School Information System

Clifford Ando:

No peer institution has borrowed so much in relation to its assets; none spends remotely as large a percentage of tuition on servicing debt. Despite gifts and the surge in the stock market, the University’s endowment has actually shrunk under its current president from 2021 to 2024 because it has been liquidating assets to mask the size of its deficits.

But its story also distills forces and trends in American higher education that are corroding ideals, and wasting money, throughout the land.

America’s leading research universities distinguished themselves both in their commitment to an extraordinary ideal, namely, the creation and questioning of new knowledge in every field that touches on human existence, and in their commitment to integrating persons at every stage of learning into this process. One way Chicago and all research universities actualize these ideals is by placing undergraduate students in the classroom with faculty who perform research. Students at these universities learn from people who exist at the cutting edge of what we know.

In a 2009 strategic plan, Robert J. Zimmer, the then-president of the University of Chicago, confessed to the university’s trustees that the faculty-student ratio was lower in 2009 than it had been in 1972. This decline, Zimmer averred, “threaten[ed] our core ethos as a University that places a premium on rigorous inquiry.” And yet, after a brief amelioration, the faculty-student ratio at the University of Chicago has gotten worse nearly every year from 2011 to 2024, for the very simple reason that the University of Chicago placed itself so deeply in debt it could conceive no other way out. (There were plenty of ways out.)

more.

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K-12 Tax & $pending climate: Chicago’s pension crisis is heading for a Detroit-style collapse

Hope Karnopp:

School districts have state-imposed limits on how much money they can take in through two sources: State general aid and property taxes. The veto raises those limits by $325 per student, per year, until 2425. 

So, an initial question is whether school districts will take advantage of those increases or forgo them.

When we reached out to Americans for Prosperity’s Wisconsin chapter for backup, state director Megan Novak said “history and data point to the reasonable conclusion that Gov. Evers’ veto can and will raise property taxes.”

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Quinton Klabon:

2025 SCHOOL REPORT CARD CUT SCORES SENT TO DPI FOR APPROVAL

• 0 districts rated 1 star
• 75% of high-income schools (<30% poverty) rated 4 or 5 stars, said a member
• new benchmarks (versus old)
  1 star: 0 (0)
  2 star: 49 (48)
  3 stars: 60 (58)
  4 stars: 71 (70)
  5 stars: 84 (83)

Corrine Hess

For some, one of the most confusing aspects of the report cards is that sometimes those stars don’t align with student proficiency rates in math and reading. 

And that isn’t likely to be changed this go-around. 

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

John Sailer:

DOCUMENTS: a UT San Antonio faculty job scoresheet gives 5 points for “Female or URM candidate.”

This is, of course, illegal. But what I’m really curious about is whoever got the “1” in that category.

more.

Anna Giaritelli

The extent of crime in D.C. has been debated by the Left and Right since President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would take federal action to crack down on problems in the District of Columbia. 

But if the public wants to have an honest conversation about crime in D.C., the MPD will first have to be honest about how prevalent crime is. Without MPD’s honesty about the crimes that it has chosen to hide from its public-facing stats page, the White House cannot get an accurate picture of how bad the problem actually is and adequately fix it.

For me, the story began long before that attack. I was a Washingtonian for seven years. I was saving up money to buy a condo and planned to spend the next few decades in Washington, the intersection of politics and media. D.C.’s crime problem was something you lived with. You took Ubers and Lyfts, told others if you were walking after dark so they knew when you were home, and knew to be aware of your surroundings, almost to the point of paranoia. (Ladies?)

On a Saturday morning in 2020, I walked out of my apartment on Capitol Hill to mail a package at a post office several blocks from the U.S. Capitol. I put on my black sweatshirt and black sweatpants then headed out the door.

I never made it to the post office.

Just one block from my apartment building’s entrance, I was attacked by a large man well over six feet tall. He charged at me for a reason that I still do not understand. In broad daylight and on well-traveled 2nd Street NE next to Union Station, I fought to get away as he sexually assaulted me. If it had not been for others in the vicinity, including a construction worker named Donny who heard my screaming and ran to my rescue, I don’t know if I would be here today.

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more:

This is the most important story I’ve told. It’s my story. I’ve waited five years to share it, and I’m ready now.

I’m Anna Giaritelli. The DC police are covering up crime. I know because they covered up what happened to me

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Alana Goodman:

The District of Columbia has quietly settled a lawsuit from a sergeant who accused Metropolitan Police Department leaders of misclassifying offenses to deflate the district’s crime statistics, court records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. Police brass repeatedly told officers to downgrade theft cases, knife attacks, and violent assaults to lesser offenses, according to internal MPD emails, depositions, and phone call transcripts the Free Beacon reviewed.

Kyra Phillips:

“I can tell you firsthand here in downtown DC where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past six months, you know, there were two people shot, one person died…”. more.

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Olbrich:

In an Aug. 8 memo to the park commissioners, Tanya Zastrow, executive director of Olbrich Botanical Society — the nonprofit fundraising arm for the gardens — cited an “increase in overnight trespassers, acts of vandalism and most recently theft in the gardens” as the reason for the request.

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Madison police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006

Katherine M. Bowser

Los Angeles USD is facing a $94.5 million budget shortfall this year. Fairfax County, VA: $121 million. Chicago: $734 million. With ESSER funds expired and enrollment declining, districts nationwide face painful decisions that can impact students, such as layoffs and school closures. Identifying and repurposing wasteful spending can help ease these tough choices.

In this District Trendline, we focus on one of education’s most persistent examples of ineffective and inefficient spending—automatic salary increases for teachers who hold a master’s degree (i.e., master’s degree premiums). We find that over 90% of large districts still pay teachers more if they earn one, despite research showing they don’t improve teacher effectiveness—at a cost of millions of dollars wasted. 

Benjamin Rothove:

Roughly 80 percent of the 2017 and 2018 Truman Scholars remain in liberal politics within a decade after winning the federally funded scholarship, according to a College Fixanalysis.

The Fix reviewed the current public activities of Truman Scholars from the 2017 and 2018 cohorts and found at least 98 of the 122 winners have a clear connection to liberal politics, such as working for Democratic members of Congress, advocating for progressive causes, or teaching classes with a liberal focus.

In contrast, none are currently involved in conservative politics. The other winners’ ideologies could not be ascertained based on publicly available information.

The Fix similarly found 75 percent of Truman Scholars from the 2015 and 2016 cohorts remain involved in liberal politics a decade later. Only a single winner from those years could be found who today works for conservative causes.

Clifford Ando:

On June 14, the dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities (AHD) formed and immediately charged five “working groups” with proposing significant reforms on the structure of departments; language instruction; and doctoral, master’s, and undergraduate education. The committees have until August 22 to submit their recommendations to the dean, who will in turn forward them to the provost by August 25. This timetable means that a program of reform intended to change nearly every aspect of academic life will be completed and advanced beyond the division in exactly the interval during which neither departmental nor divisional meetings take place. To achieve this unseemly haste, the process allows neither for consultation with departments nor for comparative and historical study.

Everything about the process, stated rationale, and likely outcomes of this program of reform strikes me as emblematic of the current trajectory of the University of Chicago and, indeed, of higher education as a whole. In what follows, I seek to analyze this development in terms that clarify the stakes, both internally to the University and externally to colleagues in higher education.

I first explore the charges of the committees and the rationale they have been given, both for acting at all and especially for acting quickly. I then analyze the implications of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and other federal actions for the University of Chicago. This analysis leads to the question of the incidence of funding changes at the federal level for the budget of the Division of the Arts and Humanities.

The thrust of this analysis is that the University has undertaken extraordinary quantities of leveraged spending in ways that benefit select units, while others, who have achieved high international ranking with little aid from capital spending, have instead suffered from a withdrawal of operational support in order to finance those endeavors. The present moment of reform brings that long trend to a crisis point. To understand the University’s willingness to dismantle its own excellence, I turn to an earlier moment of panicked reform induced by an earlier stage of this prolonged financial crisis, namely the expansion of the College in 2017. This leads to some final reflections on the maintenance of University ideals in an age of instability.

Katherine Long, Ben Foldy and Sara Randazzo:

In early May, after a baby was hospitalized with possible signs of child abuse, police showed up at a nine-bedroom mansion in this Los Angeles suburb known for lavish homes and residents with roots in China. Inside, they found 15 more children, none older than 3, living under the care of nannies.

The investigative trail led them to six more children at other homes in the Los Angeles area. A Chinese-born man and woman living in the mansion said they were the parents of all 22 children. Birth certificates list them as such. What mystified police was that the children appeared to have been born all over the U.S., and in rapid succession.

Local authorities removed the children from the homes, placed them in foster care, and called in the FBI.

The mansion, it turned out, was listed as the headquarters of Mark Surrogacy, which had arranged many of the children’s births and was managed by Silvia Zhang, the woman living there. Zhang said she was the mother of all the children.

Michael J. Petrilli

Earlier this summer, Education Next published a post by EdChoice’s Robert Enlow and Michael Q. McShane, “School Choice Should Take the Road Less Traveled.” It was not my favorite take, to say the least.

The problem wasn’t so much their argument that private-school choice should be regulated differently than charter schooling. While I would quibble (and quarrel) on some specifics, I can appreciate that the rules for private-school choice should be different from those for charter schools. Otherwise we’d “de-privatize” private schools, and what would be the point of that?

No, what really bothered me was their claim—one I’ve seen many others make—that the charter sector once had great potential for innovation, but because of those dastardly authorizers and other red-tape-loving bureaucrats, charters instead became overly cautious, impeding innovation in a way that has hamstrung and limited the entire charter school movement. Here’s how Enlow and McShane put it:

Charter schools have been a school choice success but a limited one, facing increasing challenges through the years with overregulation and limited growth. Hailed initially as a way to dramatically remake education, particularly urban education, charter schools have been stymied in their impact by an authorizing and regulatory framework that has buried potential operators in the very bureaucratic structures charter schools were created to avoid. The sector has empowered a limited set of unelected functionaries to say no for arbitrary and capricious reasons. And, it has curtailed ways in which schools can experiment and try to educate children differently.

Sun Prairie:

Following the arrest last month of a former dean of students on child pornography and exploitation charges, the Sun Prairie School Board has deemed district administrators out of compliance with policies requiring them to communicate with the board and the public.

While board members did not directly reference the district’s handling of the allegations and eventual felony charges against Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier, members of the audience cheered their action during Monday’s meeting.

Prior to the votes finding administrators had not followed the policies, a dozen parents or other residents criticized the district for failing to act sooner against Gilkey-Meisegeier and said they were worried about their children’s safety in the district.

Tricia Nowicki, who said she has a daughter at West High School, where he worked, said, “I am extremely concerned for her safety going back in the fall.”

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Megan Novak:

Madison Metropolitan School District Board, with one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the country, tackling the most important issues as the school year is about to begin. What a joke.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Ella Hanley:

The Galin Scholars program is welcoming its third cohort of high school students this fall, continuing its expansion of free college prep in the greater Madison area.

The Madison-based nonprofit now supports 15 students from seven high schools. The first five students graduated from high school this summer and will begin college at Northwestern University, Lake Forest College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison this fall.

The graduates were offered over $1.1 million in merit awards from schools where they applied, according to Galin Scholars.

Established in 2022, Galin Scholars partners with schools and families to support students with strong academic potential. The program focuses on students from low- or middle-income households and who are part of groups underrepresented in college.

Students in the program may receive academic tutoring and counseling, weekly advising, essay support, guidance on college applications and financial aid, college tours, ACT prep and transportation. The program is funded by individual and business donations, education grants and a partnership with Galin Education, a Madison-based college prep company.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

WILL:

The News: WILL submitted recommendations to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) today, urging an overhaul of the state’s school report card standards. WILL’s analysis highlights DPI’s track record of inflating ratings that masks a decades-long stagnation in student achievement.

These efforts come after years of DPI making unilateral changes to the accountability system, a trend that has made it more difficult to accurately compare academic progress over time.  Our letter urges DPI to use this as an inflection point for change.

The Quotes: WILL Research Director, Will Flanders, stated, “Wisconsin is falling behind the rest of the country academically and changing standards only masks this decline. Instead of raising the bar, we are simply putting our heads in the sand. It’s why WILL is encouraging DPI to follow through on its commitment to Wisconsin students and adopt report card standards that give true insight into school performance.”

The Problem: WILL’s analysis exposes significant flaws in the current reporting system where schools and districts appear to perform above average:

• One school with only 4.1% ELA proficiency was rated “Exceeds Expectations.”
• 18 schools statewide received an “Exceeds Expectations” rating despite less than 25% ELA proficiency.

To verify these findings, WILL compared DPI’s ratings to GreatSchools, an independent school rating system widely used by parents when choosing a school. A review of 309 Wisconsin schools across the state’s six largest districts showed that 50% of schools were rated higher by DPI, while only 3% were rated higher by GreatSchools. We believe that this demonstrates DPI’s ratings are overly generous and fail to accurately reflect declining student achievement.

WILL’s Recommendations: To create an honest and rigorous reporting system, WILL recommends that DPI adopt a new approach that is both accurate and transparent.

Joshua A. Cuevas, Bryan L. Dawson and Gina Childers:

Abstract

This study assessed the pedagogical knowledge and metacognitive awareness of pedagogy of faculty (N = 107) at a large state university in the United States. The purpose was to ascertain whether faculty could distinguish effective learning practices from ineffective ones, as determined by empirical research in learning science. Faculty responded to items regarding the efficacy of effective practices and others shown by research to be neuromyths or misconceptions. Faculty across all colleges correctly identified most of the effective practices but also endorsed myths/misconceptions, ultimately showing limited pedagogical knowledge. Tenured faculty showed stronger pedagogical knowledge than newer faculty. Faculty were also assessed on their confidence in their knowledge of pedagogical practices. Respondents demonstrated poor metacognitive awareness as there was no relationship between confidence in pedagogical knowledge and actual pedagogical knowledge. Surprisingly, education faculty scored no better in pedagogical knowledge than faculty of any other college and also showed low metacognitive awareness. Results indicate that universities preparing doctoral students for faculty positions should ensure candidates are exposed to accurate information regarding learning science. The implications for colleges of education are more dire in that they may be failing to prepare candidates in the most essential aspects of the field.

Keywords: pedagogy, learning science, cognitive myths,

more.

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

Eric Adler:

University leaders in the United States are slashing the humanities left and right. If you take what they say at face value, it’s because of their limited fiscal capacities. But there is growing evidence that this isn’t the case — that it isn’t a lack of capacity so much as a fundamental lack of will on the part of administrators and boards of trustees to support humanistic education and research. How have the priorities of these university leaders wandered so far away from the age-old value of humanistic education and the true purpose of the liberal arts?

Let’s first consider some of the evidence. Back in June, Jennifer Frey, a philosophy professor at the University of Tulsa, announced that her institution’s new provost fired her as the dean of the Honors College that she had run for two years. Why? According to the provost, the program Frey established for the college was too expensive. But this was a puzzling suggestion. The university possesses a $1.36-billion endowment, and by all accounts Frey’s new program, which focused on reading core texts in the humanistic tradition, was phenomenally successful. Enrollment in Tulsa’s Honors College grew by over 500%. Retention rates in the college soared, and the program managed to attract multiple major grants and gifts. And although we’re often told that contemporary college students lack the skills, patience, or inclination to read great (or, now, any) works of literature, history, and philosophy, pupils flocked to Frey’s college.

Joanne Jacobs Summary:

In education, there’s little support for people who say, “That’s not good enough. Do better,” he writes. In a way , the consequences of low standards are life-threatening. But it’s not obvious until years later.

President Trump is reinstating the Presidential Fitness Test, which was discontinued in 2013 in favor of a “more holistic ‘barometer’ of student health,” he writes. In the past, “students who hit certain benchmarks got a certificate.” Not a big deal.

In a New York Times story, For Some, Return of Presidential Fitness Test Revives Painful Memories, a 60-year-old woman calls the test, “survive or fail. It was Darwinist.”

“Now, I don’t think Charles Darwin would think kids having to do pull-ups really captures the adapt-or-die essence of On the Origin of Species, writes Hess. “But this kind of overwrought anxiety has become pervasive, undermining our ability to set clear expectations for kids or confidently stand by them.”

Massimo

NEWS

The U.S. national debt is now officially over $37 trillion.

This is approximately the value of the economies of China, Germany, Japan, India and UK combined. This amounts to $108,000 per person in the U.S.

The debt is currently growing at:

• $3.1M per minute
• $212.9M per hour
• $5.1B per day

Terry Falk:

Partly, for that reason, new Superintendent Brenda Cassellius asked the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS) to evaluate the MPS Office of Human Resources. This is not the first time CGCS has looked at the district’s HR department. But of the 19 recommendations it made in 2019, only one was fully implemented.

At the July 31 school board meeting, CGCS Executive Director Ray Hart outlined its latest findings in a presentation.

It is not enough to simply list the 12 new recommendations here. It is more important to try to understand why reform in the district has been so difficult to accomplish.

MPS has had so many twists and turns in its organizational structure in the last 35 years. Milwaukee’s school voucher program was established in 1990. Advocates for vouchers, such as Susan Mitchell, pushed whole sale dismantling of a centralized system when she wrote in 1994, for the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute to shift control from MPS “by allowing parents to choose schools their children attend and providing them the  financial resources to do so.”

Becky Jacobs:

While more than 700,000 people use the resource each year, Johnson said, County Health Rankings and Roadmaps will soon lose its primary funder. The New Jersey-based Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is set to end its support after 2026.

Mary Ann Lombardo, a foundation spokesperson, said the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps has been a “successful” partnership but the philanthropist is evolving how it works with partners and who it funds.

“Moving forward we are looking to support data programs that better meet the needs of community partners by providing granular and timely data for the economic, social, political and environmental factors that impact communities,” Lombardo said in an email.

Wall Street Journal:

Trustees and boards are supposed to set policy at universities, but too often they settle for football tickets and a child’s admission. That’s one reason it’s good to see the Board of Visitors take its obligations seriously at George Mason University.

We reported last week on the debate at the Northern Virginia school over racial and gender preferences. At a meeting on Friday, part open and part closed to the public, the board voted to eliminate a variety of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that had become fronts for discrimination in admissions and hiring at the school.

This is a rebuke to Gregory Washington, the George Mason president, a vociferous advocate of “diversity” preferences who had long opposed the anti-DEI move. But it was necessary if the school is going to avoid tough sanctions from the federal Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The DOJ is investigating the school’s policies for possible violations.

Press reports on the meeting have portrayed it as a victory for the president and Mason faculty because Mr. Washington kept his job. The Faculty Senate had rallied in support of the president against the Board of Visitors, whose members are appointed by the Virginia Governor. The current Governor is Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Steve Stewart-Williams

A new study finds that nearly nine in ten students fake more progressive views than they really hold, often to appease professors or stay in their peers’ good graces. The habit doesn’t stop at the classroom door; even close friends and romantic partners are kept in the dark. From lecture halls to late-night conversations, students are learning that conformity pays and candor costs. If universities still see themselves as incubators of independent thought, these numbers should be a wake-up call. Can students truly develop as thinkers when honesty feels unsafe?

Below is an excerpt from an article in The Hill by the study’s authors, Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman. You can read the full piece here.

Between 2023 and 2025, we conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. We were not studying politics — we were studying development. Our question was clinical, not political: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”

We asked: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes…

Seventy-eight percent of students told us they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity; 72 percent on politics; 68 percent on family values. More than 80 percent said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors…

To test the gap between expression and belief, we used gender discourse — a contentious topic both highly visible and ideologically loaded. In public, students echoed expected progressive narratives. In private, however, their views were more complex…

Samantha Smylie and Becky Vevea

More students in Illinois would be considered proficient on the state’s annual math and reading tests under a proposal to change cut scores, which the Illinois State Board of Education is set to vote on Wednesday. 

Cut scores are the scores that separate students into broad categories of achievement, now defined as below proficient, approaching proficiency, proficient, and above proficiency. 

Under the proposed changes, 53% of students would be considered proficient in English language arts, 38% would be proficient in math, and 45% would be in science, according to a presentation shared by state education officials Tuesday. Last year, 41% of students were proficient in English language arts, 28% were proficient in math, and 53% were in science. 

But the numbers cannot be compared year-over-year because the cut scores changed.

For example, third grade students currently must score 750 out of 850 on the math section of the Illinois Assessment of Readiness to be considered meeting proficiency standards. But under the proposed changes, they would only need to score 732 to be labeled proficient.

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Taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI recently lowered the bar as well.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Chris Rickert:

A majority of Madison School Board members appeared to be in favor Monday of significantly boosting their pay and making themselves eligible for the district’s employee health care coverage.

Board members cited the amount of work they do and a desire to make the seats more attractive to run for as reasons why increased pay and health coverage were needed. They also pointed to the salaries of board members for other, similar-sized and Wisconsin school districts.

“I think it’s really important to make sure that we make this — with the amount of work that we do — we make sure that this position is as accessible as possible,” board Vice President Maia Pearson said during Monday’s Operations Work Group meeting.

Board members currently make $8,000 a year, with the president of the board making $8,300. According to research by district administration, Milwaukee School Board members make $18,121, Kenosha members make $6,500, Green Bay members make $7,538.40 and Racine members make $3,600. The Madison School District, with about 25,000 students, is the second-largest district in the state.

Milwaukee is the only Wisconsin school district that makes its board members eligible for district health insurance. Making Madison board members eligible for health and dental coverage is estimated to cost the district between $82,000 and $220,000 annually.

Board members last increased their pay, from $4,200, in 2015. There was some consensus Monday during the board’s meeting that $15,000 might be an appropriate new yearly stipend.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Jessica Blake

President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape higher education and the federal government have spurred a flurry of lawsuits as higher education associations, students, legal advocacy organizations and colleges push back and seek relief through the courts. 

The lawsuits started almost immediately after Trump’s first day, and almost seven months later, advocates continue to file new complaints, challenging various executive orders, guidance documents or decisions to cut grants. Inside Higher Ed is tracking some of the key legal challenges related to higher ed. That includes Harvard University’s efforts to restore more than $2.7 billion in frozen research funding and protect its ability to enroll international students as well as several lawsuits aiming to stop the dismantling of the Education Department. Of the 41 included in our searchable database, judges have ruled against the administration in two-thirds of the cases so far. You can find more analysis of the lawsuits filed so far here.

We’ll update the database regularly, so check back for updates.

Sol in the Wild:

As teachers, we should spend a great deal of time refining our instructional methods based on what research tells us about how students learn best. For example, based on research I’ve consumed over the last several months, I’ve shifted intentionally toward using explicit instruction as the core of my teaching practice. But I also believe that simply using a research-based approach isn’t enough. If I want buy-in and understanding from families, I have to communicate what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and how it benefits their children. 

While explicit instruction is one of the most evidence-based ways to build knowledge and skills, it often comes with misconceptions that can create confusion or resistance among parents. 

Recognizing this, I’ve made it a priority not just to use explicit instruction, but to be transparent and proactive about explaining it, why it matters, how it supports learning, and what it looks like in practice. 

Below I explore common misunderstandings I anticipate parents may have, the key ideas I want them to understand about this approach, and my plan to communicate effectively with parents. 

What Parents Might Misunderstand

“You are just telling them the answer.”

Rose Horowitch:

The leaders of America’s elite universities are required, by the borderline-masochistic, semi-impossible nature of their job, to be skilled in the art of performative comity. So it was a bit of a shock when, at the end of an April panel discussion, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber turned on the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis, all but accusing them of carrying water for the Trump administration.

Eisgruber argued that higher education was facing a politically motivated attack, and that the two men were inadvertently making matters worse by agreeing with President Donald Trump, against the evidence, that the sector had grown illiberal and out of touch with mainstream America. The chancellors, taken aback by the public confrontation, countered that the struggles of a handful of Ivy League schools were dragging down the reputation of America’s heavyweight research institutions. Perhaps, they suggested, it was time for the Ivies’ leaders to step back and let new figures—such as themselves—represent the country’s top universities.

Jay Greene:

Eisgruber’s inability to understand politics not only exposes Princeton and other universities to significant liabilities, but also exacerbates antisemitism on his own campus. I explain how in this @DailySignal piece. dailysignal.com/2025/07/09/pri…

arcxp

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Whether you’re just starting to explore AI or scaling existing tools, this report provides a grounded, data-backed look at how your peers are navigating the AI landscape—and what it means for the future of journalism.

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Evan Morris:

Things are going badly for universities. They are in the crosshairs of an erratic and aggressive government willing to threaten anything in its path. While the government may have succeeded at securing promises for needed reforms at Columbia University, it did so by delaying or canceling scientific research funding estimated at between $400 million and $1.2 billion. But even delays that are resolved have their own costs: While a deal will restore this funding, some worthy scientists have lost their jobs and some worthy scientific research projects will not recover. To protect the sciences going forward, radical change to the composition of universities is warranted.

How do academics view the root causes of their own precarious situation? Consider a recent gathering of professors across multiple disciplines for the annual meeting of Heterodox Academy in Brooklyn last month. HxA, as it is known, is a group devoted to fostering the necessary environment and tools for airing of conflicting and unpopular (“heterodox”) views—provided they are expressed civilly. And yet, even among this group, whose members are not prone to marching in lockstep, there was remarkable consensus that the public’s distrust and the government’s ire are directed primarily at faculty in the humanities, because of their often single-minded insistence on identity politics, equity of results over merit, and abandonment of the Western canon

Daniel Nuccio:

Hafen and Villescas wrote in their July paper— which was taken down from the journal’s website on Saturday — that as “social work moves in the direction of anti-racist education and practice, social workers of color have urgently called attention to how theme [sic] profession continues to perpetuate white supremacy and harm BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color).”

The two scholars wrote that when anti-racist educators attempt to bring attention to how their field advances white supremacy in the classroom, white students attempt to “re-establish the white supremacist status quo” through resistance and the espousal of “color-blind rhetoric.”

This “[r]etaliatory white backlash,” they wrote, is best referred to as “whitelash,” which they describe as intimately entwined with the socio-relational process of white emotionality and the maintenance of racial hierarchies.

Thus, in an attempt to “expose” and “disarm” this white resistance to anti-racist education, the scholarly duo documented their own exploration of the pedagogical strategies they utilized while co-teaching two different undergraduate social work courses in 2023.

Mike Miles:

School starts on Tuesday, and last week we held our Convocation for teachers and staff. There was music, dancing, celebrating, and, of course, closing remarks. Our teachers and principals are ready for another strong year — the third year of the State intervention. My closing remarks are included below. I wish all of you a great start to your school year.

Haley Zimmerman:

Some think it’s gone too far, eliminating any spontaneity and reducing life to slots on a grid. Others say that some GCal superusers just want the world to know how busy they are.

Kaitlin Martin, a senior at Georgetown University, estimates that events in GCal cover about 10 to 12 hours of her average day.

“It’s probably from an hour before class to when I’m finishing my last assignment or activity of the day,” she said. Martin uses the app to schedule her classes, her meals, her daily tasks and hangouts with friends. When she makes plans with a friend at Georgetown, one of them sends the other a calendar invite.

Natalie Wexler:

This pushback stems from the longstanding fear that schools will overdo phonics and kill students’ desire to read—in other words, “drill and kill.” Palubiak says that when she substitute-taught in a second-grade classroom and announced that it was time for the required 40 minutes of phonics—which, according to her, the kids didn’t need—she was greeted with boos.

Kids who don’t need instruction in phonics shouldn’t have to sit through 40 minutes of it. One problem, though, is that it can be hard to tell who needs phonics instruction and who doesn’t. It can look like kids are reading, especially with leveled texts that rely heavily on repetition of the same words. Kids can easily guess at the words rather than sounding them out.

——

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

WILL:

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is representing an Iowa parent with respect to a potential defamation lawsuit after she, a newly naturalized citizen from the Dominican Republic, spoke at a public school board meeting about her concerns regarding certain curricula and instructional materials used in her son’s classroom.

What Happened: Our client, Mrs. Elayne Casalins, first addressed her concerns about the curricula and instructional materials with her son’s teacher, the school principal and the superintendent. She went to the school board because no action was taken after she explained her concerns to the teacher, principal, and superintendent. She then spoke at a June 19, 2025, Belmond-Klemme Community School Board meeting to make objections to the instructional materials used in her son’s classroom and the lack of notice she was given as a parent.

She reported to the school board that a teacher made the students watch the PG-13 movie “Till” without any parental notice or consent — even though many students, including her son, were only 12 years old. She further reported that there was a discussion of Black Lives Matter, racism, and police brutality all without parental notification or consent.

Mrs. Casalins’s comments to the school board were intended to address three issues: (1) in her opinion the curricula she objected to violated Iowa state law (Iowa Code § 279.74), (2) she believed that she was denied her statutory right to object to the curricula and instructional materials, and (3) to object to the materials after the fact under School Board Policy 605.3, and to ask that their future use be reconsidered.

Following her comments, Mrs. Casalins received a threatening letter from Boles Witosky Stewart Law PLLC firm demanding that she “cease-and-desist” any public discussion regarding this matter of public concern, namely controversial curricula and instructional materials used at the Belmond-Klemme Community School. The letter was sent on behalf of the teacher employed by the school district.

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde:

• 2023 was likely the first year in human history when our fertility rate fell below the replacement rate.

• The world population will start falling c. 2055.

• Never seen before, even compared to wars and pandemics.

• The consequences for the world are momentous.

• Let me describe a few of them.

David C. Phillips

“In most college classrooms,” wrote Alison King in a seminal 1993 article, “the professor lectures and the students listen and take notes. The professor is the central figure, the ‘sage on the stage,’ the one who has the knowledge and transmits that knowledge to the students. […] In this view of teaching and learning,” King argued, “students are passive learners rather than active ones.” And, she continued, “such a view is outdated and will not be effective for the twenty-first century.”

Instead of the transmittal theory described above, King championed a constructivist theory of learning according to which “knowledge [is] constructed—or reconstructed—by each individual knower through the process of trying to make sense of new information in terms of what that individual already knows”—a process called “active learning.” What students need, according to this view, is not a “sage on the stage” but a “guide on the side.” “Essentially,” King explained, “the professor’s role [as a ‘guide on the side’] is to facilitate students’ interaction with the material and with each other in their knowledge-producing endeavor.”

What students need, according to constructivists, is not a “sage on the stage” but a “guide on the side.”King’s article is a somewhat more modest proposal than contemporary readers familiar with the terminology might expect. But reformation efforts often trigger more revolutionary impulses in others. By 2014, Charles D. Morrison of Wilfred Laurier University was not only referring to “the now-clichéd shift from ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’” but was also declaring that it was only “a good start.” Four years later, Ted Dintersmith even approvingly described a school that “has no teachers, just a few adult ‘guides’ who aren’t expected to be subject-matter experts or allowed to answer questions.” Since then, there has been no shortage of academic papers, magazine and journal articles, and blog posts calling for or celebrating the death of the sage on the stage.

John Reed:

China plans to exclude Tibetan as a core subject from the national college entrance exam for the majority of students in the autonomous region, a senior official has said, raising concerns over the future of the language.

Gama Cedain, chair of the Tibet Autonomous Region, told a press briefing this week that the change was part of reforms to the national examination and would improve Tibetans’ career prospects.

“Tibet, like other provinces and regions,” would have “unified exam subjects”, he said, such as Chinese and mathematics, and foreign languages including English, Russian, Japanese, French, German and Spanish. But Tibetan will no longer be a core subject in the exam.

“This helps students of all ethnic groups to enjoy fairer access to high-quality education, enhances minority students’ ability to learn and improves their overall scientific and cultural literacy,” he said of the changes.

Ben:

Kill shot: seizing Harvard’s patents for inventions developed with federal funds, due to Harvard’s failure to disclose them, failure to commercialize them in America before other countries, and failure to convert them into practical use. From Commerce Secretary Lutnick. Not a good look for former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker — the soon-to-be-former Senior Fellow (board chair) of Harvard Corporation.

MTA President Max Page

“ The passage of Fair Share, which this year is bringing in $3 billion for public education and transportation from less than 1% of taxpayers, demonstrates how a fairer, more equitable tax system can generate billions of dollars for the common good,” Page said. “Massachusetts has more millionaires — and they are wealthier — than before voters passed a constitutional amendment to place a 4 % tax on income above $1 million. Fair Share has made our state a more attractive place to live by investing in the foundations of a prosperous Commonwealth.”

The MTA Board also voted to explore ways to achieve universal access to public, preK education and debt-free access to public higher education for any resident who wants to pursue post-secondary education or career training.

“Our state Constitution guarantees the right to an appropriate public education, which has been interpreted by the courts to mean kindergarten through grade 12, Page said. “That right must be expanded to include preK and public college to be meaningful in the 21st century. If we truly want to get all children the head start they need, we must provide every child with the opportunity to attend a high-quality, public prekindergarten program. And if we are serious about social and economic justice and nurturing a culturally rich and welcoming state of involved citizens, we will provide all residents with the best vehicle for a prosperous future – public education.” 

The Board of the MTA also reiterated its commitment to organize and involve all educators across the 400 local associations in the statewide union, and to remain at the forefront of defending public education against the attacks by the authoritarian-leaning administration in Washington.

——

Massachusetts is already in the top ten highest tax jurisdictions.

US District Court alt link

ORDER

For the reasons stated in the memorandum opinion issued today, it is this 7th day of August,

2025, hereby ORDERED:

1. 2. 3. The plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, ECF 97, is GRANTED.

A class is CERTIFIED under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) consisting of:

Any child who has been born or will be born in the United States after February 19, 2025, (1) whose mother was unlawfully present in the United States and whose father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) whose mother’s presence in the United States at the time of said person’s birth was lawful but temporary and whose father was not a United

States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.

Liza, as next friend to L.B.; Ashley, as next friend to K.K.; Andrea, as next friend to E.T.P.; Niurka, as next friend to L.G.; and Juana, Trinidad Garcia, and Monica, as next friends to their future children, are DESIGNATED as class representatives.

4. Counsel for the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and the Asylum

Seeker Advocacy Project are APPOINTED as class counsel.

Deborah L. Boardman

US District Judge

———

more.

Choose life.

Michael Bender:

Her hand in deploying these levers of power was evident from the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term. As his ambitions around reshaping higher education expanded, so did her remit. She is credited as an animating force behind a strategy that has intimidated independent institutions and undercut years of medical and scientific research.

The policies Ms. Mailman helped devise — and is now leveraging as she leads the White House’s negotiations with colleges — have sent shock waves through higher education, dividing faculty and alarming some students who see an effort to silence dissent. The aggressive tactics could have far-reaching implications for the future of academic freedom, the admissions practices at the most competitive colleges and the global reputations for some of the crown jewels of the nation’s university system.

——-

KEY FINDINGS:
1. Ivy League payments and entitlements cost taxpayers $41.59 billion over a six-year period (FY2010-FY2015). This is equivalent to $120,000 in government monies, subsidies, & special tax treatment per undergraduate student, or $6.93 billion per year.

2. The Ivy League was the recipient of $25.73 billion worth of federal payments during this period: contracts ($1.37 billion), grants ($23.9 billion) and direct payments – student assistance ($460 million).

Census.gov:

According to the PES, which states had undercounts?

• Arkansas (-5.04), 
• Florida (-3.48), 
• Illinois (-1.97), 
• Mississippi (-4.11), 
• Tennessee (-4.78), and 
• Texas (-1.92). 

And overcounts?

• Delaware (+5.45),
• Hawaii (+6.79), 
• Massachusetts (+2.24),
• Minnesota (+3.84), 
• New York (+3.44), 
• Ohio (+1.49), 
• Rhode Island (+5.05), and 
• Utah (+2.59) 

Why was there an undercount or overcount in my state?

While the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey can estimate undercounts and overcounts in the census, PES data cannot answer why a particular state may have experienced one.

——-
Hans A. von Spakovsky

In a shocking report that has not received the attention it deserves, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that its 2020 Census count of the American population was incorrect in at least 14 states.1 And those mistakes were costly to certain states in terms of congressional representation, number of electors, and money those states are likely to receive from the federal government during the next decade. To put the scope of these mistakes into perspective, contrast the errors in the Census Bureau’s latest recount (the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES) with the recount from a decade ago (the 2010 Post-Enumeration Survey)—in which there was a net overcount of a mere 0.01 percent (36,000 people), a statistically insignificant error.2

——-

Implications of over and under counts census results: grok // perplexity

Stephen Borelli:

“Go to a 10 year old softball game and watch the parents,” Lewis said in March at the Project Play Summit. “They care about that more than anything.”

Across campus at the University of California, another author, Richard Reeves, raised within a British youth sports system much more infatuated with playing than the material things you can get from sports, offered this reading of the landscape: “Travel sports is the work of the devil.”

Reeves’ three sons were around middle school age when he and his wife brought them over from the United Kingdom to America, and into the so-called youth sports industrial complex.

 “You’ve got these kids being hauled around the country and thinking they gotta do this, parents shouting at the kids and they had scouts there and individual coaches,” he tells USA TODAY Sports. “I was horrified by the culture around it.”

Lewis had two softball-playing daughters and, like so many of us, gave himself to their careers.

“The most pathetic character inside it is the one who’s paying for it all,” Lewis writes in “Playing to Win,” his 2020 audiobook that details life in the complex.

John Arnold:

The Early Decision process for college admissions limits price competition for wealthier students and chance of admission for those who need financial aid, not to mention the added stress for students it creates. A new antitrust lawsuit seeks to blow it up. Good riddance.

Richard Innes:

If you read the full report, you will see even more evidence that NAEP, not most watered-down state standards, relates better to what our students need for solid success. Very simply, if we want students ready for living wage careers or college, we need the sorts of performances the NAEP is scoring Proficient or better.

Richard Innes:

There’s been a lot of discussion from some teachers and Ed school professors about how the National Assessment for Educational Progress’ (NAEP) standard for reading proficiency is simply set too high. These naysayers claim this creates a false sense of crisis when things actually are pretty much OK. But are the attacks on NAEP valid? Or, do the cautionary tales NAEP is telling us need to be taken very seriously?

I took a look at that question some time back by comparing the message from Kentucky’s NAEP scores to data for the state from two different tests from ACT, Inc. Those ACT tests provided statistics on the proportion of students that had reasonable chances of earning either a “C” (75% chance) or “B” (50% chance) on related college freshman courses. ACT calls these Readiness Benchmark scores and has reported them for a number of years.

Kentucky offered a unique opportunity to conduct this study because the state tested all public school students with the ACT’s Explore test for many years and also has tested all public school students with the ACT College Entrance Test for many years, as well.

So, how did that turn out? You can read this report for the full story: https://tinyurl.com/76uwaee8, but here is one example of what you’ll find. In these figures, the correlation between the percentages of Kentucky public school students scoring NAEP Proficient or Above and the percentages of the same cohorts of students reaching the ACT’s Readiness Benchmark scores are compared.

Richard Innes:

Whether we use NAEP or state assessments, reading performance in the US is a serious problem, and trying to excuse this away just doesn’t work.

There’s been a lot of discussion from some teachers and Ed school professors about how the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) standard for reading proficiency is simply set too high. Some of that discussion centers on a NAEP process that develops equivalent NAEP scores for each state assessment’s proficiency standard (accessible here: https://tinyurl.com/4hspr6y5).

The results of that study for 2022 Grade 4 NAEP Reading are found in the graphic below. You can see that state standards very widely. Virginia, for example, set a proficiency standard below even the threshold score required to be rated a NAEP “Basic” performance. Massachusetts, at the other end of the scale, actually set a standard slightly above the threshold NAEP uses to declare a student proficient in reading.

About 1/3 of the way up the standards graphic from the least demanding state you will see Kentucky, highlighted with a blue arrow, set a proficiency standard about in the middle of the scoring range NAEP only considers to be only Basic level reading.

Given its easy standards, those who want us to believe there is no crisis in reading would surely want to be able to say that Kentucky is reporting far better results than what the NAEP reported.

Richard Innes:

There is a lot of discussion of late about Lucy Caulkins’ Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP)to teach reading. It got me thinking.

Back in 2003, then New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein really pushed TCRWP as THE program to be used to teach reading in the Big Apple.

Rather conveniently, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) started doing what is called its Trial Urban District Assessments (TUDA) around the same time. Basically, the same NAEP used to create state reporting would also be used in some of the nation’s largest school districts. New York City has been in the TUDA for several decades.

TCRWP is on the way out in New York City, but a Chalkbeat study indicated about 48% (maybe more) of the city’s schools were still using TCRWP as of 2019 (https://tinyurl.com/3tesmv48).

With the above information in hand, I decided to look at how the city did on NAEP between 2003 and 2019. The table below has the results (note: years are listed in reverse order with 2019 at the top).

Richard Innes, via a kind email:

One of the more notable problems with much that is written about the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) regarding relative state performances is that far too often, only overall average scores are compared. Whether we are talking college professors, state education agencies, local educators, members of the press, and more, far too often some important parts of the real story are ignored because only overall average scores are compared.

This isn’t a new problem. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has cautioned about overly simplistic analysis that only looks at overall average scores for many years. NCES even included special comments on the topic in the 2009 NAEP Science Report Card (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/main2009/2011451.pdf).

Below is a partial extract from Page 32 in that report card that highlights some examples of how the picture can be VERY different once more thorough analysis of NAEP is conducted.

The first example used by NCES is Kentucky’s performance in the 2009 Grade 8 NAEP Science Assessment. When you only look at overall average scores, Kentucky scores statistically significantly higher than the national public school average. However, when you only consider scores for White students in each state, Kentucky’s score statistically significantly lower than the national average. Once you learn that in this assessment Kentucky’s NAEP student sample was 85% White, the importance of this additional information becomes far more apparent.

Derek Sivers

In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee’s harmony courses. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arranging classes.

When I got to college and took my entrance exams, I tested out of those six semesters of requirements.

Then, as Kimo suggested, I bought the course materials for other required classes and taught myself, doing the homework in my own time. Then I went to the department head and took the final exam, getting full credit for those courses.

By doing this in addition to completing my full course load, I graduated college in two and a half years. I got my bachelor’s degree when I was twenty.

Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me that “the standard pace is for chumps” — that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than most people, you can do way more than anyone expects. And this principle applies to all of life, not just school.

David Sacks:

At least when you have multiple strong private sector players, that gets harder. By contrast, winner-take-all dynamics are more likely to produce Orwellian outcomes.

— There is likely to be a major role for open source. These models excel at providing 80-90% of the capability at 10-20% of the cost. This tradeoff will be highly attractive to customers who value customization, control, and cost over frontier capabilities. China has gone all-in on open source, so it would be good to see more American companies competing in this area, as OpenAI just did. (Meta also deserves credit.) 

— There is likely to be a division of labor between generalized foundation models and specific verticalized applications. Instead of a single superintelligence capturing all the value, we are likely to see numerous agentic applications solving “last mile” problems. This is great news for the startup ecosystem.  

— There is also an increasingly clear division of labor between humans and AI. Despite all the wondrous progress, AI models are still at zero in terms of setting their own objective function. Models need context, they must be heavily prompted, the output must be verified, and this process must be repeated iteratively to achieve meaningful business value. This is why Balaji has said that AI is not end-to-end but middle-to-middle. This means that apocalyptic predictions of job loss are as overhyped as AGI itself. Instead, the truism that “you’re not going to lose your job to AI but to someone who uses AI better than you” is holding up well. 

———

Twitter files

Trust & Safety

Censorship

Amin Haqshanas:

The plan would mandate that messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, must scan every message, photo and video sent by users starting in October, even if end-to-end encryption is in place, popular French tech blogger Korben wrote on Monday.

Denmark reintroduced the proposal on July 1, the first day of its EU Council presidency. France, once opposed, is now in favor, Korben said, citing Patrick Breyer, a former member of the European Parliament for Germany and the European Pirate Party.

Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Italy and Spain are also in favor, while Germany remains undecided. However, if Berlin joins the majority, a qualified council vote could push the plan through by mid-October, Korben said.

Rhyen Staley:

Boaler’s co-faulty member in the Stanford Education dept is credited with the “research” that minority students can only learn from teachers who share their skin color/ identity. Through layers of idea laundering, it is now considered “best practice,” and many many K-12 school districts have developed strategic plans to make the staff “reflect student diversity” Except, his dissertation research is based on a super flawed 1980s TN research project that in no way reflects his conclusions.

Simon Willison:

Anyone who works in security will know why this is a bad idea! It’s the root cause of SQL injection, XSS, command inection and so much more.

#

I coined the term prompt injection nearly three years ago, in September 2022. It’s important to note that I did not discover the vulnerability. One of my weirder hobbies is helping coin or boost new terminology—I’m a total opportunist for this. I noticed that there was an interesting new class of attack that was being discussed which didn’t have a name yet, and since I have a blog I decided to try my hand at naming it to see if it would stick.

Jonathan Schedler:

I’m the author of the paper @grok describes here. It’s among the most read and cited articles on psychotherapy outcome—required reading in grad programs around the world

Grok gets literally everything wrong

The paper shows psychodynamic therapy is as or more effective than CBT. Grok says the exact opposite

The title of the paper is literally, “The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy.”

The effect size for psychodynamic therapy for the major study in the paper was .97. Grok says it’s 33. The number .33 does not appear anywhere in the paper.

Beanie Geoghegan

In recent years, there has been a significant focus on the mental health of young people, accompanied by substantial financial investment in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs designed to support the mental well-being of students. According to a 2017 report, schools are estimated to have spent between $21 billion and $47 billion annually on SEL. That number grewexponentially during and after COVID school closures. While these programs may have been adopted with good intentions, they have not proven to be effective, and research suggests that they may be causing harm. In addition to the lack of evidence supporting the use of SEL, these programs place an added burden on teachers who are overburdened and on school budgets that are already stretched thin.

We believe that there is a better way to improve the mental well-being of students, and the best part is that our solution doesn’t place any additional work on teachers, nor does it burden school budgets. We propose that schools adopt Outdoor Unstructured Recess (OUR) instead of SEL. Giving students daily time outdoors to interact with their peers, engage in physical activity that isn’t organized or directed by an adult, and learn organic conflict resolution would do wonders to boost their mental and physical well-being. The fresh air and pause from instruction time would likely be a welcome respite for teachers as well. 

A recent study conducted by Heather Macpherson Parrott and Lynn E. Cohen highlights the benefits of unstructured play that spill over into the classroom. One teacher involved in the study commented that, “For most students, they’re able to focus more during the day because they know a play break is coming, and they can save their socializing and their energy for that time. They look forward to it, and they physically need it.”

Charlie Kirk:

Just one problem: At this very moment, a D.C. police commander has been suspended and is getting investigated for allegedly tweaking crime stats to make them look lower than reality.

And D.C.’s police union says that his suspension is just the tip of the iceberg. The union says its investigation has revealed that cops all over the city are routinely pressured by command staff to downgrade felonies so they don’t appear on the MPD or FBI’s violent crime database statistics.

How much of the “crime drop” is just Democrat machine politicians lying to the public?

——-

Madison police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006

Matthew Yglesias

If you major in philosophy, as I did, you will inevitably get jokes about whether they’re hiring at the philosophy factory. The truth, though, is that philosophy majors have above-average earningscompared to the typical college graduate. And that’s not just a function of would-be philosophers going to law school. People whose terminal degree is a bachelor’s in philosophy earn pretty good money. 

Most philosophy departments have a line about this, pitching students on the very real value of the skills that philosophy undergraduates practice. 

I don’t think those departmental lines are wrong, exactly. Skills like reading texts closely, understanding the logical structure of arguments, and writing persuasively certainly do come in handy in a wide range of settings. That said, I don’t think this explains much about the relative earning power of a philosophy degree. The skills you learn studying history — reading documents, evaluating evidence — are also broadly applicable. What’s interesting isn’t that philosophy-type skills have some utility, it’s that philosophy majors earn more than history majors or English majors or students of other traditional, non-STEM academic topics. 

And I think Scotty Hendricks nailed the explanation in a Big Think piece he wrote a couple of years ago: philosophy majors earn more because philosophy majors are smarter, on average, than students of other traditional liberal arts disciplines. 

But why are philosophy majors smarter?

Ben Brubaker

A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.

Forty years ago, researchers designing shortest-paths algorithms ran up against this “sorting barrier.” Now, a team of researchers has devised a new algorithm that breaks it(opens a new tab). It doesn’t sort, and it runs faster than any algorithm that does.

“The authors were audacious in thinking they could break this barrier,” said Robert Tarjan(opens a new tab), a computer scientist at Princeton University. “It’s an amazing result.”

WILL

The Problem: WILL’s analysis exposes significant flaws in the current reporting system where schools and districts appear to perform above average:

• One school with only 4.1% ELA proficiency was rated “Exceeds Expectations.”
• 18 schools statewide received an “Exceeds Expectations” rating despite less than 25% ELA proficiency.

To verify these findings, WILL compared DPI’s ratings to GreatSchools, an independent school rating system widely used by parents when choosing a school. A review of 309 Wisconsin schools across the state’s six largest districts showed that 50% of schools were rated higher by DPI, while only 3% were rated higher by GreatSchools. We believe that this demonstrates DPI’s ratings are overly generous and fail to accurately reflect declining student achievement.

———

Dozens of schools “meet” or “exceed” expectations in Wisconsin when 3 out of every 4 students can’t read at grade level. In some schools, it’s 9 out of 10 students.

———

Wisconsin’s public school districts got $18,592 of revenue per pupil in the most recent state figures.

It’s an all-time high, even after you account for inflation.

And it’s more than double what they got in 2000.

———-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Chicago Tribune:

Citadel’s workforce once numbered 1,100 in downtown Chicago, most of whom were compensated well above the $200,000 threshold Mayor Johnson now wants to tax. In a few short years, Citadel’s Chicago headcount now is at just 250, we understand.

Once company bosses make up their minds that the “privilege of doing business” in a certain place is no longer worth the expense and headache, it doesn’t take long for them to act.

Progressives who lack respect for billionaires like Citadel CEO Ken Griffin may feel they can afford to sniff at the loss of hundreds of his highly paid employees. But the departure of those 850 Citadel workers has meant hundreds of millions in lost spending power, including tax receipts.

Keep chasing folks like that out of town, and that 5% tax soon will need to be raised to something like 7.5% and surely more later.

That’s how once-flourishing cities like Chicago end up circling the drain.

Public, Parents & K-12 Education

KEY FINDINGS

Over 60% of parents feel “hopeful” about the future, and more than half feel “a sense of purpose,” “optimistic,” and “happy.” More than half of non-parents feel “hopeful,” and at least one-fourth feel “frustration,” pessimistic,” or “overwhelmed.”

When it comes to voting in federal and state elections, adults and school parents care mostly about economic issues. School parents place much higher importance on education issues than other adults.

The general public and school parents greatly underestimate per-student spending in public schools. The public and parents are much less likely to say their state’s per-student spending is “too low” when given a publicly reported statistic – by 16 point and 14 points, respectively.

Nearly 2 in 3 parents say their child’s school schedule aligns with their work schedule “always” or “often.” High school parents are the least likely to have aligned schedules with their children. About 3 in 4 parents prefer their child’s school time to start between 8:00 am and 9:00 am. Nearly half of school parents prefer their child’s school time to end between 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm.

Overall support levels for choice-based policies remain high among school parents and the general public:

• Education savings accounts (ESAs) – 76% / 70%

• School vouchers – 69% / 61%

• Charter schools – 72% / 64%

• Open enrollment – 79% / 70%

Three in four school parents believe ESAs should be available to all families regardless of income or special needs. This is over 20-points higher than the percentage of parents who want to determine ESA availability based on financial need.

Large majorities of school parents and non-parents believe ESA funds should be used for educational materials like textbooks, tutoring, online classes, and technology. Sports-related expenses, entertainment tickets, and toys are the expenses least supported by parents and non-parents alike.

Private school parents are much more likely to say that they are “very satisfied” with their child’s schooling experiences than district school parents. Parents are consistently more likely to say they are “very satisfied” with private schools than public district schools. Strong satisfaction has risen among both types since last month.

Methodology

This poll was conducted between August 2-6, 2024 among a sample of 2,252 Adults. The interviews were conducted online and the data were weighted to approximate a target sample of Adults based on gender, educational attainment, age, race, and region. Results based on the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 2.32 percentage points..

Karen Vaites:

According to a 2024 national poll, Americans (including parents) underestimate the amount we spend on education.

———-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

The Legal Process

You would think it’s shocking that schools would rather pay $900+ per pupil in “finder’s fees” than just listen to parents and improve academic outcomes – but nope, that’s par for the course with US public ed administrators.

Sharon Lurie:

Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices. Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids’ online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement.

CRPE

Student enrollment is falling at public schools across the country, impacting funding streams and threatening financial solvency, as schools continue to be on the hook for considerable fixed costs like loans or debts. Having to pay out teacher pensions (mostly using current revenue to pay retired teachers) is contributing to this growing problem. But even though teacher pension plans are tremendously expensive, they’re still not serving the majority of their members. There are better ways to provide benefits in a more sustainable way.

Nationally, teacher pension costs amount to around $83 billion a year, or about one out of every ten dollars that taxpayers provide for public education. That works out to almost $1,700 per student. 

These pension payments are eating up a growing share of the funds that taxpayers think are paying for teaching and learning. This millstone weighs down districts and hampers their ability to be responsive and flexible to falling enrollment levels or other changes in student needs.

States and districts are contributing nearly 20% of each current teacher’s salary toward pension costs. That figure is much, much higher than what a typical private-sector employer pays toward retirement benefits and does not include Social Security contributions. 

Paul Vallas:

The Chicago Teachers Union’s refusal to close near-empty schools and push for more “sustainable community schools” is hurting student achievement. CTU is about adding members and escaping accountability, not about what’s best for Chicago students.

The Chicago Teachers Union recently marked the 10th anniversary of the celebrated “hunger strike” victory that prevented the closure of the nearly empty Dyett High School.

Lost on the CTU is the harsh reality that despite Dyett boasting an 87% graduation rate and winning a 2A state boys basketball championship, only 2% of its graduates are proficient in reading. None are proficient in math. An alarming 75% of Dyett students were chronically absent – missing more than 10% of the school year.

For far too many Dyett students, education remains a broken promise.

The fight to save Dyett was focused solely on keeping the school open, not on improving its quality. This reflects the CTU’s broader approach to public education: prioritize keeping schools open, expand union membership, increase member benefits and dues, reduce workload and protect jobs.

Student achievement? Not CTU’s priority.

Standardized testing is demonized. As a result, neither schools nor teachers are held accountable for performance.

Drew Desilver:

The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member for every 747,000 or so Americans. That’s by far the highest population-to-representative ratio among a peer group of industrialized democracies, and the highest it’s been in U.S. history. And with the size of the House capped by law and the country’s population continually growing, the representation ratio likely will only get bigger.

In the century-plus since the number of House seats first reached its current total of 435 (excluding nonvoting delegates), the representation ratio has more than tripled – from one representative for every 209,447 people in 1910 to one for every 747,184 as of last year.

Mark McGrath:

But in the real world, the right move is worthless if your internal model of the world is wrong.

III. Decisions are hypotheses. Actions are tests.

You never have the full picture. You never will. Every decision is a working theory. Every action is an experiment in real-world complexity.

And here’s the key: you don’t stop and make a decision, then pause again to evaluate it. That’s how you lose. The enemy is trying to make you freeze. Don’t do their job for them. Keep moving. Keep testing. Keep adjusting.

Strategy is not about certainty. It’s about continuous experimentation under fire.

IV. Feedback loops rewire orientation. This is reorientation.

Friction, failure, and surprise don’t loop you back, they change you. All feedback flows directly into Orientation. That’s how you evolve judgment.

If you’re not reorienting, you’re not orienting.

This is not repetition, it’s mutation. Signals, results, and mismatches hit the orientation system directly. Your perception reshapes. Your actions shift. Your predictions improve. And those changes alter the next round of feedback in return. It’s a feedback flow, not a cycle.

Kristen Taketa:

Discrepancies in financial records. Inaccurate reporting of financial activities. Missing documentation to justify expenditures.

An audit initially prompted by two Canyon Crest Academy seniors who last year investigated their school’s nonprofit foundation has found a number of instances of financial mismanagement by San Dieguito Union High School District’s school foundations.

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more.

Matt Taibbi:

At issue is the Trump administration’s much-criticized deportations policy, specifically efforts by Marco Rubio and the State Department to revoke visas of students and other foreigners deemed threats. Trump officials in February announced an intention to “root out” those guilty of “anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” and Rubio followed up in March with an announcement that he’d personally revoked over 300 visas. “We do it every day,” Rubio said. “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.” Using a seemingly Charlie Murphy-inspired metaphor many Trump supporters found convincing, Rubio added:

We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to be a social activist that comes in and tears up our university campuses…

If you invite me into your home because I say, “Oh, I want to go to your house for dinner,” and I come into your house and I start putting mud on your couch and spray-painting your kitchen, I bet you you’re going to kick me out.

The signature cases involved activist Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, whose presence Rubio said would create a “hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States,” and Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, who aroused displeasure via an editorial she wrote for the Tufts Daily demanding that the school “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.” Both cases aroused massive media furor, with video of agents grabbing Öztürk off the streets going viral, triggering instant comparisons to a smorgasbord of secret police regimes. Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton told the Boston Globe, “It’s like the Gestapo. That’s what the Gestapo was established to do.” Joe Rogan, bashed as a Nazi-booster by MSNBC in March, came back into the station’s good graces when he ripped the deportations as “fucking crazy.” Amid the frenzy, few commentators noted the controversial policy’s unusual legal genesis.

Tara Moon

Warnings about declining public school enrollment have grown louder recently—and for good reason. Between fall 2019 and fall 2023, enrollment fell from 50.8 million to 49.5 million, a loss of more than 1.2 million students, or 2.5 percent, in just five years. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the decline, erasing more than a decade of modest national growth. But enrollment was already falling in some grades and communities before the pandemic, driven by factors including falling birth rates and shifting family preferences. And the trend is expected to continue: The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) projects enrollment will fall below 47 million by 2031.

Yet a FutureEd analysis based on data from NCES, the Center for Disease Control, and other sources, finds that while public school enrollment is declining overall, the trends vary widely by race, grade level, geography, and schools. And that variation offers important insight into how the education landscape is shifting, where the challenges are most acute, and what it means for the future of a public school system designed to serve a larger student population.

Erik Voorhees:

And if you care about the plight of the poor, which all good people should, consider studying the structure of the financial system in which they operate. Consider, as Bernie shows, that from the 1970’s something seems to have happened, structurally, that has lead to increasing wealth disparity.

This disparity has little to do with Elon’s momentous achievements, and much to do with money being perverted into a fiat institution when it was severed from gold in 1971.

Civilization is sick because money itself—that blood which courses through its productive veins—was perverted.

And it was perverted by people very much like Bernie, who, being unable to produce themselves, advocate for the wholesale theft of what others produce. That overt theft is somewhat distasteful, many insidious methods have been devised… most notably, the debasement of currency, which not one citizen in a hundred even diagnoses as the problem.

Aaron Ginn:

The new “AI Plus” initiative aims to integrate Chinese models into key industries and export Chinese AI and hardware to the Global South—no export license, no questions asked.

The results are already clear. China has racked up more than 1,500 models, many of which are open-source. Many outperform or match the math and coding benchmarks of Western models. Huawei’s GPUs are quickly filling the gap left by the Biden administration’s adoption of stricter export controls. The research firm Bernstein projects that Nvidia’s global AI market share will drop a whopping 12% this year alone, if restrictions largely remain in place. China’s foundry capacity has vastly surpassed Washington’s expectation, and China is shipping chips abroad several years ahead of schedule. While U.S. politicians compete to see who can be more hawkish on China, Beijing is increasing international dependency on its models and hardware.

What’s the American response to a clearly failing strategy? In many parts of Washington, it’s still restrictions. But happily that isn’t true in the White House.

Paul Vallas:

After accepting then wasting $6 billion in COVID funds, the city increased its budget 70%, schools per pupil funding 40% and the CTA 30%. Mayor Johnson is now demanding a massive state bailout.

Johnson and CTU President Stacy Davis-Gates claim city schools — which spend $30K per pupil — are shortchanged $1.6 billion.

Johnson and Davis Gates’ school funding demands are not related to improving student performance. Their demands are to pay for the second straight $1.5 billion CTU teacher contract.

To Johnson and Davis Gates, Pritzker is their new political piñata for failing to call a special session to rescue the city. Pritzker can’t bail out Chicago. He has his own problems: The governor is facing a $3.2B budget hole next year.

——-

K-12 Tax & $pending climate: Chicago’s pension crisis is heading for a Detroit-style collapse.

Derek Bok via many links:

“Universities can hardly claim the right to be free from external pressure if they insist on launching campaigns to force outside organizations to behave as their students and faculties think best. Sooner or later, governments, corporations and other groups will decide that sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and begin exerting pressure of their own. When that happens, universities will learn to their dismay that they stand to lose far more than they can gain from trying to joust with the outside world.”

Dana Goldstein:

Dana Goldstein traversed Orlando with a team of public school recruiters who were searching for families.

A decline in the number of babies being born and a boom in private school vouchers and home-schooling have combined to create an enrollment crisis for public education.

The threat is so great that some school districts are trying something that would have once seemed unthinkable.

School systems in Orlando, Newark, Memphis and dozens of other cities and towns have hired consultants who aggressively woo parents to convince them to enroll their children in local public schools.

Brian J. Stephens has built a business around this new reality. Mr. Stephens, a political consultant based in Memphis, runs Caissa K12, a consulting firm for public school districts with the tag line “We recruit students.”

Caissa K12 has taken off, with over 100 district clients. Its popularity illustrates some of the challenges facing public education.

Two-thirds of traditional public schools lost enrollment between 2019 and 2023, according to federal data. Low fertility rates mean that the number of children in the United States is starting to shrink. At the same time, policymakers have introduced more competition than ever, meaning many families have options beyond their neighborhood school.

more.

First, let’s talking about how you improve your academics. That’s Step Zero.

Our job is to adjust the perception.… There’s always some positive stuff in every school.'”

———

“Thousands of more families are choosing to leave the Madison district than to transfer here”

Enrollment growth in Madison schools has not kept pace with population growth in Madison and its suburbs, or with enrollment growth in surrounding districts. Why is that?

———

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Dana Palubiak 

We must adjust, not abandon, reading curricula

Calkins’ curriculum uses a workshop-style model that prioritizes student choice and independent learning. I taught her reading and writing units in 3rd and 4th grade, and across my 30-year career, they were among the most meaningful tools I used, not because they were easy, but because they came alive when taught with intention. They opened things up.

And yet, Lucy Calkins has become a lightning rod for literacy criticism in the education world.

Much of the criticism is likely spurred by low scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In 2019, only 34% of 4th graders in my state of Missouri and 26% in the nation performed at or above the “proficient” level in reading. And while critics point to low NAEP scores, I can tell you my students were deeply engaged with the content.

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more. and.

———

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Chris Rickert:

A former Sun Prairie West High School administrator accused of having inappropriate relationships with two students and possessing child pornography was ordered held for trial during a preliminary hearing Tuesday.

Robert E. Gilkey-Meisegeier, 30, faces two counts of sexual exploitation of a child and 13 counts of possession of child pornography — all felonies — for victimizing two students at the school and downloading images of a third girl whose nude photos he found on the internet, according to a criminal complaint in the case and police testimony.

The two students are between the ages of 15 and 17, according to the complaint, and the girl in the photos investigators found on his phone lived in South Carolina and was 12 at the time the photos were taken, Sun Prairie detective Cody Ennis testified Tuesday.

Steve Hsu:

NYTimes: Columbia and Brown to Disclose Admissions and Race Data in Trump Deal

It took an existential threat from Trump to get them to release this data. Years ago a faculty committee of the University of California system examined just this kind of data and produced the graphs below. If you look at the data you will understand the monstrous nature of affirmative action as practiced in the US for ~50 years.

NYT: … Columbia and Brown will have to maintain “merit-based admissions policies,” according to their settlements, which codify the administration’s broader aims in legally binding language.

The universities “may not by any means unlawfully preference applicants based on race, color or national origin in admissions throughout its programs,” both agreements state in identical language. “No proxy for racial admission will be tolerated.”

… “The Department of Justice will put an end to a shameful system in which someone’s race matters more than their ability,” Chad Mizelle, the acting associate attorney general, said in March. “Every college and university should know that illegal discrimination in admissions will be investigated and eliminated.”

The language used in the settlements with Columbia and Brown hammers home contested assertions about the Supreme Court admissions case that the Trump administration has been making since February.

It insists that the decision goes beyond admissions and bars any consideration of race in university life.

Quinton Klabon:

🚨ACT 20 READING UPDATE🚨

• IN OCTOBER, SCHOOLS WILL START GETTING $37,000,000 for curriculum and teacher retraining, will pay full 50% if curriculum is on 2024 and 2025 list, will fund 2026 list
• $1,500,000 for 100% of literacy diagnostic
• $9,000,000 for teacher coaches

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

John Sailer:

Last week, the DOJ released guidance for federal funding recipients.

The memo—which clarifies how nondiscrimination law should be applied—is a huge development for universities. A lot of their worst policies are looking more fragile than ever

Vimal Patel

The modern conservative movement began after William F. Buckley Jr. chronicled perceived left-leaning biases at Yale in 1951, where he attended as an undergraduate. He published a book called “God and Man at Yale,” which accused the school of being anti-Christian and preaching “collectivism.”

But Campus Reform updated the strategy for the internet era, and others followed. A similar website, The College Fix, started around the same time. A much larger group, Turning Point USA, started a watch list of professors it deemed purveyors of “leftist propaganda” and launched Charlie Kirk to conservative stardom.

“When we started,” said John J. Miller, the founder of The College Fix, “we didn’t feel like we had a ton of competition.”

Campus Reform “mainstreamed the strategy” of using anecdote to craft a narrative of higher education, said Isaac Kamola, a Trinity College political science professor who has studied the group.

“In the last few years, especially after the Black Lives Matter protests, that’s been taken up by lots of organizations,” he added.

Sean McLean:

Yet she routinely faces intentional hits, excessive fouling and uncalled abuse while referees look away. Teammate Sophie Cunningham said what fans already know: “The star player of the league is not being protected.” Ms. Clark herself noted: “Everybody is physical with me. They get away with things others don’t.” Three injuries have sidelined her for 10 games and the All-Star Game, with ratings plummeting 55% without her.

Is it because Ms. Clark is white? A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces, a three-time league most valuable player, thinks so. She has said that race is a “huge thing” and that “it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.” Under civil-rights law, race-motivated patterns trigger scrutiny even without explicit discriminatory intent.

Systemic missed calls include viral replays of Ms. Clark being fouled multiple times in a single possession. “Every single one of them is a foul,” analyst Rebecca Lobo said. Ms. Clark absorbed 17% of flagrant fouls last season—double her peers’ rate. This isn’t merely bad officiating—it’s dangerous and unequal. She endures blindside checks and midair collisions—plays that trigger reviews in other leagues. She is a flagrant foul away from a career-altering injury.

The league has fostered a hostile workplace for Ms. Clark through excessive fouling, targeting, and hostile comments from other players and owners. These aren’t isolated—they’re documented, continuing and ignored by officials. The disparity in treatment invites real scrutiny. Not a single player has been suspended for flagrantly fouling Ms. Clark.

Shayna Clark:

Melinda Heinritz is the president of the Madison Public Schools Foundation, a nonprofit that spent nearly $223,000 on a campaign to support the facilities referendum, as well as a $100 million operations referendum in the same election, which voters also passed.

“We see Madison Metropolitan School District as a destination district. We want it to be seen as the district to go to if you’re in Dane County, if you’re in the state of Wisconsin. We want it to be viewed as such nationally,” Heinritz said. “And one of the ways in which we continue to move toward that is we have to have 21st century facilities.” 

Renovation and reconstruction efforts will focus on modernizing critical infrastructure, improving heating and cooling systems, enhancing accessibility and sustainability, and creating learning environments designed to support creativity and innovation. Many of the buildings targeted for updates lack air conditioning, rely on aging boiler systems or fall short of federal accessibility standards.

Chehak said when the projects are complete, the community can expect to see school buildings that are fully modernized — designed with sustainability, accessibility and community use in mind. Upgrades will include new space for recreational programs, opportunities for career and technical education, and the integration of green energy systems and green spaces.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Giorgio Tripodi, Ziang Zheng, Yifan Qian, and Dashun Wang

Tenure is a defining feature of the US academic system with significant implications for research productivity and creative search. Yet the impact of tenure on faculty research trajectories remains poorly understood. We analyze the careers of 12,000 US faculty across 15 disciplines to reveal key patterns, pre- and post-tenure. Publication rates rise sharply during the tenure-track, peaking just before tenure. However, post-tenure trajectories diverge: Researchers in lab-based fields sustain high output, while those in non-lab-based fields typically exhibit a decline. After tenure, faculty produce more novel works, though fewer highly cited papers. These findings highlight tenure’s pivotal role in shaping scientific careers, offering insights into the interplay between academic incentives, creativity, and impact while informing debates about the academic system.

more.

Greg Collard:

The audit also shows $175 million in liabilities, mostly for grants and contracts. 

I sent an email to CPB on Friday asking what the plan is for the remaining money. I’m particularly interested in what CPB meant by saying it will make “final distributions.” Grants will surely be fulfilled, but will stations get another round of cash? CPB hasn’t responded. I’ll update this post if it does.

NPR and WaPo, however, did provide this quote from buffoon NPR CEO Katherine Maher:

The ripple effects of this closure will be felt across every public media organization and, more importantly, in every community across the country that relies on public broadcasting.

Here are some financials on other organizations that were the subject of headlines above.

American Public Media

American Public Media, which oversees Minnesota Public Radio, is one of the giants in public media, with about 500 employees. It announced cutbacks of 5-8% on July 24, or about 25-40 employees. According to its most recent 990 form, a required IRS filing for nonprofits, it carries liabilities of $48 million, but also $178 million in assets, including $75.7 million without donor restrictions!

Seventy-five million is a lot more than what 40 employees cost. That amount would cover all 40 of those employees even if they were paid $725,000 a year, the compensation rate of APM’s president and CEO.

(W)GBH

“We needed to take some pretty quick action.” Those were the words of WGBH CEO and President Susan Goldberg in discussing layoffs of 13 people who work for the excellent documentary series “American Experience.” The Boston Globe points out that the legendary Boston public outlet GBH (formerly WGBH) has had two other rounds of layoffs since 2024.

An audit completed in November 2024 shows GBH has $375 million in liabilities, but $576 million in assets, and about 75% of that amount is without donor restrictions!

The Batch

Even though the U.S. is still ahead, China has tremendous momentum with its vibrant open-weights model ecosystem and aggressive moves in semiconductor design and manufacturing. In the startup world, we know momentum matters: Even if a company is small today, a high rate of growth compounded for a few years quickly becomes an unstoppable force. This is why a small, scrappy team with high growth can threaten even behemoths. While both the U.S. and China are behemoths, China’s hypercompetitive business landscape and rapid diffusion of knowledge give it tremendous momentum. The White House’s AI Action Plan released last week, which explicitly champions open source (among other things), is a very positive step for the U.S., but by itself it won’t be sufficient to sustain the U.S. lead.

Now, AI isn’t a single, monolithic technology, and different countries are ahead in different areas. For example, even before Generative AI, the U.S. had long been ahead in scaled cloud AI implementations, while China has long been ahead in surveillance technology. These translate to different advantages in economic growth as well as both soft and hard power. Even though nontechnical pundits talk about “the race to AGI” as if AGI were a discrete technology to be invented, the reality is that AI technology will progress continuously, and there is no single finish line. If a company or nation declares that it has achieved AGI, I expect that declaration to be less a technology milestone than a marketing milestone. A slight speed advantage in the Olympic 100m dash translates to a dramatic difference between winning a gold medal versus a silver medal. An advantage in AI prowess translates into a proportionate advantage in economic growth and national power; while the impact won’t be a binary one of either winning or losing everything, these advantages nonetheless matter.

Lylena Estabine:

Illinois has the nation’s worst public pension crisis. Nationwide analysis from the Equable Institute shows Illinois state pensions remain fiscally unstable and threaten retirees and taxpayers, underscoring the need for reform.

The Equable Institute’s annual report on the state of public pensions nationwide reaffirms that Illinois pensions continue to lag the nation in funding and are in desperate need of reform.

If the state fails to fix its pension issues, the budget will continue to be strained, people will continue leaving the state over high taxes and future pension benefits could be at risk. Preserving the cost savings of Tier 2, offering retirement choice to state employees and constitutional pension reform should all be implemented if Illinois is to have any hope of gaining fiscal stability.

Comparing pension debt to the state’s gross domestic product helps measure the state’s ability to pay based on the local tax base. By that measure, Illinois ranks as the nation’s worst: unfunded obligations equal 19.02% of state GDP, up from 18.52% a year ago. In other words, roughly one-fifth of everything produced in the state would be required just to erase the shortfall.

That’s driving up the burden on taxpayers, whose contributions to state pension systems have grown nearly 20-fold, from $614 million in fiscal year 1996 to $11.2 billion in fiscal year 2025. The heavy pension bill explains why Illinoisans pay the highest effective property tax rate in the country.

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Chicago’s pension crisis is heading for a Detroit-style collapse

Steven Tucker

As we shall see, in the wake of the Southport stabbings, there are even now proposals to ban knives outright, or at least all sharp and pointy ones—you may have thought no other kinds of knives would even be possible. It’s all ban this, ban that, ban the other in the country these days…ban everything, in fact, other than that which truly does need banning: the continued uncontrolled inrush of those who wield the knives, not the wholly inanimate and therefore innocent knives themselves.

“Maybe the best class of persons to ban would be the idiot politicians who repeatedly impose new and unnecessary problems upon their own people.”

A Matter of Knife and Death
There is a desperate pretense among the U.K. ruling class that, by opening the country up to mass immigration over the past few decades, they have DEFINITELY NOT also simultaneously opened the place up to massive and intractable problems that, like the immigrants themselves, were previously largely alien to it. But this is just not true.