Daniela Jaime:

After having to fight for his first win last year, Blessed Sacrament seventh-grader Aiden Wijeyakulasuriya swiftly defended his All-City Spelling Bee title the second time around, pushing past his fellow top-three finishers in less than 10 minutes Saturday.

The awards presentation at the All-City Spelling Bee on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2023.

The 12-year-old powered through the spelling of “milliner,” “comprimario,” and “amyloid” as he faced runner-up Jay Jadhav, seemingly keeping his cool until the very end.

“There’s a lot of mixed thoughts as you’re going up there,” Wijeyakulasuriya said after the competition. “What was going through my head was, ‘I never heard some of those words.’ What I do, I just focus on my breathing, focus on the word and just forget about what the outcome will be.”

Maybe that’s to be expected of a kid whose favorite word is “cynghanedd” — an intricate system of patterning of consonants, accents and rhymes.

Note that spending increases annually, with Madison taxpayers supporting at least $23,000 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.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

When you see “school district could shut it’s doors” headlines, be sure to google per pupil funding levels. You won’t learn this from the article. Then google the local budgets of your high achieving choice school. https://t.co/gATUrXRFVU pic.twitter.com/snXeikpsGK

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) February 19, 2023

The article.

Note that spending increases annually, with Madison taxpayers supporting at least $23,000 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.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

TWITTER FILES #16
Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment pic.twitter.com/Knp0UjfaMp

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023

TWITTER FILES #16
Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment pic.twitter.com/Knp0UjfaMp

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023

Stephen Wolfram:

That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected. But how does it do it? And why does it work? My purpose here is to give a rough outline of what’s going on inside ChatGPT—and then to explore why it is that it can do so well in producing what we might consider to be meaningful text. I should say at the outset that I’m going to focus on the big picture of what’s going on—and while I’ll mention some engineering details, I won’t get deeply into them. (And the essence of what I’ll say applies just as well to other current “large language models” [LLMs] as to ChatGPT.)

The first thing to explain is that what ChatGPT is always fundamentally trying to do is to produce a “reasonable continuation” of whatever text it’s got so far, where by “reasonable” we mean “what one might expect someone to write after seeing what people have written on billions of webpages, etc.”

So let’s say we’ve got the text “The best thing about AI is its ability to”. Imagine scanning billions of pages of human-written text (say on the web and in digitized books) and finding all instances of this text—then seeing what word comes next what fraction of the time. ChatGPT effectively does something like this, except that (as I’ll explain) it doesn’t look at literal text; it looks for things that in a certain sense “match in meaning”. But the end result is that it produces a ranked list of words that might follow, together with “probabilities”:

Commentary.

Stephen Wolfram:

That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected. But how does it do it? And why does it work? My purpose here is to give a rough outline of what’s going on inside ChatGPT—and then to explore why it is that it can do so well in producing what we might consider to be meaningful text. I should say at the outset that I’m going to focus on the big picture of what’s going on—and while I’ll mention some engineering details, I won’t get deeply into them. (And the essence of what I’ll say applies just as well to other current “large language models” [LLMs] as to ChatGPT.)

The first thing to explain is that what ChatGPT is always fundamentally trying to do is to produce a “reasonable continuation” of whatever text it’s got so far, where by “reasonable” we mean “what one might expect someone to write after seeing what people have written on billions of webpages, etc.”

So let’s say we’ve got the text “The best thing about AI is its ability to”. Imagine scanning billions of pages of human-written text (say on the web and in digitized books) and finding all instances of this text—then seeing what word comes next what fraction of the time. ChatGPT effectively does something like this, except that (as I’ll explain) it doesn’t look at literal text; it looks for things that in a certain sense “match in meaning”. But the end result is that it produces a ranked list of words that might follow, together with “probabilities”:

Theo Baker:

In 2009, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, then a top executive at the biotechnology company Genentech, was the primary author of a scientific paper published in the prestigious journal Nature that claimed to have found the potential cause for brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s patients. “Because of this research,” read Genentech’s annual letter to shareholders, “we are working to develop both antibodies and small molecules that may attack Alzheimer’s from a novel entry point and help the millions of people who currently suffer from this devastating disease.”

But after several unsuccessful attempts to reproduce the research, the paper became the subject of an internal review by Genentech’s Research Review Committee (RRC), according to four high-level Genentech employees at the time; two were senior scientists and two were scientists who also served as executives. Three spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the allegations and non-disclosure agreements. The scientists, one of whom was an executive who sat on the review committee and all of whom were informed of the review’s findings at the time due to their stature at the company, said that the inquiry discovered falsification of data in the research, and that Tessier-Lavigne kept the finding from becoming public.

Theo Baker:

In 2009, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, then a top executive at the biotechnology company Genentech, was the primary author of a scientific paper published in the prestigious journal Nature that claimed to have found the potential cause for brain degeneration in Alzheimer’s patients. “Because of this research,” read Genentech’s annual letter to shareholders, “we are working to develop both antibodies and small molecules that may attack Alzheimer’s from a novel entry point and help the millions of people who currently suffer from this devastating disease.”

But after several unsuccessful attempts to reproduce the research, the paper became the subject of an internal review by Genentech’s Research Review Committee (RRC), according to four high-level Genentech employees at the time; two were senior scientists and two were scientists who also served as executives. Three spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the allegations and non-disclosure agreements. The scientists, one of whom was an executive who sat on the review committee and all of whom were informed of the review’s findings at the time due to their stature at the company, said that the inquiry discovered falsification of data in the research, and that Tessier-Lavigne kept the finding from becoming public.

Today CNN did a segment on Texas Tech’s decision to stop using diversity statements in faculty hiring, citing my report. https://t.co/h9d5kuqiAa

— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) February 16, 2023

Today CNN did a segment on Texas Tech’s decision to stop using diversity statements in faculty hiring, citing my report. https://t.co/h9d5kuqiAa

— John Sailer (@JohnDSailer) February 16, 2023

Tom Knighton:

Moreover, why should someone get preferential treatment because they’re missing a leg or something? Why should they be forced to disclose such a private, personal thing as their sexual orientation just to not lose an edge with their submission?

For a lot of people, they’re upset at the fact that this is ultimately discriminatory, and I get that. I’m not thrilled with it either.

However, one can’t help but see a lot of people feeling pressured to reveal something about themselves that they might not be ready to share with the world, all for a prestigious placement in the journal.

Then we have to face the fact that we’re living in Clown World, where what we used to call someone with normal, traditional values regarding sex is “demi-sexual.” It’s almost as if anyone can fall under the LGBT+ umbrella, so that means anyone could get oppression points they can use for the journal, right?

So it seems to me that if that’s the case, this effort is nothing but a way to force people to disclose things about themselves whether they want to or not.

Sorry, but I’m unamused.

Tom Knighton:

Moreover, why should someone get preferential treatment because they’re missing a leg or something? Why should they be forced to disclose such a private, personal thing as their sexual orientation just to not lose an edge with their submission?

For a lot of people, they’re upset at the fact that this is ultimately discriminatory, and I get that. I’m not thrilled with it either.

However, one can’t help but see a lot of people feeling pressured to reveal something about themselves that they might not be ready to share with the world, all for a prestigious placement in the journal.

Then we have to face the fact that we’re living in Clown World, where what we used to call someone with normal, traditional values regarding sex is “demi-sexual.” It’s almost as if anyone can fall under the LGBT+ umbrella, so that means anyone could get oppression points they can use for the journal, right?

So it seems to me that if that’s the case, this effort is nothing but a way to force people to disclose things about themselves whether they want to or not.

Sorry, but I’m unamused.

Daniel Buck:

I’m into my seventh year teaching. I’ve taught in rich schools and poor schools, private and public, middle school and high school. My class schedule has been both unforgivingly busy and also free to the point of leaving me bored at midday. I’ve had great administrators and terrible ones. I’ve used more curricula than I care to count. I’ve spent entire Saturdays and Sundays grading and prepping. But nothing has left me more stressed or anxious than student discipline.

It was worst in my first year of teaching, when both my classroom management skills were at their weakest and the school in which I taught was distinctly weak-kneed. Every day was chaos, and the unpredictability of it scared me the most. What insult would fly across the room? Would I have to break up a fight today? For what educational failure or emotional damage was I responsible because of the chaos in this room? I still remember one student laughing at me after I asked him to sit down.

But it wasn’t just me. An experienced educator across the hall quit that year and checked into a mental hospital because of the verbal abuse she suffered from students. The shift from “these students are disrespectful” to “I am unworthy of respect” comes quickly, and it’s emotionally crushing.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner

Three journalists – from Radio France, Haaretz and TheMarker – approached Team Jorge pretending to be consultants working on behalf of a politically unstable African country that wanted help delaying an election.

The encounters with Hanan and his colleagues took place via video calls and an in-person meeting in Team Jorge’s base, an unmarked office in an industrial park in Modi’in, 20 miles outside Tel Aviv.

Hanan described his team as “graduates of government agencies”, with expertise in finance, social media and campaigns, as well as “psychological warfare”, operating from six offices around the world. Four of Hanan’s colleagues attended the meetings, including his brother, Zohar Hanan, who was described as the chief executive of the group.

In his initial pitch to the potential clients, Hanan claimed: “We are now involved in one election in Africa … We have a team in Greece and a team in [the] Emirates … You follow the leads. [We have completed] 33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful.” Later, he said he was involved in two “major projects” in the US but claimed not to engage directly in US politics.

Wall Street Journal:

The latest move toward rational hiring is in Georgia, where the state Senate voted last week to pursue the removal of unnecessary requirements from certain government jobs. The bill directs the Department of Administrative Services to review the minimum level of education, training and experience needed for every state job, and to reduce requirements when reasonable.

“We used to mandate a college degree for almost everything,” said state Sen. John Albers, the lead sponsor. “Now we’re looking at that differently.” The state House and Gov. Brian Kemp are also likely to back the bill, which passed the Senate 49 to 1, including yes votes from 17 Democrats.

The bipartisan support is no fluke. If Mr. Kemp signs on, he’ll join two Republican Governors and two Democrats who have cut degree requirements in their states since last year. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order last month to focus state job postings on experience and skills rather than education. It was one of the first policy moves by the newly inaugurated Democrat.

“Whether you went to college or gained experience through work, on-the-job training or an apprenticeship, we value what you bring to the table,” he said.

Democrats tend to describe cutting job restrictions as a way to spread opportunity. That goes for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who reformed government hiring practices last April.

Republicans put more emphasis on efficiency. Take former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who started the trend when he reformed state hiring last March. As a former real-estate executive, he aimed to “find new ways to build a steady pipeline of talented, well-trained, skilled workers,” and he gutted restrictions to widen the applicant pool. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox made the same point when he nixed degree requirements for many state jobs in IT and health services.

Alana Newhouse:

Status-quoists believe that any decline in quality one might observe at Yale or The Washington Post or the Food and Drug Administration or the American Federation of Teachers are simply problems of personnel, circumstance, incompetence, or lack of information. Times change, people come and go, status-quoists believe—this outfit screwed up COVID policy, yes, and that place has an antisemitism problem, agreed. But they will learn, reform, and recover, and they need our help to do so. What isn’t needed, and is in fact anathema, is any effort to inject more perceived radicalism into an already toxic and polarized American society. The people, ideas, and institutions that led America after the end of the Cold War must continue to guide us through the turbulence ahead. What can broadly be called the “establishment” is not only familiar, status-quoists believe; it is safe, stable, and ultimately enduring.

Alana Newhouse:

Status-quoists believe that any decline in quality one might observe at Yale or The Washington Post or the Food and Drug Administration or the American Federation of Teachers are simply problems of personnel, circumstance, incompetence, or lack of information. Times change, people come and go, status-quoists believe—this outfit screwed up COVID policy, yes, and that place has an antisemitism problem, agreed. But they will learn, reform, and recover, and they need our help to do so. What isn’t needed, and is in fact anathema, is any effort to inject more perceived radicalism into an already toxic and polarized American society. The people, ideas, and institutions that led America after the end of the Cold War must continue to guide us through the turbulence ahead. What can broadly be called the “establishment” is not only familiar, status-quoists believe; it is safe, stable, and ultimately enduring.

Musa al-garbi

Data show that there was a significant uptick in research focused on various forms of bias and discrimination starting in 2011, but the rate of production of scholarly papers exploring these topics seems to have slowed in recent years.

After 2011, there was a rapid change in discourse and norms around social justice issues, particularly among knowledge economy professionals (i.e., people who work in fields like journalism, the arts, entertainment, law, tech, finance, consulting, education, and research).

As I detail in my forthcoming book, this “awokening” manifested in everything from poll and survey responses, to media outputs, to changes in political alignments, and beyond. Within academia, there was a sharp increase in student protest activity beginning in 2011, accompanied by growing tensions around “cancel culture” and self-censorship. There were ballooning investments in (demonstrably ineffective) mandated diversity-related training and rapid expansions of campus “sex bureaucracies.”   

Changes were also apparent in research outputs. 

In a recent paper for the National Association of Scholars, computer scientist David Rozado analyzed 175 million scholarly abstracts from articles published from 1970 to 2020. He found that, after 2011, there was a sharp increase in the use of prejudice-denoting terms. This held for virtually all forms of bias and discrimination (racism, sexism, transphobia, Islamophobia, ableism, ageism, fatphobia, and derivatives of the same). Statistical analyses suggested that a single underlying shift, likely among the people who produce academic research, could explain most of the observed change across all of these terms since 2011.

Commentary.

Stephen Johnson:

In 1989, the novelist Salman Rushdie went into hiding. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had issued a fatwā calling on “all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world” to kill the writer without delay, for which the assassin would receive a bounty of $1 million. 

Rushdie’s offense was writing a novel. Called the Satanic Verses, the story depicted the prophet Muhammad (and his wives) in ways that incensed parts of the Muslim community and turned the author into the world’s most infamous heretic. As the story circulated through international media, Western intellectuals often offered muddled responses. 

Of course it was wrong for Khomeini to call for the murder of a novelist who had merely written a book, most agreed. But few liberal-minded commentators seemed eager to say Rushdie was entirely without fault. The Indian-born writer had, after all, deeply offended the religious beliefs of millions of Muslims, in nations where values like piety and respect for authority had long been deemed more important than free expression. 

The controversy highlighted the longstanding philosophical chasm between the Islamic and Western worlds: fundamentalism versus liberalism. But for the journalist and author Jonathan Rauch, the most revealing part of the Rushdie affair was not the cultural clash of values. It was the failure of Western critics to understand the nature of their own liberal intellectual system.

Wall Street Journal:

The budget deficit more than tripled to $3.14 trillion in fiscal 2020 owing to numerous Covid bills. It fell slightly to $2.7 trillion in 2021 because individual and corporate income tax revenue surged—not because of spending discipline. As pandemic welfare payments expired, the deficit last year clocked in at $1.4 trillion.

During his State of the Union, Mr. Biden blamed deficits on his predecessor. But the deficits during the first three years of the Trump Presidency totalled $2.5 trillion—less than in the first year of Mr. Biden’s. The deficit is on a path to increase again this year owing to the infrastructure bill, Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and end-of-year omnibus blowout.

and Mike Crapo:

Moreover, corporate taxes are only one slice of the federal revenue pie, which hit new records after 2017. In the years since, federal tax revenue averaged about 17.3% of gross domestic product, according to the Tax Foundation. This was “higher than most years” before the tax cut and higher than the post-war average of 17.2%. For the most recent fiscal year, which ended in September 2022, federal tax collections were at a multidecade high of approximately 19.6% of GDP. In all of U.S. history, federal tax collections have only been that high three times. Once, during the dot-com bubble, it hit 20%. The other two times were midway through World War II: Revenue hit 20.5% of GDP in 1943 and 19.9% in 1944.

Jeffrey Flier:

Biomedical research in the United States has contributed enormous- ly to science and human health and is conducted in several thousand institutions that vary widely in their histories, missions, operations, size, and cultures. Though these institutional differences have important consequences for the research they conduct, the organizational taxonomy of US biomedical research has received scant systematic attention. Consequently, many observers and even participants are surprisingly un- aware of important distinguishing attributes of these diverse institutions. This essay provides a high-level taxonomy of the institutional ecosystem of US biomedical re- search; illustrates key features of the ecosystem through portraits of eight institutions of varying age, size, culture, and missions, each representing a much larger class exhibiting additional diversity; and suggests topics for future research into the research output of institutional types that will be required to develop novel approaches to improving the function of the ecosystem.

John Carlos Baez:

Dr. Cheng would like to give people an opportunity to ask questions and get help with understanding the book. The book club will be hosted by the Topos Institute and will be run asynchronously. They will go at an approximate rate of one chapter per week. You can submit questions for each chapter according to the published schedule. Questions for the first chapter are due February 19, 2023. They will collate the questions and Dr. Cheng will make a video each week addressing the questions for that chapter. You will remain anonymous when asking the questions, so please don’t hesitate to ask questions that might feel “stupid”. They welcome any question that comes from you wanting to understand something better!

Each video will be posted at

during the week following the deadline for questions. If you are ahead of schedule you are welcome to submit questions in advance, but they will only be addressed in the video for that chapter.

To submit questions, please fill in this Google form. Include a page reference for your question, if relevant, so that Dr. Cheng can address the questions in order in the video.

This book club is open to everyone everywhere. Please spread the word!

Note that the schedule may change, but the deadlines for each chapter will only become later, never earlier.

Sara Randazzo:

The parental pushback in Culver City mirrors resistance that has taken place in Wisconsin, Rhode Island and elsewhere in California over the last year in response to schools stripping away the honors designation on some high school classes.

School districts doing away with honors classes argue students who don’t take those classes from a young age start to see themselves in a different tier, and come to think they aren’t capable of enrolling in Advanced Placement classes that help with college admissions. Black and Latino students are underrepresented in AP enrollment in the majority of states, according to the Education Trust, a nonprofit that studies equity in education.

Culver City High School eliminated honors English classes to try to improve racial equity, but many parents disagree with the move.
Since the start of this school year, freshmen and sophomores in Culver City have only been able to select one level of English class, known as College Prep, rather than the previous system in which anyone could opt into the honors class. School officials say the goal is to teach everyone with an equal level of rigor, one that encourages them to enroll in advanced classes in their final years of high school.

“Parents say academic excellence should not be experimented with for the sake of social justice,” said Quoc Tran, the superintendent of 6,900-student Culver City Unified School District. But, he said, “it was very jarring when teachers looked at their AP enrollment and realized Black and brown kids were not there. They felt obligated to do something.”

Culver City English teachers presented data at a board meeting last year showing Latino students made up 13% of those in 12th-grade Advanced Placement English, compared with 37% of the student body. Asian students were 34% of the advanced class, compared with 10% of students. Black students represented 14% of AP English, versus 15% of the student body.

My honors English teacher encouraged me to publish my first letter to the editor. Reducing excellence in education is not equality of opportunity or liberalism. We need to invest to empower those who are left out, not tear down those who are doing well. https://t.co/bW8a9U6bzk

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) February 19, 2023

Related: Madison’s English 10 expedition (Mid 2000’s)

2017, yet Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results continue (despite spending about $23k/student).

Madison’s recent attempt to eliminate honors classes.

Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron is worth a read.

David Rozado:

I have previously documented the left-leaning political biases embedded in ChatGPT as manifested in the bot responses to questions with political connotations. I have also shown the unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system, by which derogatory comments about some demographic groups are often flagged as hateful while the exact same comments about other demographic groups are flagged as not hateful.

Here, I describe a fine-tuning of an OpenAI GPT language model with the specific objective of making the model manifest right-leaning political biases, the opposite of the biases manifested by ChatGPT. Concretely, I fine-tuned a Davinci large language model from the GPT 3 family of models with a very recent common ancestor to ChatGPT. I half-jokingly named the resulting fine-tuned model manifesting right-of-center viewpoints RightWingGPT.

David Rozado:

I have previously documented the left-leaning political biases embedded in ChatGPT as manifested in the bot responses to questions with political connotations. I have also shown the unequal treatment of demographic groups by ChatGPT/OpenAI content moderation system, by which derogatory comments about some demographic groups are often flagged as hateful while the exact same comments about other demographic groups are flagged as not hateful.

Here, I describe a fine-tuning of an OpenAI GPT language model with the specific objective of making the model manifest right-leaning political biases, the opposite of the biases manifested by ChatGPT. Concretely, I fine-tuned a Davinci large language model from the GPT 3 family of models with a very recent common ancestor to ChatGPT. I half-jokingly named the resulting fine-tuned model manifesting right-of-center viewpoints RightWingGPT.

John Sailer:

Diversity statements—short essays that express one’s past contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and future plans to advance the cause—have become ubiquitous in academia. As I’ve written before, many universities embrace these requirements not only for faculty hiring but also for all levels of employment. And in a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, I exposed how Texas Tech University used the statements as functional ideological screening tools.

But the policy is also shrouded in ambiguity. When the Academic Freedom Alliance called for an end to mandatory diversity statements, it noted that a temporary moratorium might be appropriate, given the general lack of transparency surrounding the practice. Even though the Texas Tech case provides a moment of clarity, it’s  often unclear how the statements are used elsewhere.

A recent article in the journal Communications Biology provides another moment of clarity, showing that diversity statements can make or break a would-be professor’s job prospects. In the article, biologists at Emory University explain how they assessed their job applicants’ contributions to DEI at multiple points while hiring two new biology professors. The article makes clear that a scholar or scientist’s contributions to DEI are just as important as his ability to research and teach.

For the Emory search, the job application required a diversity statement, and the hiring committee began by narrowing down its initial applicant pool from 585 to about 45 candidates by scoring three categories equally: teaching, research, and contributions to DEI. A diagram depicts a three-legged stool. On the seat is the word “Excellence.” One leg is labeled “Teaching,” another “Research,” and another “Actions toward DEI.”

It’s not a question of whether we should have digital rights anymore; it’s over what they will be. https://t.co/byvZYM81fh

— John Robb (@johnrobb) February 16, 2023

Robby Soave:

The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it. The National Endowment for Democracy—a nonprofit that has received $330 million in taxpayer dollars from the State Department—contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI’s budget, according to an investigation by The Washington Examiner‘s Gabe Kaminsky.

Should the State Department spend public money to help an organization pressure advertisers to punish U.S. media companies? The answer, quite obviously, is no: The First Amendment prohibits the U.S. government from censoring private companies for good reason, and government actors should not seek to evade the First Amendment’s protections in order to censor indirectly or exert pressure inappropriately.

The Washington Examiner, which was included on GDI’s list of risky media outlets, confirmed that it has lost out on revenue due to advertisers heeding GDI’s federally subsidized concerns. (An internal GDI memosingles out Amazon for purchasing ad space on an Examiner article that allegedly included right-wing misinformation.)

But GDI evidently considers Reason even more threatening than The Washington Examiner. Reason is listed among GDI’s 10 allegedly absolute “riskiest online news outlets,” alongside the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, One America News Network, The Federalist, Newsmax, The American Spectator, and The American Conservative.

CMU:

CMU CS Academy is an online, graphics-based computer science curriculum taught in Python provided by Carnegie Mellon University. We create novel, world-class Computer Science education for your classroom —and it’s entirely free.

Ben Chapman:

Districts have lost track of thousands of students who left public schools since the pandemic began, and it is unclear how many of them are truant or unreported home-schoolers, according to a new study.

An analysis of enrollment data conducted by Stanford University in collaboration with the Associated Press found that there were no records last school year for more than 240,000 school-age children living in 21 states and the District of Columbia, which provided recent enrollment details.

Nationwide, public-school enrollment in kindergarten through grade 12 fell by roughly 1.2 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2021, according to the study’s analysis of Education Department data.

The study published this week sought to find out where students who left public schools went, and the degree to which changes in demographics and new schooling choices by families may account for the enrollment decline.

An estimated 26% of children who left public schools during the first two years of the pandemic switched to home-schools, the research found.

Private-school enrollment grew less, climbing 4% higher from the 2019-20 school year to the 2021-22 school year, while home-school enrollment jumped by 30%, according to the study by Thomas S. Dee, a Stanford University professor who specializes in the economics of education.

Gabriel Rubin:

The Biden administration’s decision to end the Covid-19 national emergency declaration could undermine a central justification for its student-debt forgiveness plan as the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of the program.

Mr. Biden outlined a plan in August to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers making under $125,000 a year. Unable to pass the plan in Congress, the White House relied on expanded executive powers tied to the emergency declaration to enact the plan, and Mr. Biden said his intent was to “address the financial harms of the pandemic.”

Republican officials from six states sued to stop the plan on the grounds that it was an unlawful use of presidential authority that would harm state tax revenues.

Individual borrowers backed by conservative groups also sued, arguing they didn’t have a chance to weigh in on the forgiveness program’s eligibility criteria. Lower courts blocked the plan from being implemented. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Feb. 28, with a ruling expected by this summer.

Joe Heim:

Robert C. Smith is not happy with the University of Richmond.

Smith, a Richmond lawyer who graduated from the university’s law school, is the great-great grandson of T.C. Williams, one of the school’s early and prominent benefactors. Until last year, the official name of the university’s law school was the T.C. Williams School of Law.

Mike Scarcella

The prospective class action filed last year against 17 schools alleged a price-fixing conspiracy in which schools restricted financial aid, causing a class of potentially more than 200,000 students to over-pay for tuition by tens of millions of dollars. The lawsuit survived an early bid by the schools to dismiss it.

The schools have long denied taking a would-be student’s financial need into account as part of the admission process.

Kennelly’s order “will allow the plaintiffs to develop the evidence to prove our case,” plaintiffs’ lawyer Bob Gilbert, on the team leading the case, said on Thursday.

Attorneys for Brown and the other five schools did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. Representatives from those schools either declined to comment or did not respond to similar requests.

Ellen Gamerman:

On RussianMathTutors.com, a site promoting a Soviet-era style of math instruction, a sample question involves Masha, a mom who bakes a batch of unmarked pies: three rice, three bean and three cherry. The student must determine how Masha can find a cherry pie “by biting into as few tasteless pies as possible.”

While Masha is biting pies, American parents are eating it up.

In the smarter, faster, better quest that is child-rearing in the United States, goal-oriented moms and dads eager to give their children an academic edge have long looked beyond U.S. borders for math education. Singapore math promotes concept mastery and critical thinking. Japanese math espouses the discipline of daily study. Now, another turbocharged math style is having its moment. Russian math, which uses reasoning and abstract concepts to build understanding, is lighting up parent group chats as the country emerges from a pandemic that left children zoning out over Zoom and schools prioritizing social-emotional recovery over homework.

“I always think for students it’s great to aim higher,” said Andrea Campbell, a mother from Newcastle, Calif. Her three children have studied with $20-an-hour instructors from Russian Math Tutors for the past two years as they pursue math competitions. “For math, you can’t do enough.”

Math Forum Audio / Video

Madison’s Math Task Force

21% OF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM FRESHMAN REQUIRE REMEDIAL MATH

(2009) What impact do high school mathematics curricula have on college-level mathematics placement?

Related: Singapore Math.

Discovery Math.

Connected Math.

Peter Smith

At a meeting some years ago of the Trinity Mathematical Society, Imre Leader and Thomas Forster gave introductory talks on “Does Mathematics need a Philosophy?” to a startlingly large audience, before a question-and-answer session. The topic is a very big one, and the talks were very short.  After the event, I wrote up a few after-thoughts (primarily for maths students such as the members of TMS, though others might be interested …). I had occasion to revisit my remarks just recently. Rough and ready though they were, I’m happy enough to stand by their broad message, so here they are again, just slightly tidied up for new readers!

Imre did very briskly sketch a couple of philosophical views about mathematics, which he called platonism and  formalism. And he suggested that  mathematicians tend to be platonist in their assumptions about what they are up to (in so far as they presume that  they are exploring a determinate abstract mathematical universe, where there are objective truths to be discovered) but they turn formalist when writing up their proofs for public consumption.

Now, platonism comes in various stripes, and we could argue the toss about which variety (if any) tends to be presumed by working mathematicians. And there’s a further issue about how far, if at all, the presumption of platonism is doing any mathematical work: is it just an idle philosophical wheel?

New York vs Florida, by the numbers https://t.co/kmuN12Ar1E pic.twitter.com/8czv6E1s37

— Bruce Mehlman (@bpmehlman) February 15, 2023

By Thomas S. Dee, Will Dobbie, Brian A. Jacob, and Jonah Rockoff∗

We show that the design and decentralized scoring of New York’s high school exit exams – the Regents Examinations – led to system- atic manipulation of test scores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Exploiting a series of reforms that eliminated score manip- ulation, we find heterogeneous effects of test score manipulation on academic outcomes. While inflating a score increases the probabil- ity of a student graduating from high school by about 17 percentage points, the probability of taking advanced coursework declines by roughly 10 percentage points. We argue that these results are con- sistent with test score manipulation helping less advanced students on the margin of dropping out but hurting more advanced students that are not pushed to gain a solid foundation in the introductory material.

In the United States and across the globe, educational quality is increasingly measured using standardized test scores. These standardized test results can carry extremely high stakes for both students and educators, often influencing grade retention, high school graduation, school closures, and teacher and administrator pay. The tendency to place high stakes on student test scores has led to concerns among both researchers and policymakers about the fidelity of standardized test results (e.g., National Research Council 2011, Neal 2013). A particular concern is that the consequences associated with these tests can sometimes lead to outright cheating as evidenced by incidents such as the 2009 cheating scandal in Atlanta.1

Rowan Zeller:

At the end of my job search, I did something I totally wasn’t expecting. I turned down all my academic job offers and signed the OpenAI offer instead.

I was nervous and stressed out during my decision-making process — it felt like a U-turn at the time — but in the end I’m really happy with how things turned out. There were two key factors at play for me:

1) I felt like I could best pursue the work I’m passionate about at OpenAI, and

2) San Francisco — where OpenAI is — is an amazing city for my partner and I to live and work.

I’ll discuss my decision-making process more in this post.

“I never thought a massive automated rights-destroying surveillance apparatus would destroy *My* rights” say people who built massive automated rights-destroying surveillance apparatus. https://t.co/EVypMBU69Z

— Dr Damien P Williams, Spirit of “A.I.” Yet to Come (@Wolven) February 13, 2023

Jorgen Veisdal:

Following his undergraduate studies in mathematics, Wald applied to (but was barred from entering) the University of Vienna for graduate studies. The university had quotas for Jewish students. Nonetheless, Wald still travelled to Vienna. He entered an engineering school for a year before reaching out to the mathematical institute at the University of Vienna in 1927. As mathematician Karl Menger (1902-85) later wrote:

“In the fall of 1927, a man of 25 called at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Vienna. Since he expressed a predilection for geometry he was referred to me. He introduced himself as Abraham Wald. In fluent German, but with an unmistakable Hungarian accent, Wald explained that he had carried on most of his studies at the elementary and secondary school levels at home, mainly under the direction of his older brother Martin, a capable electrical engineer […] He had just arrived in Vienna in order to study mathematics at the university. Geometry had interested him ever since he was fourteen.”

– Excerpt, The Formative Years of Abraham Wald and his Work in Geometry by Karl Menger (1952) 

Wald shared with Menger, by then professor of geometry, that he had been reading David Hilbert (1862-1943)’s Grundlagen der Geometrie (Foundations of Geometry) and saw possibilities for improving Hilbert’s work by “omitting some postulates and weakening others”. Menger suggested to Wald that he write up his results, which Wald did. The paper was later published in the third volume of Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquium, the proceedings of Menger’s mathematics colloquium (read: Karl Menger’s Vienna Colloquium, 1928-36). Wald’s proofs, one of which was later incorporated in the seventh edition of Hilbert’s book, were included in the paper:

• Wald, A. 1931. Über das Hilbertsche Axiomensystem der Geometrie (“On Hilbert’s Axioms of Geometry”) Ergebnisse eines Math. Kolloquiums 3, pp. 23-24.

Although Menger was sufficiently impressed to ensure that Wald could enrol for graduate studies studies in his department, the professor would not see much of his student as Wald shortly thereafter was called to serve in the Romanian army. However, as Menger wrote, “the system of complete freedom which at the time prevailed in the universities of Central Europe kept the gifted students from wasting semesters on courses the content of which they could absorb in a few weeks of concentrated reading”. Thus, Wald was still able to keep up with his studies while in the army. In the four years that he studied under Menger he only attended three courses, on metric geometry, dimension theoryand lattice operations. Wald graduated in 1931 with a Ph.D. in mathematics. His thesis was entitled Über das Hilbert’sche Axiomensystem (“On Hilbert’s System of Axioms“) (Düppe & Weintraub, 2015) and dealt with a question of axiomatics (Wolfowitz, 1952).

Daniel P. Friedman and Anurag Mendhekar:

The Little Learner introduces deep learning from the bottom up, inviting students to learn by doing. With the characteristic humor and Socratic approach of classroom favorites The Little Schemer and The Little Typer,this kindred text explains the workings of deep neural networks by constructing them incrementally from first principles using little programs that build on one another. Starting from scratch, the reader is led through a complete implementation of a substantial application: a recognizer for noisy Morse code signals. Example-driven and highly accessible, The Little Learner covers all of the concepts necessary to develop an intuitive understanding of the workings of deep neural networks, including tensors, extended operators, gradient descent algorithms, artificial neurons, dense networks, convolutional networks, residual networks, and automatic differentiation.

By Jack Kelly, Scott Girard and Jessie Opoien:

Evers’ budget will include a per pupil revenue limit increase of $350 next fiscal year, which begins July 1, and an additional per pupil bump of $650 in the second year of the biennium. The governor’s office said the increases would represent the largest per pupil adjustments since revenue limits were adopted.

Even with the extra funds, many districts around Wisconsin face a challenging budget season this spring as they plan for 2023-24 amid high inflation, which translates to higher costs for employee pay and benefits, among other budget items. 

With two years of a $0 per pupil increase in the revenue limit in the current state budget, many districts relied on one-time COVID-19 relief funding to pay for ongoing expenses like pay increases or academic programs, leaving themselves in a difficult position now. 

Madison Metropolitan School District Chief Financial Officer Ross MacPherson said Monday that even with the most optimistic budget, which Evers’ proposal would be, the district will face a gap to continue its current spending. That will force MMSD to make cuts, and if they can’t find enough, consider using one-time funds that would leave the district with a structural deficit for 2024-25 before planning even begins.

Evers would spend $10 million to train new literacy coaches, and $3 million to support the Wisconsin Reading Corps, an AmeriCorps program that provides one-on-one reading tutoring for students in kindergarten through third grade.

Note that spending increases annually, with Madison taxpayers supporting at least $23,000 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.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner:

The absolute failure to teach even a single child to read and do math in so many schools is yet another indictment of the state’s educational system. At Wirepoints, we covered in detail the failures of Illinois education across the state in Poor student achievement and near-zero accountability: An indictment of Illinois’ public education system.

The data comes straight from the Illinois State Board of Education. 

This column focuses on schools where zero percent of kids are able to read or do math. But we could have just as easily looked at the 622 schools where only 1 out of 10 kids or less can read at grade level. That’s a whopping 18 percent of the state’s 3,547 schools that tested students in 2022.

And only 1 out of 10 kids or less can do math at grade level in 930 schools…that’s more than a quarter of all schools in the state.

Defenders of the current system are sure to invoke covid as the big reason for the low scores. But a look at the 2019 numbers show that the reading and math numbers were only slightly better than they are now.

Take Spry, for example. Just 2 of the school’s 127 students in 2019 could read at grade level before the pandemic. In math, zero students were proficient.

The failure isn’t about money, either. Data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows spending at Spry was already at $20,000 per student before the pandemic. Today it spends $35,600.

Mike Cernovich:

In the olden days, you didn’t need a college degree to get a real job. You took an IQ test to get a job. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co, the far left wing Supreme Court all but outlawed these tests.

Employers thus started to required university degrees for jobs that a smart and ambitious 19 year old could have begun learning via on-the-job training and mentorship. 

All the smart kids were forced to attend college. Most of them realized, “If I am going to go through all this hassle, I may as well sell insurance for State Farm upon graduation.”

Banning IQ tests for jobs, more than any other policy, hollowed out the middle. Millions of smart kids got left behind. We should care not for their sake, but our own.

Raising Wisconsin:

More than 50% of Wisconsinites, including 70% of rural residents, live in a child care “desert,” where there is only one licensed available child care slot for three or more children under age 5. In response, communities are using innovative approaches to address their child care needs, including the use of a taxing option through their school district, called Fund 80.

Local school boards can vote to utilize Fund 80 (Community Program and Services) to provide funding support for initiatives and programs that benefit the broader community, like child care.
In order to utilize Fund 80, a school board must establish a Community Service Fund and adopt a budget for it. Any tax necessary to operate the fund is considered an operation levy on the school’s property tax base outside of state revenue caps.

For more information on Fund 80, visit the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s website.

Ann Althouse summarizes:

Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.”

NEWS: Joe Rogan and Matt Taibbi talk about media’s reaction against Elon Musk for reinstalling freedom of speech on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/RulHPv5DCB

— T(w)itter Takeover News  (@TitterTakeover) February 14, 2023

Alex Tabarrok

New York’s Regency exam is a statewide system of standardized, exit exams for secondary school students. Traditionally, the exam was graded by teachers from the same school as the student, i.e. the student’s teachers. The exam had two cutoffs, 55 for a “local diploma” and 65 for the higher-level “Regent’s diploma.” The distribution of grades during the home-school grading period shows clear spikes in the number of students just passing the 55 and 65 point cutoffs (and consequent dips in the number of students just failing). From an excellent paper by Dee, Dobbie, Jakob and Rockoff.

Is this altruism on the part of the teachers? Maybe. But the teachers are also graded on the number of their students who pass the exam.

The home-school grading system was dropped around 2011 due to bad publicity about the rampant cheating. It’s quite amazing that not a single good reason has been given for returning to the home-school grading system but the teacher’s union has been pressuring to return to the easier to manipulate system.

Vincent Lloyd:

On the sunny first day of seminar, I sat at the end of a pair of picnic tables with nervous, excited 17-year-olds. Twelve high-school students had been chosen by the Telluride Association through a rigorous application process—the acceptance rate is reportedly around 3 percent—to spend six weeks together taking a college-level course, all expenses paid.

The group reminded me of the heroes of the Mysterious Benedict Society books I was reading to my daughter: Each teenager, brought together for a common project, had some extraordinary ability and some quirk. One girl from California spoke and thought at machine-gun speed and started collecting pet snails during the pandemic; now she had more than 100. A girl from a provincial school in China had never traveled to the United States but had mastered un-accented English and was in love with E.M. Forster. In addition to the seminar, the students practiced democratic self-governance: They lived together and set their own rules. Those first few days, the students were exactly what you would expect, at turns bubbly and reserved, all of them curious, playful, figuring out how to relate to each other and to the seminar texts.

Four weeks later, I again sat in front of the gathered students. Now, their faces were cold, their eyes down. Since the first week, I had not spotted one smile. Their number was reduced by two: The previous week, they had voted two classmates out of the house. And I was next.

“I was guilty of countless microaggressions.”

Tri City Herald:

Audra Byrd and Semi Bird were elected in 2021 on a wave of frustration over the state mask mandate. But there also were parents and citizens who were grateful for the extra caution and protective measures being taken, especially while hospitals were overrun with COVID patients and the death count from the disease continued to climb. The division in the community was reflected at school board meetings, which often turned ugly, exhausting and even frightening. At one point, school officials started making sure there was a security officer attending the meetings just to help keep control. The last thing Richland needs is a repeat of those bitter times. The recall is not about masks and it’s not about how Gov. Jay Inslee managed the pandemic. It’s about how Byrd, Williams and Bird put themselves above the law, and they did it with a vote the public didn’t see coming.

Frederick Hess:

It’s time to do away with selective college admissions for undergraduate education.

Now, let’s get the caveats out of the way. When it comes to specific training that requires particular skills (as with engineering or the performing arts) or courses of study where social benefit makes the case for some screening (as with nursing programs or the military academies), there’s an obvious case for performance-based selectivity. These are instances where prerequisites and demonstrated performance have an obvious, discernible import. Likewise, when it comes to professional schools or graduate training, that’s a different conversation.

But should we embrace selectivity in undergraduate education writ large? Nah. It’s time for the Stanfords, Swarthmores, and state flagships to show that they’re actually effective at educating students and not just at vacuuming up high-achievers, parking them in lecture halls and TA-led sections for four years, and then handing them off to consulting firms and graduate schools—all while charging students massive sums for the privilege of being selected.

It’s time for colleges to show that they’re effective at educating students, not just vacuuming up high-achievers.

After all, what’s the rationale for allowing these heavily subsidized institutions to pick and choose their student bodies? There are at least four claims that commonly get made, but none are especially persuasive.

Aaron Sibarium:

Wax’s views are undeniably controversial. She said in a 2017 interview that black law students “rarely” finish in the top half of their class. She has arguedthat black poverty is self-inflicted and, in the context of immigration policy, expressed a preference for “fewer Asians,” citing their “indifference to liberty” and “overwhelming” supportfor Democrats. She even invited Jared Taylor, a self-described “white identity” advocate, to speak to her class on conservative thought, saying his views were “well within the subject matter of the course.”

But tenure is intended to protect provocative speech. It came about in the 1920s after many professors were fired for endorsing then-controversial ideas like evolution, atheism, and free love. Robust job security meant academics could speak and teach freely about charged subjects, even if doing so was considered blasphemous.

That’s why Wax’s case has raised alarm about the future of academic freedom and the power of tenure to protect it. Unlike Princeton University’s Joshua Katz, whom the school sacked ostensibly over his consensual relationship with a former student, Wax is under the microscope only for what she’s said. Her dismissal would set a new precedent, signaling that tenured professors can be booted for airing views that students or administrators deem offensive.

“This is a game-changer, because it’s a pure case of speech,” Wax told the Free Beacon. “If they succeed in punishing me for that, it will eviscerate academic freedom as we know it.”

Faculty across the political spectrum echo that warning. Wax’s defenders include the conservative Princeton professor Robert George and the liberal Harvard Law professor Janet Halley, both of whom say Penn is playing with fire. “Statements on issues of law and public policy”—and the act of “inviting a controversial speaker” to class—are “unquestionably protected by academic freedom,” Halley wrote in July on behalf of the Academic Freedom Alliance, a nonprofit that defends faculty speech rights.

George, who cofounded the alliance, said that punishing Wax for either would have a chilling effect. “The message to faculty and students alike will be clear,” he said. “You had better not defy the campus orthodoxies, because if you do, the consequences could be severe.”

Spencer Dalke:

After being targeted by a dishonest corporate media smear campaign on behalf of left-wing teachers unions, Colorado’s conservative Woodland Park School Board and parents are fighting back and correcting the record.

Home to Merit Academy, the school chartered by parents for education in valor and responsibility, the Woodland Park School District earned the ire of the propaganda press after it decided against using Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book “Between the World and Me” in its teaching. The book, district leaders said, violated state and local social study standards, which aim to teach kids “so they may become worthy of their ancestors by becoming full members of the American republic … self-reliant citizens who respect the dignity and the rights of their fellow Americans, who love their country, and who cherish our liberties and our laws.”

These standards, of course, cut against left-wing narratives, so MSNBC’s Chris Hayes aimed his fire at the conservative district last week. “Even in states that aren’t laying down edicts about teaching about race, local school boards are pursuing that agenda,” Hayes said, “like in Woodland Park, Colorado, where a school board member grilled a high school teacher about one of the texts taught in a history elective.”

Laura Meckler:

For years, school-choice advocates toted up small victories in their drive to give parents taxpayer money to pay for private school. Now, Republican-led states across the country are leaving the limitations of the past behind them as they consider sweeping new voucher laws that would let every family use public funds to pay for private school.

Amity Shlaes:

The film assigns responsibility for the restriction drive and the 1920s culture of racism to Johnson-Reed’s signatory, Calvin Coolidge. “America must be kept American,” said Coolidge, who had become president on Harding’s sudden death. This line apparently suffices to damn Coolidge in the filmmakers’ eyes, though many of us, even if we express and understand the concept differently, share the sentiment. To buttress its anti-Coolidge case, the film juxtaposes footage of the president with footage of the Ku Klux Klan on the march, of the genuine racist Henry Ford, and of the Landsberg cell where Hitler worked on Mein Kampf. The association between the mild Coolidge and professional race-mongers is crafted so tightly that some in the press, reacting to the Burns film, twinned Coolidge with Ford. An MSNBC reporter claimed that “Henry Ford and President Calvin Coolidge were just a few of the well-known figures who espoused blatant antisemitism.”

In Coolidge’s case, some facts and background are missing. Congress backed Johnson-Reed so overwhelmingly (the vote in the Senate was 69–9) that any presidential veto would have been overridden. As for Japanese exclusion, Coolidge shared the concern about its impact on Japan’s future, even announcing publicly: “If the exclusion provision stood alone I should disapprove it.”

Bret Devereaux:

This week I want to talk a bit about academic freedom. There has been a lot of discussion lately about academic freedom being under threat. In the latest, Hameline University fired an adjunct instructor of art history for showing (with warning!) a historical painting of the prophet Muhammad, produced as an act of devotion. In a pleasant surprise, nearly the whole of the great and the good of academia lined up to loudly protest; in an unpleasant surprise Hamline University president Fayneese Miller largely told the rest of academia to drop dead. Meanwhile, closer to home, the UNC-system proposed a rule change which would likely block the use of diversity statements in academic hiring or admissions. Controversy there is likely to be more complex, with some seeing this as a political infringement on the traditional prerogative whereby departments chose their members and thus an infringement on academic freedom; alternately others will argue that this actually protects academic freedom since diversity statements can be little more than political litmus tests thinly disguised.¹ Meanwhile in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ‘war on wokeness‘ has extended to laws aimed at constraining the speech of university professors, to the fear and consternation of the academy. DeSantis has argued in court that, “A public university’s curriculum is set by the university in accordance with the strictures and guidance of the State’s elected officials. It is government speech” which does not seem consistent to me with existing supreme court precedent which has tended to find fairly wide free speech rights for professors in their classrooms, though I am not a lawyer. Academic freedom is under attack!

And I don’t mean that last statement facetiously; academic freedom and campus free speech are under attack. But what I want folks to understand is thatacademic freedom has always been under attack: it has always been so.

Chris Stokel-Walker & Richard Van Noorden

Fluent but not factual

Some researchers think LLMs are well-suited to speeding up tasks such as writing papers or grants, as long as there’s human oversight. “Scientists are not going to sit and write long introductions for grant applications any more,” says Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a neurobiologist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, who has co-authored a manuscript² using GPT-3 as an experiment. “They’re just going to ask systems to do that.”

Tom Tumiel, a research engineer at InstaDeep, a London-based software consultancy firm, says he uses LLMs every day as assistants to help write code. “It’s almost like a better Stack Overflow,” he says, referring to the popular community website where coders answer each others’ queries.

Luke Berg:

The District’s “Fact Sheet,” under the “How much will it cost?” section, put the following statement in bold and a separate box, indicating that this was the net effect voters needed to know: “A levy rate increase of $.13 would equate to $13 for a $100,000 home and $26 for a $200,000 home.”

Based on these statements from the District, the Monroe Times ran a piece, shortly before the referendum, with a headline emphasizing the net effect to voters: “Taxes to go up just $13 per year on $100k house should referendum pass.”2 The Superintendent spoke to the paper for the piece, and told the paper he “hopes voters see the minimal price hike of taxes and vote ‘yes’”—again, connecting the $.13 mill rate increase to the relevant net effect for voters.
After the referendum passed, taxes increased by much closer to the $199 per $100,000 figure mentioned above. From the tax bills we have reviewed, the net effect was a tax increase of between $160 and $190 per $100,000 in home value (using the 2021 valuations).3 In other words, while there was a small “offset” from the state aid and TIF district, it was nowhere near as large as the District suggested it would be. Voters understandably felt misled, and the District eventually issued an apology, claiming that it made a mistake and that it did not “underst[and] the impact” that “unprecedented increase[s] in valuation” would have on property taxes.

Want to test your knowledge of the science of reading? Try the quiz:https://t.co/10n7miXuFW

— Nate Joseph (@NateJoseph19) February 11, 2023

The Free Press:

Many parents saw America’s public education system crumble under the weight of the pandemic. Stringent policies—including school closures that went on far too long, and ineffective Zoom school for kindergarteners—had devastating effects that we are only just beginning to understand.

But, as with so many problems during the pandemic, COVID didn’t necessarily causethese structural breakdowns as much as it exposed just how broken the system was to begin with. 

How broken? Consider the shocking fact that 65 percent of American fourth-grade kids can barely read. 

American Public Media’s Emily Hanforduncovers this sad truth with her podcast, Sold a Story. She investigates the influential education authors who have promoted a bunk idea and a flawed method for teaching reading to American kids. She exposes how educators across the country came to believe in a system that didn’t work, and are now reckoning with the consequences: Children harmed. Tons of money wasted. An education system upended.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Speak-up exercised in an environment where the vast majority just looks the other way! Role model. Chapeau, @Baroness_Nichol https://t.co/s9JpqOHdHX

— Rainer Ohler (@roblagnac) February 12, 2023

Wall Street Journal:

Yet, be­lieve it or not, Flor­ida’s state bud­get as mea­sured in the lat­est pro­pos­als from the two gov­er­nors, is only half the size of New York’s. This is in part a re­flec­tion of their tax bur­den, which in Flor­ida is much smaller. If Flor­ida politi­cians want to spend more, the state’s econ­omy has to grow more. New York’s politi­cians can raise in­come taxes, as they do with great fre­quency.

Flor­ida has no state in­come tax, while New York’s top tax rate is 10.9%. In New York City, the top rate is 14.8%, while in Mi­ami it’s zero. Any guess why Ken Grif­fin moved his Citadel hedge fund to Mi­ami in­stead of New York when he was look­ing for an al­ter­na­tive to Chicago? Flor­ida has a 6% sales tax, higher than New York’s, but New York City’s com­bined state and city sales tax is 8.875%.

One of New York’s big­gest bud­get busters is Med­icaid, with 38.6% of the pop­u­la­tion on the rolls at the end of 2022. The state spent $26.47 bil­lion on the joint state-fed­eral pro­gram, or $73.27 bil­lion with the fed­eral con­tri­bu­tion. Con­trast that with Flor­ida, where 25% of the pop­u­la­tion is on Med­icaid and the cost is about two-thirds less than New York’s. We doubt the qual­ity of med­ical out­comes is vastly dif­fer­ent for Med­icaid pa­tients in the two states, de­spite the dis­par­ity in fund­ing.

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

It behooved the United States and China to hold the now-canceled talks, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, postponed because of the balloon incident, for all the reasons that others have said: to allay tensions, to reduce the risk of a military confrontation that neither government wants.

For those who couldn’t figure out why I devoted four columns to the Pentagon UFO debate, this is why. It became clear that, whether from serendipity or design, national security agencies were using UFOs to hide something they didn’t want us to see. That something, it has slowly dribbled out since last May, was Chinese surveillance in U.S. airspace. Suspected Chinese drones have been a sometimes daily presence in U.S. military training sites going back perhaps a decade or more. We learn now of multiple balloon incursions too.

John Sailer:

At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between “equality” and “equity.” Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun “he” when referring to professors. Still another was praised for having made a “land acknowledgment” during the interview process. A land acknowledgment is a statement noting that Native Americans once lived in what is now the United States.

Amidst the explosion of university diversity, equity and inclusion policies, Texas Tech’s biology department adopted its own DEI motion promising to “require and strongly weight a diversity statement from all candidates.” These short, written declarations are meant to summarize an academic job seeker’s past and potential contributions to DEI efforts on campus.

Wall Street Journal:

Each of these states has at least one neighbor where tax rates have dropped recently, and competition is sustaining the trend. “We were the cool kid on the block 15 years ago when we moved to 5% flat,” said Rusty Cannon, president of the Utah Taxpayers Association, referring to his state’s flat income-tax rate this month. But in the past two years Colorado has adopted a 4.4% top rate on income, and Arizona dropped its rate to 2.5%. “We’re no longer the cool kid on the block at all,” said Mr. Cannon.

The tax-cutting trend took off in 2021 as state revenues boomed, driven by postpandemic reopening, rising stock prices and capital gains, and federal aid. By September 2022, 31 states were outperforming their prepandemic revenue trajectories, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Twenty-one states have cut their income taxes in this period, according to the Tax Foundation, and they’re betting that returning revenue to taxpayers will spur faster economic growth.

BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS and SHARON LURYE:

She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe and taking art classes. 

Instead, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then.

She is among hundreds of thousands of students around the country who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn’t resume their studies elsewhere.

An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 240,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data. 

In short, they’re missing.

“Missing” students received crisis-level attention in 2020 after the pandemic closed schools nationwide. In the years since, they have become largely a budgeting problem. School leaders and some state officials worried aloud about the fiscal challenges their districts faced if these students didn’t come back. Each student represents money from the city, state and federal governments.

@GavinNewsom . @TonyThurmond. Barbara Ferrer and @lapublichealth. @UTLAnow. @austinbeutner. You don’t see Florida on this list, do you? A complete and predictable result from California’s COVID policies. pic.twitter.com/cyqWwttKTX

— LA Uprising (@UprisingLa) February 10, 2023

Matt Taibbi:

The irony is the entire field of “disinformation studies” itself has the features of an inorganic astroturfing operation. Disinformation “labs” cast themselves as independent, objective, politically neutral resources, but in a shocking number of cases, their funding comes at least in part from government agencies like the Department of Defense. Far from being neutral, they often have clear mandates to play up foreign and domestic threats while arguing for digital censorship, de-platforming, and other forms of information control. 

Worse, messages from these institutions are parroted more or less automatically by our corporate press, which has decided that instead of a network of independent/adversarial newspapers and TV stations, what the country needs is one giant Voice of America, bleating endlessly about “threats to democracy.” I’ve come to believe a sizable percentage of reporters don’t know that their sources are funded by the government, or that they’re repeating government messaging not just occasionally but all the time. The ones who don’t know this truth need to hear it, and the ones who knew all along need to be exposed. This project is about both of those things, too. 

Foreign state media is labeled on platforms like Twitter. 

I want to put labels on our own propaganda, and need your help to do it.

Todd Feathers:

Vista Equity Partners has been buying up software used in schools. Parents want to know what the companies do with kids’ data

Jay Greene:

In the past, state officials refrained from addressing the rise of DEI bureaucracies in public universities, not out of an inability to do so legally but from a conviction that it was somehow inappropriate for them to interfere. DeSantis’s innovation was to recognize that this self-restraint was unnecessary, counterproductive, and based largely on a misunderstanding of what DEI bureaucracies actually are. 

DEI units at universities are not faculty, nor are they engaged in the core functions of teaching and conducting research. They are staff with the ostensible purpose of helping welcome students, faculty, and staff from different backgrounds to campus and creating conditions that facilitate their success. DEI staff members develop a set of practices and inculcate related dispositions that university leaders believe are necessary for welcoming diverse groups and ensuring that they thrive. One might say that DEI staff members articulate and enforce a university-approved orthodoxy regarding a set of divisive political concerns.

Jonathan Turley:

Below is my column in the Hill on moves by some states to create greater choice and control for parents over the education of their children. The move to use funding to change the status quo could soon be used in higher education. Not only are alumni beginning to withhold contributions to schools with little or no diversity or tolerance on their faculties, but states could reduce their levels of support.

Here is the column:

What if they offered public education and no one came? That question, similar to the anti-war slogan popularized by Charlotte E. Keyes, is becoming more poignant by the day.

This month, Florida is moving to allow all residents the choice to go to private or public schools. Other states like Utah are moving toward a similar alternative with school vouchers. I oppose such moves away from public schools, but I have lost faith in the willingness of most schools to restore educational priorities and standards.

Faced with school boards and teacher unions resisting parental objections to school policies over curriculum and social issues, states are on the brink of a transformative change. For years, boards and teacher unions have treated parents as unwelcome interlopers in their children’s education.

The Economist

The university of california, Berkeley is currently advertising for a “director of cell culture, fly food, media prep and on-call glass washing facilities”. Applicants need an advanced degree and a decade of research experience, and must submit a cv, a cover letter and a research statement. They must also send in a statement on their contributions to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion. Seemingly everyone (this director, the next head of preservation for the library, anyone who dreams of a tenured professorship) must file a statement outlining their understanding of diversity, their past contributions to increasing it and their plans “for advancing equity and inclusion” if hired.

Not long ago, such statements were exotic and of marginal importance. Now they are de rigueur across most of the University of California system for hiring and tenure decisions. Studies claim that as many as one in five faculty jobs across America require them. And government agencies that fund scientific research are starting to make grants to labs conditional upon their diversity metrics and plans.

Proponents argue that such things are needed to advance concepts normally invoked by abbreviation: diversity, equity and inclusion (dei), sometimes with “belonging” appended (deib), or “justice” (deij), or else rearranged in a jollier anagram (jedi). Critics—typically those with tenure rather than those seeking it—think mandatory statements constitute political litmus tests, devalue merit, open a back door for affirmative action, violate academic freedom and infringe on First Amendment protections for public universities. “There are a lot of similarities between these diversity statements as they’re being applied now and how loyalty oaths [which once required faculty to attest that they were not communists] worked,” says Keith Whittington, a political scientist at Princeton University. Who is right?

Ben Cohen:

One way to learn how the world’s biggest building projects work—or don’t—is to start with some of the smallest building blocks: Legos.

In the 1950s, when Lego decided to make one product the centerpiece of its business, the Danish company went looking for a single toy that could be the foundation of an empire. It picked the colorful plastic bricks that have captured the imagination of children ever since. It was a wise choice. It was also a fitting corporate strategy: Lego turned a small thing into something much bigger.

“That’s the question every project leader should ask: What is the small thing we can assemble in large numbers into a big thing?” says University of Oxford economist Bent Flyvbjerg. “What’s our Lego?”

He understands the power of Legos better than anybody, and not just because he is also Danish. Bent Flyvbjerg is an expert in the planning and management of “megaprojects,” his name for huge efforts that require at least $1 billion of investment: bridges, tunnels, office towers, airports, telescopes and even the Olympics. He’s spent decades wrapping his mind around the many ways megaprojects go wrong and the few ways to get them right, and he summarizes what he’s learned from his research and real-world experience in a new book called “How Big Things Get Done.”

Spoiler alert! Big things get done very badly.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Scott Girard:

“Most teachers are still learning how to teach reading from the commercial materials that they’re being supplied,” he said. “These materials are defective. What teachers have traditionally learned from them is poor practices.

“What’s the effect? Some kids are going to learn to read anyway, but for a lot of children it makes it harder to succeed.”

Kymyona Burk, a senior policy fellow for early literacy at the Foundation for Excellence in Education, also presented on the changes other states have made to surpass Wisconsin in reading growth over the past three decades.

She showed during her presentation that on the latest “nation’s report card” exam results, while Wisconsin students remained ahead of the national average for reading scores, they were falling behind states like Mississippi, which invested in early interventions for struggling readers in 2013.

“In order for us to improve we have to know where we are,” Burk said. “This is not data-shaming, this is an opportunity for us to learn from where we’ve been, to know where we need to be.”

Burk, noting Mississippi’s rise “wasn’t overnight,” stressed that while funding is important, it has to be targeted at the right things. Once it is, it takes a lot of people to make it effective.

“It’s going to take an interconnected system from policy to practice,” Burk said. “Legislators have the job of passing policy, the rest of us have the job of ensuring that we’re making it work and that we’re actually doing it and implementing it effectively.”

The conversations included state legislators, who attended both events. Sen. John Jagler, R-Watertown, suggested he and his colleagues want to do something about this, but aren’t certain what the state’s role should be and whether they can come to agreement with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

Seidenberg said it’s key to not cast blame on anyone in the conversation about what’s happened in the past and instead focus on working together to solve the problem. Hanford, the journalist, suggested state legislators visit schools in Wisconsin “that are making changes and trying to figure it out and start there.”

“Don’t feel like you have to go back to your office and do something today,” Hanford said. “Go learn some more, go give this some more thought. Talk to your colleagues, but go and talk to the educators who are really trying to do something good; they might not be doing the perfect thing, but they’re trying and they’re dealing with what’s hard.

“They can tell you what they need.”

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Jonathan Turley:

I recently wrote about how public schools and boards are making the case for school choice advocates with failing scores and rising controversies. The latest shocking statistic was released this week that 23 schools in Baltimore City had zero students who tested proficient in math. Those schools include 10 high schools, eight elementary schools, three Middle/High schools and two Elementary/Middle schools. The state found that 2,000 students who took the state test could not do math at grade level.

We previously discussed the Baltimore public educational system as an example of where billions of dollars have been spent on a system that continues to have appalling scores and standards. Recent data now offers another chilling statistic: 41 percent of students in the Baltimore system have a 1.0 (D) GPA or less.

We also discussed how a high school student almost graduated near the top half of his class after failing every class but three in four years. He had a 0.13 GPA. His mother objected and went public.

The top spending public school districts are also some of the worst performing school districts.  New York topped the per capita spending at $24,040 per kid. Washington, D.C. is close at $22,759.  Baltimore is often ranked in the top three per capita spending districts. The total budget for Baltimore public schools is roughly $1.2 billion. That is for a city with a total population of roughly 600,000 (The greater Baltimore metropolitan area is 2.8 million). In 2015, the school population was 84,000 kids.

Faced with school boards and teacher unions resisting parental objections to school policies over curriculum and social issues, states are on the brink of a transformative change. For years, boards and teacher unions have treated parents as unwelcome interlopers in their children’s education.

Victor Fiorillo:

Here is the relevant part of the message, as posted on Twitter by one Temple University graduate student, who couldn’t be reached for comment:

Dear Temple Student:

As a result of your participation in the TUGSA strike, your tuition remission has been removed for the Spring semester. You now owe the full balance listed in TUpay, which is due by Thursday, March 9.

If your balance is not paid in full by the due date, you will be assessed a $100 late payment fee and a financial hold will be placed on your student account. This hold will prevent future registration.

“Can this possibly be real?” one colleague asked me when she saw the tweet.

It sure is, as Temple officials have confirmed. Many commenters in the Tweet thread suggested that this is downright illegal. And the national coalition Higher Education Labor United put out a statement declaring that “removing tuition remission would destroy [Temple University] — grad workers would be forced to leave en masse. This is an unenforceable and absolutely vile threat. This is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Way to make it clear WHY [the student union] is striking.”

We reached out to Temple administrators to see if we could sort all this out, and their responses couldn’t have been more straightforward.

Joel Kotkin:

The world may not be turning upside down, but it’s certainly tilting. In the long shadow of the pandemic, with war on the European continent and the West and China entering a new cold war, the “new economy” of bits and bytes that was supposed to connect and shape the world has hit a rough patch. Meanwhile, the much disdained “old” economy of manufacturing, agriculture and energy is thriving.

Today, it’s not steel companies or gas plants that are experiencing mass layoffs, but firms such as Goldman Sachs, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Snap and Google. Last year,…

Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Why an Experimental Vaccine was Added to the Childhood Schedule

“The reason ACIP recommended…getting the COVID-19 vaccine on the pediatric schedule, it was ONLY because it was the only way it could be covered in our ‘Vaccines for Children’ program” pic.twitter.com/k1CVf4cv09

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 8, 2023

Paul Fanlund:

In the end, my position on objectivity comes down to this. First, different experiences and perspectives of journalists should be welcomed and acted upon when debating what to cover and how to approach it.

But once that process moves to a story’s execution, best practices remain the same. At last fall’s Idea Fest, Bernstein described how as a reporter he boldly pursued sources, knocked on doors and voraciously consumed documents, all without preconceptions about where his story would eventually lead.

I don’t think telling readers that journalism needs to move beyond objectivity aligns with that.

Talal Ansari:

Nearly 1,000 children separated from their parents at the U.S. border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal immigration haven’t been reunited, federal data shows, despite a multiyear effort to do so.

The federal program has reunited 600 migrant children with their parents, according to numbers released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday, the second anniversary of the establishment of the Family Reunification Task Force by President Biden soon after he assumed office.

Of the 998 children who remain separated from their families, 148 are in the process of being reunited, DHS said. The task force has also worked with nongovernmental organizations to inform 183 families of the opportunity to reunify.

“We understand that our critical work is not finished,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Thursday.

David Blaska:

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Used to be that some fairly accomplished individuals sought to serve in public office. Think of Mary Burke, former executive with the Trek bicycle company, and James Howard, an economist with the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory, not that long ago. On the other hand, they hired Jennifer Cheatham!

More.

Scott Girard:

In total, the district took about 14 months from Cheatham’s announcement to find the person that would become its next superintendent, with the pandemic playing a key role in that timeline.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Nic Carter:

These purchases, made with dollars summoned out of thin air, come with a giant asterisk – they do not derive from organic demand for our debt. They are only sustainable as long as inflation is tolerably low, which it no longer is (in February, it hit a 40-year high of 7.5%).

The exact explanation for the lost appetite among foreigners for U.S. dollars and U.S. debt is hard to pin down. It may have been a delayed reaction from the 2008 crisis, when the Fed made it clear it had the ability to print unlimited dollars to support domestic markets (at the expense of foreigners). It might have been the aggressive sanctions the U.S. instituted against Russian banks after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 – the most economically powerful nation the U.S. had ever targeted in such a manner.

Previously, sanctions had been reserved for small, economically unimportant nations. At the time, the U.S. threatened to exclude Russia from the SWIFT international transfer system entirely but backed down due to the severity of the measure. Russia took the threat to heart, and its central bank divested most of its U.S. Treasury exposure and set up a SWIFT alternative called SPFS.

Even as the Russians took steps to free themselves from dependence on the dollar system, the U.S. wisely walked back from the brink, realizing that American and European banks were hopelessly intertwined with Russian ones. At the time, President Obama laid out a prescient warning regarding the risk to the dollar system that arbitrary exclusions could pose. In 2015, he cautioned, in the context of unilateral Iran sanctions:

Jeffrey Penney:

Numerous studies have found that students who are of the same race as their teacher experience increased academic achievement. In this paper, I attempt to explain when these benefits occur and which students are most likely to achieve the largest gains. Using exogenous variation in student–teacher matches and classroom composition from Tennessee’s Project STAR experiment, I find that below average achieving students benefit most from having a teacher of the same race, but the benefits from matching can be substantially reduced in smaller classes. Moreover, the effect is decreased in racially homogeneous classes where the teacher is the majority race.

Wing Kuang

Chinese American physicist Xiaoxing Xi is still haunted by the memory of an early morning in 2015, when a group of FBI officers surrounded his home in Pennsylvania. 

The agents pointed guns at his wife and two daughters and then handcuffed him.

The former chair of Temple University’s physics department was charged with leaking sensitive technology to the Chinese government.

Prosecutors accused Professor Xi of secretly sharing the design of a pocket heater for a supercomputer with scientists in China.

Overnight, Professor Xi’s face was splashed across US media and he was branded a “Chinese spy”.

He faced up to 80 years in prison if found guilty.

But just four months later, Professor Xi’s case came to a dramatic turning point.

Before the trial had even kicked off, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) dropped all charges against Professor Xi, with a document filed in court explaining that “additional information came to the attention of the government”.

According to Professor Xi’s lawyer Peter Zeidenberg, the scientist had never shared secret technology with Chinese colleagues.

The Economist:

hen seeking a job to teach in the University of California system, academic excellence is not enough. Applicants must also submit a diversity, equity and inclusion (dei) statement, explaining how they will advance those goals. That sounds fair enough, except that a promise to treat everyone equally would constitute a fail. Meanwhile in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis and the state legislature are trying to ban the teaching of critical-race theory, an approach to studying racism with which they disagree. While this has been going on, a row has broken out (also in Florida) over a new pre-college course in African-American studies. These three developments have one thing in common: they are attempts to win arguments by controlling the institutions where those arguments take place.

Threats to academic freedom in America can come from many directions. Students sometimes object to being exposed to ideas they deem troubling. Some even try to get faculty members fired for allowing such ideas to be voiced. Donors occasionally threaten to withdraw funding, which has a chilling effect on what can be taught. Speakers can be banned. Academics may self-censor, or succumb to groupthink. Occasionally American society demands restrictions on academic freedom, as when professors in the 1950s were asked to take loyalty tests to prove they were not communist sympathisers.

Dave Cieslewicz

But having now cleared my throat, I’m glad that DeSantis took on the College Board over its proposed African American Studies AP course. The course materials, which were being piloted in 60 high schools around the country, were extensive, consisting of four units. Only the last unit, which tackled contemporary issues, came in for criticism from DeSantis and others. (You can form your own opinion by reading the proposed study guidance here.)

That last unit deserved a closer look because it did, in fact, present just one side of current debates. For example, it included arguments in favor of reparations for slavery, but no counter arguments. It included a host of hard-left writers, like Kimberle Crenshaw, Michelle Alexander and Ta-Nehisi Coates, but no moderate or conservative Black thinkers, like John McWhorter, Shelby Steele or Robert Woodson. 

DeSantis got his state’s education department to reject the proposed curriculum because of what was in that one unit. They had no objections to the rest. In response to DeSantis and other feedback, those most controversial topics were stripped out, but what remains is still pretty good.

Dave cieslewicz:

Anybody who serves as Madison Schools Superintendent deserves our thanks. I’ve always thought that it’s the toughest job in Madison, even tougher than being mayor. 

Yesterday Carlton Jenkins announced his retirement effective at the end of July, after only three years on the job. Let’s thank him for his service and wish him well on his retirement, but let’s also be clear on what we need in the next superintendent. 

I hope the school board looks for five qualities. 

First, someone who will care about all the kids and parents in the schools. Jenkins and his predecessor, Jennifer Cheatham, never expressed any interest or concern for the majority of average kids who just want to learn or for the taxpayers who want value for their investment. The district is shedding enrollment in a growing community and we need a superintendent who sees that as the first problem to tackle. 

Second, someone who will make school safety and good order a priority. The last two superintendents have been obsessed, not with the racial achievement gap which is real, but with graduate-level race theory. I’ll stop short of calling it Critical Race Theory, but it’s in that ballpark. Jenkins did nothing to improve on the awful Behavioral Education Plan dreamed up by Cheatham. As a result our schools have too much disorder when they don’t have actual violence and teachers are demoralized because they feel helpless to do anything about it. 

Third, someone who will be the Luke Fickell of school superintendents. The new Badger football coach is a dynamic guy who is attracting talented players and coaches. Madison is in competition for great teachers. This needs to become a place where those teachers want to be and nobody has more to say about that than the superintendent.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Ryan Quinn:

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we clearly have a world-class faculty that exists and teaches students and creates leaders of the future,” Boliek said. “We, however, have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our campus, like many campuses across the nation. But the same really can’t be said about right-of-center views. So this is an effort to try to remedy that with the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which will provide equal opportunity for both views to be taught.”

That interview came two days after his board passed a resolution asking Chapel Hill’s administration to “accelerate its development of a School of Civic Life and Leadership,” with “a goal of a minimum of 20 dedicated faculty members and degree opportunities for undergraduate students.” The evening that passed, the Wall Street Journal editorial board was already praising the university for planning “to build a syllabus free from ideological enforcers.”

“Students will be able to choose the new classes to fulfill university core requirements,” the Wall Street Journal board wrote. “Those who aren’t interested can stay in the existing courses.”

The editorial’s headline and a Fox News chyron during Boliek’s interview were the same: “UNC Takes on the University Echo Chamber.”

Kevin Bardosh, Alex de Figueiredo, Rachel Gur-Arie, Euzebiusz Jamrozik, James Doidge, Trudo Lemmens, Salmaan Keshavjee, Janice E Graham, Stefan Baral

Vaccination policies have shifted dramatically during COVID-19 with the rapid emergence of population-wide vaccine mandates, domestic vaccine passports and differential restrictions based on vaccination status. While these policies have prompted ethical, scientific, practical, legal and political debate, there has been limited evaluation of their potential unintended consequences. Here, we outline a comprehensive set of hypotheses for why these policies may ultimately be counterproductive and harmful. Our framework considers four domains: (1) behavioural psychology, (2) politics and law, (3) socioeconomics, and (4) the integrity of science and public health. While current vaccines appear to have had a significant impact on decreasing COVID-19-related morbidity and mortality burdens, we argue that current mandatory vaccine policies are scientifically questionable and are likely to cause more societal harm than good. Restricting people’s access to work, education, public transport and social life based on COVID-19 vaccination status impinges on human rights, promotes stigma and social polarisation, and adversely affects health and well-being. Current policies may lead to a widening of health and economic inequalities, detrimental long-term impacts on trust in government and scientific institutions, and reduce the uptake of future public health measures, including COVID-19 vaccines as well as routine immunisations. Mandating vaccination is one of the most powerful interventions in public health and should be used sparingly and carefully to uphold ethical norms and trust in institutions. We argue that current COVID-19 vaccine policies should be re-evaluated in light of the negative consequences that we outline. Leveraging empowering strategies based on trust and public consultation, and improving healthcare services and infrastructure, represent a more sustainable approach to optimising COVID-19 vaccination programmes and, more broadly, the health and well-being of the public.

Wall Street Journal:

Florida rejected the last version of the curriculum, which featured topics on “Black Queer Studies,” “‘Postracial’ Racism,” and “the case for reparations.” That framework suggested teens read a text from an academic exponent of critical race theory. “We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think,” Mr. DeSantis said, “but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them.”

Even as it deletes this academic theorizing, the College Board denies it’s reacting to Florida’s criticism. The other explanation is that it arrived at a similar conclusion on its own. Mr. DeSantis’s critics have accused him of trying to erase black history, though he was doing nothing of the sort. If the revised AP framework actually was drawn up in December, then the curriculum committee had already decided that none of this nonsense was needed for teaching black history to high-schoolers.

The College Board’s CEO is calling the revised course “an unflinching encounter with the facts and evidence of African-American history.” One thing driving the changes, he said, was that students in the pilot class were engaged by primary sources, but they found the academic theories “quite dense.”

AI means a brilliant doctor on your phone. Who can diagnose you instantly, for free, privately, using only your locally stored medical records.

Do you think the doctors will be happy about that? Or the lawyers? The artists? The others that AI disrupts?

They’ll fight it. Hard.

— Balaji (@balajis) February 10, 2023

TPI-US:

In 2022, TPI-US was awarded a contract to conduct statewide literacy coursework, “landscape analysis,” through which TPI-US will invite all 13 University of Wisconsin educator preparation programs to participate in a study of evidence-based early reading instructional practices. Participation by EPPs is an entirely voluntary opt-in, and reports will only be shared with the participating EPP.

For the Wisconsin landscape analysis, TPI-US has been asked to:

Secure voluntary opt-in participation by UW EPPs

Develop a literacy-focused rubric, making sure it’s aligned to relevant WI teacher prep standards, and train review teams

Conduct up to 13 reviews

Provide confidential reports to each participating UW institution

Deliver a roll-up report of overall findings and recommendations to DPI by November 30, 2023, that will not identify individual institutions.

Benefits to UW institutions of participating in the landscape analysis

A confidential, no-cost assessment of reading coursework and training strengths and any potential areas for improvement weaknesses from a respected national organization that is independent and employers reviewers that are literacy and teacher preparation experts.

DPI grants of up to $100k to each participating institution

$50k to the institution at the completion of its landscape analysis

$50k on the adoption of a program improvement plan responsive to findings and recommendations

The Summary Report of findings provided to DPI will be anonymous and identify trends, but not institutions.

Much more in the 3 page pdf document.

Roth says that it would not surprise him if “visibility filters” were placed on the accounts of elected officials without their knowledge.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 8, 2023

Evan Gorelick & Janalie Cobb

A Yale College Council referendum, which opened Jan. 30, saw students vote overwhelmingly in favor of more democratic trustee elections.

Over 2,000 students — almost 90 percent of referendum participants — voted in the affirmative to the referendum’s two yes-or-no questions: “Should the board of trustees for Yale Corporation consist of democratically elected trustees?” and “Should students, professors, and staff be eligible to vote for candidates for the board of trustees for Yale Corporation?” Approximately 30 percent of Yale’s undergraduate population voted in the online referendum. 

The Yale College Council sent a letter to the Board of Trustees on Feb. 6 with the results of the referendum and several policy recommendations aimed at “achieving democratization.” These recommendations do not directly address the trustee election process. Rather, they are intended to “open the door” to the possibility of achieving democratic trustee elections in the future, according to the letter. 

“The connection between Board members and members of the Yale community has dissolved,” the YCC letter reads. “Democratization is something that may take a long time — longer than our time spent here as undergraduates. As members of the Yale College Council, we believe we must restore the link between the Board and the students, faculty and staff at Yale.” 

The Yale Corporation, also known as the Board of Trustees, consists of the University President, 10 “successor trustees” appointed by the current Board and six “alumni trustees” elected by University alumni from the broader community. The governor and lieutenant governor of Connecticut retain positions on the Board.

The Economist:

The University of California, Berkeley is currently advertising for a “director of cell culture, fly food, media prep and oncall glass washing facilities”. Applicants need an advanced degree and a decade of research experience, and must submit a CV, a cover letter and a research statement—as well as a statement on their contributions to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion. Seemingly everyone (this director, the next head of preservation for the library, anyone who dreams of a tenured professorship) must file a statement outlining their understanding of diversity, their past contributions to it and their plans “for advancing equity and inclusion” if hired.

Not long ago, such statements were exotic and of marginal importance. Now they are de rigueur across most of the University of California system for hiring and tenure decisions. Studies claim that as many as one in five faculty jobs across America require them. And government agencies that fund scientific research are starting to make grants to labs conditional upon their diversity metrics and plans.

Wayne Carlson:

This book was developed in an attempt to maintain in one location the information and references that point to the many important historical developments of the short life of the computer graphics world as we know it.

Julie Jargon:

Seeing a child endure drama over group chats is enough to send parents lunging for their kid’s phone. After all, we have the skills to resolve disputes diplomatically, the words to make it all better. If only we could just…

Nope, don’t even think about it.

Writing texts as your child is a bad idea, and what’s more, texting in momspeak isn’t going to fool kids more accustomed to acronyms and emojis. It also isn’t going to teach kids how to resolve differences themselves, in their own words, as awkward as they might be.

When 13-year-old Hannah Yeatman wasn’t sure how to respond to some friend drama in a group chat, her mother, Lilly Yeatman, offered suggestions. Her wording didn’t fly with Hannah.

“If my mom had sent the message, she would have put in a bunch of punctuation,” says Hannah, a seventh-grader in Los Angeles. “We don’t really do that.”

Ilenia Martini

In the centre of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s old town, surprisingly close to the Royal Palace, between charming narrow cobbled streets, stands a beautiful 18th-century building echoing the vision of a classic, elegant Scandinavian architecture. Stepping in Jesper Kouthoofd’s glorious four-metre ceiling height, light-filled apartment, housing large-scale original affresco paintings covering wall after wall, I see a luscious universe with an eclectic colour palette filled with artworks, books, iconic references to the masters of industrial design and, gently taking over like a statement centrepiece, instruments and audio equipment growing into the space in the form of a home studio. Between the apartment’s original features, blending in unpretentiously, some awe-inspiring design objects from Joe ­Colombo, Virgil Abloh and Arne Jacobsen. Overall, this vast space resembles a symphony produced by an orchestra rather than a flat note. Observing the contrast of bold colours, I think, ”how fitting geometry and organic shapes blend into a recurring home theme.”

Today, living there with his wife and two children, Jesper Kouthoofd, who is not only the co-founder and CEO of Teenage Engineering, the leading Swedish consumer electronics brand, internationally renowned for beautifully designed audio products, but also an exceptionally creative individual brilliant at recognizing the vibrancy of the ebbs and flow of life, turning them into unexpected connections between ordinary things and creative ideas. I had met Jesper a few years back in 2017 at a presentation in Älmhult for IKEA introducing their upcoming collaboration and already back then, the fascination began with this creative entrepreneur who is able to design electronic instruments in such an effortless way that feels everything but intimidating. You know you’re onto something interesting when you are knee-deep in the research process and there’s minimal information about the founders, yet there are millions of likes and a growing number of international artists raving about Teenage Engineering’s first product — the op-1. Fans include Bon Iver, Swedish House Mafia, Thom Yorke, St. Vincent, Bonobo, Reggie Watts — believe me, the list goes on. Although Jesper has had plenty of experience being the spokesperson for the brand, you can understand that I felt intimidated yet extremely curious about his personality and professional background — thankfully we share a love for Italian design which broke the ice as we sat down in his kitchen and started talking. I immediately felt as if for Jesper it’s less about doing more than about doing things more creatively.

John Sailor:

Texas Tech’s Department of Biological Sciences passed a resolution titled “Prioritizing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion of Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University.” The motion mandated that faculty search committees require diversity statements and heavily value them in the hiring process. It also called for every faculty search committee to provide “a report on the evaluation of the required diversity statements.” Through a Freedom of Information Act Request, I have acquired these DEI evaluation reports from eight separate faculty searches.

In my latest article for the Wall Street Journal, “How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science,” I unpack these documents and their implications. Simply put, they perfectly illustrate the case against diversity statements. These documents show how the biology department penalizes some job candidates for not adopting the language of identity politics. They also reveal horribly misplaced priorities.

The evaluations are embedded below. Readers are encouraged to peruse the documents for themselves, but a few of the DEI “strengths” and “weaknesses” that the search committees named are worth highlighting here.

Candidates’ weaknesses included:

• “Mentioned that DEI is not an issue because he respects his students and treats them equally. This indicates a lack of understanding of equity and inclusion issues.”
• “Poor understanding of the difference between equity and equality, even on re-direct, which suggested rather superficial understanding of DEI more generally.”
• “Wasn’t a lot of discussion of the nuances between D, E, and I and how they (inter)related.”
• “Didn’t distinguish well between international and domestic students and their DEI needs.”
• “Conflation of international with diversity without explaining any subtlety.”
• “Diversity was only defined as country of origin and notably never mentioned women.”
• “Not during DEI meeting but observed multiple examples of microaggressions towards women faculty, including assuming one junior faculty was a graduate student and minimizing the difficulties of women in the US by comparing to worse situations elsewhere.”

Their strengths, meanwhile, include:

More, here.

Glenn Reynolds:

Can graft and racial politics save public schools? Just maybe. Let me explain.

Public schools face an exodus of students. Even before COVID, parents were pulling their kids out of failing (and often unsafe) public schools in favor of private schools that cost more money but offered better and safer educations. Other parents were pulling their kids out for homeschooling, which is more work for parents but also can offer better — and certainly safer — education.

This trend put public schools at risk. The parents pulling their kids out were, on average, the parents most interested in their kids’ educations, the parents who’d been most likely to support school funding, to volunteer, to donate and to be voices for public education. With them, the schools not only lost student bodies — a blow in itself since funding depends in part on enrollment — but also vital political and financial support.

Those losses, naturally enough, encourage other parents to pull their kids. As schools lost the kids with the most involved parents — kids who tend to be the better students — even “good” schools faced a reputation hit. The result was a self-reinforcing spiral that in a book a few years back I called a “K-12 implosion.”

As I noted at the time, public schools’ potential salvation lay in charter schools. They’re publicly funded and part of the public-school system, but they have many of private schools’ virtues. To the extent that public schools could attract students to charters over private schools or homeschooling, they were keeping those students in the system and thus preserving funding and parental support.

Jeremy Tate:

The es­say hasn’t been ban­ished from clas­si­cally minded in­sti­tu­tions. Rather, the more per­son­al­ized, dis­cus­sion-cen­tric model of in­struc­tion by its na­ture ren­ders es­says a sec­ondary tool. Stu­dents that skip their home­work won’t be able to hide for long when asked to of­fer an opin­ion on last night’s read­ing.

For cen­turies, the clas­si­cal cur­ricu­lum was the norm, rather than the ex­cep­tion. In the mod­ern era, how­ever, the march to­ward fac­tory-style ed­u­ca­tion re­placed the old ways with more spe­cial­ized stud­ies de­liv­ered in lec­ture form. Per­haps it’s time to re­think this change. The clas­si­cal method sur­vived as long as it did be­cause it fos­tered crit­i­cal-think­ing skills that can then be ap­plied to any cat­e­gory of spe­cial­ized study.