Selena Simmons-Duffin How did scientists get the idea that the appendix was useless? There had been a lot of discussion about what the appendix might do as a function, whether it served a function, prior to [Charles] Darwin’s time. The [fact] that we can live without it does provide some support for the idea that … Continue reading Your appendix is not, in fact, useless. This anatomy professor explains→
Greg Lukianoff: ACLU National Legal Director David Cole has a review of my and Rikki Schlott’s book, “The Canceling of the American Mind,” coming out in the February 8 edition of the New York Review of Books. Overall I thought it was quite positive, but Cole made some arguments — which we actually hear quite often — … Continue reading Yes, the last 10 years really have been worse for free speech→
Sara Randazzo: The effort has been slow to gain traction partly because the loudest opposition comes from teachers themselves. Some Texas teachers complain that the extra pay is doled out unfairly and pits colleagues against one another, even as recipients report life-changing raises that have paid off debts and funded long-awaited vacations. “This merit-based pay … Continue reading Texas Teachers Can Earn $100,000. But There’s a Catch.→
Rob Thomas: But the seeds of Mattes’ crusade to expose wrongdoing in government were planted not in sunny Florida, but in wintry Madison. As the new Bunker Crew/MSW Media podcast“Lawyers Guns and Money” chronicles, the Connecticut-born Mattes attended school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late ‘60s and joined the antiwar movement there. In the … Continue reading “spearheaded a change in hiring practices based on merit”→
Melissa Korn and Joseph De Avila: A major donor to the University of Pennsylvania has told the school he would rescind a $100 million gift if the school doesn’t replace President Liz Magill, who has faced intensifying criticism for her handling of antisemitism on campus—most recently because of how she defined harassment in a congressional … Continue reading Penn Donor Threatens to Rescind $100 Million Donation Unless President Is Ousted→
by Bob Yirka A team of neuroscientists at the University of Padua, in Italy, working with a colleague from CNRS and Université Paris Cité, has found evidence suggesting that neural development of babies still in the womb is impacted by the language they hear spoken by their mothers as they carry them. In their paper published in … Continue reading Language heard while still in the womb found to impact brain development→
John Sailer: A search committee seeking a professor of military history rejected one applicant “because his diversity statement demonstrated poor understanding of diversity and inclusion issues.” Another committee noted that an applicant to be a professor of nuclear physics could understand the plight of minorities in academia because he was married to “an immigrant in … Continue reading Inside Ohio State’s DEI Factory→
Andrew Mcmunn: The average Composite score on the ACT test for the class of 2023 has fallen to 19.5 out of 36, according to a report. The decrease in scores marks a decline of 0.3 points from 2022, when the average score was 19.8, data released by ACT in October shows. ACT is the nonprofit organization … Continue reading ACT test scores drop to lowest level in 30 years→
Thomas Claburn Last week, privacy advocate (and very occasional Reg columnist) Alexander Hanff filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) decrying YouTube’s deployment of JavaScript code to detect the use of ad blocking extensions by website visitors. On October 16, according to the Internet Archives’ Wayback Machine, Google published a support pagedeclaring that “When you block … Continue reading YouTube (google) anti privacy tactics→
Thomas Claburn: The law requires tech companies to prevent illegal content from being distributed on their platforms and to remove it when identified. It also seeks to prevent children from being exposed to harmful material, a goal that demands effective online age verification. And it allows for fines of up to £18 million ($21.82 million) … Continue reading UK “online safety act”→
Hannah Cox: Earlier this year, Florida joined a growing list of states with universal school choice programs—meaning any student in the state can access a portion of the money the state spends on their education and use those tax dollars to homeschool, attend a private school, or do some sort of mixed-learning program. Families have … Continue reading Over 10,000 students exit ONE failing school district after Florida allows this new freedom→
Christopher Campos and Caitlin Kearns Demand estimates suggest families place substantial weight on schools’ academic quality, providing schools with competition-induced incentives to improve their effectiveness. The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity. More.
NPR: High school students’ scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test. Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. … Continue reading ACT test scores for U.S. students drop to a 30-year low→
Hope Karnopp A spokeswoman for the Madison Police Department said Thursday there were no updates in the case. Police had planned to reexamine the case if more information became available and discuss internet safety with the girl and her mother if they were identified. The police department’s Special Victims Unit reviewed the photo depicting the … Continue reading A 10 year old girl and Madison’s naked bike ride→
Andrew Campa: A Monterey County school district has settled a lawsuit that alleged middle school staff “convinced” a student to identify first as bisexual and then as transgender, without informing the 11-year-old’s mother. The Spreckels Union School District, which encompasses an elementary and middle school in the Salinas area, paid nearly $100,000 to a Monterey … Continue reading School district pays $100,000 to settle suit saying it supported secret transitioning of student→
Hoover: Google “Shoplifting in San Francisco” and you will find more than 100,000 hits. And you will find lots of YouTube videos, where you can watch a single thief, or an entire gang, walk into an SF Walgreens or CVS and empty the shelves. Most walk in, go about their pilfering, and then walk out, … Continue reading Why Shoplifting Is Now De Facto Legal In California→
Alex Tabarrok: What’s going on in WV is thus a reflection of national trends, magnified by West Virginia’s own decline in population. Full paying foreign students from China are also way down. Now add to declining college demographics, budgets hit by the great recession and then the pandemic. Now add in the rise of online … Continue reading College enrollment peaked in 2010 and has since fallen by 15%→
Will Flanders and Amellia Wedward: Federal intervention in school discipline policy became an issue of increasing importance beginning during the Obama administration. Based on the argument that differences in the rates of discipline for students of different racial groups was evidence of racism, the administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter informing school districts that they … Continue reading The impact of suspension policy on student safety→
Arthur Thomas: Gus Ramirez was at Cardinal Stritch University for a ceremony for All-In Milwaukee students when he had an idea. “When I was on campus, I realized it was just a beautiful campus and could be an opportunity for us,” said Ramirez, co-chair of the Ramirez Family Foundation that bought the campus for $24 … Continue reading Ramirez family plans to spend $10 million to convert Cardinal Stritch into K-12 school→
Gail Heriot: My friends call me a pessimist. But if you’re concerned that this piece is going to be a downer, in which I list all the ways universities will circumvent the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions ruling, relax. I’m very pleased with the Court’s decision. Opponents of race-preferential admissions haven’t won the war, and things … Continue reading Closing the Credentials Gap: The affirmative action ruling represents real progress.→
Matt Taibbi: I read Special Counsel John Durham’s “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” yesterday in a state I can only describe as psychic exhaustion. As Sue Schmidt’s “Eight Key Takeaways” summary shows, the stuff in this report should kill the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory ten … Continue reading Civics: notes on our de facto state media→
Rutgers has to stop relying on low paid adjuncts to teach its undergrad, liberal arts classes. The majority of my son’s first two years of classes were taught by low wage, transient profs who would open complain about wages in the middle of class. https://t.co/a734bMdRRZ — Laura McKenna (@laura11D) April 10, 2023
Nader Issa: First revealed in Lightfoot’s budget proposal last fall for the current year, this year’s $175 million payment from CPS to the city was approved by the Board of Education at its monthly meeting Wednesday — but was the subject of intense scrutiny by board members who criticized City Hall. The board passed with … Continue reading Chicago K-12 Tax, Spending & Pension Practices→
They eliminated standardized testing before they eliminated legacy admissions. Tells you all you need to know. https://t.co/L9PgXqsi8p — Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) March 2, 2023
Reminder that 45% of all black students at Harvard only got in because they’re black pic.twitter.com/bzpTYb58w6 — Daniel Schmidt (@RealDSchmidt) February 20, 2023
Reminder that 45% of all black students at Harvard only got in because they’re black pic.twitter.com/bzpTYb58w6 — Daniel Schmidt (@RealDSchmidt) February 20, 2023
Gurwinder: Advances in the understanding of positive reinforcement, driven mostly by people trying to get us to click on links, have now made it possible to consistently give people on the other side of the world dopamine hits at scale. As such, pleasure is now a weapon; a way to incapacitate an enemy as surely … Continue reading The ultimate weapon of mass distraction→
Peter Vickers When do we have a scientific fact? Scientists, policymakers, and laypersons could all use an answer to this question. But despite its obvious importance, humanity lacks a good answer. The renowned biologist Ernst Mayr was one scientist—probably one of many—frustrated by the fact that philosophers of science haven’t developed an account of the transition from … Continue reading How to Identify a Scientific Fact→
Brian Chau: There are wide reaching impacts to the political bias of artificial intelligence tools. ChatGPT is a technology that can already be used to draft articles, academic papers, poems, screenplays, and legal briefings. Political and cultural catechisms restrict the potential opportunities this can create, constantly interfering in favor of affluent social progressives against the … Continue reading How a Few Activists Made ChatGPT Deny Basic Science→
Jessica Lyons Hardcastle: Misconfigured Amazon Web Services S3 buckets belonging to McGraw Hill exposed more than 100,000 students’ information as well as the education publishing giant’s own source code and digital keys, according to security researchers. The research team at vpnMentor said they discovered the open S3 buckets on June 12, and contacted McGraw Hill … Continue reading McGraw Hill’s S3 buckets exposed 100,000 students’ grades and personal info→
Scott R. Anderson For the past two years, Congress has been on the verge of a step that it hasn’t taken in more than half a century: the repeal of an outstanding war authorization. Several decades-old authorizations are nominally on the chopping block. But only one has been the subject of substantial debate: the repeal … Continue reading Civics: How the 2002 Iraq AUMF Got to Be So Dangerous, Part 1: History and Practice→
Asta Nomani: “This is a victory for every parent,” said Oettinger. “In 2020, we knew that the actions that FCPS was taking were in noncompliance with IDEA. We are now vindicated, and every parents should contact FCPS to make sure that every child receives COMPENSATORY EDUCATION and other services that meet their needs.” The key … Continue reading Finds Fairfax “failed to provide” a free appropriate education to 1000s of kids→
Scott Girard: The Madison School Board’s closed session meeting to discuss the appeal of fired principal Jeffrey Copeland Tuesday lasted just over 15 minutes without a decision. “I can’t explain that,” board member Nicki Vander Meulen said, leaving around 5:16 p.m. and declining further comment. Other board members who left shortly after also declined to comment and … Continue reading ‘No action’ on fired taxpayer supported Madison Sennett principal’s appeal yet→
Thomas Hale: “You need to quarantine,” a man on the other end of the line said in Mandarin. He was calling from the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “I’ll come and get you in about four or five hours.” I dashed out of my hotel to stock up on crucial supplies. Based … Continue reading I spent 10 days in a secret Chinese Covid detention centre→
Becky Hogge: Should it be surprising that a Wikipedia entry titled “2011 Egyptian Revolution” was prepared for publication the day before protests began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square? An intriguing but inconclusive new book takes a fresh look at the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit through the lens of a single article, and finds reason to question … Continue reading Wikipedia and the online battle over facts→
Seth Gershenson, Cassandra M. D. Hart, Joshua Hyman, Constance A. Lindsay and Nicholas W. Papageorge, Leveraging the Tennessee STAR class size experiment, we show that Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K–3 are 9 percentage points (13 percent) more likely to graduate from high school and 6 percentage points … Continue reading “The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers.”→
J Sellers Hill: Convening for its weekly general meeting Sunday, the Harvard Undergraduate Association voted to allocate $2,700 toward the Harvard Affirmative Action Coalition to support its demonstrations at the Supreme Court later this month. The allocation was the first to make use of the Association’s new “HUA Helps” grant program, which was established at … Continue reading Harvard pays students to support Supreme Court affirmative action protest→
Richard Sander: In most public discussions, “affirmative action” in higher education is treated as one of the core issues that divides liberals from conservatives. It is rare in public life to hear a Democratic leader criticize the use of racial preferences in college admissions, and it is equally rare to hear a Republican support them. … Continue reading Affirmative action commentary→
Dan Lennington and Rick Esenberg Standing rules are important guardrails for our separation of powers. Justice Scalia was concerned that Ms. Kelly’s injuries were too diffuse and too widely shared to constitute the type of injury that might count as a case or controversy. But problems remain. What about cases in which a governmental policy … Continue reading Biden’s Student-Loan Action Is Obviously Unconstitutional. So Why Can’t Anyone Stop It?→
Richard Phelps: With each public remark a scholar may add to society’s collective working memory or subtract from it. Their addition is the new research they present in a journal article or conference presentation. The subtraction, when it occurs, is typically found in the scholar’s portrayal of previous research on the topic. Editors typically grant … Continue reading Subtractive Scholarship→
Erin Doherty: The average ACT test score for students in the class of 2022 dropped to its lowest level in more than three decades, according to data out Wednesday. Why it matters: The decline in scores is the latest indicator of the pandemic’s detrimental effects on the nation’s students — and underscores the extent to which graduating high school students … Continue reading ACT test scores fall to lowest levels since 1991→
Retraction Watch: Ronald Reagan was president and James Wyngaarden was director of the National Institutes of Health when a division of the agency found 10 papers describing trials of psychiatric drugs it had funded had fake data or other serious issues. Thirty-five years later, one of those articles has finally been retracted. A 1987 report … Continue reading In 1987, the NIH found a paper contained fake data. It was just retracted→
David Blaska: Why in hell (our favorite rhetorical flourish) is the Madison public school district promoting a Get Out the Vote rally? For a partisan election! No school board candidate, no school referendum is on the ballot. But Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes are! Why is the rally, scheduled for Monday 10-24-22 at the State Capitol, … Continue reading Madison Schools’ 2022 Political activity→
MATTHEW DeFOUR, MATT MENCARINI, and JACOB RESNECK Wisconsin Watch: Helping fuel the concern over ineligible voters is the case of Sandra Klitzke, a resident of the Brewster Village nursing home in Outagamie County, who voted in the November 2020 and April 2021 elections, even though a court had removed her right to vote in February … Continue reading Civics: An ongoing look at voter data (Wisconsin charges $10k per request!)→
Aaron Sibarium: The largest public university in the United States is reserving faculty positions based on race and making six-figure bonuses available exclusively to minorities, programs that are now the subject of a class action lawsuit. As part of a new initiative to attract “faculty of color,” Texas A&M University set aside $2 million in July … Continue reading Texas A&M offers $100K bonus for minority professors only→
Anna Allen: Average scores on the ACT college admissions test dropped to their lowest in 30 years, revealing more evidence of the pandemic’s alarming impact on American education. The average composite score for the class of 2022 was a 19.8 out of 36, according to a report released Wednesday, falling under 20 points for the first time since … Continue reading Average scores on the ACT college admissions test dropped to their lowest in 30 years,→
Erik Hoel: Their refusal to link or cite or provide any outside reference anywhere that might take you off their website means you never know where any fact they give you comes from—and without its origins, you can’t assess its veracity. Like: Says who? Is this study 5 years old? 10? This year? No one … Continue reading Civics: curious legacy media practices→
Will Flanders & Dylan Palmer : Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a much greater focus by parents and concerned citizens on what is being taught in schools around the country. For the first time, many parents were exposed to what was being taught to their children, and they didn’t like … Continue reading Impact of College-Level Indoctrination on K-12 Education→
Sofia Garcia: The paper outlines a statistical model meant to “explain how a difference in variability could naturally evolve between two sexes of the same species,” a direct reference to the GMVH. The paper relied on strict biological assumptions, such as the idea that genes encoding for variability would be expressed in only in one … Continue reading University Profs’ Criticism Led to Retraction of Controversial Math Paper on Gender→
Ann Althouse A key I use to understanding puzzles like this is: People do what they want to do. What have they done? Begin with the hypothesis that what they did is what they wanted to do. If they postured that they wanted to do something else, regard that as a con. Work from there. … Continue reading Civics: Andrew Yang abortion commentary on political rhetoric vs actions→
Joel Kotkin: Overall, these cities tend to have some of the worst inequality of any location, an urban model very different to the Jane Jacobs conception of a city that does not “lure the middle class” but creates one. Indeed, as the transactional city reached its apogee, the opportunity horizon for working- and middle-class families … Continue reading The price of “transactional cities”→
Pierre Baldi Today there exists no public, freely downloadable, comprehensive database of all known chemical reactions and associated information. Such a database not only would serve chemical sciences and technologies around the world but also would enable the power of modern AI and machine learningmethods to be unleashed on a host of fundamental problems. In … Continue reading Call for a Public Open Database of All Chemical Reactions→
Dana Goldstein: How Professor Calkins ended up influencing tens of millions of children is, in one sense, the story of education in America. Unlike many developed countries, the United States lacks a national curriculum or teacher-training standards. Local policies change constantly, as governors, school boards, mayors and superintendents flow in and out of jobs. Amid … Continue reading “The fact that she was disconnected from that research is evidence of the problem.” Madison….→
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. pic.twitter.com/RY2ATTA40b — John Robb (@johnrobb) May 19, 2022
Todd Milewski: Our times. The number of tickets scanned when spectators enter the venue represents the actual crowd size and it’s often well below the announced attendance and number of tickets sold or distributed.
Wyatte Grantham-Phillips: College students expect to make about $103,880 in their first job after graduation, a new survey suggests. But statistics show that the average starting salary for college graduates is $55,260. Overestimates also persist in undergrads’ outlook for mid-career earnings – while both race and gender pay gaps grow. Today’s college students expect to … Continue reading College students expect to make $103,880 after graduation – almost twice the reality→
Tom Knighton: I’m not a big fan of public education. It’s not that I’m not a fan of education itself. I just think the government is, generally, the worst entity imaginable to deliver a quality product. That was before everything got ridiculously stupid. Yet I have a bit of a reputation for having negative feelings … Continue reading “The fact that my daughter is now homeschooled should tell you something”→
Emily Hanford and Christopher Peak The new, federally funded study found that children who received Reading Recovery had scores on state reading tests in third and fourth grade that were below the test scores of similar children who did not receive Reading Recovery. “It’s not what we expected, and it’s concerning,” said lead author Henry May, director … Continue reading Madison’s literacy disaster, continued: reading recovery’s negative impact on children→
Adam Ellwanger: When I was in high school in the mid-1990s, we were all required to swim in gym class. This was before wokeness. Since then, concerns over “accessibility,” “inclusion,” “acceptance,” and changing clothes in a locker room have all but killed physical education. The decline was already in motion, even back then. The girls … Continue reading “Contract-Grading” and the War Against Academic Excellence→
“CRT is not taught in schools.” West High School in Madison is teaching the basics of CRT once a month to their entire student body. Called “Regent Pride,” the slides explore the basic tenets of CRT. Multiple concerned parents have contacted me. Thread below: pic.twitter.com/qrsRTe65oU — Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) April 8, 2022 Mandates, closed schools and … Continue reading Madison West high School Curriculum Practice Notes→
John McWhorter: When we expect less of people, it’s often because we think less of them: In 1974, the linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs documented that in rural villages in Madagascar, women were associated more with direct and therefore less refined speech than men. Their culture heavily valued circumlocution — diplomatic, even delicate speech — but … Continue reading Making the SAT and ACT Optional Is the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations→
David Blaska: Look sharp, readers! Make sure car doors are locked and crash air bags working! Tavion J. Flowers, the gift that keeps on taking, is back on the mean streets of Madison! Sprung from the Dane County Jail Monday 02-07-22 for the paltry price of $400. A week after the 18-year-old’s most recent excellent adventure. Mr. Flowers … Continue reading Notes on Judges and Youth crime activity→
David Blaska: Spot quiz: What word will not be spoken by any of Madison’s candidates for school board? Time’s up! Groucho Marx’s secret word is “discipline.” Discipline is defined as “training to act in accordance with rules; activity, exercise or a regimen that develops or improves a skill.” Discipline is the sine qua non (more Latin) of education. Mathematics, language, … Continue reading Notes on discipline and character in the taxpayer supported Madison K-12 school district’s governance→
Tyler Cowen: Of course this process has very little transparency and not much in the way of appeal, or even competition, or for that matter accountability to outside parties. Might it also be a factor behind a lot of the academic conformism we witness? You go through the early part of your career knowing that … Continue reading Commentary on Higher Education Job Practices→
Thomas Prosser Universities are increasingly accused of bias. According to critics, high concentrations of liberals entail groupthink and discrimination against conservatives. Announcing the establishment of the University of Austin, founders cited damning statistics. Nearly a quarter of American social science and humanities academics supportdismissing colleagues who have unorthodox views in areas such as immigration or gender differences. Four out of five American … Continue reading How bad have universities got? Conservatives exaggerate, but liberal bias is a real problem in universities; three factors underpin this. →
David Ramos: Tip #1: Quit bad books Life is too short to read a bad book. — James Joyce Nothing stops a reading habit in its tracks like a bad book. A book can be bad for a few reasons. Sometimes they’re poorly written, or not well-organized. Other times, the book just doesn’t interest you. … Continue reading How to easily read 50+ books a year: 10 tips to read more→
Ellen Townsend: The rights and needs of young people have been ignored in this crisis and this is a national and global disaster in the making. The future of our youngsters has been sacrificed in order to protect adults which goes against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 3) states: “In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social … Continue reading The human rights implications of long lockdown and the damaging impact on young people→
Kate Hirzel: Campus Reform has covered various instances of colleges, faculty, and students fighting back against leftist ideology in 2021. Below are the top 10 examples of sanity prevailing this year. 10. Hillsdale’s ‘1776 Curriculum’ is a patriotic response to the ‘1619 Project’ Hillsdale College announced its ‘1776 Curriculum’ that helps K-12 students appreciate America. Hillsdale’s curriculum … Continue reading 10 times universities said no to the woke mob in 2021→