School Information System

Dawn Baumgartner:

“And we’re just trying to understand — was there something going on here, from the institutional standpoint, that maybe was too dangerous. Obviously, COVID was a significant world event. And we are the body over the UNC System, and so (we’re) taking a look at those things,” he said.

UNC spokesperson Kevin Best said Thursday when asked about the status of the legislature’s request that nothing has changed since its statement to The N&O in June, which was that due to state law, “any request made to an agency employee by Commission staff and any communication between Commission staff and an agency employee is confidential.”

“The University deeply values and appreciates its partnership with the General Assembly and is committed to legal compliance and transparency,” Best said.

U.S. Right to Know’s request denied by appeals court

According to the Court of Appeals decision, U.S. Right to Know describes itself as “an investigative research group that promotes transparency for public health, [which] has been investigating the origins of COVID19 and the virus that causes it.” The group requested public records of Baric’s work and associations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right to Know, told The N&O in an email that they are “disappointed” in the Court of Appeals result and are evaluating their “legal options and potential next steps.”

Jenna Rae:

Milwaukee Public Schools recently hired a senior financial officer from Minneapolis who was placed on administrative leave just days after his appointment, according to district documents and reports.

Ibrahima Diop, who served as the senior financial officer for Minneapolis Public Schools for the last decade, was hired by Milwaukee Public Schools on Dec. 18 as the Deputy Superintendent of Operations with an annual salary of $240,000.

However, this past Friday, the Minnesota Reformer reported that Diop and two other senior leaders in Minneapolis were put on administrative leave after the school board learned leaders failed to submit necessary financial paperwork to the state as the district faces a $25 million budget shortfall.

The situation mirrors Milwaukee Public Schools’ own financial challenges. In May 2024, MPS also failed to submit its financial records to the state, and the state threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars.

Arthur Brooks:

“DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies…policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.”

Two decades on, DEI programs have come under attack. Some of this criticism has involved a political backlash, but some has involved research questioning their effectiveness. As far back as 2016, Harvard Business Review published an article titled “Why Diversity Programs Fail,” showingthat, as generally practiced, DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies. Last year, psychologists reviewing the literature found that these policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.

Chris Rickert:

Sun Prairie School District administrators didn’t do enough to investigate allegations that now-former West High School Dean of Students Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier was having inappropriate relations with female students, an independent investigation has found.

jennifer Van Laar

Out of the $140,329 in monetary contributions Betty Lieu for School Board received between 2018 and 2023, 33 percent is from the campaign accounts of Ted Lieu and a handful of California politicians:

• $5,000 Asian American Forward PAC
• $13,000 Former CA State Treasurer John Chiang
• $2,500 CA Asm. Evan Low (who’s now running for Congress)
• $3,400 Former CA Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon
• $500 CA Asm. Ben Allen
• $22,913 Ted Lieu for Congress

Betty Lieu for School Board doesn’t have to file contribution reports for 2024 until after June 30; from FEC records, we know that Ted Lieu for Congress contributed another $2,000 to his wife’s campaign in January 2024, bringing his campaign’s total transfers to $24,913.

——

more

Susan Crabtree:

Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman went to jail for their varsity blues college admissions scandal but ZERO accountanility for Ted Lieu.

Megan Messerly and Diana Nerozzi:

At least 70 alumni of Claremont’s fellowships over the last decade serve in President Donald Trump’s administration, a POLITICO analysis found.

At least 70 participants in Claremont’s small suite of fellowships over the last decade hold or have held posts in President Donald Trump’s second administration, according to a POLITICO analysis of fellowship lists, LinkedIn profiles, and other public biographies.

Trump’s budget director Russ Vought, White House legislative director James Braid, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s adviser Michael Needham and CIA Deputy Director Michael Ellis are all graduates of Claremont fellowships.

“It is no secret that the first Trump administration suffered from the lack of a prebuilt network,” Ryan Williams, Claremont Institute’s president, told POLITICO. “In our small way, we have been a reliable piece of that larger network which the president has now built over the last several years.”

Long viewed as an intellectual home for a strain of conservatism skeptical of globalism, hostile to the administrative state and rooted in a close reading of the Founding Fathers, Claremont for decades operated more at the margins of Washington’s governing mainstream.

That began to change with Trump’s ascent, with Claremont’s rise in Washington over the last decade closely tracking the president’s. Even before his first election, some Claremont conservatives — or “Claremonsters,” as they’re sometimes known — saw Trump as an unlikely but effective catalyst to transform Washington. Its leaders made an early bet that his disruption would create space for their ideas to take root in government — and it’s paid off.

In Trump’s Washington, Claremont occupies a niche that few other groups attempt — a hybrid of political philosophy, training and personnel cultivation.

Lindsay Ellis:

The “talent is everywhere” mantra adopted by U.S. employers when the job market was white hot is giving way to a more traditional entry-level recruiting strategy: hire from a few select universities.

Instead of one or two passes through 45 to 50 schools each year, GE Appliances now attends four or five events each semester at a slimmer shortlist of 15 select universities that includes Purdue and Auburn.

Bill, a financial technology firm, is focused on recruiting heavily from colleges near its corporate offices in San Jose, Calif., and Draper, Utah.

And McKinsey, the white-shoe consulting firm that expanded its recruitment efforts well beyond the Ivy League in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, recently removed inclusive language from its career page that said, “We hire people, not degrees.”

Gary Rushkin:

Today, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled against our efforts to compel the University of North Carolina to disclose roughly 50,000 pages of documents, mostly of Prof. Ralph Baric, mostly about his work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possibly containing clues about the origins of COVID-19.

Even though the NC Court of Appeals agreed that the NC Public Records Act “is intended to be liberally construed” and “exemptions must be construed narrowly,” it held in support of a broad reading of the university research exemption, and against our efforts to make these documents public.

We are disappointed in today’s result. We believe that the public has a right to know where the Covid pandemic may have come from. We believe that the University of North Carolina, as an institution of higher learning, should help the public understand the lessons of the pandemic, and not obscure or bury them.

We are evaluating our legal options and potential next steps. #FOIA

usrtk.org/wp-content/upl…

Quinton Klabon:

• 75,126, +1,236 more than 2024
• 9.5% of all students attend outside district
• +2,554 applications, +448 rejections
• out up: Two Rivers, Portage, Baraboo, Marshfield
• in up: Westosha Union, Ripon, Middleton
• highest/lowest counts below

——-

Where Have All The Students Gone? 1995-2024

Anna Stokke:

The EMS Online Lecture Series on Mathematics Education starts next week!

🗓️ Friday, 9 January 2026 – 19:00 CET

🎙️ Anna Stokke – Why foundational math skills matter and how to improve them

▶️ Watch on YouTube (live): youtube.com/c/EuropeanMath…

ℹ️ Info: euromathsoc.org/news/ems-lectu…

from Sorting to Strategic Agents
(2022) pdf, print, school program

This book was written to support what was, during its operation from 2020-23, the most advanced high school math/CS track in the USA. It culminated in high school students doing masters/PhD-level coursework (reproducing academic research papers in artificial intelligence, building everything from scratch in Python).
“One of the best parts of reading Justin Skycak’s textbook for Eurisko (which covers a vast array of topics) is the number of times you go “Oooh here’s that cool algorithm I’ve vaguely heard about… wait that’s it? That’s the core idea? I did not expect you can explain it so simply!” If art is knowing what to leave out, this book is a masterwork.” — Julian

——

more.

By Toluwani Osibamowo

Texas is now the first state in the U.S. to eliminate American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, ending the state’s 42-year-long reliance on the national organization.

The Texas Supreme Court issued an orderTuesday finalizing a tentative September opinion, asserting the ABA should “no longer have the final say” on which law school graduates can take the bar exam — a requirement to becoming a licensed lawyer in each state.

“The Court advised that it intends to provide stability, certainty, and flexibility to currently approved law schools by guaranteeing ongoing approval to schools that satisfy a set of simple, objective, and ideologically neutral criteria using metrics no more onerous than those currently required by the ABA,” reads the order signed by all nine justices.

The change means law school graduates who want to practice in Texas are no longer required to attend an ABA-accredited school. The power to approve those law schools now rests solely with the state’s highest civil court.

Melissa Whitler:

Three senior leaders in the finance department of Minneapolis Public Schools have been placed on administrative leave, according to two people with knowledge of the personnel decisions, just as the district begins its annual budget process. 

Administration of the state’s fourth largest school district placed the three leaders on leave Friday, according to the two people familiar with the moves. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The officials placed on leave are Ibrahima Diop, senior finance officer; Tarior Chapinduka, executive director of finance; and Aaron Gilbert, controller. 

When reached by phone, Gilbert would not confirm her employment with the district and would not provide further comment. Diop and Chapinduka did not respond to voice messages left seeking comment.

Donnie Belcher, executive director of communications, said the district could not comment on the personnel changes due to personnel privacy laws.

The school board is set to vote Tuesday night to designate certain financial authorizations to Senior Executive Officer Ryan Strack. These designations were previously held by Diop.

The removal of finance department leadership comes at a crucial time for the district. The district expects a $30 million gap between its revenue and expenses next school year, or roughly 4% of the annual budget. . This deficit comes despite the district cutting more than $70 million in expenses during its last budget cycle, and voters approving a $20 million increase to the district’s operating capital levy in 2024.

The district failed to complete its annual financial audit by the state deadline of December 31. The district’s auditor, Bergen KDV, told the board on December 9, 2025, that the delay was because the district’s finance department had failed to provide the necessary information on time. The auditors expect to finish by the end of January.

Quinton Klabon:

35% means schools are spending ~$2,480,000,000 just on special education this year, ~$19,300 per student (plus ~$16,500 general).

36% would be ~$2,420,000,000 and ~$18,800.
37% would be ~$2,360,000,000 and ~$18,400.

Per student costs rose over $1,000, way over inflation.

Texas Comptroller

The Bond, Tax, and Project Database contains:

• a table with basic bond-related information;
• a details report for each individual submitted bond proposal that was voted on; and
• a downloadable spreadsheet containing bond-related information throughout Texas.

Each submitted bond proposal that has been voted on is reported once to the Texas Comptroller (Government Code, Chapter 403).

The Comptroller is required to develop and maintain a database containing current and historical information on taxes imposed and bonds issued.

Select Committee on the CCP:

The Department of Education has released a new online portal where the American people can see how much foreign money is being given to American universities. The portal – which is online at foreignfundinghighered.gov – lists China as the fourth biggest foreign contributor, giving more than $4 billion to American universities. China moves to second on the list when including an additional $1.9 billion from Hong Kong.

“Secretary McMahon and the Trump administration have done tremendous work to bring transparency to our universities. Through this portal we can all see that China has given nearly $6 billion to our nation’s universities in order to transfer critical research, influence, and academic talent to China,” said Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar. “Passing the SAFE Research Act and the DETERRENT Act will protect students and the taxpayer-funded research being done on our nation’s campuses.”

The top three recipients of money from mainland China were New York University, Harvard University, and Stanford University. The top three recipients of money from Hong Kong were Harvard, Yale University, and Stanford.

America 250

Learn about the Presidential 1776 Award: a history competition of a lifetime, supported by resources from the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation that covers the road to independence and the ideas that shaped our nation.

Luis Garicano

I am often approached by students and other young people for advice about their careers. In the past, my answers were often based on a piece of advice I myself got from Bengt Holmstrom: “when in doubt, choose the job where you will learn more.” In the last few years, there is a new variable to consider: the likelihood that artificial intelligence will automate all or large pieces of the job you do. Given that, what should a student choose today? The answers below are motivated by a book on artificial intelligence and the organization of work on which I am currently working with Jin Li and Yanhui Wu.

One way of thinking about this is that all knowledge work varies along one important spectrum: messiness. On one end, there is one defined task to execute, say helping clients fill their taxes. You get the expenses and payslips on email, you use some rules to put them on a form, you obtain a response. Over time, you become better at this task, and get a higher salary. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a wide bundle of complex tasks. Running a factory, or a family, involves many different tasks that are very hard to specify in advance.

James Hankins:

You are right. We don’t expect the book will be usable in unionized public schools. It’s written for classical schools, where students have a much larger vocabulary, more discipline, and a higher level of reading comprehension. The book can be read by 11th-12th graders and college students. There is a “young readers” edition in the works for the lower grades, and we are organizing summer seminars for classical school teachers to help them teach the book.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Carmen Nesbitt

About half of Utah’s third-graders are not reading at grade level, according to a new report from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Neither are nearly half of Utah’s kindergarteners through second graders, the study found.

The analysis, commissioned by the Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation, comes about two weeks before the start of Utah’s next legislative session and “underscores the urgent need for coordinated early literacy initiatives,” a news release on the report states.

Third grade marks a crucial moment in a child’s academic career and future success, the report notes. That’s because after third grade, reading becomes the primary way students are expected to absorb information across all subjects. 

Those who have not mastered it risk falling behind. And the report notes many Utah students who are not proficient readers are moving on to the next grade.

“Children shape Utah’s future, and their ability to read proficiently by the end of third grade plays a central role in the opportunities they have,” the report states.

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Enjoyiana Nururdin, Erin Gretzinger and Olivia Herken:

Two of the board’s seven seats are up for election, and both races are poised to be contested. Board members serve three-year terms.

Seat 6 incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham faces Daniella Molle, a qualitative researcher at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

Seat 7 incumbent Nicki Vander Meulen is being challenged by Dana Colussi-Lynde, an operations manager at CDW, a Fitchburg-based information technology company.

——-

Chris Rickert:

Over the last five years, eight elections for the board have been uncontested, three have been contested, and one featured an incumbent running against a registered write-in candidate.

——-

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Jonathan H. Adler:

Today’s New York Times reports on a new study by three economists purporting to show that the Supreme Court’s decisions are increasingly tilted toward the interests of the rich, and suggesting that this may play a role in rising economic inequality. Here’s how the NYT story begins:

Supreme Court justices take two oaths. The first, required of all federal officials, is a promise to support the Constitution. The second, a judicial oath, is more specific. It requires them, among other things, to “do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”

A new study being released on Monday from economists at Yale and Columbia contends that the Supreme Court has in recent decades fallen short of that vow.

The study, called “Ruling for the Rich,” concludes that the wealthy have the wind at their backs before the justices and that a good way to guess the outcome of a case is to follow the money.

The study, “Ruling for the Rich: The Supreme Court Over Time,” by Andrea Prat, Fiona Scott Morton, and Jacob Spitz, was posted as an NBER working paper, and has not yet been peer-reviewed or (to my knowledge) accepted anywhere for publication. But that did not stop it from getting a the full-article treatment in the NYT.

Having looked at the study, I don’t think it does much of anything to reliably substantiate its claims. It is both conceptually muddled and poorly executed. At most it shows that (surprise!) Republican Supreme Court nominees have become more conservative over time (a point I made to the Times), but that is hardly a revelation.

The biggest problem with the study’s design is its adoption of overly simplistic conceptions of what makes a decision “pro-rich” or “pro-poor.” Here is what the authors say they are doing:

Erin Gretzinger:

At the end of the semester, the UW-Madison students presented their findings to school district leaders in the Doyle Administration Building. Superintendent Joe Gothard thanked the students for their work, emphasizing the importance of better understanding the families opting out of enrolling in Madison’s schools and 4K programs.

“This is what we do in this room right here,” Gothard told the students. “We talk about these factors all the time, so it’s really great to have some new ideas about ways that we might present and think about our own practices.”

———

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Timothy Martin:

South Korea’s infamously difficult college-entrance exam can open the door to a promising future—but just 3% of students who took it recently landed a top-tier score for English, half of last year’s rate. A top official overseeing the test’s creation resigned in disgrace.

Colleges typically look only at a student’s test score when choosing whom to accept or reject. The pressure is so great that some superstitious students avoid washing their hair or trimming their nails as the single exam day every November approaches—fearful knowledge might slip away. The roughly eight-hour test covers various topics such as math, Korean history and English.

To get a top-tier result for English, a student with a perfect score on the listening section could miss no more than three of the test’s 28 reading-comprehension problems. These are the five toughest, according to EBS, South Korea’s public education broadcaster. See how you would fare.

1 OF 5
Giving clients sufficient opportunity to react to your designs while in progress is a key to professional success. Similarly, involving prospective building users as well as clients is even more valuable in the long run. Say your client is a large corporation, such as a health care provider. While the hospital administration may serve as your client, no doubt the perspectives of administration personnel will differ significantly from those of doctors, interns, residents, nurses, and other medical staff who use the building regularly. In addition, the experiences of patients and visitors who use the building irregularly, often as a result of life-threatening emergencies, are altogether different as well. Understanding how each type of user experiences the current medical environment as well as how each reacts to your prospective designs inevitably produces a better building. People are likely to be more satisfied with a new building or addition if they ________________________________________. For a large institution, this can translate into increased productivity on the job, reduced absenteeism, less turnover, and lower costs.

Christina Boggess:

I am done lending my name, my vote, and my silence to a broken, corrupt, and morally bankrupt system that no longer serves the children or families of this state.

The corruption inside the Utah State Board of Education and the broader educational establishment is not subtle—it is brazen, pervasive, and rotting the soul of public education. Nearly every decision is now driven by not-so-hidden agendas, political cowardice, financial kickbacks, and raw personal ambition—not by what is best for students. The USBE has become a closed club that wages open war on the minds, values, and innocence of our children while systematically stripping parents of any meaningful voice. This is more than mere incompetence; it is betrayal on a grand scale – by the very people you elected.

Layer upon layer of dysfunction—mirrored and magnified in the Utah Legislature—has turned governance into a circus of gridlock, self-preservation, and faux theatrical outrage that accomplishes nothing. Good ideas are buried, brave voices are punished, and the status quo is protected at all costs. The chaos is not accidental; it is the design of those who profit from it.
I ran for this office to fight for you—your children, your values, your right to be heard. Instead, I have been forced to watch as even the loudest “conservative” voices fold, trade their votes for favor and money, or abandon every promise they made on the campaign trail. The Republican Party platform means nothing inside those walls. The Word of the Lord means even less. Your concerns—about pornography in libraries, radical gender ideology in classrooms, the erosion of academic excellence, and the assault on parental rights—are mocked, ignored, or drowned out by the shrill demands of special interests and the timid silence of those who fear losing their seat more than losing their soul.

I will not play this game any longer. I refuse to be a prop in their theatre of fake reform.

Chris Rickert:

More than 10 years after the Madison School District’s implemented its Behavior Education Plan, one of the plan’s primary goals — reducing racial disparities in discipline — remains unmet.

David Blaska:

Madison’s public schools have a “coordinator for progressive discipline.” Things we never knew, thanks to Chris Rickert, writing for our favorite local morning newspaper. Yes, you with your hand up in the back: Isn’t “Progressive discipline” like saying “peaceful war”? (George Orwell, report to the principal’s office.) 

In the 10 years since Jennifer Cheatham cursed Madison students with her race-obsessed Behavior Education Plan, “the district hasn’t been able to reduce the ‘stubborn disproportionalities” of black students representing 62% of the students tossed out of school despite comprising 23% of enrollment. 

If there is anything a Woke educrat hates (the list is long), it is stubborn disproportionalities — the theory being that if there are five roosters and five hens, each should produce the same amount of eggs.

——-

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

William Galston:

At the conclusion of the 20th century, America’s leadership was uncontested. We had the world’s strongest economy and most powerful military, bolstered by an unequaled system of alliances. Americans from the bottom to the top enjoyed rising real incomes. The federal budget ran a surplus for four consecutive years, from 1998 to 2001. Despite their differences, the political parties were able to reach agreement on important issues, including on fiscal policy, education, welfare, the environment and protecting Americans with disabilities.

An era of folly began in the new century. Leaders of both political parties supported China’s entry into the World Trade Organization on terms that allowed a flood of cheap imports, contributing to a loss of 5.7 million manufacturing jobs (one-third of the prior total) between the end of the Clinton administration and January 2010. Few displaced workers received help making the transition to new jobs, and many suffered a decline in their standard of living, laying the foundation for an era of populist resentment.

The 9/11 attacks devastated the nation. President George W. Bush’s overreaction was also damaging. Any president worth his salt would have struck back against the terrorists who killed thousands of Americans. But the Bush administration went much further, launching a prolonged war in Afghanistan and Iraq and eventually proclaiming the grandiose goal of “ending tyranny in our world.” By focusing so much attention and resources on the “global war on terror,” America all but ignored the rising threat from China, whose economic gains were translated into a massive military buildup. The Mideast campaigns soured many Americans on international engagement.

Madison School District PDF:

“Strategic Framework Goal 1”:
+10 percentage points in literacy proficiency
+10 percentage points in students’ math proficiency
+3 percentage points in 4-year HS completion

“Strategic Framework Goal 2”:
+15 percentage points in percentage of students with annual attendance rate of +90%
100% of district departments and schools with documented improvement plans,
including universal and targeted strategies, and demonstrate evidence of PDSA cycles

“Strategic Framework Goal 2”:
+15 percentage points in literacy proficiency
+15 percentage points in students’ math proficiency
+6 percentage points in 4-year HS completion
+25 percentage points in percentage of students with annual attendance rate of +90%

Since 2021–2022, Student Services allocation increased by +28.9 FTE,
resulting in more time and resources available for students

7,095 staff for 25,003 students = 3.52 student to staff ratio…..

The 2025-2026 taxpayer funded budget is $668,000,000 or $26,716 per student.

8,897 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group during the 2024-2025 school year.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Hugo C. Chiasson and Elise A. Spenner:

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.

In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.

“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.

The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom.

Garber’s tenure in Massachusetts Hall has been defined by sustained controversy over free speech on campus. He inherited a campus deeply divided over the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — and facing heavy external criticism for its handling of campus responses in its wake.

Robert Pondiscio

A Republican Michigan state legislator has proposedexempting people without children in public schools from paying school-related property taxes. In a news release, Steve Carra, who has served in office since 2021, says it’s “fundamentally unjust to force people—including seniors, empty-nesters, those who pay for private school, and those without children—to subsidize a government education system they do not use.” It’s especially unfair, he continues “because our broken system spends a record amount of money yet results continue to plummet.”

At first glance, the idea has intuitive appeal: Why should people pay for a service they do not use? But while the proposal may sound fiscally tidy (or like a blunt-force accountability measure aimed at discrediting low-performing district schools), it rests on a deeply un-conservative misunderstanding of what public education is—and why a free society has long treated its costs as a shared obligation.

Public education is not a consumer good, like a gym membership or a streaming service. It is a civic institution. Conservatives have always recognized that some goods must be funded collectively because everyone benefits from their existence, not merely from direct use. You hope that you will never need the fire department, but you still pay for it because you benefit from living in a community where houses don’t burn down. The same logic applies to educating children.

Jack Goldsmith

But here is the reality. Congress has given the president a gargantuan global military force with few constraints and is AWOL in overseeing what the president does with it. Courts won’t get involved in reviewing unilateral presidential uses of force. And no country plausibly could stop the U.S. action in Venezuela.

That means that in practice the only normative legal framework for presidential war powers that matters derives from executive branch precedents and legal opinions. The Justice Department, if asked, easily could have drafted an opinion based on these precedents and opinions to justify the invasion of Venezuela.

Below is my quickly written explanation for this conclusion, but of course the analysis is preliminary since there is much we do not yet know.

Domestic Law

The main precedent DOJ could cite is President George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989 to arrest and bring strongman General Manuel Noriega to justice in the United States, in part for drug trafficking. Some will seek to distinguish the Noriega matter from the Venezuela invasion on the grounds that Panama Defense Forces had recently killed a U.S. Marine and the Panamanian National Assembly had declared that a state of war existed between the Republic of Panama and the United States.

But the Panama precedent will nonetheless matter to the Venezuela attack due to this 1989 opinion by then-Assistant Attorney General Bill Barr, issued six months before the invasion. That opinion justified FBI arrests in foreign countries under domestic law even if doing so violated international law. It specifically concluded:

Stuart Chambers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is certainly in vogue these days. Within post-secondary institutions, it is rapidly reshaping the pedagogical landscape. Some academics maintain that AI enriches the student learning experience, whereas others believe it enhances critical thinking.

Tech enthusiasts regard AI as a vital component of the contemporary university. Ted Brodheim, CIO adviser for education at Zoom, suggests that AI has become “the backbone of today’s learning ecosystem” in higher education. Likewise, Evan Solomon, Canada’s first-ever minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, contends that AI is having a “transformative effect” on education curriculum.

null

Such high praise has convinced many educators to jump on the AI bandwagon; however, I’m not one of them. As an undergraduate sociology professor, I bucked the trend by banning AI for all classroom assignments. Here’s why.

Eugene Volokh:

Reed v. Reed, an appeal decided Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Superior Court (Judge Mary Jane Bowes, joined by Judges Mary Murray and Jill Beck), involved a paternal grandfather seeking shared legal custody and partial physical custody of two children (N.R. and M.R., ages 8 and 10 as of the time of the appellate decision). Many states allow grandparents shared custody in some situations, especially when their child (the grandchildren’s parent) is dead, as was the case here. But, to oversimplify to some extent, they generally require some showing of failings on the part of the other parent.

In this case, the trial court did indeed rule for the grandfather, but the appellate court disagreed. An excerpt from the trial court’s opinion (other portions of the trial court’s opinion are discussed by the appellate opinion, so I haven’t excerpted them here, but you can see a lot more here):

Erin Gretzinger:

The biggest achievement is building a culture of care — care for our students, care for our families and care for our staff. Oftentimes, because there’s so much talent already here, what you’re trying to do is just create the conditions that allow for the power of education to happen every single day, and just remove the barriers so the work can work, can happen. …

You see on everything we have that it’s “excellence grounded in equity.” And I just always want to make sure that when I say “equity” — when we say “equity” in the Verona Area School District — equity means that each student has access to the resources that they need to thrive in our society. I fully understand that the word has gotten politicized, but we have held firm to our stance through our equity framework. 

This is not a political statement. This is an action that anyone — if you break down the true definition of what we’re saying — you want us to remove barriers to allow access for any student to receive the resources that they need.

—-

1,855 Verona 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group.

Nidhi Sachdeva:

In December, Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office released its latest student-testing results, and delivered a sobering message: Only about half of the province’s Grade 6 students met the provincial standard in mathematics, and Grade 3 performance sits at just 64 per cent, inching up only slightly over three years. 

These numbers are not just statistics. They represent children – real students – moving through school with shaky foundations in the very subject that underpins science, technology, skilled trades, financial literacy and problem-solving. 

Put differently, of the nearly 134,000 Grade 6 students who participated, only about 65,000 met provincial benchmarks. Of those, roughly 11,000 reached the highest level of proficiency. In a province that prides itself on innovation and global competitiveness, that is a troublingly small fraction. 

Now imagine two Grade 6 classes heading out for recess. Of the 60 students playing outside, statistically about 30 are struggling to meet math expectations. Only a handful are achieving at the highest level. We would never accept this kind of performance in health care, engineering or aviation. Yet in classrooms, we have normalized it.

——

more.

Kimberly Wethal

UW-Madison should centralize much of its budgeting and human resources to avoid future abuses of its policies, according to a third-party report requested after the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion chief was demoted for excess spending.

The recommendations, created by outside financial services firm Deloitte, said HR should be realigned to give more oversight in hiring and compensation, salary adjustments should be streamlined and the finance department should create roles that focus on future budget planning and business partnerships.

OECD:

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the world’s largest survey of teachers and principals. In 2024, 280 000 educators from 55 education systems shared insights into their working conditions, professional development and the realities of the modern classroom. In this edition, Results from TALIS 2024, teachers reveal if and how they use artificial intelligence, why they choose teaching, and if they wish to remain in the profession. Data from TALIS enables governments to make policies that improve teaching and learning conditions in their schools.

Teachers’ usage of artificial intelligence varies tremendously

Teachers and education systems have a responsibility to embrace artificial intelligence while also protecting students against its harmful effects. Singapore and the United Arab Emirates are leading the way in this regard. Around 75% of teachers in these systems are using AI. Importantly, teachers in these systems are also most likely to report having received professional learning in using artificial intelligence.

Novice teachers receive more mentorship but are still allocated to difficult environments

Being a novice teacher can be an intimidating experience. No amount of training can prepare someone for the feeling of being directly responsible for hundreds of students. Mentorship can greatly ease the transition from initial teacher education to actual classroom teaching. TALIS data show that novice teachers who have mentors also have greater job satisfaction and well-being. Policymakers also need to consider where novice teachers are teaching. Teacher allocation mechanisms often privilege seniority, which can place the least experienced teachers in the most difficult educational environments.

FutureDad:

‘Everything is incentives, the rest is commentary.’ – Stephen Landsburg

The world’s fertility rate has crashed in the last few decades. Some selected examples from 1950 to 2021 are1: –

South Korea’s dropped from 5.72 to 0.82.

Italy’s dropped from 2.45 to 1.21.

Morocco’s dropped from 7.18 to 2.26.

Canada’s dropped from 3.31 to 1.46.

Ecuador’s dropped from 6.09 to 2.20.

New Zealand’s dropped from 3.49 to 1.62.

I cite a country from every continent, both emerging market and developed, to demonstrate the multi-regional distribution of the problem. No region on Earth is in good shape, fertility-wise. This is a crucial point that is evaded by many commentators, usually to then bemoan their own country’s lack of child care facilities, affordable housing or some other pet peeve. These are lies by omission.

It’s a curious phenomenon that a global problem with real-world civilisation-ending effects is so badly understood. I will select a recent well-attended example. In a 2025 Kurzgesagt YouTube video about South Korea’s demographic collapse, with over 10 million views2, most of the top-liked viewers’ comments cited a non-reason as a reason. It’s evidence of the lazy thinking of the modern world and provides a startling example of the ‘unwisdom’ of crowds. It behoves us therefore to be particularly careful in our analysis. A problem of this civilisational scale obligates a cross-examination of the assumptions and the counter-examples before identifying the actual cause.

———

choose life.

Substack link:

The Affidavit involves a Minnesota socialist welfare program, funded largely by Medicaid, called the “Integrated Community Supports” (ICS) program. It was a “waivered” program under Medicaid rules — as are several other Minnesota programs now being investigated. If approved, the waiver means states are allowed to deviate from standard Medicaid rules for covered “services” in order to deliver such services in more flexible and targeted ways. 

These services have almost NOTHING to do with providing “medical care” for the poor as most believe Medicaid was intended to do. 

States ask permission from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to “waive” certain Medicaid requirements for a program to be funded. If approved, the state can offer non-traditional services — not otherwise subject to reimbursement with Medicaid dollars — by limiting eligibility to specific groups and/or providing services in community settings rather than leaving the clients in institutions.

Waivers are designed to help keep people out of nursing homes or similar group- home arrangements or institutions, provide in-home care and and community-based services on a one-on-one basis with the care providers, be an experimental lab to test innovative alternative care models, and to control costs while maintaining or improving care.

CJ Ciaramella:

Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID.

But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers unreliable, even though getting one requires providing proof of citizenship or lawful status in the country.

In a December 11 court filing, Philip Lavoie, the acting assistant special agent in charge of DHS’ Mobile, Alabama, office, stated that, “REAL ID can be unreliable to confirm U.S. citizenship.”

Danyela Souza Egorov:

New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is inheriting a public school system that has made some progress in student learning but is completely dysfunctional in terms of financial stability and operations. And his campaign promises are likely to worsen the system’s flaws.

New York City’s public schools once educated more than a million students, but the system’s enrollment has been steadily declining. Since 2020, it has lost 10 percent of its K-12 students. Even with the expansion of pre-K and 3-K programs for young children, the schools are serving 115,000 fewer students than they did seven years ago.

Yet the budget for the city Department of Education (NYC DOE) has greatly increased, rising from $33 billion in 2019 to over $40 billion this year. This disconnect between enrollment and budget has led to the highest per-pupil spending in the nation, which the Citizens Budget Commission estimates will reach $42,000 this year.

Dan Wang:

One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless.

If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes. Which of the tech titans are funny? In public, they tend to speak in one of two registers. The first is the blandly corporate tone we’ve come to expect when we see them dragged before Congressional hearings or fireside chats. The second leans philosophical, as they compose their features into the sort of reverie appropriate for issuing apocalyptic prophecies on AI. Sam Altman once combined both registers at a tech conference when he said: “I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world. But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” Actually that was pretty funny.

It wouldn’t be news to the Central Committee that only the paranoid survive. The Communist Party speaks in the same two registers as the tech titans. The po-faced men on the Politburo tend to make extraordinarily bland speeches, laced occasionally with a murderous warning against those who cross the party’s interests. How funny is the big guy? We can take a look at an official list of Xi Jinping’s jokes, helpfully published by party propagandists. These wisecracks include the following: “On an inspection tour to Jiangsu, Xi quipped that the true measure of water cleanliness is whether the mayor would dare to swim in the water.” Or try this reminiscence that Xi offered on bad air quality: “The PM2.5 back then was even worse than it is now; I used to joke that it was PM250.” Yes, such a humorous fellow is the general secretary.

Leif Le Mahieu

Unborn babies continue to be aborted at a higher rate across the United States despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the implementation of stronger pro-life laws, according to new data.

Data released in December by the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning revealed that the number of monthly abortions continued to increase in 2025 from 2024, which was itself an increase from 2023. Much of the increase has been fueled by the widespread mailing of abortion drugs across the country, even in states with “abortion bans” in place.

The numbers show that the battle for pro-lifers has only begun as the ubiquitous mailing of mifepristone makes ending the life of an unborn child easier than ever before.

To address the continued increase, many pro-life advocates have urged the Trump administration to roll back Biden-era restrictions that allowed abortion pills to be sent through the mail with no in-person doctor visits. Others have shifted their efforts to changing cultural attitudes toward abortion. Senator Josh Hawley is launching a new political action committee promoting family. Some elected state Republicans and groups have pushed for laws to criminalize abortion for both the abortionist and the mother.

The data produced by the Society for Family Planning estimated that through June 2025, there were 98,630 babies aborted every month. That was an increase from the monthly rates of 2024 (95,250), 2023 (88,180), and 2022 (79,620). The group estimated that 27% of the abortions for the available 2025 data were through telehealth, meaning they were facilitated by abortion pills sent through the mail.

——-

Choose life.

David Blaska

Schools we can be proud of:

• Put teachers back in control of their classrooms, principals back in their schools. 
• Don’t penalize kids who just want to learn for the price of those who won’t. 
• Return school resource police officers to our troubled high schools.
• Link administrator pay to academic results.
• Ban cell phones in the classroom (Why did it take Republican legislature to do it? “Cell phone bans work.”)
• Return honors courses. Learning can be fun but it was never supposed to be easy.

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Matt Taibbi:

Mamdani continues to ignore media requests to clarify whether or not his office is opposed to home ownership. Mamdani said in the past his goal is to “move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it” toward one in which the “state guarantees high-quality housing for all.” 

That’s fine. The more serious issue is the continued employment of someone with abjectly racist ideas. Weaver has a spectacular, tinfoil-level fixation on white people. Among her deleted posts is a long list of racialist lunacies, from a call to “impoverish the white middle class” to claiming “homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy.”

Chris and the Editorial Staff

In the summer of 2023, a good friend from my high school days summed up his view of religion as follows: As science becomes increasingly powerful in its ability to explain nature, the world relies less and less on religion to explain the unknown.

My friend’s argument is a common one, echoed by prominent atheist Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion:

If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it… gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.

The implication is clear: The existence of this “God of the gaps” is becoming increasingly unnecessary and unlikely over time.

Meanwhile, Dr. Karin Öberg, a professor of astronomy at Harvard University who converted from agnosticism to Catholicism in adulthood (as I did), declared:

The world that we know today… is much more suggestive of a creator than, I think, the universe that people thought they were living in 100 years ago.

Who’s right? As Socrates said, let’s follow the evidence wherever it leads.

KAP:

A Straussian Meme is a meme that communicates different ideas to different kinds of people, according to their ability and willingness to hear the message. A Straussian meme has a specific structure:

There are higher and lower readings that are related but different. This is called multi-level messaging.
Those who accept the higher readings understand the lower readings but see them as “noble lies”, “socially necessary fictions”, or “useful simplifications”.
The higher-lower structure is self-stabilizing because of what level either conceals or says about the other levels.
Whether Straussian Memes are intentionally designed or the result of some kind of selection pressure, my claim is that powerful and enduring memes often benefit from self-stabilizing stratified structure in order to maintain a stable and broad base.

Vincent Phillip Munoz

Perhaps no group of scholars has investigated the principles of the American Founding more seriously than the students of Leo Strauss. The bicentennial celebrations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution produced notable Straussian commentaries, including the still-influential essay by Martin Diamond, “Ethics and Politics: The American Way.” Although those who studied directly under Strauss have, for the most part, retired or passed, we can expect the students of those students to take the lead as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration and, in a few years, of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Yet Straussians, famously, disagree about the meaning of America. Following Diamond, so-called “East Coast” Straussians contend the founding was “low but solid,” grounded primarily and essentially in preserving life, liberty, and property and nothing more, thus eschewing or at best downplaying the cultivation of virtue and morality. So-called “West Coast” Straussians interpret America more favorably, even claiming that it is the “best regime” of Western civilization, as Harry V. Jaffa argued in these pages. West Coasters maintain that America, properly understood, aims at goodness and nobility. Why so much disagreement? More importantly, who gets America right?

The intellectual stakes are considerable. Ought we to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration and its principle of equality, or should we de-emphasize it and substitute an alternative understanding of America? Should we embrace natural rights or minimize what Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon called “rights talk”? Do we return to the founding or imagine a “post-liberal” future?

Though he didn’t call attention to it, Jaffa is actually the intellectual father of both East Coast and West Coast Straussianism. In his chapter on “The Universal Meaning of the Declaration of Independence” in Crisis of the House Divided (1959), Jaffa outlines the basic premises of the East Coast’s “low but solid” interpretation. Thomas Jefferson, Jaffa argues, wrote the Declaration within the “Lockean horizon” of the state of nature, and within the state of nature, there are “no real duties” but only “rules which tell us to avoid doing those things which might impel others to injure us.” Jaffa continues:

John Roberts:

Two hundred fifty years ago this week, a recent immigrant to Britain’s North American colonies put the finishing touches on a manuscript in which he hoped to express “plain truths” about his newly adopted home. A native of Thetford, about 90 miles northeast of London, Thomas Paine had struggled as a laborer, sailor, craftsman, and excise tax collector in England before embarking for Philadelphia in late 1774 with almost nothing to his name. The one thing going for him was an acquaintance named Benjamin Franklin, who had provided a letter of recommendation that led to an offer of employment with a new publication called The Pennsylvania Magazine.

From tight quarters at the corner of Front and Market Streets, across from the London Coffee House and next to the Magazine’s offices, Paine earned his first byline on January 24, 1775. Acting as both an editor and contributor, Paine brought a burst of energy to the fledgling periodical, vaulting it to unanticipated success with one of the highest readerships in the colonies.

More.

Quinton Klabon:

Speaking of virtual education, the best reporting this year was @ORMorrison about how a virtual charter school grew big enough to boss around Pennsylvania’s state legislature.

Imagine teaching 1,200 6-year-olds remotely and just 50 participate.

This thread will shock you.

Don Taylor:

Reforming higher education requires changing the incentives at play—for students, professors, presidents, alums and trustees. This post provides an overview of the economic model of Duke University, where I have been a professor since 1997 and played a variety of leadership and faculty governance roles. The modern research university is an exceedingly opaque organization and this piece begins to bring some clarity about the finances that drive the university incentive structure. 

Is Duke Rich or Not? 

The answer is yes, and no. There are only 10 to 15 universities in the U.S. that do not covet Duke’s financial resources—our problem is that we aim to compete with the very few who have far more money than Duke (e.g., Stanford, Harvard, Yale). This reality leads to the following repetitive conversation:

“How can Duke not afford to [ ] because we have Billions of dollars?” (exasperated tone)

The ‘cause’ in the blank might be a further increase in Duke’s minimum wage; expanding need-based financial aid for undergraduates, or extending same to international students; increasing the guaranteed stipend for Ph.D. students; or hiring more faculty in Physics. Or English. Or African and African American Studies. Or building more and better athletics facilities.

And on and on. The problem is that you can only spend a dollar once.

Solveig Lucia Gold & Joshua T. Katz

In a bid to increase enrollment, especially of students of color, the Princeton Department of Classics in the spring of 2021 made the now infamous decision to eliminate its language requirement for undergraduate majors so that students could graduate with a degree in Classics without ever taking a single course in Latin or Ancient Greek.* The decision enraged many alumni and outside commentators, who marveled at the department’s soft bigotry.[1]Both of us have written about what Princeton did: Solveig Lucia Gold, “Princeton and the Erosion of Expertise,” First Things, June 10, 2021, available here; Solveig Lucia Gold, “Rebuilding the Classics,” City Journal, December 16, 2022, available here; and Joshua T. Katz, “Classics: Inside Out and Upside Down,” Academic Questions 36.1 (Spring 2023) 89–104, at 95–7, available here. As the linguist John McWhorter put it, “The Princeton Classics department’s new position is tantamount to saying that Latin and Greek are too hard to require Black students to learn.”[2]John McWhorter, “The Problem with Dropping Standards in the Name of Racial Equity,” The Atlantic, June 7, 2021, available here. The decision also left people scratching their heads: what does it mean to do Classics without the languages?

It’s a good question.[3]For a nuanced answer by an outstanding Classical philologist, see Wolfgang de Melo’s two-part article “Classics in Translation? A Personal Angle,” Antigone, March 2023, available here and here. While de Melo concludes that “not every student of the ancient world needs to learn Latin and Greek,” he drives home the point that “we should not get rid of language training and translation practice just because certain strands of activists are pushing for this to happen.” While Classics is an interdisciplinary subject, knowledge of Greek and/or Latin has traditionally been the one thing all Classicists share, whether their focus is papyrology or archaeology. And more specifically, all Classicists have traditionally been trained in the subfield that binds the whole field together: philology.

Mitchell Schmidt:

The proposed amendment, which would restrict Wisconsin’s governor from using a partial veto to increase taxes or fees in appropriation bills such as state budgets, passed the Legislature the first time in early 2024. If the measure passes both chambers early next year, the ballot question could come before voters in the state’s fall election cycle.

If passed, Vos said the proposed constitutional amendment would halt future increases in state-imposed revenue limits on school districts created when Evers issued partial vetoes to the state’s two-year spending plan in July 2023.

“We don’t think that you should be able to have that massive property tax increase by one person’s actions,” Vos said.

Revenue increases already enacted under the budget would remain in place, he said.

“It would say that, going forward, you can’t continue to increase property taxes via that veto,” Vos said.

Under the budget Evers signed, districts would be allowed to raise revenue by $325 per student per year until 2425. Given current public school enrollment levels, that amounts to a more than $260 million increase per year.

To make the change, Evers struck several words and a hyphen in a section of the budget Republicans intended as a temporary increase in the revenue limits. As a result, the phrase “for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year” became “for 2023-2425.”

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $26,000 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?

Kelly Meyerhofer:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has reclaimed its status among the top five institutions nationally for research spending – the highest ranking the state flagship has earned since 2014.

UW-Madison’s national research ranking has been a sore spot on campus for a decade after the university fell out of the top five for the first time in nearly 45 years. It dropped to No. 8 in 2018. UW-Madison officials at the time attributed the slide in rankings to state budget cuts and the loss of senior faculty members.

“We in Wisconsin can’t claim we’re in the top five on many things, but this is one where we’ve consistently been able to demonstrate to the world that UW-Madison is a premier research institution,” Mark Bugher, the retired director of University Research Park and former secretary of administration under Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the time of the ranking drop. “To lose that distinction is unacceptable, in my opinion.”

Christopher Huffaker:

The reckoning may come soon: students next sit for the national test this spring and a continuation of recent underwhelming performances risks any number of states, including Wyoming, New Jersey, or even Mississippi, toppling the Commonwealth from its lead in one or more subjects.

So for the governor on whose watch this is brewing, the urgency to respond is in part helped along by a matter of pride:

“We’re not going to give that ranking up,” Governor Maura Healey said at an event recently to introduce new statewide graduation requirements, at which she referred to the state’s ranking no less than three times. 

“I’m a little competitive,” she added.

For political leaders, symbolism matters: for the setting of her event in early December, Healey chose Dedham, where the first taxpayer-funded schools were established more than a century before the British colonies became the United States.

In response to the slippage, Healey and other Democratic leaders have proposed a kitchen sink of solutions that include new graduation requirementssuch as state tests in some required courses and senior year projects, and a state mandate on how reading is taught that is pending before the state Senate. Declining scores have also been cited by other education leaders and advocates as an argument for banning cellphones in school, further raising state school aid, and other measures. 

In what is perhaps a measure of the seriousness of the challenge, Healey is willing to buck the state’s leading teachers’ union, which is also one of the most influential blocs of support within the state Democratic Party.

Politically, that’s a big risk, but the state’s perch at the top matters greatly: to parents, who expect their children to learn to read and do math and lead successful lives; to employers who want to be confident in hiring Massachusetts school graduates; and even to voters if they perceive their leaders are letting one of the state’s biggest advantages slip away.

———

more.

Related: MTEL.

Tom Pappert:

Despite writing that her gender identity was oppositional to Christianity, the killer nonetheless continued to invoke God in later journal entries, including those written in March 2023.

“Forgive me God, this act will be inglorious,” the killer wrote on the day of the attack.

The new writings released by the FBI also show that the killer selected March 27, 2023, for her attack on the Covenant School as early as May 9, 2022, when she selected the date tentatively while considering other targets.

Daniel McCarthy:

At Harvard University today, professors who teach Western history are history.

James Hankins, a specialist in Renaissance thought, was one of the last holdouts.
Now Hankins, who has just published a hefty book that teaches what Harvard doesn’t—The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition. Vol. 1—has decamped for the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education.

It’s not the warmer weather that’s drawn him away from Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s the contrast in intellectual climates: frozen and dead, where Western history is concerned, at Harvard; full of green shoots at the University of Florida.

“We have not hired with tenure a historian in a Western field—ancient, medieval, early modern, or modern—in a decade,” Hankins says about his Harvard department, which in that time “lost eight senior historians in Western fields—all major figures—through death, retirement or departure for other universities. I will be the ninth, and I am not expecting to be replaced.”

The loss isn’t just Harvard’s: “the replacement of Western history by global history” has done “serious harm … to the socialization of young Americans,” the historian warns in Compact magazine. “When you don’t teach the young what civilization is, it turns out, people become uncivilized.”

Mark Treinen:

I really can’t let this stand @DrJillUnderly @WISCTV_News3. The superintendent’s continued claims of DPI transparency and our reporting’s inaccuracy are problematic. Thread.

———

Much more on Jill Underly, here.

Corrinne Hess:

The increase in emergency teaching licenses was higher in extracurricular subjects. For example, from 2022 to 2024, emergency licenses in Spanish grew by 49 percent. Physical education grew by 96 percent.

The three subject areas with the most emergency licenses were special education, regular education and elementary/middle education. These grew by a collective 10.9 percent over the last year, according to the report. 

Concerns raised 

The National Council on Teacher Quality has raised concerns about emergency teaching licenses. 

Heather Peske, president of the organization, says it is a mistake to give “unqualified, emergency-licensed teachers responsibility over student learning.” 

“These teachers go into classrooms without the content knowledge and skills they need to be successful with students,” Peske said in a statement. “They are less effective. And they teach the most vulnerable students at higher rates.”

The Policy Forum report found the statewide rate for emergency licenses among educators was 3.6 percent. But that rate is not uniform across districts. 

Rory Linnane:

Days after Brenda Cassellius was offered the job as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published findings that hundreds of vacant staff positions in the district were concentrated where students come from the highest rates of poverty and have the most to catch up on academically.

The problem mirrored a broader trend, the Journal Sentinel and subsequent consultants have found: a lack of needs-based investment and attractive programs in those schools, like extracurriculars, art and music classes, recreational sports teams and advanced academic programs.

Cassellius, who said she was impacted by the Journal Sentinel’s reporting, made the vacancy issue a central focus, setting a goal of every student having a licensed, permanent teacher in their classroom.

Cassellius said the reporting helped her see into the vacancy issue right away: “I started to question where we were at.”

Also influenced by a review of district operations ordered by the governor, Cassellius enlisted an outside consultant for recommendations on overhauling the human resources department and hired a new department director to implement them.

Ten months since the Journal Sentinel’s original report, district officials say vacancies appear to have significantly declined. Still, data show their distribution has remained uneven, in a similar pattern across the city.

The highest vacancy rate, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of October data, was in the central city’s 53206 ZIP code, where MPS reported 26 vacancies in eight schools, including teachers, paraprofessionals and children’s health assistants. The area’s vacancy rate by student population was six times higher than in Bay View’s 53207 ZIP code.

Addressing the equity problem will take deeper investments in targeted areas, such as higher pay for staff in schools with the greatest needs, Cassellius said, which she is starting to craft to propose to the school board.

Her work progresses under a ticking clock. Some of the schools that need the most help, those in and near 53206 where scores of families have departed and staff vacancies are chronic, are up for potential closure because of low enrollment.

John Neer:

These lectures notes run from the fall of 1966 to 1971. Feynman lectured prior to this period and continued on after 1971. With a few exceptions, the actual 2 hours lectures were not dated. However, the volumes in chronological order.

I want to stress, again, that these are my personal notes and are only a representation of the lectures I attended. They are to the best of my ability my recreation from memory and my original real time notes. No AV recording system was used in the transcription of my raw notes.

Luona Lin, Kim Parker and Juliana Menasce Horowitz:

As they navigate these challenges, teachers don’t feel they’re getting the support or reinforcement they need from parents.

Majorities of teachers say parents are doing too littlewhen it comes to holding their children accountable if they misbehave in school, helping them with their schoolwork and ensuring their attendance.

Teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools are more likely than those in low-poverty schools to say parents are doing too little in each of these areas.

These findings are based on a survey of 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers conducted Oct. 17-Nov. 14, 2023, using the RAND American Teacher Panel.² The survey looks at the following aspects of teachers’ experiences:

Ellesheva Kissin:

Decision follows scandals at Big Four and comes as AI tools make it easier to circumvent invigilators

The world’s largest accounting body has decided to scrap remote exams to combat a rise in students cheating when sitting tests remotely.

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, which has 257,900 members, will end its online exams from March, requiring candidates to sit assessments in person unless there are exceptional circumstances, its chief executive Helen Brand told the Financial Times.

Remote invigilation was introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic to allow students to continue qualifying into the profession during lockdowns.

But the ACCA has concluded that online tests have become too difficult to police, particularly as artificial intelligence has made cheating more difficult to combat.

“We’re seeing the sophistication of [cheating] systems outpacing what can be put in, [in] terms of safeguards,” said Brand.

The accounting profession has been hit by a series of cheating scandals, involving thousands of staff, with firms such as PwC, KPMG and Deloitte fined millions of dollars in the US, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands.

James Hankins:

Two weeks ago I gave my last lecture at Harvard, where I have been a history professor for forty years. My four decades of experience at one of the world’s leading universities have given me a unique vantage point to trace the replacement of Western history by global history. This change is part of the reason why the younger generation finds itself in a state of moral and intellectual disorientation.

My decision to retire was not a sudden one. I am coming to the end of a four-year retirement contract that I signed in the fall of 2021. That year I decided I no longer wanted to teach at Harvard. We had just endured almost two years under the university’s strict Covid regime. This was a form of emergency governance that mirrored to a fault the whole country’s uncritical acceptance of The Science and its proclivity, when backed by public power, for tyrannous invasions of private life. At Harvard, professors were told we had to lecture in masks and give seminars on zoom. Neither practice accorded with my idea of liberal education. 

“The best student at Harvard … was rejected from all the graduate programs to which he applied.”

The year earlier the university had collectively taken a knee during the Summer of Floyd. This turned out not to be empty virtue-signalling, as I expected, but had serious consequences for the way we conducted our affairs. In reviewing graduate student applicants in the fall of 2020 I came across an outstanding prospect who was a perfect fit for our program. In past years this candidate would have risen immediately to the top of the applicant pool. In 2021, however, I was told informally by a member of the admissions committee that “that” (meaning admitting a white male) was “not happening this year.” In the same year a certifiably brilliant undergraduate I had tutored, who was literally the best student at Harvard—he won the prize for the graduating senior with the best overall academic record—was rejected from all the graduate programs to which he applied. He too was a white male. I called around to friends at several universities to find out why on earth he had been rejected. Everywhere it was the same story: Graduate admissions committees around the country had been following the same unspoken protocol as ours. The one exception I found to the general exclusion of white males had begun life as a female. 

Harvard, I believe, is now on a better course under its current president, Alan Garber. The reaction to the Claudine Gay fiasco, which highlighted the university’s shocking indifference to the anti-Semitic demonstrations following the October 7 atrocities, compelled the Harvard Corporation, which chooses the president, to seek out a safe pair of hands. President Garber, our provost for over a decade, provided them. Even so, I believe I can make far better use of my time and experience at my new institutional home—the Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida—than at Harvard. The reason why is that the Hamilton School is committed to teaching the history of Western civilization. When late liberal pedagogy replaced Western civilization courses with global history, serious harm was done to the socialization of young Americans. When you don’t teach the young what civilization is, it turns out, people become uncivilized.

Drew Gilpin Faust:

In 2010, cursive was omitted from the new national Common Core standards for K–12 education. The students in my class, and their peers, were then somewhere in elementary school. Handwriting instruction had already been declining as laptops and tablets and lessons in “keyboarding” assumed an ever more prominent place in the classroom. Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.

Although I was unaware of it at the time, the 2010 Common Core policy on cursive had generated an uproar. Jeremiads about the impending decline of civilization appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Defenders of script argued variously that knowledge of cursive was “a basic right,” a key connection between hand and brain, an essential form of self-discipline, and a fundamental expression of identity. Its disappearance would represent a craven submission to “the tyranny of ‘relevance.’”

Natalie Wexler:

But these states aren’t all doing the same thing. Mississippi and Alabama have focused just on phonics, while Tennessee and especially Louisiana have succeeded in getting districts to adopt curricula that also build academic knowledge beginning in the early grades. On its own, effective phonics instruction, while crucial, leads only to short-term gains. Combined with a knowledge-building curriculum in the early grades, it lays the groundwork for success at higher grade levels.

I was delighted to see this post coming in at #3, and I hope it reflects a surge of interest in history—which is often either not taught at all, especially in elementary school, or else is taught in a way that isn’t engaging or effective. Learning about history is crucial for enabling students to become responsible citizens. There’s also evidence that social studies boosts reading comprehension, especially for students from low-income families.

This post described a framework for teaching history called the Four Question Method and featured interviews with teachers piloting a U.S. history curriculum developed by the creators of the method. The teachers reported that compared to their previous approaches, the new curriculum engaged students more and enabled them to retain and understand more content. (I serve on the advisory board of 4QM Teaching.)

Channel3000:

Susan Webb Yackee talks with For the Record’s Elly Laliberte on the launch of a new major