on Thursday, November 17, for a program, “So Now What? The Path Ahead for Education in Wisconsin and the Nation.”

In Wisconsin, the outcome of the November elections, particularly for governor, will be an important marker in setting the course of education policy going forward, as a new state budget and legislative cycle begins. And both here and across the nation, standardized test scores statewide have declined from pre-COVID levels, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic linger as an important factor in determining how to help students. How should we be and how are we addressing needed improvements in education and student achievement?

The conference will include a presentation by Erin Richards, former education reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and USA Today and currently with the Center for Reinventing Public Education. She will discuss the center’s recently released report, The State of the American Student: Fall 2022.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Civics: public vs private security

John Hindraker:

Ilhan Omar exemplifies this more vicious type of hypocrisy. She hates law enforcement and campaigns to defund the police, but when it comes to her own safety? Men with guns. Alpha News reports:

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign recently dropped tens of thousands of dollars on private security services following her calls to defund the police and support for a campaign to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department, federal filings show.

According to Federal Election Commission records, the campaign spent $27,081.14 on “security services” between July and September, the highest quarter to date.

Before the third quarter, her campaign paid roughly $83,000 to private security firms between May 2019 and July this year, according to a review of federal filings.

Commentary on status quo K-12 governance in Wisconsin

“The proposal appears to be largely more of the same with some targeted funds at special education,” Bender said of Evers’ proposal. “After surprisingly vetoing bills on reading improvement last year, a bit unexpected that there are not more resources aimed at improving not only the low proficiency rates, but the nation’s worst racial gaps in the country.”

“It does appear that Evers keeps the automatic increase for private school choice and charter schools, but that does nothing to close the large gap between the sectors,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Michels did not answer questions from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Michels’ plans for schools, including whether he would sign a budget that would raise revenue limits, or whether he would increase funding for school districts’ special education costs.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“That it was the largest decrease in the country is also embarrassing”

Dick Hall-Sizemore

Governor Youngkin declared it “catastrophic” and proceeded to blame his predecessors.

It should be pointed out that the Northam administration and the “mainstream media” had begun sounding alarms several years ago. The Richmond Times-Dispatch, much criticized on this blog, declared in 2018 that “Virginia’s failing grade on reading SOLs must not be tolerated.” The administration began to take steps after the release of the 2019 NAEP scores to address the problem. James Lane, then Superintendent of Public Instruction, expressed his dismay over the widening gap in the reading scores and declared the Department of Education (DOE) would examine the methods used by divisions in which students had scored well with an eye to determining whether those methods could be replicated in other divisions. He also scheduled a statewide literacy summit in early 2020 in Charlottesville to address the problem. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and whatever was decided at that summit took a back seat to the efforts just to keep schools operating at some level during the crisis. As the pandemic eased and schools re-opened to in-person instruction, it was recently pointed out on this blog that the Northam administration’s outgoing budget “prioritized reading initiatives for 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders.”

What has Governor Youngkin proposed? For months, his administration has advocated increasing accreditation standards and the SOL “cut scores.” He reiterated those goals in the wake of the NAEP scores. The top priority listed in the Governor’s news release was “Raise the Floor and the Ceiling” and the fourth priority was “Hold Ourselves and Our Schools Accountable.” Those goals were also expressed by Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera, as reported by Jim Bacon on this blog.

“all of them stressed the importance of more funding for public schools”

“This means a lot to me because I don’t want students who are younger than me to lack various resources and opportunities that will be offered,” La Follette’s Yoanna Hoskins said. “I want my teachers to be well compensated and respected for all the hard work they put in every single day.”

Adding that she’s not yet old enough to vote herself, she urged everyone else to do so.

“And leaders, the adults that I’m supposed to look up to, let’s work together so we can get caught up (on funding),” Hoskins said.

Among the stakes in the Nov. 8 election are school choice. GOP candidate Tim Michels has offered support for universal school choice, and while he hasn’t provided detailed plans, it’s likely that includes a voucher system without income limits, given his past statements.

Incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, running for reelection, won’t likely get many of his policy priorities regardless of the outcome of the race, given the overwhelming Republican majority in the Legislature. But he used his veto pen regularly in his first term, including on education items, like halting a “parental bill of rights” and stopping a proposed breakup of the Milwaukee Public Schools district.

Evers, along with State Superintendent Jill Underly, have proposed adding almost $2 billion for public schools across the state in the 2023-25 biennial budget.

Kabby Hong, who teaches English in Verona and was a 2022 Wisconsin Teacher of the Year, said that the “public education system is on the ballot.”

“One election can radically change the landscape for all of us,” Hong said. “That is why I’m asking all of you to go out and vote and to not give in to cynicism, apathy and indifference.”

$$ Madison taxpayers have long spent far more than most k-12 school systems, now $21,720 per student!

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Commentary on K-12 tax and spending increases amidst stagnant or declining enrollment

Olivia Herken:

The La Crosse School District has the largest referendum in the state this fall, asking voters to approve nearly $195 million to consolidate its two high schools due to declining enrollment and aging facilities.

Some Oregon residents who oppose the referendum doubt it would have a big impact. Some question whether they’ve been given full and accurate information.

“Many village of Oregon residents can’t afford this referendum, especially with all other current inflationary pressures,” Joshua King said. “But they should at least have the complete picture of the tax burden about to hit them so they can make the best decision.”

King said the referendum has become a “complex and very emotionally charged topic.”

“I’m against it,” Evy Collins said. “I’m not against people having better wages. I worked all my life, most of it as a single mother after (my) husband died of cancer. I know struggles. I always had to make do with what I had, and I still do today as a retired person. Why should our property taxes continue to go up and the propaganda that it’s for ‘the kids’ make me go for it? It’s not for the kids or better education. I’m voting no.”

The November referendums are appearing on the ballot alongside some higher turnout elections, including the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races.

It’s not clear, though, how higher turnouts affect referendums. In the last decade, referendums have passed at slightly higher rates in even-numbered years when bigger elections are held, compared to odd-numbered years, Brown said. But he emphasized that other factors could be at play.

The questions come at the same time districts have received an influx of one-time money through COVID-19 relief funding. District officials have stressed, however, that because the funding isn’t ongoing, it cannot responsibly be used to pay for ongoing operating expenses without creating a fiscal cliff in future years.

The state Legislature, meanwhile, pointed to that funding in denying an increase in the revenue limit in the current biennial budget.

While the Madison Metropolitan School District is not among those asking voters for funds this fall, it is in the midst of implementing the successful capital and operating referendums from 2020. Officials have repeatedly described the current budget as a difficult one, with School Board member Savion Castro suggesting the district may need to go back for another referendum in the near future to continue funding its most important initiatives.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Madison Schools’ 2022 Political activity

David Blaska:

Why in hell (our favorite rhetorical flourish) is the Madison public school district promoting a Get Out the Vote rally? For a partisan election! No school board candidate, no school referendum is on the ballot. But Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes are!

Why is the rally, scheduled for Monday 10-24-22 at the State Capitol, called “Unity in the Community”? What unity? An election — any election — is up or down, yes or no. Somebody wins, the other guy loses — the antithesis of unity. Unity? That’s Kim Jong Un language. The kumbaya word is invoked to hide the partisan nature of this exercise. Unavoidably, the Madison Metropolitan School District gives away its game:

Andrew Gumbel:

Thiel’s spending has been dwarfed this year by at least three other mega-donors – Soros ($128m to the Democrats), shipping products tycoon Richard Uihlein ($53m to Republicans) and hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin ($50m to Republicans). And Thiel has some way to go to match the consistent giving, cycle after cycle, of the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, the late Las Vegas casino magnate.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

The Remediless Reading Right

Shana Hurley:

Lawmakers nationwide are trying to improve reading by embracing a scientific consensus regarding literacy acquisition and enacting robust regulatory regimes touching every part of the learning process. For most actors, “Right to Read” laws establish clear accountability rules and noncompliance remedies. However, students who are not provided with statutory reading entitlements have inconsistent or nonexistent remedies against their schools. As a result, states do not hold accountable educators using debunked instructional methods and schools failing to provide necessary interventions. And courts abstain from enforcing their entitlements based on anachronistic research and policy. This Note introduces the new literacy science and laws, arguing descriptively that Right to Read regimes are enforceable under an implied right of action or a statutory negligence claim. Nevertheless, it recommends that lawmakers enact a public enforcement scheme that would better serve the students most in need of support.

The report, which builds on a 2019 Wisconsin Policy Forum report on the same subject, comes less than a month before a gubernatorial election that is likely to have a significant impact on the future of school funding.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Commentary and advocacy on Wisconsin K-12 Redistributed taxpayer funds

In the Madison Metropolitan School District, the formula meant $2,068 per student of unfunded special education costs in the 2019-20 school year, according to a district-by-district map that accompanies the report. MMSD spent $80.7 million on special education in the 2019-20 school year and received $19 million in state reimbursement, plus $6.1 million in federal special education funding, leaving $55.5 million total in unfunded special education costs.

The cost can be even higher for some rural school districts like the 737-student Lakeland Union High School District on the state’s northern border, which had $3,268 per pupil in unfunded special education costs in 2019-20.

“If you increase the state’s spending on special education through the reimbursements to school districts, it helps every child in every school district in the state,” University of Wisconsin-Madison law and education professor Julie Underwood said.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

“Mississippi’s rise from having some of the nation’s lowest-performing reading scores to its most improved — required nearly a decade of new laws, strategic planning and fresh thinking”

David Kaufman:

Indeed, 32 percent of Mississippi students hit literacy targets in 2019, up from 27 percent in 2017 and just 17 percent in 1998, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Despite the successes so far, Ms. Wright — who retired from education this year — believes there are plenty of challenges left to be tackled “to make things better for the children of Mississippi.”

“Each year we tweak our methods, but the goals always remain the same,” said Ms. Wright, who feels that the state’s math programs are particularly ripe for an overhaul.

Here are some of the actions that helped pull Mississippi up the reading ranks.

Leading Through Laws

The most crucial element of Mississippi’s testing turnaround was the establishment of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013, which required third-grade students to demonstrate basic reading proficiency levels to progress onto fourth grade.

Championed by the Republican State Senator Gray Tollison and signed into law by former Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, the act not only set clear standards and expectations (“a critical model of accountability,” Ms. Wright said), it also set off a range of policies and legislation — such as provisions for new charter schools — to support students, districts and, most critically, teachers in achieving its aims.

Among the most notable was the Early Learning Collaborative Act, which funds specialized collaborative pre-K programs. Rachel Canter, executive director of Mississippi First, said it encourages partnerships between school districts and Head Start, along with private schools or child care, which could then trigger state funding to run pre-K programs for 4-year-olds.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Madison public charter school mostly mum on gun found in employee’s backpack

Chris Rickert:

A state-authorized public charter school in Madison initially refused to work with police after a student found a gun in a school employee’s backpack, according to a recently released police report, and the employee refused to answer questions about the incident.

Police ultimately closed their investigation of the June 1 incident involving Milestone Democratic School teacher Art Richardson, saying they did not have enough evidence that Richardson knew he had the gun in his backpack and after Richardson put off speaking to them and then cut off communication entirely.

Knowingly bringing a firearm into a school is a Class I felony under state law, punishable by up to three and a half years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000 or both.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Thin Madison K-12 Commentary (Achievement?)

HEDI RUDD and RUTHIE HAUGE:

Two years into the job, Madison Metropolitan School District superintendent Carlton Jenkins received praise from the Madison School Board for his handling of the district’s 2022-23 budget and leadership.

A summary of the board’s annual performance review of the district’s top staff member was released Wednesday evening. While most of the review was in praise of Jenkins’ work, the board wrote that it “would like to partner with Dr. Jenkins to build upon and enhance district-community relationships.”

“This would bolster community perceptions of district accountability and transparency,” the board wrote. “Superintendent Jenkins has begun to proactively increase his team’s work in partnering with community members and business leaders.”

This, in a way, encapsulates the secret recipe that many Madison charter schools use to create environments that don’t fit a traditional educational model. To explore what that looks like, photographers Hedi Rudd and Ruthie Hauge recently visited three local charter schools.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Notes on taxpayer supported censorship

Just the news:

The Stanford Internet Observatory, University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, think tank Atlantic Council, and social media analytics firm Graphika claimed their consortium had a 35% success rate getting flagged content removed, throttled or labeled.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee, also flagged purported misinformation through the consortium.

“No news organization should be subjected to an enemies/censorship list for reporting newsworthy facts” Just the News Editor in Chief John Solomon said in a statement. “It’s even more egregious that this censorship machinery was prodded, aided and sanctioned by the federal government.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

K-12 Literacy Governance Climate

Has Biden EdSec Cardona ever addressed literacy reform, much less pushed schools to make changes? Have national education teams and outlets been asking him about his position? https://t.co/45kID7plxW

— Alexander (@alexanderrusso) October 2, 2022

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

“with little consideration for the staff or other customers, she said”

Daniela Jaime:

Torres said she’s had to tell students repeatedly not to smoke or vape indoors and be courteous towards patrons, but the response has been so negative that on one occasion, she said, a student threw food at her after being kicked out. Torres no longer allows students to dine in, posting signs at the door, but does provide them to-go orders.

“I have regulars who come from work. I get embarrassed by (students’) behavior, so I don’t sit them anymore,” she said.

But those problems pale in comparison to the series of break-ins at the current site that began in September of last year.

“I just thank God we didn’t have any huge scares,” Torres said, “especially since the waitress is my daughter. The material stuff, well, that comes and goes, but my daughter, she doesn’t.”

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Related: The Milwaukee County Pension Scandal that lead to Scott Walker’s election to county Executive and later the Governor’s office.

Incumbent Wisconsin Governor proposes $2B in additional K-12 tax & Spending….

Rory Linnane:

Evers said his plan for the 2023-25 budget would draw on the state’s projected $5 billion budget surplus while “holding the line” on property taxes.

Evers’ opponent in the November election, Tim Michels, called Evers’ plan “more money and more bureaucracy.”

“The tired, old Evers approach has not worked,” Michels said in a statement.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos also quickly derided Evers’ proposal, taking to Twitter to call the plan a “feeble ploy to try to win votes.”

Republican lawmakers rewrote much of Evers’ proposed 2021-23 state budget, nixing his plan to increase the caps on how much school districts are allowed to spend each year. School district leaders have argued they cannot keep up with inflation with flat spending limits.

The biggest chunk of state funding, $800 million, would allow schools to spend $350 more per student in the 2023-24 school year and $650 more the following year.

The plan would also invest $750 million to increase how much the state reimburses school districts for special education costs, from about 30% to about 45% in the first year, and 60% the next year.

The plan also includes:

$240 million to expand the “Get Kids Ahead” initiative for school-based mental health services with an investment of $100 per student, ensuring that each district has at least one full-time staff member focused on mental health
$20 million for before- and after-school programming in and outside schools
$10 million for literacy programming, including a state literacy center that would provide training for teachers
$5 million to help school districts implement financial literacy curriculum
An unspecified amount of funding to reimburse school districts for meal costs to provide free meals for students who already qualify for free and reduced-price meals, and decrease the cost to other students

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Cost of Student Debt Cancelation Could Average $2,000 Per Taxpayer

Andrew Lautz:

Public reporting indicates President Biden may soon announce executive action canceling federal student loan debt for a large set of borrowers. Though parameters of the student debt cancellation have yet to be announced, the Biden administration may cancel $10,000 of debt per borrower for borrowers making $125,000 in income per year or less.

Based on projections from the Penn Wharton Budget Model for the total cost of such cancellation, we estimate President Biden’s plan would cost the average taxpayer over $2,000.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM) released a policy report on Tuesday that estimated the total cost of $10,000 in debt cancellation for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year would be $329.1 billion over 10 years. There were just under 158 million taxpayers in 2019 according to the IRS, meaning that the average cost of debt cancellation is $2,085.59 per taxpayer.

This is not a perfect proxy for cost, however, given the U.S. tax code is progressive and tax burdens are not evenly distributed across households. Accounting for the share of taxes paid by low- and middle-income households, we estimate that:

Analysis of the policy’s taxpayer costs.

Dave Cieslewicz

Biden probably balked at this because he understands the bad politics for Democrats. Two out of three American adults didn’t complete a four year degree. They have every right to question why people who did, and who on average make about twice as much as they do, should get this big government handout.

And then, of course, there are the millions of us who did go to college, did take out a loan and did, in fact, do what we promised to do: pay it back.

This is bad politics for Democrats because it should be. Asking taxpayers to pay off the student loans of people who were irresponsible or careless in taking on debt they couldn’t afford is horrible public policy. And worse, Biden’s plan does nothing about the real problem: the skyrocketing cost of higher education. What’s going to happen next year when a new crop of college grads starts demanding that they get the same handout that last year’s grads got?

This could well stop the progress Democrats have made in this election cycle. It was beginning to look like a combination of legislative wins, the abortion issue, public concern over gun violence and the easing of gas prices might result in a better November than had been predicted for Biden’s party. Now this policy will remind voters without a college degree just how much disdain the Democrats have for them.

Additional commentary:

Of the 43 million people with federal loans, 15 million owe less than $10,000. Another 9 million owe between $10,000 and $20,000. By eliminating a minority of outstanding debt, Biden would forgive most or all balances for the majority of student debtors, disproportionately those who are at the highest risk of default.

Is this even legal? Is there anything Biden’s political opponents can do to stop him?

Maybe? And, maybe? The Higher Education Act is almost 60 years old, and no president has ever done anything like this before. The Trump administration’s 2020 decision to suspend all federal student loan payments, which Biden has extended multiple times, came from a separate law granting the president powers during a national emergency like a pandemic. Biden is citing that authority for the new loan forgiveness plan.

There are a host of constitutional provisions, federal laws, and legal precedents that obligate federal agencies to collect on outstanding debts. Skeptics also point out that Congress has enacted a number of specific student loan forgiveness programs, including plans that eliminate remaining debt after 20 years of payments or 10 years of public service. The administration’s recent decision to wipe out debt for students who attended the notorious for-profit Corinthian Colleges was based on a discrete legal provision meant to protect students who were defrauded by their college.

Commentary on K-12 Governance

“Remember, parents are not entitled to know their kids’ identities. That knowledge must be earned,” states a slide in the presentation. “Teachers are often straddling this complex situation. In (the Eau Claire Area School District), our priority is supporting the student.”

The presentation included further context, Nordin said, about how teachers should talk with students if a student comes out to them, including asking them if they’ve told their parents and possibly offering advice on how to have that conversation if they haven’t.

But the slide text spread, including on national right-wing news, and is still well-known enough that it was specifically mentioned in a question during the July 27 Republican gubernatorial radio forum. Nordin believes it likely contributed to the threat he received in his inbox in March.

“I am going to kill you and shoot up your next school board meeting for promoting the horrific, radical transgender agenda,” the email stated. “It’s now time to declare war on you pedos. I am going to kill you and your entire family.”

From the April 2019 spring election through March 2020, roughly 224 seats changed hands out of the approximately 2,800 board seats statewide. The following year, the first of the pandemic, the number jumped to 298.

But from April 2021 through March 2022, it ballooned to 426. And already this year, including the spring election, there have been 409.

“and may reward the party that focuses more on fundamental instruction than ideological warfare”

Jonathan Allen:

“But then you want to turn to areas that are more important” such as funding and fundamental instruction.

That explains the two-step thrust-and-parry messaging American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten will outline Thursday morning during her union’s convention in Boston.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Mario Loyola and Eric Groten

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Notes on the 2022 NEA convention; “enemies list”

Mike Antonucci:

I provided in-person gavel-to-gavel coverage of every National Education Association Representative Assembly from 1998 — the year of the failed merger attempt with AFT — through 2016. NEA denied me a press credential thereafter due to my partnership with The 74, which they said “does not meet journalistic standards as a credible news outlet.”

In truth, it was a bit of a relief. The convention was tedious and became more and more stage-managed as the years went on. It was also an expensive trip and a week of little rest and bad food.

Looks like I’m not the only who has lost interest in the NEA Representative Assembly. Delegate attendance over the years:
1998 – 9,715
2002 – 8,519
2012 – 7,403
2017 – 6,880
2022 – 5,071 (3,858 in person)

— Mike Antonucci (@UnionReport74) July 3, 2022

Thanks to Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation and his sources, we now have a complete list of the new business items NEA delegates are debating this week. For this first time, the union has seen fit to hide this information behind a firewall, making it available only to the delegates themselves.

You can take a look at Terry’s Twitter threadto see the items he highlighted, but I’ll point to these few for now:

NBI 15 – The latest in a long history of creating enemies lists (this one from 1998):

“NEA shall compile research to create fact sheets about the largest 25 organizations that are actively working to diminish a students’ right to honesty in education, freedom of sexual and gender identify, and teacher autonomy.”

NBI 31 – The return of merger!

“I move that the NEA create a committee and a plan to work with AFT to strongly consider a national merger of the two education unions.”

NBI 37 – Another in long history of fringe NBIs that never pass from activists in the Oakland Education Association:

“The NEA will work with state affiliates to support a national policy of mandatory masking and COVID vaccines in schools, as well as high-quality virtual education for immuno-compromised students and all families who want it by publicizing successful virtual education programs in public schools throughout the nation in existing media outlets.”

NBI 44 – Offers sample contract language to institute bereavement leave for “pregnancy loss and failed fertility treatments.” Doesn’t open can of worms by including bereavement leave for abortions.

NBI 63 – More sample contract language, this time suggesting “mother” be replaced with “birthing parent” and “father” with “non-birthing parent.” The NBI’s sponsors will need bereavement leave when this gets voted down.

NBI 77 – Wrote about this when the California Teachers Association sent it to committee. Now it’s aiming for nationwide application:

Twitter bans @TerryStoops for 12 hours for posting “other people’s private information,” by which they mean new business items from the NEA Representative Assembly. Hey @Twitter, come get me, too. pic.twitter.com/XhFLG959xo

— Mike Antonucci (@UnionReport74) July 6, 2022

By a vote of 3,103-1,084, NEA delegates committed the union to “publicly stand in defense of abortion and reproductive rights and encourage members to participate in… rallies and demonstrations, lobbying and political campaigns, educational events, and other actions…”

— Mike Antonucci (@UnionReport74) July 6, 2022

Summary:

The purpose of the four-day assembly is to elect officers, approve the union’s budget and set national policy for the coming school year. In practice, however, the agenda is largely decided by the union’s executive officers, staff and 172-member board of directors. The election results are usually a foregone conclusion, and the budget is always approved with no alterations.

Where the delegates get their say is in the introduction, debate and votes on “new business items.” These are actions that are “specific in nature and terminal in application, shall concern issues beyond one affiliate and shall not call for NEA to do work that is already in progress.” It takes just 50 delegate signatures on a petition to get an item to the floor for debate and vote.

The focus of these items runs the gamut, from battling institutional racism to supporting a national opt out/test refusal movement to calling for Arne Duncan to resign as President Barack Obama’s secretary of education. Many have no relation to education or labor at all.

Though approval of new business items is the expressed will of the delegates, execution of the actions demanded usually falls very short of impactful. The 2021 assembly debated 66 items. Of these, 11 were ruled out of order or withdrawn. Ten were voted down. A full 22 were referred to an NEA standing committee without a recommendation. That left only 23 that were approved. Of those, nine called on NEA to use its print and social media outlets to publicize something.

Civics: “rule making” vs legislation

The EPA’s attempt to impose such a scheme on states was particularly bold because Congress had just declined to enact a similar scheme. After the 2008 election, Democrats introduced the Waxman-Markey bill, a sweeping cap-and-trade scheme to reduce carbon emissions dramatically. Even with Democratic supermajorities in both houses, Congress failed to pass the bill.

After his party lost the House in 2010 President Obama turned to the EPA, which in 2015 promulgated the Clean Power Plan. The basic idea of the CPP was to pressure states into shutting down coal and (eventually) natural-gas plants and switch to renewable electricity sources. The agency resorted to an obscure provision of the original Clean Air Act that lay largely dormant for decades. It empowers the EPA to designate a “best system of emissions reduction,” or BSER, for existing facilities. The provision had been used only a handful of times, mostly for solid-waste incinerators, to reduce emissions “inside the fence line” of the facility itself.

The EPA decided that BSERs could extend beyond the fence line to the whole economy. The CPP would have imposed costly technological requirements within its purview, but also imposed standards that would force states to switch to natural gas and eventually renewables. The agency even planned to adopt nationwide standards on how and when you are allowed to use electricity in your own house.

There were a host of statutory and constitutional problems with this scheme, and the Supreme Court stayed it in 2016. In 2019, the Trump administration replaced it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule. That rule held to the traditional “inside the fence line” approach and accordingly focused on modest emissions improvements at coal plants. On the last day of Mr. Trump’s presidency, however, the powerful U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the Trump rule.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“Expert” idiocy on teaching kids to read

Robert Pondiscio:

Calkins’s work mostly disregards this fundamental insight, focusing students’ attention in the mirror instead of out the window. For low-income kids who are less likely to grow up in language-rich homes and don’t have the same opportunities for enrichment as affluent kids, the opportunity costs of Calkins’s “philosophy” are incalculable. Endless hours of class time that could be building knowledge and vocabulary are squandered.

I witnessed this daily in my South Bronx elementary school, where fewer than 20 percent of students passed state reading tests. I never had a single student unable to read words printed on a page. When they were reading and writing about topics they knew—the Calkins method—students did well. But when asked to read about unfamiliar topics on state tests, they often struggled. They read it, but they didn’t get. One principal I worked under attributed our low scores to “test anxiety,” but that wasn’t the problem. Their education was all mirrors and no windows.

It is well that Calkins has finally seen the light on phonics, however begrudgingly. But her approach commits even greater sins, particularly against low-income children, that phonics alone can’t fix.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Ambarish Chandra and Tracy Beth Høeg

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“no significant relationship between mask mandates and case rates”

Our study replicates a highly cited CDC study showing a negative association between school mask mandates and pediatric SARS-CoV-2 cases. We then extend the study using a larger sample of districts and a longer time interval, employing almost six times as much data as the original study. We examine the relationship between mask mandates and per-capita pediatric cases, using multiple regression to control for differences across school districts.

Findings: Replicating the CDC study shows similar results; however, incorporating a larger sample and longer period showed no significant relationship between mask mandates and case rates. These results persisted when using regression methods to control for differences across districts. Interpretation: School districts that choose to mandate masks are likely to be systematically different from those that do not in multiple, often unobserved, ways. We failed to establish a relationship between school masking and pediatric cases using the same methods but a larger, more nationally diverse population over a longer interval. Our study demonstrates that observational studies of interventions with small to moderate effect sizes are prone to bias caused by selection and omitted variables. Randomized studies can more reliably inform public health policy.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Charles Mitchell and Scott Walker:

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

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

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

“We believe Pennsylvania has a lot to learn from Wisconsin’s example”

The goal of Act 10 was to remove unfair powers wielded by government union executives over state budgets, education policy, and politics.

A recent study from the Commonwealth Foundation found that Act 10 saved Wisconsin taxpayers nearly $7 billion in 2018. Other analyses from a free-market think tank in Wisconsin suggested it helped resolve a $3.6 billion deficit without raising taxes, while the savings produced by Act 10 enabled future tax cuts that helped create 42,000 new jobs — including 20,000 jobs in manufacturing. Thanks to the reduced influence of government unions over state education policies, the number of low-income children benefiting from Wisconsin’s school choice program has increased nearly thirtyfold, to almost 15,000 students.

“As seen in Wisconsin, where public-sector labor reform leads, prosperity follows.”Charles Mitchell and Scott Walkernone

Pennsylvania and other similarly situated states could benefit from following Wisconsin’s example. The Keystone State has more government union workers than any other state except California, New York, and Illinois. Most of these workers lose a chunk of their paychecks each month to pay union executives who often prioritize a political agenda ahead of the workers they claim to represent. And look at what those government unions are achieving: Pennsylvania has the country’s fourth-highest unemployment rate and the second-highest business tax rate, while ranking 45th in economic performance.

As was the case in Wisconsin before Act 10, government unions are the largest campaign contributors in Pennsylvania. Since 2007, these groups have spent more than $150 million on politics, with 90% of campaign contributions going toward Pennsylvania Democrats. These government unions lobby for more government spending, against reforming the state’s pension system, for a government-run liquor monopoly, and against educational options for children and families.

Pennsylvania is not alone. A recent analysis showed that during the last academic year, the nation’s largest teachers’ union spent more on politics than on representing its own members.

Those interested in the rise of Scott Walker might find the Milwaukee County Pension Scandal illuminating.

Wisconsin Gov Evers’ Mulligans run their course?

Libby Sobic:

Gov. Tony Evers’s recent vetoes put him at a historic rate of total vetoes compared to previous governors. Of the more than 100 vetoes he executed a week ago Friday, about a quarter were related to education. In many veto messages, the governor cited his previous role as state schools superintendent. Yet his vetoes demonstrate a bias towards the public school establishment and how out of touch the current administration is with Wisconsin parents.

The pandemic created a great awakening for parents across the country. Many families, who were happy with their local public school, were thrown into a difficult dynamic when their district placed the interests of adults over their students in returning to the classroom. In Wisconsin, families fled their local districts and enrolled their children in alternative options. But some parents became determined to hold their local district accountable for their decisions and are trying to change the public school status quo.

What started as a parent grassroots movement to hold local school board officials accountable quickly led to debates in the state Legislature. The Legislature responded to these concerns, passing several bills this session pertaining to education reform. For example, Wisconsin was the first legislature in the nation to pass a classroom transparency bill for local public schools this past September.

But as quickly as parents demanded action and the Legislature responded, Evers used his veto pen. Over the last several months, the Legislature passed bills expanding educational options for families through the existing school choice program and public charter schools, establishing parents’ rights against government intrusion. Each of these bills were in response to Wisconsin parents demanding change, yet Evers denied them again and again.

What will these vetoes this mean for elections this fall? The grassroots parent movement is not slowing down, and many parents claimed victories in the recent elections for school board and local government. Nationwide, other governors are signing school choice bills and other bills pertaining to public schools, including West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia, New Hampshire and Kentucky, among others.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

“A full Replacement for K-12”

Balaji Srinivasan:

Why a new school? Confidence in public schools is at historic lows. Parents want a change. And people can sense that the Prussian education system, the model for American schooling, just isn’t working anymore. Perhaps fifty years ago you might well pull the same lever every day on an assembly line, but today you hit a different key every second.

Instruction hasn’t kept up.

You can watch videos on the Synthesis model here, but the fundamental concept is teaching kids how to collaboratively work with information like adults do. In a sense, it’s similar to what American education used to be — namely early apprenticeship in the kinds of activities they’d be doing as adults, the system that educated Ben Franklin.

Synthesis is starting out as a complement to existing schools, but already has thousands of happy students and parents. Over time the plan is to add more and more math and science, until eventually it’s a full-blown alternative to the legacy K-12 system. Ultimately that may involve building physical classrooms.

There are several aspects of Synthesis that I think are worth noting, as they are part of a general set of tactics to build opt-in alternatives to failing institutions.

First digital, then physical. A full replacement for the education system will eventually require physical locations. Too many parents depend on state-run schools for childcare. However, it’s important to go digital first, then physical. Synthesis is building a networked community online and then, later, creating physical infrastructure as needed be.
Scale what can be scaled. Today’s K-12 instruction can be decoupled into (a) curricula, (b) small group tutoring and (c) de facto childcare. While the tutoring and childcare components will continue requiring hands-on attention for each student, the curricula can be created by world class instructors and cost-effectively scaled to millions of children. That means one could have the polish of a Hollywood movie or an AAA-quality game for educational content, which is what Synthesis is working on.
Go direct. Legacy media is incentivized to protect legacy systems. Therefore, companies offering an exit must go direct to customers and build their own distribution. Otherwise, they’ll either get politically attacked or forced to fold back into the values of the incumbent system. And so Synthesis is reaching parents entirely through social media and eschewing legacy media corporations.
Make exit easy. Our education systems won’t reform from within. The necessary improvements require too much change. The only real solution is to create something better from the ground up that’s so attractive users can’t help but exit the old system. Something like that doesn’t arise overnight – it’s proved out in stages, by people gradually opting out of the current system, providing feedback and driving features, till the parallel system is better in all respects and ready for broad adoption. This, too, is part of the Synthesis strategy.
Win and help win. Finally, the aim of education should be to train kids to grow the global pie for humanity so all can benefit. In other words, kids need to learn how to work together and succeed in a competitive environment so thatthey can contribute to the common good. And Synthesis believes that teaching values like this is as important as teaching calculus.

Human capital is the bottleneck to civilizational progress. It’s our scarcest resource. To increase the supply, the highest leverage place to begin is K-12. If we can fix that system, we have a base for a better world. That’s what Synthesis aims to do.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Wisconsin Governor Evers Friday Afternoon K-12 Vetoes: parents vs the taxpayer supported system

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Friday vetoed legislation that would have dramatically overhauled education in Wisconsin by making all children eligible to receive a taxpayer-funded private school voucher, regardless of their household income.

Parents would have been able to sue school districts for violations of a new “parental bill of rights” under another bill Evers vetoed on Friday.

Evers, a former public school educator and state superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction, rejected the legislation as Republicans hoping to unseat him in seven months make the policy idea central to their campaign against him.

Republican lawmakers passed a number of bills this session that would overhaul K-12 education knowing Evers would veto them. Evers has long opposed expanding the state voucher programs without overhauling how schools are funded in Wisconsin.

GOP lawmakers said Friday Evers was siding with school officials rather than parents in issuing his vetoes.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

‘So disillusioned”: Mandates, Parents, Students and K-12 Governance

Michael Bender:

Democrat Jennifer Loughran spent the pandemic’s early days sewing face masks for neighbors. Last month, as a newly elected school-board member, she voted to lift the district’s mask mandate. That came four months after she voted for the state’s Republican candidate for governor.

After a monthslong political identity crisis, Ms. Loughran decided her opposition to her party’s mask mandates, economic restrictions and school-closure policies outweighed her support for positions on climate change, abortion and gay rights, at least for the moment.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Commentary on K-12 Parental Rights and legacy Governance; “we have the children”

Darlene Click:

As the saying goes, you catch flack when you’re over target. Disney execs boast about secret queer agendas, teachers boast on social media how they will defy parents and, now, that bastion of inane Leftwing propaganda, Salon states parental rights are harming kids.

Across the country, students are struggling to regain a sense of normalcy as they cope with the loss and emotional hardship of the pandemic. This is especially true in Florida and Texas, where there are severe teacher shortages and underfunded public school systems, we parents are concerned for our children’s well-being and futures.

We? we? Who is this “we” that the co-authors, Jane Gray and Jaime Jara, portray themselves as representative of parents everywhere? Was there an election the rest of us missed?

According to their Salon bios, Gray describes first about herself as mother of three children who are cisgender and Jara as mother of a transgender daughter. Both are involved in academia.

Explains a lot now, doesn’t it?

These two moms, steeped in the jargon of Left Lysenkoism and racialist pedagogy, pen a short rant that takes gaslighting to new levels. Never mind that parents themselves had a front row seat via Zoom of their children’s classrooms during the Wuhan virus lockdowns and grew, rightfully, alarmed. No, none of those parents showing up at school boards demanding to know why their kids are being racially targeted or sexually harassed actually exist (pace AG Garland’s siccing the FBI on parents), or girls and their families trying to save girls’ sports, this is all a great big conspiracy of (cue the screaming horses) RETHUGLICAN POLITICIANS!

“We have the children”.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Commentary on Competitive school board races

Rory Linnane:

In an emailed statement, the Republican Party of Wisconsin touted “flipping” some school boards to conservative majorities and highlighted Manitowoc as now having a “fully conservative board.”

“Parents are fed up with far-left school boards who have kept students out of the classroom, implemented divisive curriculum, and put teachers unions over kids,” Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Mark Jefferson said in an email.

The strategy from the Democratic Party was more defensive. Rather than backing candidates looking to oust conservative incumbents, the party invested most heavily in supporting their favored incumbents and backing more left-leaning candidates in open races. They didn’t point to any “flips.”

Ben Wikler, Democratic Party of Wisconsin chair, said the party was starting from a better position with the composition of school boards in Wisconsin, due to prior Democratic “wave” spring elections.

“Progressives were coming from a position of extraordinary strength in school board elections,” he said. “Red areas returning to their underlying political makeup represents a kind of progression to the mean rather than a shift.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Civics: Ongoing Decline in Madison School Board Candidates and Voters; Unhealthy

This year’s election showed lower interest than recent contested races, in both fundraising for School Board races and voters. The number of votes was less than even last year, which featured two seats up for election with both candidates unopposed. Just over 41,000 people voted in those races.

The 2020 election, which included the Democratic presidential primary and was held in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, featured three seats on the ballot. Two of them were contested, and about 80,000 people voted in those races.

The last time these same seats were all on the ballot, in spring 2019, more than 65,000 people voted in each of the races, all of which featured two candidates on the ballot.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Supporting David Blaska (2022 write in) for Madison School Board; Muldrow Campaign messages

Dave Cieslewicz:

I’m voting for David Blaska. God help me. But God help us all if we continue down the path laid out for us by the current board without at least someone to challenge the status quo.

Postscript: This is not just a Madison problem. Liberal San Francisco voters recently recalled three hard-left school board members for similar issues. And today long-time Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Alan Borsuk reportson what’s going on in Milwaukee’s public schools. To quote part of his story:

Referring to students, (an MPS teacher) went on to say: ”Teachers at Grantosa are in abusive relationships that are only escaped by quitting. … We see the individuals committing these abusive acts return to our classes repeatedly without consequence. We struggle to make contact with parents as many of their phone numbers change weekly.” And when they do make contact, “some teachers are not met with support, but blame and further verbal abuse.”

The letter continued, “Today I have a student who I’ve developed a great relationship with cussed me out and threatened me for stopping her from watching Netflix” in class. The students had found a way to get around the system in place to block that.

. Wisconsin Working Families Party www.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Civics: Notes on media censorship

Megan McArdle:

That’s a whole lot of effort to suppress a story that seems to be … true? The New York Times reported March 16 that the emails are part of the evidence in a federal investigation now before a grand jury.

One week into the “Oops, it was real” news cycle, I have now heard all the excuses as to why this actually is an instance of journalism and tech moderation working like they should. It was unverified, I’ve heard. Too close to an election. And even if the emails were real, they may have been obtained illegally — can’t have that!

All of which might sound very reasonable if only my profession had displayed the same caution with stories that made conservatives look bad.

In September 2020 the New York Times revealed all sorts of details from two decades of Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns. It seems possible, even likely, that whoever leaked the information had a legal or fiduciary duty to keep it confidential. Yet the story ran, and as far as I know, Twitter didn’t block it from being shared.

The fact that the now-discredited Steele dossier was unverified did not stop BuzzFeed from publishing it, or the rest of the mainstream media from engaging in an orgy of speculationabout Trump’s connections to Russia. When unverifiable accusations of sexual assault against Brett M. Kavanaugh surfaced, mainstream outlets relaxed their journalistic standards — but were considerably more skeptical when the accused was Joe Biden. Many easily believed misleading videos about Catholic kids at the March for Life, but when Project Veritas releases a new sting video, the instinct is to point out how deceptive edited video can be.

As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it, the difference in mainstream reporting is the difference between can and must. When it comes to stories that flatter Democrats, we often ask “Can I believe it?” If it’s not obviously false, we do. But if the story flatters the right, we are more likely to ask “Must I believe it?” If we can find any reason to disbelieve, we take it — and keep the story off our pages.

The New York Times now admits the story was real. News and social-media companies will pay no price for suppressing vital information in 2020.

Commentary on Madison’s taxpayer funded K-12 Governance and Spring 2022, largely unopposed school Board candidates

Elizabeth Beyer:

“include instituting law and order in schools, questioning diversity and equity initiatives in curriculum and promoting charter schools. His viewpoint, an outlier among the predominantly left-leaning board, would create diversity of thought if he is elected, he said.”

I did not see Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results mentioned in this article.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Wisconsin State Journal Commentary

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

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

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

Civics: notes on Disinformation &Censorship at the NYT, Facebook, Google and others

Glenn Greenwald:

This disinformation campaign about the Biden emails was then used by Big Tech to justify brute censorship of any reporting on or discussion of this story: easily the most severe case of pre-election censorship in modern American political history. Twitter locked The New York Post‘s Twitter account for close to two weeks due to its refusal to obey Twitter’s orders to delete any reference to its reporting. The social media site also blocked any and all references to the reporting by all users; Twitter users were barred even from linking to the story in private chats with one another. Facebook, through its spokesman, the life-long DNC operative Andy Stone, announced that they would algorithmically suppress discussion of the reporting to ensure it did not spread, pending a “fact check[] by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners” which, needless to say, never came — precisely because the archive was indisputably authentic.

The archive’s authenticity, as I documented in a video report from September, was clear from the start. Indeed, as I described in that report, I staked my career on its authenticity when I demanded that The Intercept publish my analysis of these revelations, and then resigned when its vehemently anti-Trump editors censored any discussion of those emails precisely because it was indisputable that the archive was authentic (The Intercept‘s former New York Times reporter James Risen was given the green light by these same editors to spread and endorse the CIA’s lie, as he insisted that laptop should be ignored because “a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.”) I knew the archive was real because all the relevant journalistic metrics that one evaluates to verify large archives of this type — including the Snowden archive and the Brazil archive which I used to report a series of investigative exposés — left no doubt that it was genuine (that includes documented verification from third parties who were included in the email chains and who showed that the emails they had in their possession matched the ones in the archive word-for-word).

Any residual doubts that the Biden archive was genuine — and there should have been none — were shattered when a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book last September, entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power,” in which his new reporting proved that the key emails on which The New York Post relied were entirely authentic. Among other things, Schreckinger interviewed several people included in the email chains who provided confirmation that the emails in their possession matched the ones in the Post‘s archive word for word. He also obtained documents from the Swedish government that were identical to key documents in the archive. His own outlet, Politico, was one of the few to even acknowledge his book. While ignoring the fact that they were the first to spread the lie that the emails were “Russian disinformation,” Politicoeditors — under the headline “Double Trouble for Biden”— admitted that the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.”

“She’s not a fan of charter schools outside the control of the district” (achievement…..)

Two other seats on the board are mostly uncontested. Nichelle Nichols, a former Madison School District administrator whom we’ve endorsed in the past for School Board, will do a fine job filling Seat 5.

For Seat 4, incumbent Ali Muldrow is the only name on the ballot, with conservative agitator David Blaska making a late write-in challenge. Blaska says he wants to provide an outlet for a protest vote. Blaska lost by a wide margin to Muldrow three years ago, when our board passed on endorsing either candidate. This time around, Blaska’s name won’t even be on the ballot. So Muldrow’s reelection is all but assured.

We urge more candidates to run for School Board in future elections. For now, the best choice on the April ballot for the only truly competitive race is Simkin for Seat 3.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before. 2004 notes.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Jill Tucker & Anni Vainshtein:

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

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

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

Competitive School Board Races (!) San Francisco & Mount Horeb Incumbents Ousted. Madison?

San Francisco voters overwhelmingly supported the ouster of three school board members Tuesday in the city’s first recall election in nearly 40 years.

The landslide decision means board President Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga will officially be removed from office and replaced by mayoral appointments 10 days after the election is officially accepted by the Board of Supervisors.

The new board members are likely to take office in mid-March. The three were the only school board members who had served long enough to be eligible for a recall.

The recall divided the city for the past year, with a grassroots effort of frustrated parents and community members pushing for the trustees’ removal over the slow reopening of schools during the pandemic and the board’s focus on controversial issues like renaming 44 school sites and ending the merit-based admission system at Lowell High School.

Supervisor Hillary Ronen said she wasn’t surprised by the results.

“We faced the hardest time of our entire lives as parents and as students in public schools and this Board of Education focused on issues that weren’t about dealing with the immediate crisis of the day, and they didn’t show the leadership that that was necessary and that parents needed to hear, and that kids needed to hear,” said Ronen.

At least a hundred recall backers had gathered in the back room of Manny’s Cafe in the Mission District on Tuesday night.

Elizabeth Beyer:

In an election season heated by controversy surrounding COVID mitigation policy and K-12 curriculum, Dane County’s largest school board race appeared split, with voters pushing through a raft of newcomers while ousting one longtime incumbent and advancing another during Tuesday’s primary election.

The SF school board recall should be a wake up call to elected officials — especially Democrats — across the nation: Parents are fed up with the status quo that puts adults ahead of kids and ideology ahead of results.
— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) February 16, 2022

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

By Lisa Lerer, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Astead W. Herndon

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

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

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

The politics of mask “mandates”; meanwhile in Dane County (Madison)

It was Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey who began the effort last fall, weeks after he was stunned by the energy of right-wing voters in his blue state, who nearly ousted him from office in what was widely expected to be an easy re-election campaign. Arranging a series of focus groups across the state to see what they had missed, Mr. Murphy’s advisers were struck by the findings: Across the board, voters shared frustrations over public health measures, a sense of pessimism about the future and a deep desire to return to some sense of normalcy.

Republicans excoriated Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles after they were photographed without masks at an N.F.L. playoff game on Jan. 30. (Mr. Garcetti said he held his breath during the photo, creating a “zero percent chance of infection.”)

On Monday, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, called Representative Elissa Slotkin of Michigan “another Democrat hypocrite” after Ms. Slotkin posted a photo of herself unmasked at an indoor campaign event.

And over the weekend, Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat running for governor, deleted a photograph she had tweeted that showed her smiling, mask-free, in front of a classroom full of children wearing masks at a Georgia school.

“This is the Georgia Stacey Abrams wants,” warned a digital ad with which the campaign of former Senator David Perdue, a Republican running for governor, sought to capitalize on the misstep. “Unmask our kids.”

Tuesday night, Ms. Abrams said she had erred by taking the photograph. “Protocols matter,” she said on CNN. “And protecting our kids is the most important thing. And anything that can be perceived as undermining that is a mistake, and I apologize.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

2022 Wisconsin Governer’s Race and K-12 changes

Two Republicans running for governor said this week they would sign legislation that dissolves the state’s largest school district while the Democratic incumbent who spent a career in education said the idea would throw Milwaukee’s children into “chaos.”

Gov. Tony Evers, a former state superintendent and public school educator, signaled Tuesday he would not support a package of bills being proposed by Republican lawmakers that would break up Milwaukee Public Schools within two years and replace it with smaller school districts.

The future of Milwaukee’s school district suddenly depends on the outcome of this year’s governor’s race with the Republican field’s top two candidates endorsing an idea that has failed in the past but has new support sprung from scrutiny born during the coronavirus pandemic over how schools are run.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Washington Post Editorial:

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

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

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

Youngkin’s choice for education secretary might be a sign of good things to come

Announcing his selection of Aimee Rogstad Guidera as education secretary, Mr. Youngkin cited her work in “advocating for innovation and choice, data-driven reform, and high standards.” Ms. Guidera is a national expert on the use of data in education policy. She headed up the Guidera Strategy consulting firm and is the founder and former leader of the Data Quality Campaign, a national nonprofit that advocates using data to shape education. Time magazine named her as one of its “12 Education Activists for 2012.” “This is a really good choice,” tweetedAndrew Rotherham, an educational reform activist with Bellwether Education Partners, when Ms. Guidera’s selection was announced last month. It signaled, he wrote, that Mr. Youngkin “wants to get something done substantively on education.”

Mr. Youngkin’s other top education appointments — Jillian Balow, superintendent of Wyoming’s public schools, as Virginia schools superintendent, and Elizabeth Schultz, a senior fellow with Parents Defending Education, as Ms. Balow’s deputy — seem to be more ideologically driven. While on the Fairfax County School Board, Ms. Schultz opposed a nondiscrimination policy against transgender students and railed against the decision to rename a high school named for a Confederate general. Both Ms. Balow and Ms. Schultz are outspoken critics of critical race theory, an academic framework used in higher education but not K-12 that examines how policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism. That Republicans have weaponized this phantom issue to rally their base diverts attention from the critical issues facing schools today.

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We hope Mr. Youngkin’s selection of Ms. Guidera shows a seriousness of purpose in addressing the deficiencies in public education, which too often negatively affect students who are poor, Black and at risk. Mr. Youngkin’s politically driven executive order forbidding the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory,” was misguided, but it is noteworthy that it also included a directive that the state schools superintendent produce a report within 90 days on the status of efforts to close the achievement gap between minority students and their peers.

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

School Climate: Federalism and Leadership

1. Ok, let’s talk about a different strategy for Biden and Dems, going all the way back to inauguration. Instead of seeing the election as a mandate to expand the safety with weird badly designed programs, what would a good agenda have been? Deal with Covid. What does that mean?

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) December 20, 2021

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Advocating accountability for taxpayer supported K-12 schools

Low-performing schools in Wisconsin would be forced to close under a plan to overhaul K-12 education put forward by Kevin Nicholson, a Republican who is expected to announce this week he is running for governor.

Nicholson, who was defeated in a Republican U.S. Senate primary in 2018 by former state Sen. Leah Vukmir of Brookfield, is proposing massive changes to the state’s education landscape but did not answer questions about how he would accomplish his goals if elected.

In a GOP primary, Nicholson would face Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch who has broad support among elected Republican officials — including Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester.

Vos said in an event Wednesday hosted by Wispolitics.com that Nicholson should not run.

“I think if he runs, it hurts our chances to defeat Gov. Evers. But I can’t control that. If he runs, he runs,” Vos told the Madison-based Capital Times.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Commentary on the Democrat Party Education Axis

Matt Taibbi:

However, much like the Hillary Clinton quote about “deplorables,” conventional wisdom after the “gaffe” soon hardened around the idea that what McAuliffe said wasn’t wrong at all. In fact, people like Hannah-Jones are now doubling down and applying to education the same formula that Democrats brought with disastrous results to a whole range of other issues in the Trump years, telling voters that they should get over themselves and learn to defer to “experts” and “expertise.”

This was a bad enough error in 2016 when neither Democrats nor traditional Republicans realized how furious the public was with “experts” on Wall Street who designed horrifically unequal bailouts, or “experts” on trade who promised technical retraining that never arrived to make up for NAFTA job josses, or Pentagon “experts” who promised we’d find WMDs in Iraq and be greeted as liberators there, and so on, and so on. Ignoring that drumbeat, and advising Hillary Clinton to run on her 25 years of “experience” as the ultimate Washington insider, won the Democratic Party leaders four years of Donald Trump.

It was at least understandable how national pols could once believe the public valued their “professional” governance on foreign policy, trade, the economy, etc. Many of these matters probably shouldn’t be left to amateurs (although as has been revealed over and over of late, the lofty reputations of experts often turn out to be based mainly upon their fluidity with gibberish occupational jargon), and disaster probably would ensue if your average neophyte was suddenly asked to revamp, say, the laws governing securities clearing.

But parenting? For good reason, there’s no parent anywhere who believes that any “expert” knows what’s better for their kids than they do. Parents of course will rush to seek out a medical expert when a child is sick, or has a learning disability, or is depressed, or mired in a hundred other dilemmas. Even through these inevitable terrifying crises of child rearing, however, all parents are alike in being animated by the absolute certainty — and they’re virtually always right in this — that no one loves their children more than they do, or worries about them more, or agonizes even a fraction as much over how best to shepherd them to adulthood happy and in one piece.

Behind the scenes, there must be HUGE battles going on between the various groups in the Democratic Party. If schools close down, Democrats will lose every election for the next ten years.

I suspect that the Democrat leaders are making some deals that suburban schools stay open, because they can’t afford to lose the suburbs, but they’ll take the loss in the cities.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

The Fallout From Remote Education: It’s a Fiasco for Kids, Families, and Democracy

Laura McKenna:

Are we going to shutdown society and schools again?

There is enormous pressure from the top to not close schools. That’s why the CDC has shifted its recommendations for dealing with positive people. Now, positive people only have to isolate for five days. Fauci says that positive people are really only contagious two days after exposure and the first three days of symptoms. After that, they say that the risk of contagion is minor. (So, we quarantined for ten days for nothing? Ugh!)

My guess is that big city schools are going to shutdown. School leaders in Washington and Chicago, under enormous pressure by the AFT, are saying that schools will probably go remote in January. Mayor Adams in New York City says they won’t. Behind the scenes, there must be HUGE battles going on between the various groups in the Democratic Party. If schools close down, Democrats will lose every election for the next ten years.

I suspect that the Democrat leaders are making some deals that suburban schools stay open, because they can’t afford to lose the suburbs, but they’ll take the loss in the cities.

In politics, there’s always a big difference between what will happen and what should happen. What should happen is that schools remain open, because kids have still not recovered from remote education. One education expert called remote education a “cruel joke,” and I think he’s right.

By now, there’s just so much evidence about learning lag and behavior issues, but what’s freaking me about today are the stories from teachers saying that their students are developmentally delayed. Third graders are acting like kindgarteners. First graders don’t know how to play with their classmates on the playground.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Former Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Takes Administrative Job in the Madison Schools

Lucas Robinson:

A former state superintendent of schools is stepping into a new position with the Madison School District’s leadership team, the district said Wednesday.

Carolyn Stanford Taylor will serve as the district’s interim assistant superintendent for engagement, diversity, equity and inclusion, a position geared toward beating back bias and discrimination in the district.

Stanford Taylor was appointed the head of the Department of Public Instruction in January 2019 by Gov. Tony Evers, who previously held the position before winning the governor’s office the previous year. Stanford Taylor’s tenure in the role ended in July after she declined to seek election.

“I have great love for the District and community,” Stanford Taylor said in a statement.

“For over 18 months, the Fairfax County School Board has focused on every political issue of the day,” O’Neal Jackson said. “In turn, [it] has not focused on what’s best for our students and families in Fairfax County.”

Alex Nester:

Parents in Virginia’s largest school district collected enough signatures to recall a school board member who ignored parental concerns and kept schools closed during the pandemic.

Open FCPS Coalition, a bipartisan group of parents, on Wednesday filed with a county circuit court a petition to recall school board member Laura Jane Cohen. The group accuses Cohen of ignoring studies that showed reopening was safe and keeping students isolated from peers for more than a year was harmful for their mental health.

Republican candidates swept Virginia’s statewide elections in November, victories many attributed to parents’ frustration with school closures. But that momentum may not be enough to recall Cohen, who was not up for reelection this cycle. A local attorney backed by left-wing megadonor George Soros quashed Open FCPS Coalition’s attempt to recall a school board member.

In a statement Thursday, Open FCPS Coalition founder Dee O’Neal Jackson said the 8,000 signatures gathered show the group’s mission resonates with the community.

“For over 18 months, the Fairfax County School Board has focused on every political issue of the day,” O’Neal Jackson said. “In turn, [it] has not focused on what’s best for our students and families in Fairfax County.”

A judge will verify the authenticity of the signatures and decide whether to hold a trial and special election to replace Cohen. The coalition also wants to recall at-large school board member Abrar Omeish, who in May came under fire after she in two social media posts referred to Israel as an “apartheid” state.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

“The first and most important job of public schools is: Teach the basics”

Shannon Whitworth:

Ensure that kids can read, write, understand the fundamentals of math, science and history. But a lot of public schools appear to be more interested in pushing an ideological agenda than providing children with the skills they need to compete on a global scale. For the first time, many parents started to take note of critical race theory concepts and the sexual and gender ideology being taught at the youngest levels. Then, of course, there are the tanking proficiencies in math and English, closed schools and never-ending mask mandates, and even indescribable levels of violence in our urban schools. The deafness to parents’ concerns, coupled with the arrogance and condescension of a government that appears to have forgotten who is supposed to serve whom, appears to have “awakened a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve” (“Tora! Tora! Tora!”).

The educational establishment should be paying attention to this trend coming into an election period next year. If Wisconsin is going the way of the rest of the country, the establishment is particularly vulnerable. When the state of our public schools is coming under increasing scrutiny, those who have been failing our system for decades are about to be held to account. School choice is now favored by a majority of Americans. Inner city parents have been complaining and trying to get their children out of failing schools for decades. Now with the rest of the country paying attention to the sorry state of our public schools, the rising crescendo will be difficult to ignore. Which leads us to our latest educational outrage here in Wisconsin.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

Parents’ Rights in Education

What is happening in our public schools? Tonight I will again be speaking at an event hosted by @RightsParents. Topics include CRT, vaccines, @WILawLiberty‘s litigation & policy work, and lots of time for Q&A – 6PM. Lancaster City Hall, 206 S. Madison Street, Lancaster, WI pic.twitter.com/inSf0kKgDW

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) November 16, 2021

Meanwhile, Ali Muldrow announced that she plans to run for re-election to the Madison School Board. 3 board seats are on the February/April 2022 ballot.

A former Madison Superintendent lamented to me some years ago that unlike other similarly sized communities, we lack serious K-12 interest by the business community. I would add most parents to this, as well. The organization operates first to perpetuate what exists.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

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

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

More failing grades for the ‘Education Governor’

MD Kittle:

The latest woeful proficiency numbers show what conservative lawmakers have been saying for a long time: It’s not about dumping more money on the problem. These are failing grades a long time in the making, and they have much to do with the failings of the “Education Governor.” Before winning election in 2018, the Democrat ruled the state Department of Public Instruction for a decade. He was a tool for the state’s teachers unions. So was his hand-picked successor, Carolyn Stanford Taylor. Underly is just as beholden to the unions and to the status quo of failed policies.

More so, despite billions of dollars at his disposal, Evers and DPI failed to come up with plans that would have extended the school year or added instructional time to the school day, MacIver reports.

“Undely has spent most of her time talking about the need to implement the racist Critical Race Theory in our schools and pushing mediocrity on our children rather than using the bully pulpit to raise awareness about this critical problem,” MacIver asserts.

Republicans took aim at the state’s education failures on Evers’ watch.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Jacques van Helden, Colin D Butler, Guillaume Achaz, Bruno Canard, Didier Casane, Jean-Michel Claverie:

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

An appeal for an objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2

On July 5, 2021, a Correspondence was published in The Lancet called “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”.¹ The letter recapitulates the arguments of an earlier letter (published in February, 2020) by the same authors,² which claimed overwhelming support for the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic originated in wildlife. The authors associated any alternative view with conspiracy theories by stating: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. The statement has imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate, including among science journalists.³ The 2021 letter did not repeat the proposition that scientists open to alternative hypotheses were conspiracy theorists, but did state: “We believe the strongest clue from new, credible, and peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature is that the virus evolved in nature, while suggestions of a laboratory leak source of the pandemic remain without scientifically validated evidence that directly supports it in peer-reviewed scientific journals”. In fact, this argument could literally be reversed. As will be shown below, there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible.There is so far no scientifically validated evidence that directly supports a natural origin. Among the references cited in the two letters by Calisher and colleagues,^{1, 2} all but one simply show that SARS-CoV-2 is phylogenetically related to other betacoronaviruses. The fact that the causative agent of COVID-19 descends from a natural virus is widely accepted, but this does not explain how it came to infect humans. The question of the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2—ie, the final virus and host before passage to humans—was expressly addressed in only one highly cited opinion piece, which supports the natural origin hypothesis,⁴ but suffers from a logical fallacy:⁵ it opposes two hypotheses—laboratory engineering versus zoonosis—wrongly implying that there are no other possible scenarios. The article then provides arguments against the laboratory engineering hypothesis, which are not conclusive for the following reasons. First, it assumes that the optimisation of the receptor binding domain for human ACE2 requires prior knowledge of the adaptive mutations, whereas selection in cell culture or animal models would lead to the same effect. Second, the absence of traces of reverse-engineering systems does not preclude genome editing, which is performed with so-called seamless techniques.^{6, 7} Finally, the absence of a previously known backbone is not a proof, since researchers can work for several years on viruses before publishing their full genome (this was the case for RaTG13, the closest known virus, which was collected in 2013 and published in 2020).⁸ Based on these indirect and questionable arguments, the authors conclude in favour of a natural proximal origin. In the last part of the article, they briefly evoke selection during passage (ie, experiments aiming to test the capacity of a virus to infect cell cultures or model animals) and acknowledge the documented cases of laboratory escapes of SARS-CoV, but they dismiss this scenario, based on the argument that the strong similarity between receptor binding domains of SARS-CoV-2 and pangolins provides a more parsimonious explanation of the specific mutations. However, the pangolin hypothesis has since been abandoned,^{9, 10, 11, 12} so the whole reasoning should be re-evaluated.

The Assault on Empiricism

Wilfred Reilly:

A remarkable aspect of today’s culture war debates, across a whole range of topics, is the fact that many massively popular positions bear no resemblance to measurable truth. Many core claims of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the “systemic racism” school of sociological thought, the Stop AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) Hate movement, and, for that matter, QAnon and election fraud devotees on the political right, don’t gel at all with empirical facts. Often this is no accident. Many activists and a surprising number of academics and media figures seem to have returned to the ancient idea that truth is relative, and hard data of the Bureau of Justice Statistics variety are less valuable than individual “lived experience.” Others, so far as I can tell, simply lie to facilitate personal or political goals. The trend is a dangerous one: People who fear nonexistent demons are also likely to propose costly and unnecessary witch hunts. In the face of the new Hounds of God, empiricism must again be defended.

It is simply not debatable that the claims of many popular modern movements are far removed from reality. BLM’s contentions about a near-genocide of African Americans directed by police may be the best example of this. To give only two famous examples out of dozens, Black Trans Lives Matter activist Cherno Biko stated on prime-time television in 2015 that an innocent Black person is “murdered” by American police “every 28 hours,” while star attorney Benjamin Crump hinted at an even higher total in a 2019 book he titled Open Season: The Legalized Genocide of Colored People.

These sorts of claims have become conventional wisdom on the political left. A well-run and large-N study from the Skeptic Research Center in February 2021 found that 54% of Americans who “identify as very liberal” believe that the average number of unarmed Black men killed annually by U.S. police is somewhere between “about 1,000” and “more than 10,000.” A major empirical survey conducted by the political scientist Eric Kaufman in April 2021 found that 80% of African Americans and 60% of educated white liberals believethat more young Black men die annually at the hands of police than in car wrecks.

Platforms, democracy and inter-institutional impacts

Katharine Dommett:

Digital platforms, such as Google and Facebook, are under increased scrutiny as regards their impact on society. Having prompted concerns about their capacity to spread misinformation, contribute to filter bubbles and facilitate hate speech, much attention has been paid to the threat platforms pose to democracy. In contrast to existing interventions considering the threats posed by interactions between platforms and users, in this article, I examine platforms’ impact on the democratic work of other bodies. Considering the relationship between platforms and the media, I reveal how platforms affect journalists’ ability to advance their democratic goals. Using a case study of journalistic coverage of digital campaigning at the 2019 UK general election, I show how platforms have hindered journalistic efforts to inform citizens and provide a watchdog function. These findings are significant for our understanding of platforms’ democratic impact and suggest policy makers may wish to regulate platforms’ inter-institutional impact upon democracy.

Would-be teachers fail licensing tests

Joanne Jacobs:

Only 45 percent of would-be elementary teachers pass state licensing tests on the first try in states with strong testing systems concludes a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Twenty-two percent of those who fail — 30 percent of test takers of color — never try again, reports Driven by Data: Using Licensure Tests to Build a Strong, Diverse Teacher Workforce.

Exam takers have the hardest time with tests of content knowledge, such as English language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

Research shows that “teachers’ test performance predicts their classroom performance,” the report states.

NCTQ found huge variation in the first-time pass rates in different teacher education programs. In some cases, less-selective, more-diverse programs outperformed programs with more advantaged students. Examples are Western Kentucky University, Texas A&M International and Western Connecticut State University.

California, which refused to provide data for the NCTQ study, will allow teacher candidates to skip basic skills and subject-matter tests, if they pass relevant college classes with a B or better, reports Diana Lambert for EdSource.

The California Basic Skills Test (CBEST) measures reading, writing and math skills normally learned in middle school or early in high school. The California Subject Matter Exams for Teachers (CSET) tests proficiency in the subject the prospective teacher will teach, Lambert writes.

Curiously, the Wisconsin State Journal backed Jill Underly for state education superintendent, despite her interest in killing our one teacher content knowledge exam: Foundations of Reading. Wisconsin students now trail Mississippi, a stare that spends less and has fewer teachers per pupil.

Foundations of reading results. 2020 update.

Assembly against private school forced closure

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Rarely seen: School Board Accountability (!), San Francisco edition

Heather Knight:

Siva Raj often receives gifts of thanks when he’s at farmers’ markets collecting signatures to qualify a recall effort of three San Francisco school board members for the ballot. Coffee, doughnuts, cookies, strawberries. “Everything!” he said with a laugh.

But a new memo from a top Bay Area pollster outlining very grim unfavorable numbers for the three board members and strong support for recalling them, particularly among parents of kids in the city’s public schools, proved especially validating.

“It doesn’t surprise us,” Raj said. “On the streets that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Pretty much anyone who is remotely aware of the situation is eager to sign.”

Raj and Autumn Looijen, his partner, launched the recall effort of Commissioners Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga last spring after a dire year of distance learning and a number of sideshows at the board, including renaming 44 schools that weren’t open, and changing the way students are admitted to Lowell High which, like all public middle and high schools in the city, has remained shuttered to the vast majority of kids since March 2020.

The recall campaign has until Sept. 7 to turn over 51,325 valid signatures of San Francisco registered voters to the Department of Elections. So far, they’ve collected about 26,000 through weekend volunteers and are now fundraising to hire professional signature gatherers.

If students return to school like normal or close to it on Aug. 16, the anger may ease. But dropping enrollment numbers and a looming budget crisis for the school district could make the picture even worse.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Parent group seeks recall of four Mequon-Thiensville School Board members

Alec Johnson:

Citing an abdication of duties since March 2020, a group of parents filed paperwork June 21 seeking to recall four of the seven Mequon-Thiensville School Board members.

A news release from the group said the group wants to recall board members Wendy Francour, Erik Hollander, Akram Khan and Chris Schultz.

The group has 60 days to collect about 4,200 signatures for each of the board members being recalled.

The group also said it has recruited four candidates to run against the recalled board members once the recall is certified. Those candidates plan to run on a platform of educational excellence, the news release said. The names of those candidates were not immediately available. More information is expected soon, according to the website RecallMTSD.com.

Wisconsin statutes require recall petitions to have the signatures of enough qualified electors equal to at least 25% of the votes cast within the district from the 2018 gubernatorial election. People signing the petition must be of voting age and live in the district.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: population changes

David Keltz:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2010 and 2019, California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois lost a combined four million residents. Meanwhile, the top five states that saw the greatest influx of new residents were the Republican-led states of Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Ohio, and Arizona. It does not hurt that Florida, Texas, and Tennessee also have no income tax.

But the pandemic, in conjunction with disastrous Democrat policies, has only accelerated the blue-state exodus. It turns out that draconian lockdowns in the form of school, restaurant, and business closures; massive spikes in violent crime; few entertainment options; higher taxes; and scarce job opportunities do not make for a desirable living environment or a suitable place to raise a family.

Shocking, I know.

Look at California, a state that, with its sprawling beaches and sunny weather, has long been a desirable place to live. But not anymore, thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s totalitarian leadership and unscientific mismanagement of his state’s pandemic response. He faces a likely recall election, but many people are simply voting with their feet.

In 2020, 135,600 more people left the state of California than moved there, the third-largest population loss ever recorded in the Golden State and only the 12th time since 1900 that California has had a net migration loss. From July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, California added just 21,200 people, increasing the state’s population by 0.05 percent. Over the past year, Newsom has done all he can to make living in California essentially a prison sentence.

Macron to close Ena, training school of French elite

Leila Abboud:

To reform the senior civil service, the government will also abolish the system by which people are initially assigned to the most prestigious government jobs based on their ranking at Ena graduation, and instead give them roles based on needs and skills.

Macron first promised to abolish Ena, which has produced four of France’s seven presidents since 1958 and is his own alma mater, in 2019 in response to the anti-establishment gilets jaunes protests.

The decision shocked the French elite and divided public opinion — some saw it as a long overdue move to help fix an unequal society while others decried it as a cynical gesture pandering to populists.

Last year the government appeared to soften its stance and floated the idea of replacing Ena with a new institution while retaining the brand for international purposes such as the training of EU staff. That approach has now been adopted as Macron prepares for presidential elections next spring with his popularity dented by his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ena was founded in 1945 under Charles de Gaulle with the aim of training civil servants drawn from all social classes through entrance exams and assigning jobs based on performance rather than wealth or connections.

“and I would create a more robust communications team to foster improved public relations”- Jill Underly on Wisconsin taxpayer funded K-12 Governance

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 Underly was elected state schools superintendent, a position that oversees the state Department of Public Instruction.

Vos went to war with Underly immediately after her election after outside spending fueled by Democratic groups set a record for state superintendent races, which are supposed to be nonpartisan but aren’t as more political groups spend to back candidates and state parties promote them.

“… the teachers union owns the DPI; not the parents or the students or the taxpayers. Count me as someone who isn’t going to support putting another nickel into this unaccountable state bureaucracy,” Vos tweeted on Tuesday, an hour after the Associated Press called the race for Underly over former Brown Deer School District Superintendent Deb Kerr.

In response, Underly said she wants to work with the Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers to “help all kids — no matter how their parents vote.”

“I think it’s clear from yesterday’s results that supporting our local schools and our children isn’t a partisan issue,” she said in a statement. “There’s plenty of common ground here, as I’ve already said I want resources to flow to schools, to help with mental health, credit recovery, staffing, and more.”

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Wisconsin’s open and closed taxpayer supported K-12 Schools; on the April 6 Ballot

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 future of Wisconsin schools is on the line in the spring election. She said organizations like the Centers for Disease Control back her recommendations for returning to in-person schooling and knocked her opponent Jill Underly for not having a plan.

A New York Times analysis this month found that only 4 percent of school districts nationwide have low enough COVID-19 community transmission to safely hold full-time in-person classes.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Public schools and racial hierarchy

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 choice the civil rights issue of our time. However, Stanford is taking the standard approach of over-educated leftists. As is typical, they detected disparate outcomes in a system they are evaluating, they blamed it on racism and their first instinct was to lower the standards.

Their practicum is The Youth Justice Lab: Imagining an Anti-Racist Public Education System. Perhaps they would like to engage in a deeper analysis. Recently I wrote about a teen in Baltimore who only passed three classes in his entire high school career. Even more shocking, with a GPA of 0.13, his class rank was 62 out of 120 students The mayor of Baltimore City is black, the city council is extremely diverse, and the CEO of Baltimore City Schools is also black. The school district’s average teacher salary is $62,000, and its per-student spending was the third highest in the nation in 2019.

This overall picture of well-funded schools with a minority-led city government and school leadership is common in underperforming urban school districts. These districts have financial resources, and it would be hard to imagine their leadership’s primary goal is to hold students down based on racial identity. Instead, schools and individual student school performances are a multi-factor analysis. It is not as simple as assigning a motive, as Stanford Law has.

Luckily, Stanford University has one of the most astute students on inequity in education at the Hoover Institution. Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote a data-filled book called Charter Schools and Their Enemies. He demonstrates that charter schools, free from mandates from the local school board, can operate in the same building as a public school and produce significantly better results with predominantly minority populations. He spends quite a bit of time evaluating Success Academy, a charter school system comprised of 47 schools in New York City that enroll approximately 20,000 students.

Success Academy enrolls students through a lottery in underserved neighborhoods. In the last year that students in New York took standardized tests, Success Academy students had the state’s highest scores. Of the more than 7,000 students who took the exams, 99% passed the math portion, with 86% achieving the highest score, and 90% passed the English and language arts portion, with 41% achieving the highest score. The student population that took the tests was diverse and had an average household income of less than $50,000 in one of the world’s highest cost-of-living cities.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

San Francisco Parents Work to Recall School Board Members Amid Reopening Controversy

Alejandro Lazo:

Fed up with the pace of plans to reopen public schools, parent groups are mobilizing against San Francisco’s elected school board, arguing it has given priority to social justice issues over getting kids back in classrooms.

Two parents have launched a formal recall effort against three members of the school board, including its president and vice president, while another group is considering options that include asking voters to eliminate school board elections altogether.

The parent activism is the latest development in the escalating San Francisco schools-reopening saga. Public schools have been shut down since last March, and negotiations between the local teachers union and the district remain at an impasse despite San Francisco having low Covid-19 rates for a major U.S. city.

“The people and businesses of San Francisco have worked very hard, have sacrificed, to keep our Covid levels low, and our schools have been closed entirely throughout,” said Patrick Wolff, one of the parents who formed the Campaign for Better San Francisco Public Schools, which can fund-raise for political campaigns. “So just think of the harm that’s being done.”

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Effort launched to recall three S.F. school board members

Lizzie Johnson:

A San Francisco family has officially launched an effort to recall three school board members, filing the paperwork with county and state election officials, with more than 1,200 city residents already saying they are ready to sign the petitions.

Organizers Autumn Looijen and Siva Raj, who are parents to five children, said they wanted to “get politics out of education.”

The recall effort targets President Gabriela López, Vice President Alison Collins and Commissioner Faauuga Moliga.

The other four board members, who were elected in November and took office in January, cannot be recalled until they have served six months.

In total, the effort will need 70,000 signatures for each of the three members to get the recall on the ballot.

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Opinion: Affluent professionals and unions: Can this marriage last?

Megan McArdle:

Rereading Teixeira and Abramowitz today, one is struck by their eerie prescience, but also by the fundamental difficulty of holding together a Democratic Party where highly educated and affluent adults are the ascending faction but are not numerous enough to carry an election by themselves. This past year, that difficulty has come into sharp focus as the pandemic has set the educated class that leads the party on a collision course with its traditional union base.

That crash might have come sooner if private-sector unions hadn’t been largely a spent force. If White manufacturing workers and manual laborers had remained the party’s “prototypical” voters, as Teixeira and Abramowitz say they were in the mid-20th century, one can imagine that shift of the highly cosmopolitan “mass upper middle” toward Democrats might have stalled over issues such as immigration and trade.

These days, however, “labor” is more likely to mean government unions, which account for a slight majority of all unionized workers. Public-sector unions aren’t worried that the local school system is going to outsource its teaching to China or that courthouse jobs will be taken over by immigrants from Guatemala. So the party could keep singing the same hymns to organized labor even as the congregation turned over and its theology changed.

Progressive professionals might not like every single thing the teachers unions or the transit workers did, but they could live with it — and if services became really intolerably bad, they moved someplace where the unions were less intransigent, even while insisting that they were very supportive of public services, and of a well-paid government workforce represented by government unions.

The death of George Floyd, however, made it a little bit harder to voice full-throated support for government unions. Progressives raged at each new revelation of how insulated police officers had been from any sort of accountability for abusing their power. They had a whole bevy of union-negotiated special protections that made it hard to convict bad cops, and just as hard to separate them from the force.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

3 Attacks on School Choice in Governor Evers’ Wisconsin Budget Proposal

Will Flanders:

Governor Tony Evers’ 2021-23 budget includes a Christmas tree for teachers unions in the form of higher spending and no requirements to get kids back into the classroom. But it also represents a renewed assault on the state’s high-performing school choice and charter programs. Below are three school choice takeaways from the governor’s budget proposal.

Enrollment Caps on Choice Programs

The budget proposal includes an enrollment cap on all of Wisconsin’s school choice programs—Milwaukee, Racine and statewide. These programs serve students whose families are low-income—under 300% of the federal poverty limit in Milwaukee and Racine and under 220% of the limit statewide. The cap would begin in fiscal year 2023, using the enrollment from the 2022 school year. While an enrollment cap can sound innocuous, the practical effect would be to prevent additional students from accessing the program. Make no mistake: this freeze would make the programs unviable for many schools that participate.

Currently, enrollment in the statewide program (Wisconsin Parental Choice Program) is capped at 5% of district enrollment. This number is set to increase by 1% per year until the caps come off in 2025, when the programs reach 10% of district enrollment. Setting an enrollment cap next year would limit choice enrollment to 6% of district enrollment. This would make it impossible for school choice to flourish like it has in Milwaukee, where many schools exist to primarily to serve low-income students who would not otherwise be able to afford private schooling.

Parents clearly want educational options. Enrollment in the statewide program has grown from 499 students in 2013-14 to 11,740 students this year—an increase of more than 2200% over just eight years. This is likely because school choice has a track record of improving outcomes. WILL’s annual Apples to Apples study has found higher achievement on the Forward Exam for students in the state’s choice programs relative to traditional public schools, a finding that is supported by national data. This provision can be seen as little else than protecting public school enrollment counts.

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

Patrick Marley and Molly Beck:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

When asked about Act 10, I often suggest that interested parties explore the Milwaukee pension scandal. Successful recall elections lead to the first Republican County Executive in many, many years – Scott Walker.

A few links, just before Act 10 require contemplation, as well.

2009 “an emphasis on adult employment” – retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, speaking at the Madison Rotary Club..

2010, WEAC: Four (State) Senators for $1.57 million (!)

Mulligans for “Act 10”?

Republican legislative leaders immediately rejected the full proposal because of provisions within it that would roll back policies they enacted under a Republican governor.

“He’s not serious about governing, he’s serious about politics,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters after the budget address.

Vos said the budget proposal was full of “poison pills” that Evers knew would be opposed by Republicans and would likely be ignored while writing the next state budget plan.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, expressed a similar view, writing on Twitter that Republicans would “set Evers’ bad budget aside.”

Meanwhile, Evers concluded his speech by asking GOP lawmakers to end the seemingly permanent standoff between them.

“There’s no time for false promises of hope and prosperity with empty words that you know full well won’t match your actions,” Evers said. “You can disagree with me if you want, but don’t punish the people we serve so you can settle a score no one but you is keeping.”

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

A few links, just before Act 10 require contemplation, as well.

2009 “an emphasis on adult employment” – retired Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, speaking at the Madison Rotary Club..

2010, WEAC: Four (State) Senators for $1.57 million (!)

Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Candidate Forum: What’s at Stake for Black and Brown Communities?

wiseye.

Does the DPI structure and spending practice address our long term, disastrous reading results? Wisconsin students now lag Alabama, a state that spends less and has fewer teachers per student.

The primary election is scheduled for Tuesday, 16 February 2021. The top two candidates will advance to the April, 2021 election.

Seven Candidates vie for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent.

Superintendent candidates defend handling of racist incidents in their school districts.

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

The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent. “Disinformation” and “misinformation” are used to excuse incompetence and punish opposition.

Ash Staub:

The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” have dominated the political lexicon in recent years. Whereas misinformation merely refers to inaccurate or misleading information, the label of disinformation implies an intent to deceive. Both have served as the source of much consternation and hand-wringing from media figures and politicians alike, with countless articles, press segments, academic papers, and political speeches devoted to solving the problem posed by intentionally false or misleading information and “fake news.” For its part, the Biden administration has characterized disinformation as a “threat to our democracy,” going as far as to lay out a road map for how to combat it.

Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.

While our inability as a society to agree on basic facts is certainly a problem, what should be self-evident is that misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions. If the information sources that are deemed “authoritative” are so often wrong or misleading, and inspire little public confidence, is it any wonder that people turn to alternatives? Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.

Furthermore, the escalating war on misinformation and disinformation seems to be less concerned with actually trying to establish authoritative sources of truth as it is with marginalizing facts or narratives that don’t suit the establishment agenda. The labels “misinformation” and “disinformation” are liberally and inconsistently applied to silence dissent and promote certain political interests.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

“We Cannot Mince Words”: San Francisco Education Official Denounces Meritocracy As Racist

Jonathan Turley:

Alison Collins, the Vice President of the San Francisco Board of Education, has declared meritocracy to be racist even in the selection of students at advanced or gifted programs. As we have previously discussed, this has been a building campaign in academia as educators and others denounce selection based on academic performance through testing. At issue in San Francisco is Lowell High School where top students were selected through testing and grades. Most cities have such gifted programs or institutions, though we have discussed calls for the elimination of all gifted and talented programs in cities like New York. Lowell had a majority of white and Asian students and only two percent of its student body were African-Americans. Collins and other board members want to abolish the merit-based selection in favor of a blind lottery system.

Collins’ remarks from a San Francisco Board of Education public meeting in October 13, 2020 were only recently posted by Sophie Bearman of San Francisco’s online publication Here/Say Media. In the meeting, she declared “When we talk about merit, meritocracy and especially meritocracy based on standardized testing…those are racist systems.… You can’t talk about social justice, and then say you want to have a selective school that keeps certain kids out from the neighborhoods that you think are dangerous.”

Collins made the statement in support of a resolution, entitled “In Response to Ongoing, Pervasive Systemic Racism at Lowell High School,” authored by Collins, Board President Gabriela Lopez, Commissioner Matt Alexander, and Student Delegates Shavonne Hines-Foster and Kathya Correa Almanza.

Newsweek quotes at least one Lowell teacher who objects to the elimination of the school as a place for top performing students and said that the system is blind on race and designed to reward “the hardest working kids in terms of academics.”

Gifted programs and elite academic schools are designed to allow students to reach their full academic potential with other students performing at the highest level of math and other disciplines. It is often difficult for such students to reach that potential in conventional settings. Teachers have to keep their classes as a whole moving forward in subject areas. That often means that academically gifted children are held back by conventional curricula or lesson plans. Those students can actually underperform due to boredom or the lack of challenging material. Many simply leave the public school system. Moreover, students tend to perform better with students progressing at their similar level. Teachers can then focus on a lesson plan and discussions that are tailored to students at a similar performance level.

Related: English 10.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron provides a timely read.

The Tragedy of the Schools

Daniel Henninger:

In Chicago, the nation’s third-largest system is on the brink of a strike, despite pleas from the city’s progressive mayor, Lori Lightfoot, for the teachers to return. Unions are resisting opening in Los Angeles, Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Washington. Michael Mulgrew, head of the teachers union in New York City, says the schools may not open “until September.”

San Francisco’s Board of Education has enough time on its hands to vote 6-1 to cancel the names of 44 Americans from their public schools. On Wednesday, the city sued its own school board for failing to get the schools open.

Though teaching modes vary by state, what data exist suggests in-person teaching at public schools is below 25%, while it’s about 60% at private schools, which have largely reopened.

At the start of the pandemic, the closures were understandable. They no longer are, with even the oh-so-careful Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying there is scant evidence of significant virus transmission among grade-school-age children.

Some public districts are performing, as are many dedicated teachers. But parents aren’t waiting for the next school-board election to file complaints. They are voting with their children’s feet.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Teacher Unions & Influence Spending

Chrissy Clark:

Democrats are taking the side of the Chicago Teachers Union as it vows to strike. City leadership ordered teachers to return to classroom learning and the ongoing feud is highlighting the burgeoning divide between teacher unions — who wish to keep schools closed — and school administrators — who wish to safely reopen using mitigation strategies.

The White House Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, is among the most notable Democrats to take the side of the teacher unions that refuse to return to in-person learning.

The unions and the Biden administration claim that reopening schools is unsafe, despite evidence that in-school transmission of COVID-19 is extremely rare. A peer-reviewed study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “schools can stay open safely in communities with widespread community transmission.” Other studies have also indicated that schools are not driving coronavirus infections.

Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also calls on schools to reopen for in-person learning “as safely and quickly as possible.” Dr. Anthony Fauci has repeatedly echoed the CDC guidelines to reopen schools, as well.

Despite Democrats’ calls for “science” to drive policy, there appears to be another force driving their policy goals — political donations from teacher unions. Here are the Democrats who backed efforts to keep schools closed while taking thousands from teacher unions in the 2020 election cycle:

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Three staff members vying to become next Madison Teachers Inc. president

Three Madison Metropolitan School District staff members are vying to be the next Madison Teachers Inc. president.

One week after the most contentious presidential transition in generations, a much friendlier race is playing out with millions fewer voters.

“It is actually a very healthy part of our union to have these sorts of elections and to have these sorts of discussions,” said West High School dean of students Michael Jones, one of the three candidates. “The important thing is that the strength and the health of our union and our education community is there and we’re going to make sure that happens.

“I think we have a mutual respect for each other and an admiration.”

MTI members are voting this week for their choice. The top two vote-getters will advance to a second vote, which will take place next week.

Madison Teachers, Inc. demands virtual start to the school year.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Chicago Teachers Union vs. Biden

Wall Street Journal:

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) this weekend vetoed Joe Biden’s plan to reopen schools during his first 100 days by voting to continue remote learning indefinitely. The union is taking kids hostage to extract more money from Congress with no guarantee that it will release them if it does.

Chicago’s Board of Education had required K-8 teachers to show up at schools on Monday to prepare for a return to in-person instruction on Feb. 1. The union doesn’t care. Seventy-one percent of CTU voting members rejected a return to in-person learning until schools are “safe”—meaning whenever teachers feel like going back.

The district has installed air purifiers in classrooms, conducted ventilation tests, increased cleaning and procured rapid testing, among other things. It will begin vaccinating teachers next month. There’s no excuse for teachers not to return to classrooms.

“Students in over 130 private and parochial schools and over 2,000 early learning centers across the city have been safely learning in their classrooms since the fall, and we must provide that same option to our families who, through no fault of their own, have been unable to make remote learning work for their children,” Chicago Public Schools said. “We’ve seen grades, attendance, and enrollment drop significantly for many of our students in recent months, and the impact has been felt most by our Black and Latinx students.”

After the union vote, the district postponed teachers’ start-date until Wednesday to provide time “to resolve our discussions without risking disruption to student learning.” Haven’t district leaders read the children’s book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”? Accommodating unreasonable demands leads to more unreasonable demands.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Dane County Madison health department files 119-count complaint against studio over ‘Nutcracker’ performance

Chris Rickert:

It does not include specific regulations for art or dance studios, and Nemeckay said her business was among about 20 studios that collectively tried to get answers from Public Health Madison and Dane County about what they were allowed to do, but that the agency either gave them conflicting information or refused to answer their questions because it had been sued over the mass gathering restrictions.

“So we are stuck trying to figure it out on our own,” she said.

Public Health says in its complaint that it learned Dec. 7, 8 and 11 that the studio was continuing to hold indoor dance classes and warned it in a message on Dec. 11 that holding the ballet would violate the public health order. Nemeckay said she never received that message and hadn’t heard of the complaint against her business until told of it by the State Journal.

She said that in nine months, five people involved in activities at the studio have tested positive for the coronavirus, but that none of the infections were traced back to the studio.

Each of the 119 counts is punishable by a $200 fine, plus court costs. Most of the counts pertain to children dressed for parts in the ballot and are described by what part they’re playing, such as “Mouse #3”, the clothes they’re wearing or the color of their hair. None of the people involved are mentioned by name.

Madison assistant city attorney Marci Paulsen said she has drafted 41 summons and complaints related to violations of local COVID-19 restrictions — 39 in Madison Municipal Court and two in circuit court for violations that happened outside of the city.

“Elections have consequences.”

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign:

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Google, Defense Products and Politics

Jonathan Guyer:

Days after winning the November election, Joe Biden announced the names of those staffing his transition. Big Tech landed prominent spots. Among the hundreds of personnel on the agency review teams serving the president-elect, there was one from Uber, two from Amazon, and one from Google. And then there were two people from Rebellion Defense, a shadowy defense startup.

The announcement sent Washington insiders scrambling to look up the company. No major defense contractors appeared on the list. “It’s sure odd that a year-old startup like Rebellion winds up with two employees serving on a presidential transition team,” Ken Glueck, the executive vice president of the tech company Oracle, told me.

What is Rebellion Defense? With a Star Wars allusion as its name, this firm is not your typical contractor. Rebellion launched in the summer of 2019 to craft artificial-intelligence (AI) software for the defense industry. Trade publications gushed about how innovative it was. It quickly raised $63 million, with the conspicuous backing of its board member Eric Schmidt. Schmidt is best known as the former CEO of Google, but he’s also a billionaire investor and an influential consultant to key government bodies.

More from Jonathan Guyer

Schmidt serves as chairman of an advisory board to the White House and Congress called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. From official positions, he has advocated for the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to adopt more machine-learning technology. Meanwhile, as a venture capitalist, he has invested millions of dollars in more than a half-dozen national-security startups that sell those very technologies back to the government.

Many taxpayer supported K-12 school districts use Google services, including Madison.

Top Contributors to the Candidates for Wisconsin School Superintendent

Seven candidates who want to be the state’s next top school chief in the upcoming spring elections collectively raised more than $200,000 last year.

The seven candidates will face off in the Feb. 16 primary. The top two finishers will vie for a four-year term as state school superintendent in the April 6 elections. The winner succeeds Carolyn Stanford Taylor, who is not running for election. Taylor was appointed state school superintendent in 2019 to fill out of the term of Tony Evers after he became governor.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the candidates and their 2020 fundraising:

Deborah Kerr, a retired Brown Deer School District superintendent, accepted $68,460 and had about $50,140 in her campaign account as of Dec. 31.

Sheila Briggs, an assistant state school superintendent, raised about $53,300 and had about $44,345 in her campaign coffers at year’s end.

Jill Underly, Pecatonica Area School District superintendent, raised about $38,330 and had about $20,525 in her campaign account as of Dec. 31.

Troy Gunderson, retired West Salem School District superintendent, raised $20,505 and had $13,240 in his campaign coffers on Dec. 31.

Shandowlyon Hendricks-Williams, director of Gov. Tony Evers’ Milwaukee office, raised about $18,320 and had about $7,840 in her campaign account at year’s end.

Joe Fenrick, a Fond du Lac High School science teacher, raised about $8,600 and had about $8,575 in his campaign account on Dec. 31.

Steve Krull, principal of the Garland Elementary School in Milwaukee, raised about $3,460 and had about $2,450 in his campaign account as of Dec. 31.

Here are the contributors who gave $1,000 or more to the candidates in 2020, according to a preliminary review of their campaign finance reports. The employers of these contributors were identified by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign because state law no longer requires candidates to identify the employers of their large donors:

Kerr

Ted Kellner, of Mequon, retired founder of Fiduciary Management, and his wife, Mary, $5,000,

Gary and Janet Henseler, of Racine, owners of Accounting & Business Services, Inc., $5,000,

Michael Perrone, of Antioch, Ill., president of The Deli Source, and his wife, Karen, $5,000,

Cristal Bemont, of Redwood City, Calif., chief executive officer of Talend, about $1,900,

Patrick English, of Wauwatosa, chairman of Fiduciary Management, about $1,400,

Michael Kass, Brown Deer police chief, $1,000,

Kathy Wilson, an optometrist in Ringwood, Ill., $1,000,

The campaign committee of GOP State Sen. Alberta Darling, of River Hills, $1,000,

In addition to the contributions, Kerr loaned her campaign $21,000.

Briggs

Lillian Lowery, of Yardley, Penn., $1,000,

Katie Rainey, of Madison, a Department of Public Instruction director, $1,000,

Pamela Arp, of DeForest, retired, $1,000,

James Dahlberg, of Madison, University of Wisconsin emeritus professor of biochemistry, $1,000,

Anupam Mishra, Hillsborough, Calif., a director at Aspire Public Schools, $1,000,

Bonnie Dykman, of Monona, retired Madison public school teacher, $1,000.

In addition to the contributions, Briggs made about $3,000 in in-kind contributions and loans to her campaign.

Underly

Jill Gaskell, of Blanchardville, a Pecatonica school board member, $1,200,

Charles Semko, of Munster, Ind., $1,000,

Jeff Semko, a Crown Point, Ind. attorney, $1,000,

Kaye Gilbertson, of Barneveld, owner of J&R Underground, $1,000.

In addition to the contributions, Underly made loans and in-kind contributions to her campaign totaling about $11,200.

Gunderson

Del Gunderson, of Colfax, a retired accountant, $5,000,

Jill Gunderson, of West Salem, a retired teacher, $4,000,

Trevor Gunderson, a St. Paul, Minn. attorney, $1,500,

Cheryl Gunderson, a Minneapolis, Minn. paralegal, $1,000,

William Hubbard, of Monroe, a retired teacher, $1,000.

In addition to the contributions, Troy Gunderson made $2,480 in in-kind contributions to his campaign.

Hendricks-Williams

Doris Reaves, of Milwaukee, retired, $1,000.

In addition to the contribution, Hendricks-Williams contributed $10,000 to her campaign.

Fenrick

Fenrick made loans and contributions to his campaign totaling about $7,600.

Krull

Pamela Gustafson, Milwaukee public school teacher, $1,000.

More, here.

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

CDC study finds COVID-19 outbreaks aren’t fueled by in-person classes

Jessie Hellmann:

A new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that in-person classes at K-12 schools do not appear to lead to increases in COVID-19 when compared with areas that have online-only learning.

The CDC study noted that in the week beginning Dec. 6, coronavirus cases among the general population in counties where K-12 schools opened for in-person learning were similar to rates in counties that were online only.

“CDC recommends that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely,” the authors of the report wrote.

As of Dec. 7, about 62 percent of K-12 school districts were offering either full or partial in person-learning, but reports of outbreaks at schools have been limited, according to the CDC.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

“The choice is ours”: Panel discusses COVID-19 and schools

Most children are better-served by in-person education, Navsaria said, with benefits coming from “just being around other people,” but there is a “balance” to strike with the health of the community. Pointing to guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, Navsaria said it’s good to operate with a goal of being in-person, but only when the mitigation strategies mentioned in that guidance can be implemented.

“I think it’s really important that people not just stop before reading the ‘ifs,’” he said.

Madison’s well funded K-12 schools remain closed while many nearby organizations are either fully or partially open.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

When the Great Equalizer Shuts Down: Schools, Peers, and Parents in Pandemic Times

Francesco Agostinelli:

What are the effects of school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s education? Online education is an imperfect substitute for in-person learning, particularly for children from low-income families. Peer effects also change: schools allow children from different socio-economic backgrounds to mix together, and this effect is lost when schools are closed. Another factor is the response of parents, some of whom compensate for the changed environment through their own efforts, while others are unable to do so. We examine the interaction of these factors with the aid of a structural model of skill formation. We find that school closures have a large and persistent effect on educational outcomes that is highly unequal. High school students from poor neighborhoods suffer a learning loss of 0.4 standard deviations, whereas children from rich neighborhoods remain unscathed. The channels operating through schools, peers, and parents all contribute to growing educational inequality during the pandemic.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Mary Ann Nicholson K-12 School Positions

Mary Ann Nicholson is running for Dane County Executive. She recently published her K-12 positions:

Further, my heart goes out to students and parents/guardians throughout Dane County this week. From those in MMSD learning they won’t have the option of going back in-person for third quarter to those receiving news from medical advisory task forces/School Boards/administration that they may now go back.

According to medical experts, here and across the U.S., COVID-19 research** indicates:

Transmission rates in schools is almost ZERO

Transmission is occurring primarily in households from a positive family member

I understand it is a confusing, frustrating and emotional time for students and parents/guardians.

It is my hope that I can give a voice to all those who feel like they are not being heard. I want to build trust. I want to build up ALL citizens of Dane County. I will do my best to make sure your voices are heard.

Nicholson is running against incumbent Joe Parisi. The election is scheduled for Tuesday, April 6, 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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Commentary on Madison’s Closed K-12 Schools

Elizabeth Beyer:

A number of the staff respondents expressed concerns for their safety in regard to class size, ventilation and PPE, lack of district evidence that a safe return is plausible, the high number of COVID-19 cases in Dane County and a lack of detailed policies and procedures for returning.

“Our numbers in Dane County do not support a safe return. Our classes are too large to be able to space them out according to guidelines,” one staff member wrote in response to the survey.

District staff also noted a desire for widespread vaccination before returning to classrooms. Gov. Tony Evers said Monday the public won’t be able to receive the vaccine until June.

Madison Teachers Inc. issued a separate survey ahead of the district’s decision last week that asked members if they were ready to return to in-person learning for the third quarter and an overwhelming majority indicated they felt it was too soon to reopen classrooms.

“They asked a different question than us,” Jenkins said, “They asked a question about teachers feeling comfortable coming back, we asked how many felt like they could come back. It was different, from our survey to their survey, and anytime you have two different surveys, researchers will tell you, it is about the question: Was it the same, was it the same intent? And no it wasn’t.”

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Madison’s well funded K-12 schools remain closed; online only

Not a surprise, but the Facebook comments on @MMSDschools‘ post about the decision to remain virtual are hotly divided between people supporting the decision and others saying the decision is a failure: https://t.co/MnD2Q3W3qj

— Scott Girard (@sgirard9) January 8, 2021

Commentary one and two.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Doctors’ group says open schools, with proper COVID-19 measures

UPI:

A prominent U.S. doctors’ group reaffirmed its recommendation this week that having kids physically in school should be the goal, while also outlining safety protocols needed to allow schools to be open.

In its COVID-19 guidance for safe schools, the American Academy of Pediatrics listed measures communities need to address.

These include controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the community, protecting staff and students in schools and coordinating closely with local and state health experts.

“New information tells us that opening schools does not significantly increase community transmission of the virus. However, it is critical for schools to closely follow guidance provided by public health officials,” said Dr. Lee Beers, new president of the AAP.

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

Unions, political affiliation more predictive of virtual learning decision than COVID cases. The report.

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Run for Office: Dane County Executive is on the Spring, 2021 ballot.

Wisconsin schools saved money by closing, unclear where savings went

Benjamin Yount:

Wisconsin schools saved about $40 million by not being open last spring, but a new report says no one is sure where the money went.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty looked at the data included in the coronavirus report issued by the state’s Department of Public Instruction last month.

“The report asks for costs and savings in five categories: utilities, transportation, food service, personnel, contract terminations, and a catch-all ‘other’ bucket,” WILL Director of Research Will Flanders wrote. “By far the biggest savings came from transportation costs. When schools are shut down, obviously most kids are no longer being transported, leading to a savings statewide of more than $34 million.”

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).

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state.

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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