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Civics: “Federal Judge Ordering Virginia to Reinstate Noncitizens Back Onto the Voter Rolls”

Glenn Youngkin:

“Let’s be clear about what just happened: only eleven days before a Presidential election, a federal judge ordered Virginia to reinstate over 1,500 individuals–who self-identified themselves as noncitizens–back onto the voter rolls. Almost all these individuals had previously presented immigration documents confirming their noncitizen status, a fact recently verified by federal authorities.

“This is a Virginia law passed in 2006, signed by then-Governor Tim Kaine, that mandates certain procedures to remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, with safeguards in place to affirm citizenship before removal–and the ultimate failsafe of same-day registration for U.S. citizens to cast a provisional ballot. This law has been applied in every Presidential election by Republicans and Democrats since enacted 18 years ago.

“Virginia will immediately petition the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court, for an emergency stay of the injunction.”

More.

“Is the problem that the District has too many administrators?

Dan Lennington:

Sun Prairie School District has a whopping 42% of all employees assigned as “administrative.” In their defense, they told parents basically, “we’re not as bad as other Dane County schools.” Ugh. Learn how bloated your district is at will-law.org/school-scoreca… @WILawLiberty

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

“Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health”

Jay Bhattacharya:

The House report on HHS covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden admin spent almost a billion dollars to push falsehoods about covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.

More: taxpayer funded Dane County Madison Public Health Mandate lockdowns.

Ten lessons from six decades in the struggle to improve schools

Chester Finn:

In 1953, the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin published one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated essays, titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” He was riffing on the Greek poet Archilochus, who wrote that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In this essay, Sir Isaiah divided people—well, writers and thinkers, those sorts of people—into two categories. As summarized in Wikipedia, they are:

hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include PlatoLucretiusBlaise PascalMarcel Proust, and Fernand Braudel), and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include AristotleDesiderius Erasmus, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe).

Reflecting on my own engagement with education over the past sixty years, beginning just a dozen years after Berlin wrote, I find that I started as a hedgehog but have turned into a fox. My hedgehog self, I should add, was young, optimistic, probably naïve. Becoming a fox has meant growing skeptical, wary, perhaps jaded, though still determined.

Once upon a time—college senior time, LBJ time—I pretty much agreed with President Johnson that the way to end poverty in America while achieving other worthy ends was to beef up the education system, particularly the parts that served poor kids, and that the way to do that was to ramp up its funding, such as via the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the War on Poverty, both of which he pushed through Congress.

When he signed ESEA in the one-room schoolhouse of his childhood in Johnson City, Texas, the president declared that:

A modest proposal for the elimination of grade inflation.

John Staddon:

Dealing with an increasing number of marginal students in an equity-charged environment is one factor that has favored grade inflation. But there is a contributing factor that is built into the American system and has taken some years to reach fruition. When I first came to this country from Britain, I was surprised to find that students were graded by the individual who taught them. This obviously introduces a conflict of interest, especially for teachers of elective courses. Harsh grades mean a drop in enrollment. A drop in enrollment means a loss of salary for the tenured, or of a job for adjunct faculty. Given the incentives, I am surprised that grade inflation has taken so long to become a problem.

The U.S. system allows for spontaneity but also for corruption; how might it be fixed?The contrast with British practice was stark. At that time (the 1960s), pupils’ futures were decided by two sets of high-stakes exams: Ordinary Level, taken at 16, and Advanced Level, at 18 or so. After O-level, a good pass meant you could go on to A-level two years later and then, possibly, to college (maybe five percent or so of each cohort made it to college in those days, so the process was very selective).

These vital examinations took place in a separate location, “examination halls” (mine was in South Kensington in central London). Students, identified not by name but by a number, from schools all over the city, sat at widely separated tables patrolled by a gowned “invigilator.” The whole thing was completely anonymous; the student didn’t even know who was grading his exam, which was done by a system-wide committee that might include his teacher but most likely did not.

This system is totally fair, but it’s also rather rigid, because all must teach from the same syllabus. Teachers have little room for spontaneity.

Civics: She Was Arrested for Praying in Her Head

Madeleine Kearns:

On October 4, Emma, who asked not to be named, got a letter from the Scottish government. Addressed “Dear Resident,” its purpose was to alert her that her home, due to its proximity to the hospital, is now in an abortion censorship zone.  

This is due to the UK’s brand-new “Safe Access” law, which came into effect September 24 and made it a criminal offense to do anything within 200 metersof an abortion facility that could “influence” someone’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate an abortion. In the Scottish government’s letter, Emma read that even “activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.”

“You can report a group or an individual that you think is breaking the law,” the letter added, before providing instructions on how to do so.

More.

Civics: After Tim Thomas’ property was searched up to his doorstep by state officials on multiple occasions, he filed a federal lawsuit.

Chris Bennett:

The ball began rolling on a steady chain of glaring constitutional violations, contends IJ attorney Kirby West: “The government cannot go wherever and whenever it wants—that’s the very reason for the Fourth Amendment in the first place. We see a lot of cases where government goes overboard, but this statute is the plainest example I’ve seen that contradicts the Fourth Amendment on its face.”

Civics & health: Sharing medical outcome information (or not)

Leor Sapir:

NEW: Azeen Ghorayshi reports in the @nytimes that prominent gender clinician Johanna Olson-Kennedy of @ChildrensLA has refused to publish data from a study on puberty blockers, fearing that the unimpressive results will be “weaponized” by critics of “gender-affirming care.”

JK Rowling:

‘We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.’

Benjamin Ryan:

The top readers’-pick comments on the @NYTimes article on the researcher shielding her null findings from her puberty blocker study for political reasons:

Civics: Open Records and the District Attorney

Akilah Winters:

The judge ruled in favor because she said the district attorney’s office failed to timely provide the requested documents. According to Krause, the law firm is owed those documents and will be awarded attorneys’ fees.

It stemmed from a lawsuit in which Ashleigh Merchant accused the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office of violating the state’s Open Records Act.

The lawsuit accused Willis of “hiding documents” related to a media monitoring company, alleging the district attorney had used taxpayer dollars to pay for it. It also accused the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office of not wholly fulfilling open records related to employees’ nondisclosure agreements.

“She is the elected DA. It’s her office. I think that every government agency has a duty to respond to open records requests. I think when you have an elected official, they are the ones who are held accountable by the public. They are the ones who set the policy,” Merchant, who is Trump co-defendant Michael Roman’s lawyer in the election interference case, said on Monday while testifying on the stand in the case. 

Notes on the ongoing Wisconsin DPI right reduction effort

Will Flanders:

An example of the problem with DPI changing standards from Reddit. This poster earnestly believes proficiency is up 12% this year. The average person doesn’t have time to delve into the nuance of state tests. DPI is willfully pulling the wool over our eyes to hide their failings.

Curiously, after reducing rigor statewide, Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly chimes in.

The taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI recently reduced rigor….

Civics: free speech and elections

FIRE:

POLL: Americans rank free speech second only to inflation on their list of 2024 concerns, according to a new poll by FIRE. That’s higher than other hot-button issues like crime, immigration, and health care.

Adrian Vermeule:

Trump has to meet a very high bar to rule as our most authoritarian President ever. If he sends an ethnic minority to internment camps, tries to pack the Court, and stays in office for four terms, he’ll still only be tied.

Error leaves 2 Wisconsin high school football teams out of the playoffs

Sean Davis:

The result of the WIAA’s incorrect use of tiebreakers means Madison West’s and Greenfield’s seasons are over at least a week earlier than they should be. It would have been the Regents’ first playoff appearance since 2019. Meanwhile, Madison Edgewood and Pewaukee will get the opportunity to play in the postseason after doing nothing wrong.

“These things are just so weird,” Madison Edgewood athletic director Ben Voss said. “We were told we’re in the playoffs, and we’re preparing for Friday.”

Civics: Elections and a British Censorship Group

Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker

In the Disinformation Chronicle/Racket articleyesterday, we noted that “both the CCDH and Labour Together were founded by Morgan McSweeney, a Svengali credited with piloting Starmer’s rise to Downing Street.” We added that the CCDH documents “carry particular importance because McSweeney’s Labour Together operatives have been teaching election strategy to Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” with Politico dubbing Labour and the Democrats “sister parties.” 

Today, I appeared on Times UK evening edition with host Kait Borsay, who said Times radio was able to get new comment from the “Labour Together” think-tank about CCDH. Borsay relayed a statement from Labour Together, which says it has “nothing to do” with CCDH. This was surprising for a number of reasons. McSweeney not only founded both groups, he was director of CCDH for a three-year period that overlapped with Starmer’s leadership campaign. McSweeney resigned from CCDH to become Starmer’s Chief of Staff. 

What did we lose when we stopped writing letters?

Benjamin Breen:

Two things had to change to make letter writing into a form of mass communication.

First, the advent of widespread literacy, which was very much a project of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — something I wrote about here:

“So.. a cabinet secretary in the incumbent administration can email all federal student loan borrowers and tell them they’ll have to pay way more if they don’t vote properly”

Philip Greenspun:

An official U.S. Department of Education email received by a nephew who just finished college highlights the advantages of being an incumbent (his email and name redacted):

Why aren’t effective teaching tools widely adopted?

Ogden Lindsley:

The fate of highly productive educational methods in public instruction is a national shame. No highly effective educational method or program has ever been widely adopted in North America. I didn’t understand and accept this until 1983, when I read the results of Project Follow Through and how they had been ignored and covered up (Car-nine, 1983; Engelmann & Carnine, 1982). Here, the clear-cut results of the most extensive and most expensive educational research ever conducted were being ignored. You couldn’t even get the reports out of Washington. These were the results of investing public funds, and they had run out of reports! They couldn’t find them! “Call back next Monday!”

Civics: The administrative state and immigration

DHS watchlist

The DHS Bureaucrat Watch List is dedicated to exposing the career staff who have outsized influence on efforts to secure the southern border. While everyone knows who Alejandro Mayorkas and Merrick Garland are, few Americans know who the career bureaucrats are that implement their orders.  

By uncovering hidden agendas and failures, we aim to restore integrity to our immigration system and border protection by showing America who can be counted on to reform America’s broken immigration system and who is in league with left-wing open border groups. Join us in defending our borders and reclaiming America’s sovereignty.

Civics: voter data, privacy, security and elections

Peter Bernegger:

The lawsuit emphasizes that while Wisconsin’s online voter registration for the Nov. 5 election closed on Oct. 16, the portal remains active for managing absentee ballot requests and other adjustments through Election Day.

To support their claims, the plaintiffs reference the indictment of Harry Wait, who allegedly used MyVote to request absentee ballots in the names of two voters without authorization. Wait’s actions demonstrate how the system can be exploited for election fraud, according to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs have requested an immediate injunction to shut down MyVote until adequate security measures are implemented, warning that its continued use could disenfranchise voters and compromise the upcoming election.

“As such, use of the MyVote portal should be enjoined until the system and website can be redesigned and redeveloped, or retooled, and tested for cybersecurity vulnerabilities of the kind illustrated within the Harry Wait indictment,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint. “The inadequate cybersecurity safeguards present within the MyVote website pose significant risks to the integrity of the electoral process and the personal data of Wisconsin voters.”

A request for comment on the allegations sent to the Wisconsin Election Commission was not immediately returned.

K-12 Tax & $pending climate: a reality based federal taxpayer budget?

Paul Teller:

Year after year, administration after administration, Congress continues to pass last-minute spending bills without amendment, without cutting spending and without addressing our unsustainable federal debt.

They continue to extend liberal priorities without a second thought, while conservative policy provisions are left out year after year.

Despite a Republican majority in the House and very narrow Democrat control of the Senate, the current Congress has once again chosen this well-trodden path and set up Dec. 20th as the day by which to pass the annual Christmas spending bill. This Christmas chokepoint will likely be used to force an earmarks-laden omnibus appropriations bill (or equivalent) that increases spending and carries on it other big-spending items, like a food-welfare extension, a PAYGO waiver and a debt-ceiling increase.

It is noteworthy that House Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire House Leadership team adopted and sincerely advocated the appropriations plan developed by House conservatives and the Conservative Movement: a six-month CR to avoid a Christmas chokepoint, with the SAVE Act attached to prohibit the voter registration of non-citizens.

The Leadership efforts are commendable. The conservative world made a very reasonable ask, and leadership not only listened but made a real push to pass the conservative plan. They deserve thanks from conservatives.

US debt clock.

Notes on Academic Discourse and X

James Bisbee And Kevin Munger

Twitter has been a prominent forum for academics communicating online, both among themselves and with policy makers and the broader public. Elon Musk’s takeover of the company brought sweeping changes to many aspects of the platform, including public access to its data; Twitter’s approach to censorship and mis/disinformation; and tweaks to the affordances of the platform. This article addresses a narrower empirical question: What did Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform mean for this academic ecosystem? Using a snowball sample of more than 15,700 academic accounts from the fields of economics, political science, sociology, and psychology, we show that academics in these fields reduced their “engagement” with the platform, measured by either the number of active accounts (i.e., those registering any behavior on a given day) or the number of tweets written (including original tweets, replies, retweets, and quote tweets). We further tested whether this decrease in engagement differed by account type; we found that verified users were significantly more likely to reduce their production of content (i.e., writing new tweets and quoting others’ tweets) but not their engagement with the platform writ large (i.e., retweeting and replying to others’ content).

Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan

Kristina Armitage:

Ramanujan is perhaps most famous for coming up with partition identities, equations about the different ways you can break a whole number up into smaller parts (such as 7 = 5 + 1 + 1). In the 1980s, mathematicians began to find deep and surprising connections between these equations and other areas of mathematics: in statistical mechanics and the study of phase transitions, in knot theory and string theory, in number theory and representation theory and the study of symmetries.

Most recently, they’ve appeared in Mourtada’s work on curves and surfaces that are defined by algebraic equations, an area of study called algebraic geometry. Mourtada and his collaborators have spent more than a decade trying to better understand that link, and to exploit it to uncover rafts of brand-new identities that resemble those Ramanujan wrote down.

Massachusetts parents sue school district over student receiving ‘D’ after using AI for social studies project

Brie Stimson

The parents of a Massachusetts high school senior who used artificial intelligence (AI) for a social studies project have filed a lawsuit against his teachers and the school after their son received detention and a “D” grade.

“He’s been accused of cheating, and it wasn’t cheating, there was no rule in the handbook against AI,” Jennifer Harris, who along with her husband, Dale, are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts’ Plymouth County District Court last month against the Hingham High School administration and the school district, told Boston 25 News. 

The lawsuit alleges that their son will “suffer irreparable harm that is imminent” over the grade that his parents say kept him out of the National Honor Society, which they claim is threatening his standing with top tier 

Teach Math!

Alberta Parents Union:

We are urgently calling on Alberta to teach math teachers to teach math!

That may seem like a silly request, but read on to find out which math-like-substance is being sold to teachers as “teaching math” now.

It’s a perennial struggle in parent advocacy.

Parents want to know the basics are being covered in every subject, with time-tested, evidence-based approaches, so we can see our kids are learning.

Whenever we win once, though, the next fad – with the same fundamental flaws – comes packaged in new terms.

First it was “discovery math”.

Now it’s “Building Thinking Classrooms”.

Peter Liljedahl, a professor of math education at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, has seen his “Thinking Classrooms” pervade Alberta.

For him, a teacher demonstrating how to work a problem before the students work it themselves is “mimicking” rather than “thinking”.

Practicing math facts like reciting “2+2=4” and multiplication tables is deemed “memorizing” rather than “thinking”.

And on it goes.

2007 math forum audio video

Connected Math

Discovery Math

Singapore Math

Remedial math

Madison’s most recent Math Task Force

Milwaukee school board committee votes ‘no’ on Carmen co-location, but stays flexible on lease

Cleo Krejci:

The board’s committee on accountability, finance and personnel approved a resolution that gives notice of non-renewal for a Carmen lease with MPS that will expire in June 2026. The resolution, which is expected to go to the full board for approval Oct. 31, signals an intention to end the “co-location” between Carmen’s South and Southeast high schools that currently operate out of the same buildings as MPS’ Academia de Lenguaje y Bellas Artes (ALBA) and Pulaski High School.

But committee members also wrote-in a caveat: Carmen could still extend its lease by one more year, if necessary.

That’s because Carmen is in the midst of constructing a new $55 million high school, scheduled to be open for students in fall 2026. That’s just a few months after the charter’s lease with MPS ends that June — meaning if construction is delayed, students could end up with nowhere to go.

“Obviously, we don’t want students to be displaced. We want Carmen students to have a home while the building is being built,” said board member Missy Zombor, who has led board efforts to end the co-location.

Wisconsin Administrative Literacy Coaching Budget Rhetoric

Alec Johnson:

Over a year after the Wisconsin Legislature approved Act 20 and Gov. Tony Evers signed it into law, the state Department of Public Instruction is still waiting for the joint finance committee to release nearly $50 million it was promised as part of the new legislation intended to improve reading among state schoolchildren.

State DPI superintendent Jill Underly appealed to the committee to release those funds in a letter sent Monday to state Rep. Mark Born, R-Beaver Dam, and state Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, who co-chair the committee. Underly said she has “repeatedly called” for the committee to release the funding.

It was among the issues Underly brought up in her annual state of education address last month. Underly said at the time the state Legislature’s failure to release most of the funding needed to help schools implement the law left already-struggling public schools to fund the mandate themselves.

The new law requires schools to emphasize a phonics-based approach for teaching reading, meaning students learn how to sound out parts of words.

Evers signed the bill in July 2023. He also enacted a controversial partial veto to Act 100, the appropriations bill that funded the bill. That veto has been the source of legal wrangling since spring.

“I understand you have a concern about the governor’s partial veto, but the clear decision of the circuit court judge in that case has now once again made it clear you have the obligation to provide these funds to DPI,” Underly wrote this week to Born and Marklein. “I know we agree that the children of Wisconsin need this critical support to learn to read, and we need to support the Wisconsin districts with the greatest early literacy needs. Now is the time to keep your promise to Wisconsin families. Now is the time to take action and release the funding.”

Notes and links on DPI Superintendent Jill Underly.

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?

Chronic Absenteeism Persists in All Corners of Wisconsin

Wisconsin Policy Forum:

Despite a decline from the previous year, rates of chronic absenteeism for Wisconsin’s students – defined as missing more than one in ten school days for any reason – remained at historically high levels in 2023 for children of every race, grade level, and socioeconomic status. District leaders point to many causes, including lasting impacts of the pandemic. Some have made improvements through strong communication campaigns and concerted, districtwide efforts. 

In the 2022-23 school year (referred to in this brief as 2023), 19.5% of Wisconsin’s K-12 public school district and charter students were chronically absent. While this number represents a welcome decline from the record number of students who were chronically absent in the prior school year, it is still dramatically higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Last year, we delved into the data on chronic absenteeism in Wisconsin and found that, in 2021, chronic absenteeism rose alarmingly and was highest for districts with large shares of students of color and students from low-income households. Since that time, two more years of data have been published, showing rates even higher than in 2021. Here, we analyze these latest data in an effort to plumb not only the problem but also potential causes and solutions.

The data we use come from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which defines chronic absenteeism as missing at least 10% of possible attendance days, including excused absences. In most school districts, this amounts to a student missing 18 or more days of school in a year.

More.

Abbey Machtig Summary.

Wauwatosa School District faces potential legal action over plans to close STEM school and programs

Ben Jordan:

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, known as WILL, claims the district would be violating the constitution for ‘racial balancing’.

The Wauwatosa School Board is mulling plans to close WSTEM Elementary School. A district task force report says the school currently lacks diversity.

Watch: TMJ4’s Ben Jordan investigates potential legal action involving Wawautosa’s STEM programs. 

WILL claims it would be illegal to move forward with that plan.

“Why does WILL believe shutting down this school would be illegal?” TMJ4 reporter Ben Jordan asked.

“The U.S. Constitution prohibits what’s called racial balancing which is to try to balance the type of students you have in a district based on their race,” said WILL attorney Dan Lennington.

Lennington sent a letter to the Wauwatosa School District superintendent Tuesday, saying the district, “has ‘no authority…. to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.’”

Curiously, Madison taxpayers funded the expansion of two of its least diverse schools a few years ago: Van Hise elementary and Hamilton Middle.

Candidate forum at Madison West High School (east?)

Kayla Huynh:

Most students at West High School aren’t old enough to vote in November’s election. 

That shouldn’t stop them from learning about the candidates on the ballot, though, said Adah Lambeck, a 17-year-old senior at West High.

Lambeck and students from the high school’s civics club hosted two town halls Monday with candidates running for U.S. Senate, including Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin and Libertarian challenger Phil Anderson.

“I think we achieved our goal, which was to educate the student body about the positions of the different candidates on issues,” Lambeck said following the event at West High’s auditorium. “That way, when they do turn 18, they can make a more informed decision when they’re voting.”

Republican challenger Eric Hovde didn’t attend the event. Campaign spokesman Zach Bannon said “the schedule just didn’t end up working” and Hovde “never confirmed participation.” Hovde sparred with Baldwin Friday in their first and only scheduled debate.

“The students have been working on this for a year,” said Carrie Bohman, a social studies teacher and adviser to the civics club. “I wish Republican candidate Hovde was here, but he opted to cancel on Friday.” 

Note on class size

James Furey:

I really think the composition of the class matters more than the number of students. And of course, if the teacher is empowered to enact consequences, that makes a huge difference. I have more students right now than at any previous point in my career and it’s my (so far) best year ever.

K-12 results and implications

Holden Culotta

Mike Rowe: “We’re dealing with alarming math … For every five tradespeople who retire this year, two will replace them.”

“I got a call a few months ago from a company … building four nuclear-powered subs. They need to hire 100,000 tradespeople in the next nine years. This guy called me and said, ‘Can you help? … Do you know where they are?’

And I said, ‘Yeah, I do, they’re in the eighth grade.’ We have to start now, because we’re racing the math and the math almost never loses.” @mikeroweworks

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?

See this 8th grade graduation exam from 1912.

Jeremy Wayne Tate:

Somehow the one room school house produced objectively higher educational outcomes for 8th graders 100 years ago than 12th graders today.

They did it with almost no budget, a partial schedule, and no Dep of Education.

Shakespeare on the wane?

Drew Lichtenberg:

How real is this Shakespeare shrinkage? American Theatre magazine, which collects data from more than 500 theaters, publishes a list of the most performed plays each season. In 2023-24, there were 40 productions of Shakespeare’s plays. There were 52 in 2022-23 and 96 in 2018-19. Over the past five years, Shakespeare’s presence on American stages has fallen a staggering 58 percent. At many formerly Shakespeare-only theaters, the production of the Bard’s plays has dropped to as low as less than 20 percent of the repertory.

Why might American theaters be running away from Shakespeare? […]

Over the past 10 years, as American politics and culture have grown more contentious, Shakespeare has become increasingly politicized. In 2017, the Public Theater’s Delacorte production of “Julius Caesar” depicted the assassination of a Donald Trump-like Caesar. The production elicited protests from Trump supporters, and corporate sponsors pulled their funding. Shakespeare is also under assault from the progressive left. In July 2020, the theater activist collective “We See You, White American Theater” turned the industry upside down with demands for a “bare minimum of 50 percent BIPOC representation in programming and personnel,” referring to Black, Indigenous and people of color. Though Shakespeare’s name went unmentioned, his work remained the white, male, European elephant in the room. […]

A look at the future of the University of Wisconsin System

Wisconsin Legislative Council:

This memo summarizes the proposals raised by members during the first four meetings of the Study
Committee on the Future of the University of Wisconsin (UW) System or submitted by members
directly to Chair Nedweski or Legislative Council staff. This memo is intended to guide committee
discussion during the October 24, 2024 meeting and help the committee determine recommendations it
would like to make to the Joint Legislative Council.
Proposed Recommendation #1: Separate UW-Madison From UW System

Raised by: Several Committee Members
Several committee members propose to separate governance and funding of UW-Madison from the
governance and funding of the other 12 UW campuses. The proposals envision creating a new Board of Regents to oversee UW-Madison and maintaining a separate Board of Regents to oversee the other comprehensive universities. The proposals also envision creating a new state appropriation to provide general purpose revenue (GPR) funding specific to UW-Madison, and maintaining or increasing a separate GPR appropriation for the other comprehensive universities in the UW System.
Individual members propose varying details relating to the separation, such as creation of UW-Madison
as an authority rather than a state agency, a requirement that UW System headquarters be located outside of Madison, and a guaranteed GPR funding percentage increase for both UW-Madison and the separated UW System each biennium.
Proposed Recommendation #2: Cr

Meanwhile, k-12…..

Civics: Taxpayer funded US and UK Censorship

Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker

The British are coming, to meddle in our elections!

In an explosive leak with ramifications for the upcoming U.S. presidential election, internal documents from the Center for Countering Digital Hate—whose founder is British political operative Morgan McSweeney, now advising the Kamala Harris campaign—show the group plans in writing to “kill Musk’s Twitter” while strengthening ties with the Biden/Harris administration and Democrats like Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has introduced multiple bills to regulate online “misinformation.”

Senator Klobuchar’s office did not respond to request for comment.

Collingwood:

A bombshell report, by renowned investigative reporter @mtaibbi and former US Senate investigator @thackerpd, could have serious political and diplomatic ramifications for the UK. This thread explains why, and lists the questions that must be asked of the government.

Politics UK:

BREAKING: Donald Trump has filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against ‘far-left’ Labour helping the Kamala Harris campaign for ‘illegal foreign campaign contributions’ and ‘interference in our elections’

Mike Benz:

CCDH — whose explicit written goal is to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” — not only has its Chairman come from NATO’s Atlantic Council, its former Comms chief was a CIA operative who worked extensively in NATO intelligence ops.

Thats where this is coming from, folks

Network Effects:

Countering “hate” or “disinformation” is not a side-show or small-scale political tactic, it is a key pathway to take and manage power today. The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s founder Morgan McSweeney is Kier Starmer’s Chief of Staff.

Notes legislation addressing Wisconsin’s long term, disastrous reading results

Quinton Klabon:

ACT 20 READING UPDATE

  • 38% of districts did not reply to DPI’s legal obligation to report teacher reading retraining progress (LETRS)
  • of 62%, ~10% of administrators, ~15% of teachers had not begun
  • boards responsible for July 2025 deadline, law needs 2026 check for missers

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?

Notes on Madison’s 2024 Fall Tax & $pending increase referendum

Abbey Machtig:

Student/adult ratio for the school construction projects included in the referendum:

Orchard Ridge 3.92

Toki Middle School: 4.84

Gompers Elementary: 4.56

Black Hawk Middle: 4.24

Anana Elementary: 4.5

Crestwood elementary: 4.78

Sherman Middle: 4.0

Shabazz City High: 4.0

Cherokee Middle: 4.96

Sennett Middle: 4.64


Notes and links on the Fall 2024 referendum, here.

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Civics: “Prolonged, Warrantless Surveillance of Entire Driving Population”

Don King:

“I don’t like the government following my every movement and treating me like a criminal suspect, when they have no reason to believe I’ve done anything wrong,” said Lee, a 42-year-old Norfolk husband and father who recently retired from the Navy.  

“My work requires me to drive around Norfolk very often, and it’s incredibly disturbing to know the city can track my every move during that time,” said Crystal, a 44-year-old home health care worker who lives in Portsmouth. 

In 2023, Norfolk Police partnered with a company called Flock Safety, Inc. to install 172 automatic license plate reading cameras across town. The cameras were strategically placed to create what Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot referred to as a “nice curtain of technology,” which would make it “difficult to drive anywhere of any distance without running into a camera somewhere.”  

Civics: politics and the right to representation

Rachel Alexander:

Progressive activists are warning conservative election attorneys to avoid getting involved in litigation over the 2024 election or they will have their jobs threatened, will be targeted for disbarment, and even prosecuted. Many attorneys who assisted with litigation over the disputed 2020 presidential election, such as Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman, underwent disciplinary proceedings and prosecution.

The New York Times published an op-ed a few days ago by law professor Kate Shaw (pictured above, left) warning attorneys not to represent Trump in election litigation. She said, “Lawyers cannot, consistent with their ethical obligations, participate in devising litigation that is retrofitted to support the position Mr. Trump seems to hold — that the only ‘real’ Americans are those who cast their ballots for him and that those who vote against him are by definition engaging in fraud.”

She provided instructions on how to punish these attorneys. “Attorneys at prominent law firms should already know that they cannot defensibly assist in Mr. Trump’s specious efforts. If they waver, their corporate clients should make clear they do not want their attorneys associating with a candidate who has already told us he will not respect the will of the voters if they do not choose him.”

Marc Elias, the controversial election fraud denying progressive election attorney who intervenes in election lawsuits and files bar complaints against conservative election attorneys, posted the article on X, calling it a “must read.”

More.

Civics: More on Facebook Censorship

Glenn Greenwald:

A long-time senior Israeli government official and Netanyahu/Liduk adviser, Jordana Cutler, is now the chief of Facebook’s US censorship unit on Israel and Palestine.

She repeatedly and aggressively uses that position to demand censorship of Israel critics:

Notes on “edtech”

Joanne Jacobs:

Hoping to be “innovative,” schools have added digital devices — tablets, Chromebooks, iPads and so on — without a clear idea of how to use them or any reason to believe students will learn more, writes Amy Tyson on After Babel.

A former child therapist and the mother of four children, Tyson is a co-founder of Everyschool, which promotes the limited use of technology only if it’s superior to traditional methods.

“Teachers are pressured to use devices and apps because districts have invested millions in technology,” she writes. Students spend more and more time on screens.

“Are we now in danger of criminalising vulnerability?”

Helen Warren:

It is high summer in the English suburbs, and the hedges around Josh’s house are cut sharp as a Lego brick. He has mown the grass to an exacting stripe and is clipping the ragged bay tree. Josh, who is 13, has few friends and spends his school holidays gardening. From inside the house, his parents watch him work, stranded between pride and despair.

For the past two years, Josh’s teachers have complained of “persistent poor behaviour”, ranging from making inappropriate comments to hitting a fellow pupil who had been taunting him. An educational psychologist concluded that Josh had autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but recommended his parents, Mike and Sarah, seek a formal NHS diagnosis. In the meantime, the school continued to sanction Josh for small infractions — forgetting his pencil or kicking a chair. His parents pointed out repeatedly that his suspected autism led him to be forgetful, lose focus and lash out when confronted. Teachers countered that his condition did not excuse his conduct.

The situation escalated during a PE lesson in June, when a teaching assistant reported that Josh had shouted, “Get them out! Reform UK” at a non-white pupil, apparently referencing the populist political party, which takes a hard line on immigration. Josh disputed having mentioned “Reform UK” and said that “get them out” was a cricketing reference, as he was bowling at the time. He was given detention, during which he wrote a story about three Asian men embarking on an ill-fated adventure to join Isis-K, the Afghan-based Islamist terror group. Their hopes of glory collapse when they are caught by counter-terror police, convicted and sent to prison. The final line reads, “Moral of the story: don’t try and join Isis-K”.

Civics: A Media Beyond Caricature

Victor Davis Hanson:

Stahl falsely claimed the laptop “can’t be verified.” She further incorrectly asserted, “So this story about Hunter and his laptop, some repair shop found it; the source is Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.” The New York Post, in fact, reported the story. The FBI did not deny it.

Yet old Twitter and Facebook, under collaborating FBI tutelage and pressure, suppressed dissemination of the truth. Joe Biden’s then-advisor and now Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in conjunction with former interim CIA Director Michael Morrel, helped round up “51 former intelligence authorities” (among them Leon Panetta and both John Brennan and James Clapper, who had admitted previously of lying under oath to Congress) to claim falsely that the laptop had all the hallmarks of a Russian information gambit to warp the election.

Joe Biden used the “expert” consensus to further lie in the last Biden-Trump debate that the laptop was cooked up by the Russians. And neither CBS, the “intelligence authorities,” nor any of the Bidens have ever since apologized.

More recently, CBS got caught selectively editing the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, cutting and pasting an incoherent Harris response to lessen her embarrassing word salad. And in a subsequent interview with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the network once again edited and pruned his answers, but in contrast, on this occasion, to make him seem far less persuasive.

In yet another current CBS interview with author Ta-Nehisi Coates, network host Tony Dokoupil honestly questioned Coates about his new, one-sided, anti-Israeli book The Message. The result was that the left-wing icon Coates was almost immediately revealed to be abjectly ignorant of the Middle East, unapologetically biased, and completely uninterested in any viewpoint other than his own partisan prejudices.

Notes on Seattle k-12 tax and $pending practices

Mel Westbrook:

I reviewed the upcoming Seattle Schools capital levy (BEX VI) which sits at $1.8B. They aren’t even TRYING to hide using more capital dollars for operations. 90% of the Tech department’s funding now comes from this levy (and that’s up 10%). bit.ly/3BTfYYu

“Chicago used its whopping $2.8 billion allocation, which it was required to spend by September 2024, to add nearly 8,000 positions to its workforce”

Austin Berg:

🔻“This is what it looks like when you burn a district down,’ said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “It is a level of dysfunction that feels beyond destabilizing, enough to make people lose confidence in the system.’”

🔻Soon after the federal government approved a historic $190 billion in covid relief funds for schools, experts warned school districts across the country that it would be risky to use the one-time funding for ongoing expenses…Chicago used its whopping $2.8 billion allocation, which it was required to spend by September 2024, to add nearly 8,000 positions to its workforce, budget documents show.

🔻The district has resisted even modest staff reductions, but also had no clear plan for how to maintain that payroll once the covid relief money was gone. It also has promised not to close any schools, although enrollment in the district has fallen significantly over the past two decades.

🔻Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher who is closely aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, says he won’t tolerate cuts to the schools staff, which he refers to as laying off “Brown and Black women…” the mayor has pressured the schools to consider a high-interest, short-term $300 million loan that some call irresponsible, because it shifts the problem to next year and adds interest.

More, from the Bezos’ Washington Post.

I Went from Reading 40 Books a Year to Reading 0

Iyaylo Durmonski:

As you can see from my website, part of the content here is the creation of book summaries. Obviously, for a site that produces book summaries to function, I have to read books in order to summarize them (like, duh!).

However, with time, books gradually become something more than just content for my site. I started to perceive book-reading as a race.

Race towards a potentially ever-evolving individual who is getting better by the hour.

More books meant more knowledge. And more knowledge seemed to offer the possibility for more opportunities.

But was this true?

“Hiring managers say recent college grads are unprepared for the workforce”

Intelligent:

Generation Z (Gen Z) has a reputation for being challenging to work with and difficult to manage.

In August, Intelligent.com surveyed 966 business leaders involved in hiring decisions at their company to explore attitudes toward hiring recent Gen Z college graduates.

What we found:

75% of companies report that some or all of the recent college graduates they hired this year were unsatisfactory
6 in 10 companies fired a recent college graduate they hired this year
1 in 6 hiring managers say they are hesitant to hire from this cohort
Hiring managers say recent college grads are unprepared for the workforce, can’t handle the workload, and are unprofessional
1 in 7 companies may refrain from hiring recent college graduates next year
9 in 10 hiring managers say recent college graduates should undergo etiquette training
3 in 4 Companies Report Issues With Recent Grad Hires
This year, 94% of companies report hiring recent college graduates. Among these companies, only 25% state that all recent college graduate hires worked out well, while 62% mention that only some were successful. Further, 14% report that only a few or none of the hires were successful.

Civics: “qualified Immunity”

FIRE:

Qualified immunity shields government officials — from cops to public college administrators — from accountability for violating people’s constitutional rights

AI Detectors Falsely Accuse Students of Cheating—With Big Consequences

By Jackie Davalos and Leon Yin

The best AI writing detectors are highly accurate, but they’re not foolproof. Businessweek tested two of the leading services—GPTZero and Copyleaks—on a random sample of 500 college application essays submitted to Texas A&M University in the summer of 2022, shortly before the release of ChatGPT, effectively guaranteeing they weren’t AI-generated. The essays were obtained through a public records request, meaning they weren’t part of the datasets on which AI tools are trained. Businessweek found the services falsely flagged 1% to 2% of the essays as likely written by AI, in some cases claiming to have near 100% certainty.

Even such a small error rate can quickly add up, given the vast number of student assignments each year, with potentially devastating consequences for students who are falsely flagged. As with more traditional cheating and plagiarism accusations, students using AI to do their homework are having to redo assignments and facing failing grades and probation.

The students most susceptible to inaccurate accusations are likely those who write in a more generic manner, either because they’re neurodivergent like Olmsted, speak English as a second language (ESL) or simply learned to use more straightforward vocabulary and a mechanical style, according to students, academics and AI developers. A 2023 study by Stanford University researchers found that AI detectors were “near-perfect” when checking essays written by US-born eighth grade students, yet they flagged more than half of the essays written by nonnative English students as AI-generated. OpenAI recently said it has refrained from releasing an AI writing detection tool in part over concerns it could negatively affect certain groups, including ESL students.

Cleaning up “Scientific Reports”: Can It Be Done?

Derek Lowe:

I have had some problems with the journal Scientific Reports over the years, and I’m not alone. At the same time, I’ve read some interesting and useful papers published there as well. But worthless/faked manuscripts showing up in a journal tend to contaminate everything else that shows up there, which is a problem that you’d hope that scientific publishers are concerned about. To put things in the style of my late father, his one of his analogies was that if he had a gallon of urine and put a shot glass of wine into it, he still had a gallon of urine. On the other hand, if he had a gallon of wine and put a shot glass of urine into that, he now had a secondgallon of urine. That’s the problem.

This open letter, signed by many well-known literature fraud experts, is (to me) more than enough evidence that Scientific Reports has some serious problems with the papers it’s letting through, and that the publishers (Springer Nature) are not doing enough to address them. It shows numerous examples of papers with odd and questionable references in them and with phrases that are redolent of (unstated) chatbot use, those apparently in attempts to bypass automated plagiarism-detection software. The authors of the letter note that even when the editors have taken action, that can be just to republish the same paper with slightly altered phrases:

Rethinking School Design: How Education Architecture Reflects Changing Views on Childhood

Kalina Prelikj:

For decades, school design was synonymous with rigidity. Rows of identical classrooms, harsh lighting and long, narrow corridors created environments that felt more like factories — or worse, prisons — than places for nurturing young minds. This comparison isn’t entirely accidental. While it may be more legend than the fact that many schools were designed by the same architects who built prisons, the underlying principles guiding their design were strikingly similar. The focus was on efficiency, control and uniformity — goals just as relevant to prisons as early educational institutions.

Large institutional architecture firms, often responsible for designing schools, libraries, hospitals and prisons, employed similar principles across these different building types. These designs prioritized managing large groups of people, keeping them orderly and minimizing disruption. The result was monolithic, drab and often devoid of warmth or inspiration — structures that, like prisons, organized people and their activities in ways that stripped away individuality and creativity.

But the world has changed. And so has our understanding of childhood and adolescence. Society now sees children as individuals with unique needs and ways of learning. The rigid designs of the past are giving way to spaces that embrace creativity, exploration and a more holistic approach to education. This shift is clearly reflected in the A+Awards winners and finalists in the education categories, where innovative designs redefine how we think about learning environments. With that in mind, this article explores the child-centric principles shaping the design of contemporary educational spaces.

“concluded that there was “little to no evidence about children and adolescents”

Andrew Sullivan:

Many WPATH members, we discover, also knew the studies would “reveal little or no evidence and put us in an untenable position in terms of affecting policy or winning lawsuits.”

In other words, WPATH knows full well that their transing of children has little to no medical evidence behind it. So when Johns Hopkins presented the review, WPATH instantly buried it, suppressing publication of all the studies but two. Other contributors drew on their experiences as expert witnesses to suggest removing “language such as ‘insufficient evidence,’ ‘limited data,’ etc.” that could ‘empower’ groups ‘trying to claim that gender-affirming interventions are experimental.’” SOC-8 — the latest Standards of Care from WPATH — was therefore knowingly based on concealing the truth, and written for lawsuits, not patients. Not medicine. Ideology.

And all along, this allegedly professional group, WPATH, conferred with Levine at HHS. They gave her an early embargoed version of SOC-8, with lower age limits for some treatments, and her office responded, horrified. They feared that the listing of “specific minimum ages for treatment … under 18, will result in devastating legislation for trans care”: 

Levine “was very concerned that having ages (mainly for surgery) will affect access to healthcare for trans youth … and she and the Biden administration worried that having ages in the document will make matters worse.”

So they removed the age limits! For these procedures, among others: removal of both ovaries; double mastectomy; turning a girl’s clitoris into a micro-penis; surgically removing a boy’s penis; surgical and chemical castration of boys; and permanent removal of the capacity for orgasm for both boys and girls. I repeat: permanent removal of the capacity for orgasm for both boys and girls.

Civics: Open Records and the University of North Carolina

Brendan Eich:

Screencap from protected account I follow, who replied linking to this. UNC should be pried open on appeal. Baric worked for taxpayers (ignoring any pharma bucks under the table).

K-12 Tax & $pending Climate: “we are on pace for 30% of all govt revenue going to interest payments”

Wall Street Silver

Final numbers for fiscal year 2024

Total US govt revenue = $4.918 trillion
Interest on natl debt = $1.133 trillion
23% of all govt revenue went to interest on the debt.

2025 fiscal year started Oct 1st, we are on pace for 30% of all govt revenue going to interest payments.

America:

Half a TRILLION dollars has been added to the National Debt in the in the past 3 weeks.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

Jason:

Each American will pay $3,593 in interest payments this year… on our national debt!

Madison’s K-12 Schools Don’t Make the Grade

Dave Cieslewicz:

This morning it’s grades. They’re getting rid of them. No more letters, only “advanced,” “proficient,” “developing,” and “emerging.” Only four categories — apparently no one will fail.

Actually, this is nothing new. MMSD has had this system for elementary and middle schoolers for a while and it was being “piloted” (read: phased in) at East High School. Now it will go districtwide at some point in the next couple of years.

For elementary students I’m not sure this is such a bad idea. No reason to crush the souls of little kids with D’s and F’s. But when a kid gets to high school he should start to get a taste of the real world, where there is, in fact, such a thing as failure. And dealing with those inevitable failures is something adults need to learn to do. Shielding kids from disappointment is a bad idea — especially when it’s disappointment in himself.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

More Reason to Vote ‘No’ on Madison Schools 2024 Referendum Question

Dave Cieslewicz:

And, of course, all of the underlying reasons to send the school board a message about their priorities and their performance are still very much there. This is a district with some of the lowest test scores and some of the highest absenteeism rates in the state, a district where the racial achievement gap is the highest in the state and where there were 800 police calls to schools last year. And it’s a district so badly managed that they plan to take a decade to fix a $3 million shortfall in their free lunch program. A district so fiscally undisciplined that it will add 100 new staff positions to schools that have seen declining enrollments for a decade.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Civics: Election Censorship

Glenn Greenwald:

Yes, this is all a complete lie from @karaswisher on CNN – as they claim she’s the one who “knows.”

Twitter locked the NY Post out of their account for 2 weeks – until 3 days before the election – because the NY Post refused to remove links to 6 stories about Biden.

One year later, federal response to parental concerns about Native school still unclear

Ted McDermott Public Service Journalism Team

These allegations from students, parents and staff of the Flandreau Indian School – an off-reservation Bureau of Indian Education-operated boarding school – are at the center of this Lee Enterprises Public Service Journalism Team investigation. But they are not news to the BIE itself. 

The bureau has known about these concerns – as well as others – since the fall of 2023. That’s when Lexi Follette, an alumnus of the school and the mother of a recent Flandreau graduate, filed a lengthy complaint with the federal government about the treatment of staff and students at the boarding school located in southeastern South Dakota. 

Madison College scraps monthslong search for new leader, restarts

By Becky Jacobs

More than a year after the school’s current president announced his retirement, Madison College is starting over in a search for its next leader.

Three finalists were scheduled to attend forums this week and next week in Madison, where employees, students and community members could provide input.

But after one candidate backed out, Donald Dantzler Jr., president of the Madison College District Board of Trustees, canceled the events for the remaining finalists and announced Tuesday the board will restart its search.

Civics: “I now doubt the practical effectiveness of some of the policies I embraced in previous years”

Noah Smith:

So anyway, I want to go through a bunch of progressive issues from the 2010s — immigration, DEI, energy and climate, crime and policing, the welfare state, universal health care, unions, and trans rights — and explain why I think they’re all mostly stuck. 

Immigration

In the 2010s, immigration went from a technocratic consensus to a progressive cause célèbre. This happened for two reasons. The primary reason was that Donald Trump and his reactionary movement were against immigration, probably on racial grounds (though they never explicitly admit this). For many progressives, that made fighting for immigration a way of fighting against racism. A more minor reason was that many progressives either implicitly or explicitly bought into the idea that immigration would create a permanent Democratic majority

In the 2010s, pro-immigration sentiment soared. In 2020, Gallup reported that for the first time since it started keeping track in 1965, the percent of Americans who said they want more immigration was larger than the percent who said they want less:

More.

Civics: Federal Taxpayer Grantmaking and DEI regulations

Christopher Rufo:

The most significant of these initiatives is the agency-wide effort to redirect billions of dollars toward supposedly oppressed racial groups and other “underserved communities.” In 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary Yellen jointly announced$8.7 billion in investments to increase lending to “minority-owned businesses,” among other groups. Two years later, the Treasury announced that some 30 private companies were committed to raising $3 billionin deposits for “underserved communities,” to be delivered through community-development financial institutions (CDFIs) and minority depository institutions (MDIs).

The State Small Business Capital Initiative is another node of the department’s slush fund for favored racial groups. In 2021, Treasury announced that it was using SSBCI to route $2.5 billion to “businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, including those in communities of color.” The first $1.5 billion of this total was earmarked for small businesses in Treasury-designated areas “owned by individuals that have faced barriers . . . including membership in a group that has been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society.” The other $1 billion went to “incentive funds” aimed at increasing venture capital investments in these businesses.

Secretary Yellen has also intensified Treasury’s commitment to awarding federal contracts based on race. Treasury openly discriminates in favor of “diverse” businesses, reporting to Congress that the department’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) was committed to “[e]stablish[ing] an organizational climate that advances procurement equity”—that is, “the percentages of contract obligations awarded to minority-owned and women-owned businesses.” Earlier this year, the department reported progress: Treasury had “[i]ncreased federal business with Black businesses” to “over $188 million in government contracts.”

The early days of peer review: five insights from historic reports

David Adam:

The initial process was much more informal than the one scientists know today, which became formalized in the 1970s, she adds. “Some early referees’ reports have news about their holidays or what else they are doing.”

What do these and other discussions show us about peer review? “When peer review goes well, it is a system that allows authors to improve the way they communicate their results. It is a unique moment of candid exchange between scientists where anonymity can neutralize the discourse,” Ferlier suggests.

“When it goes wrong, it can be a biased or inefficient quality-control that simply slows down the circulation of scientific knowledge.”

Nature rummaged through the archive for insights into the evolution of peer review.

More.

Ireland’s big school secret: how a year off-curriculum changes teenage lives

Zoe Williams:

There’s no curriculum for any part of TY, but core subjects – Irish, English, maths, PE – have to be covered in some form, for two hours a week. Work experience is recommended at two to four weeks a year; career guidance and social, personal and health education (SPHE) for an hour a week. Otherwise, schools decide for themselves what to do.

Hare canters through what’s going on in his TY for 2024-25: nine weeks each of Chinese, folklore and law; nine weeks of BodyRight, a consent, relationships and friendship workshop devised by Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Then there’s everything from aviation to arts, coding to car maintenance, political engagement to boxing. There’s a young scientist programme, with two separate blocks of work experience. As part of a Stem module, two former police officers set up a crime scene and show kids how to run an investigation.

(Massachusetts) High School Exit Exams: A Roadblock to Graduation or a Necessary Standard?

Harvard Graduate School of Education Event:

In a ballot question this fall, voters in Massachusetts will be asked if they wish to end the requirement that high school students pass exit exams in math, English, and science to earn a diploma. Critics of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement point to national studies that have connected these types of standardized exams to higher dropout rates for students of color and students from low-income families, while supporters say they maintain academic standards. With only a handful of states still using high school exit exams, we consider their effectiveness and discuss ways to help all youth succeed, including the most vulnerable.

Key Takeaways



State assessments should be made accessible to all students — translated into multiple languages, built on universal design principles, and include accommodations for students with disabilities.


Supporters of high-stakes graduation tests, like the MCAS exams in Massachusetts, say they put pressure on educators and leaders to provide support to meet the needs of all students. The high school graduation requirement also encourages students to engage in their learning process, supporters say.


In Massachusetts, there are alternative pathways for students to show their competency in math, English, and science, besides MCAS exams. However, the different pathways, including an appeals process, are not always fully utilized by school districts.

Notes on politics and the Massachusetts’ graduation exam.

The taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI recently reduced rigor….

“the percentage of teaching staff versus “other” staff varies”

Will Flanders:

Madison Percent teaching staff: 50.61%

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

More Madison students joining after-school activities like fall sports

Kayla Huynh

Madison children and teens are becoming increasingly involved in activities outside of class, according to a recent report on hundreds of clubs and athletics programs run by the public school district.

Nearly 60% of middle and high school students participated last school year in at least one co-curricular activity sponsored by the Madison Metropolitan School District, a 6 percentage point jump from 2021-22, according to figuresshared with the Madison School Board this month.

The school district has expanded programming, increased transportation options and nearly doubled the number of recreation staff to further boost participation among middle school students, said Mary Roth, who leads Madison School & Community Recreation, or MSCR.

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]

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 (US Dept of Education) was founded in 1979 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter to fulfill a campaign promise to a teachers union”

Kelly Meyerhofer:

Student loans and controversial debt forgiveness programs also an Education Department responsibility

Managing federal student loans also falls under the department’s oversight.

Under the Biden administration, the department has canceled more than $160 billion in student loans for 4.7 million borrowers, largely by adjusting the rules of existing programs.

The department also issues regulations about how civil rights laws should apply to students, under the direction of the administration.

The Obama administration, for example, wrote new rules on sexual assault in schools and colleges. The Trump administration rolled them back, handing more protections to those accused of assault and saying the previous rules went too far.

More recently, the Biden administration wrote rules providing greater and more explicit protections for LGBTQ students. Republican-led states have sued to block the rules, with a judge putting the regulations on pause in many states, including some schools in Wisconsin.

It would be useful to evaluate the role and effectiveness of the taxpayer funded federal grants (“grant making industrial complex”)on k-12….

More.

And.

Curiously, after reducing rigor statewide, Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly chimes in.

——

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

——

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]

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?

Shevchenko Expelled From Spanish Team Championship After Phone Found In Toilet

Colin McGourty:

22-year-old GM Kirill Shevchenko has been expelled from the 2024 Spanish Team Championship with his draw against GM Bassem Amin in round one and win over GM Francisco Vallejo in round two turned into losses. When Shevchenko’s regular absence from the board aroused suspicion in round two a locked phone was found in the toilet, with arbiters claiming a link of the phone to Shevchenko based on handwriting and behavior. 

The 2024 Spanish Team Championship Honor Division, taking place in the North African Spanish city of Melilla from October 12-18, has been shaken by a scandal after Shevchenko, playing for C.A. Silla – Integrant Col·lectius, was expelled from the tournament.

Shevchenko, who was born in Ukraine and has since switched to represent Romania, is the world number-69 and became a grandmaster at the age of 14 years and nine months. His greatest achievements include winning the 2021 European Team Chess Championship with Ukraine, as well as the individual Lindores Abbey Blitz in Riga in the same year, where he topped the table ahead of GMs Fabiano Caruana and Arjun Erigaisi.  

St. Augustine Prep’s latest campus

Alec Johnson:

The new look for the old Cardinal Stritch University site in Fox Point and Glendale is becoming clearer, as St. Augustine Preparatory Academy broke ground Wednesday for its new North Campus, which will serve students in 4-year-old kindergarten through 12th grade.

The school is scheduled to open in fall 2026 with just over 300 students. Officials estimate it will take about seven years after the school opens to reach its desired capacity of over 1,000 students. The school plans to start with grades 4K through six and nine, then add grades each year until it becomes a full 4K-12 school.

Plans for the school call for STEM labs, music and fine arts spaces. Its athletic facilities will include a new fieldhouse, turf soccer field and an outdoor track. It will also include facilities “for college and career readiness, and health care for students and families,” said a news release from the school.

Civics: “The FCC must act swiftly to restore public confidence in our news media”

Center For American Rights:

The Center for American Rights (CAR) has filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against WCBS-TV, a CBS-owned station, for engaging in significant and intentional news distortion.

The complaint stems from two different broadcasts of the same interview aired on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “60 Minutes” on October 5 and 6, 2024. In both broadcasts, the same question was posed to Vice President Kamala Harris regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but CBS aired two conflicting responses. These discrepancies, CAR argues, amount to deliberate news distortion—a violation of FCC rules governing broadcasters’ public interest obligations. The complaint demands CBS release the unedited transcript of the interview to set the record straight.

“This isn’t just about one interview or one network,” said Daniel Suhr, President of the Center for American Rights. “This is about the public’s trust in the media on critical issues of national security and international relations during one of the most consequential elections of our time. When broadcasters manipulate interviews and distort reality, it undermines democracy itself. The FCC must act swiftly to restore public confidence in our news media.”

The State of Educational Opportunity in America

50can:

The “State of Educational Opportunity in America: A Survey of 20,000 parents” is a new 50-state study from 50CAN and Edge Research, offering an unprecedented, state-by-state examination of the current education landscape and what is important to parents.

The 200-page report is available for download in full and by question or state.

Chaos Reigns as Chicago School Board Quits & Elections Loom

Kevin Mahnken:

At the heart of the conflict rests an elemental question: Who will govern Chicago’s schools? Mayors have enjoyed the right to appoint and dismiss members of the school board for nearly three decades, and Johnson’s slate of replacements will be able to approve his agenda once they are seated. But the Illinois legislature recently swept aside mayoral control over the district, charging the city with establishing a popularly elected, 21-seat board by 2027. In November, voters will choose the first 10 elected members, with Johnson appointing 11, to a hybrid body that will preside over the transition.

The district will spend that interregnum attempting to balance its accounts, while also negotiating new contracts for teachers and principals and deciding the fate of scores of under-enrolled schools. Local K–12 leaders foresee increasingly bitter disputes arising over the reach of the CTU, which now appears to hold most of the leverage over critical decisions. At the same time, their opponents increasingly question the legitimacy of a process that has seen one iteration of the school board precipitously leave office, and another be appointed in its place, just weeks before the election of a third set of candidates. 

Why kids should read obituaries

Peter Sipe:

about life, not death – death is merely the detail that gets these stories of life printed. And kids should read these life stories because they are: 

  • Informative: Obituaries are some of the most nutrient-dense texts a child can read. They’re biography, history, and often works of literature – major newspapers put some of their best writers on the obit beat. 
  • Interesting: Whether it’s the New York Timesor the Washington Post or the The Telegraph, the obituaries section is exclusive real estate. They don’t let boring people in. 
  • Inspirational: The curriculum features the obituaries of a flight attendant, a math professor, a farm hand, an inventor, a lieutenant colonel, and a lottery winner. The first five feature bravery, kindness, perseverance, ingenuity, and levelheadedness, all qualities we’d want children to acquire. (As for the sixth – “a cautionary fable worthy of Aesop” – it was a musical she inspired.)

How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

It’s shameful. Chicago Public School officials want to celebrate a record graduation rate when much of the other data shows they are failing Chicago’s children.

Only 26 percent of CPS 11th-graders can read and do math at grade level, according to the latest Illinois Report Card data, and yet last week the district proudly announced that 84 percent of students graduated from CPS in 2021 – a new record high. 

First of all, color us skeptical about that record high rate. Everyone knows that the city’s children were underserved by remote learning – the failures were reported ad nauseum by the press. Announcing record graduation rates is a way for district officials to sweep those failures under the rug.

But there’s a more fundamental problem: the graduation rate distracts from the fact that CPS officials are pushing out poorly educated children. 

Only 26 percent of Chicago 11th-graders are proficient in English Language Arts and only 27 percent proficient in math according to 2019 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) data.

How bad are S.F. public school lunches? We sent our restaurant critics to find out

MacKenzie Chung Fegan, Cesar Hernandez

What’s at stake? If the food is gross, students don’t eat it. With two-thirds of SFUSD studentsdepending on daily breakfasts and lunches for their nutritional needs, the quality, tastiness and, dare we say, presentation of the food matters. It’s no easy task: All school meals must abide by SFUSD nutrition standards, which meet or exceed federal and state guidelines, and the district has about $1.25 to spend for the food and milk per meal after labor and other costs, compared with about $2.50 per meal paid to Revolution Foods, which includes delivery. Since 2021, meals have been free to all 48,000 students regardless of family income.

So we, the Chronicle’s restaurant critics, grabbed our Jansport backpacks, put on our cleanest pairs of sneakers and went back to school, where we sampled the two options and weighed in with our own extremely professional opinions. After an early Revolution Foods lunch at Sloat Elementary, we headed north to Marina Middle School, a Refresh campus. (Two lunches in one day? We call that Thursday.) Below, you’ll find our real-time reactions, and check out our colleague Jill Tucker’s reporting for more information on the two school lunch programs.

Civics: A theory on the Democrat Party 2024 Coup

“Cynical Publius”

  1. On that July Sunday, some Biden staffer—taking orders from Obama or one of the other 25th Amendment extortion cabal members—posted that weird Biden candidacy resignation on X.
  2. Jill Biden got super PO’d, knew the X account password, and posted that strange follow-on post minutes later saying Joe endorsed Kamala. She did it to screw with and spite all the Dem leaders who had kicked her out of her plush First Lady gig.

Notes on politics and the Massachusetts’ graduation exam

Deanna Pan and Emma Platoff

On one side are Congressional Democrats, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is up for reelection this November and supports Question 2, the teachers union-backed measure to repeal the state mandate requiring students to pass their 10th grade MCAS exams. Democratic Governor Maura Healey sits squarely in opposition — along with Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Campbell.

“Eliminating the MCAS requirement means that we won’t have the same standard for schools across the state, so we’ll have different standards in Randolph than we will in Reading,” Healey said at a press conference Wednesday at Friends of the Children, a Roxbury-based youth advocacy nonprofit. “And that’s a system that I don’t believe sets us up for success.”

Mulligans are a thing in Wisconsin’s Evers era.

——-

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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 Madison Federalist

Noe Goldhaber

The Federalist receives funding from the Fund for American Studies Student Journalism Associationwhich “supports young conservative, libertarian and independent journalists who believe in restoring objectivity to the media.” Rothove said the Fund for American Studies has been advising the Federalist to ensure the newspaper “is a sustained effort and doesn’t just have three stories and then disappear again.”

Rothove cited Tripp Grebe, a UW-Madison student whose op-ed opposing defunding the police in 2020 was rejected by the Herald, as a motivation for starting an explicitly conservative newspaper. Grebe later had a column in the Cardinal and published the original opinion

“We’d have the ability to guarantee that, as long as you’re not writing about antisemitic conspiracy theory or something crazy, we will publish conservative students’ voices,” Rothove said. “Yes, we are in the minority on this campus. I think that if we have a publication for conservative students, it will kind of help build a network.”

Rothove said the Federalist plans to publish campus news on their Substack and hopes to have a print magazine twice a year. He said editorials will be conservative and news coverage will have some “conservative candy” but not “be super in your face, like Fox News openly right-wing, as much as we are just a non-liberal space.”

Current www.

Civics: the first amendment and taxpayer funded government censorship

Camus Excerpt

“James Madison, the author of the First Amendment, foresaw this exact situation of a government that ignores laws. In fact, and I didn’t know this until I had to research the speech, he was originally opposed to the Bill of Rights because he didn’t think paper guarantees could stop a corrupt government. So he thought bigger. He put together a document that was designed to inspire a certain personality type that would resist efforts to undo the experiment. And here a very important quality came play. James Madison was a great writer. The 44 words of the First Amendment were composed with extraordinary subtlety. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech and here’s the alliterative part, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. What was he saying? The First Amendment didn’t confer rights to the people, it didn’t entrust government with guaranteeing them. Instead, the founders stood to the side the way an old country recognizes a new country, and they simply acknowledged an eternal truth, the freedom of the human mind. And this is what censors never understand, speech is free. Trying to stop it is like trying to catch butterflies with a hammer or stop a flood with a teaspoon. Choose your metaphor, but it’s a fool’s errand. You can apply as many rules as you want. You can threaten punishment. You can lock people up. The human mind always sets its own course, even in spite of itself. The poet William Ernest Henley explained about a century after the Constitution was written, he said, remember, it matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

K-12 Tax & $pending climate: A “no” on the city of Madison 2024 November Referendum

Judith Davidoff & Liam Beran:

Soglin opened the news conference at the Park Hotel noting that the room contained an array of “unconnected” folks who are “connected by their concern for the city.” Audience members included former Alds. Nino Amato, Dave Ahrens and Dorothy Borchardt; Lisa Veldran, who led the city council office for 30 years; and Alex Saloutos, a real estate agent and staunch opponent of the referendum who recently started a blog where he addresses city issues.

Soglin, who has publicly denounced his various successors over the years, has ramped up his criticism of Rhodes-Conway and her administration this past year. In November 2023 he wrote a guest column for Isthmus arguing that Madison was facing a fiscal crisis “unprecedented in scope and depth.” And in recent months he has railed on Facebook against the referendum, charging that Rhodes-Conway and the council have been fiscally irresponsible and have failed to adequately engage lawmakers to increase state funding. But Wednesday’s news conference signaled that opponents were moving more aggressively and collectively to defeat the referendum in the final weeks before the vote. 

Sam Munger, Rhodes-Conway’s chief of staff, questioned whether Soglin, who lost a bid for reelection against Rhodes-Conway in 2019, was preparing for another run for mayor. 

Alex Saloutos:

Premature and Unjustified: Madison’s Referendum to Permanently Increase Property Taxes.

For example, the $23.2 million men’s homeless shelter and the $397.4 million BRT system were approved without operating budgets, including the sources of funds to operate them.

Inadequate oversight of human services grants. There is inadequate oversight of human services funding, with tens of millions of dollars disbursed to local providers each year without appropriate policies and sufficient monitoring of their use.

Wisconsin Policy Forum:

Madison’s spending is rising more quickly than its main revenues.

Danielle DuClos:

But Madison leaders have known of a growing budget deficit for years. In 2021, the mayor’s proposed budget projected an $18 million to $20 million shortfall by 2023 — even with pandemic-related funding to help balance the books.

Yet, the Madison City Council approved 5% and 6% raises for city employees in 2023 and 2024, respectively. The 2023 increases, which included public safety employees, cost about $7.2 million. This year’s pay raises added $4.9 million in costs for general municipal employees and $3 million for public safety employees, city figures show.

About $14.6 million of the anticipated $22 million deficit next year can be traced to labor costs, such as raises, health insurance and other fringe benefits, said Jason Stein, president of the nonpartisan research group Wisconsin Policy Forum.

While the city’s pay raises are not out of character for the rate of inflation, property tax collections aren’t keeping pace with the growth in wages, Stein said.

David Blaska:

Even more reason to vote against both MMSD spending referenda: State government ended its fiscal year with $4.6 billion surplus — over $800 million more than expected.

And:

MMSD expends $20,380 on each student, well above the $16,345 average among Wisconsin’s public schools. 

•  Because Madison taxpayers approved seven referenda over the last 25 years to jack up operating revenue, the Wisconsin Policy Forum finds, “MMSD’s funding has still held up better than school funding across Wisconsin. In 2023, the revenue limit for Madison schools was 17.8% higher than the state average for all districts.”

• In fact, MMSD in 2024 has the second-highest revenue limit per pupil among the state’s 10 largest districts. “Compared to their peers at other large urban districts, MMSD students do not stand out for having higher needs,” according to the WI Policy Forum. 

• Madison does have the second-highest share of students learning English and the fourth-highest share of students of color among those ten districts, but enrolled the fourth-lowest rate of economically disadvantaged students and third-lowest rate of students with disabilities, according to Policy Forum authors Jason Stein and Tyler Byrnes.

• Public schools account for 49% of the $7,757 annual property tax for the median Madison residence. If approved, the average homeowner can expect to pay an extra $1,049 in property taxes as the spending is phased in over four years — and forever after.

Sort of related by Mike Bloomberg:

There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program.

Former Madison mayor and local leaders urge ‘No’ vote on property tax referendum, criticize city’s fiscal strategy

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Corrinne Hess

“The property taxpayers are paying more than we receive in state aid,” Means said. “I think that makes passing referendums difficult.” 

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

“Homework isn’t graded under the new system, and attendance and behavior aren’t taken into account, either”

Abbey Machtig:

Schaefer said launching the pilot program is part of a yearslong effort to have all Madison schools use a consistent grading system. Elementary and middle schools have been using standards-based grading for several years.

Madison’s well funded k-12 system and city government are seeking substantial 607M+ tax and spending increases via referendum this fall.

Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.

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?

Money and Ohio charter schools

Stéphane Lavertu, Foreword by: Aaron Churchill Chad L. Aldis

We learn two main things about the program:

  • First, charter schools spent the supplemental funds in the classroom, most notably to boost teacher pay. As noted earlier, teacher salaries in charter schools have historically lagged. However, with the additional QCSSF dollars, qualifying charters were able to raise teacher pay by an impressive $8,276 per year on average. This allowed schools to retain more of their instructional staff, as indicated by a reduction in the number of first-year teachers as a percentage of their overall teaching staffs.
  • Second, students attending qualifying schools made greater academic progress in math and reading than their counterparts attending non-QCSSF charters. Based on an analysis of the state’s value-added scores—a measure of pupil academic growth on state assessments—Dr. Lavertu’s most conservative estimates indicate that the supplemental dollars led to additional annual learning that is equivalent to twelve and fourteen extra days in math and reading, respectively. In addition to these achievement effects, he also finds that QCSSF reduced chronic absenteeism by 5.5 percentage points.

Civics: “Progressive ideology poses a serious threat to the rule of law, and the Founders’ idea of a constitutional democracy”

John McGinnis:

At its core, the progressive left’s attack on the Constitution undermines the very foundation of American democracy: the sovereignty of the people. As historian Gordon Wood has shown, the genius of American constitutionalism lies not merely in rejecting monarchy but in placing ultimate authority in the hands of the people, not their rulers. The Constitution represents this popular sovereignty by setting firm limits on government power. Allowing any branch of government—whether Congress, the presidency, or the judiciary—to rewrite these limits at will subverts this fundamental act of self-government.

Even more troubling, as political scientist Keith Whittington has observed, it denies the people their ongoing sovereignty—their right to amend the Constitution as they see fit. The Founders designed Article V to ensure that ultimate authority always rests with the people, not with their temporary agents. A Supreme Court that seeks to enforce the Constitution as written, thus safeguarding popular sovereignty against temporary political whims, naturally becomes the target of progressive ire.

K-12 Tax & $pending climate: “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors 2024”

Chris Edwards:

This report grades governors on their fiscal policies from a limited‐government perspective. Governors receiving an A are those who have cut taxes and spending the most, whereas governors receiving an F have increased taxes and spending the most.

Notes on k-12 governance climate and elections

Jennifer Berkshire:

At a rally this summer, Donald Trump touched on the topic of school spending. “We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world, and we’re at the bottom of every list,” he told a crowd in Philadelphia. Cut spending in half, Trump insisted, and the result will be “much better education.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s claim is wildly at odds with research on the connection between school spending and student achievement. That more spending, particularly on schools attended by the poorest students, leads to improved academic performance and graduate rates is now so well established that even former naysayers have conceded the point. The evidence regarding the damage done by slashing school spending is also considerable. Deep spending cuts result not in a system that looks like Norway, as Trump opined to the faithful, but in stunted academic and life outcomes for kids.

Twelve years ago, Kansas attempted a radical experiment in tax cutting. Under then-Gov. Sam Brownback, lawmakers slashed taxes on the state’s top earners and reduced the tax rate on some business profits to zero. As one think tankput it, “Kansas Tax Cuts Among Deepest State Tax Cuts Ever Enacted.” The cuts did not bring the promised “trickle-down” economic renaissance. As revenues plunged, lawmakers were forced to make deep cuts to spending, particularly for public schools. By 2016, Kansas had tumbled to near the bottom of state spending on public elementary and high schools.

FOIA Files: The University of California

Matt Taibbi:

On November 20, 2022, 85% of Stanford University’s Faculty Senate voted to condemn Dr. Scott Atlas, a former chief of radiology at the Stanford University Medical Center who was serving on President Trump’s White House Coronavirus Task Force. The Stanford faculty pilloried Atlas for questioning the efficacy of state-enforced lockdowns, face masks, and social distancing protocols, even arguing that his claims were “anathema to our community, our values and our belief that we should use knowledge for good.” A few weeks after the Faculty Senate rendered its verdict, the Academic Advisory Board of the University of California’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement held a meeting in which its members questioned whether Atlas’ COVID-19 pronouncements were protected by academic freedom.

A series of FOIA productions shed some light on what was discussed during that meeting. Dana Nelkin, a philosophy professor at UC San Diego, seemed to draw a distinction between academic freedom and cases in which faculty members promote ideas with the potential to harm the general public, especially in the context of a pandemic. This line of thinking was seconded by Suneil Koliwad, a medical professor at UC San Francisco, who argued that Atlas had “hit us very hard as scientists in the area of public health, from basic to clinical to epidemiological.”

Notes on network politics

John Robb:

Networked Politics

As a refresher, networks haven’t just changed how we communicate (see the GG Report; Packetized Media for more detail); 

  • Exposure to networks has rewired our brains. We process information differently now. Specifically, we scan torrential information flows instead of reading or watching long-form books and broadcasts to uncover new, novel, or interesting information. 
  • We use pattern matching to make sense of the packets of information we find through scanning. We can do this independently (few people) or rely on popular podcasters, X accounts, or YouTube personalities to pattern match for us (many people). 
  • Overwhelmingly, people have opted to join large (tribal) networks engaged in collaborative pattern matching since it simplifies processing torrents of online information. Due to this adoption, collaborative networks are now in the process of rewiring our politics and our society.

Networked Tribalism

K-12 Governance climate: Woke vs entrepreneurs

Joel Kotkin:

The discord among the American elites is far more pronounced now than in 2016 or 2020. This time, Donald Trump has gained more support from more tech and financial lords, notably the backing of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and America’s most accomplished entrepreneur. Some of this can be traced to Biden’s policies, which have led to the likes of Chase’s Jamie Dimon to praise Trump, something unexpected from President Obama’s “favourite banker”. Financial industries overwhelmingly favoured Biden in 2020, but now are slightly more oriented to the GOP – despite continued evidence that Trump remains ever more irrational and crude.

But Trump does best with those industries, like construction, manufacturing and agriculture, that actually make things. People who work with their hands – truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, oil-workers and farmers – generally favour the Republicans and so do the people who employ them. Trump’s business backers include those like Harold Hamm and Kelcy Warren, with ties to fossil fuel energy. The pro-Trump producer lobby also includes Musk, easily America’s most important industrialist, as well as others such as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale.

One element is concern among producer companies that a Harris administration would follow the model she championed in California. The Golden State imposes environmental and labour laws that have accelerated the state’s significant de-industrialisation and the immiseration of swathes of its population.

But Harris is still winning the daimyo wars. As has occurred throughout her career, she continues to harvest big money from the tech oligarchy. The industry helped her raise four times as much as Trump in August, and gathered in over $1 billion, two to three times Trump.

These are the very people who Teamsters President Sean O’Brien claims have “bought and paid” for the Democratic Party. Certainly, Harris’ ties to the oligarchy can hardly be ignored. She even reportedly received expert coaching for her strong debate performance – clearly the highlight of her otherwise vacuous campaign – from a top Google attorney litigating an anti-trust case against her own administration. This same company’s dominant search engine also appears to do its best to steer people to view Harris favourably, according to a study by the Media Research Center.

Big Advance on Simple-Sounding Math Problem Was a Century in the Making

Samuel Velasco:

There was just one wrinkle: Pasten had no exam to give his students. He instead had them write an essay on whatever topic they wanted. “This turned out to result in very high-quality work,” he said.

Pasten submitted his proof to Inventiones Mathematicae, one of math’s preeminent journals, where it was accepted in just over a month — the blink of an eye by the field’s usual publication standards. “It’s a lovely advance on something that hasn’t seen much progress for essentially 100 years,” said Cameron Stewartof the University of Waterloo. Mathematicians hope it will translate into advances on related number sequences, too.

Pasten’s technique also enabled him to make progress on certain cases of the abc conjecture, yet another question that deals with the interplay between addition and multiplication, and one of the most famous — and controversial — unsolved problems in mathematics. “New (and correct) ideas in this area have been scarce,” Granville wrote in an email. “The originality and promise of his methods deserve wide attention.”