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 →

Douglas Detterman: Education has not changed from the beginning of recorded history. The problem is that focus has been on schools and teachers and not students. Here is a simple thought experiment with two conditions: 1) 50 teachers are assigned by their teaching quality to randomly composed classes of 20 students, 2) 50 classes of … Continue reading “Education and Intelligence: Pity the Poor Teacher because Student Characteristics are more Significant than Teachers or Schools” →

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. →

Jonathan Zimmerman: It’s about Carole Hooven. Never heard of her? I didn’t think so. But Hooven’s story speaks volumes about the real problem at Harvard, and in American universities more broadly: the lack of academic freedom for diverse perspectives. We’ve heard the word diverse a lot since Gay stepped down because she was Harvard’s first African American … Continue reading The nation’s oldest institution of higher learning talks a good game about diverse views, but it doesn’t actually protect them. →

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” →

Adam Andrzejewski The auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit government-spending watchdog which I direct, examined 10 universities—the Ivy League, plus Stanford and Northwestern. We found that during a five-year period from 2018-22 these wealthy universities collected $45 billion in taxpayer subsidies, special tax treatment, and federal payments. In fact, these universities collected a stunning $33 billion in federal … Continue reading The U.S. tax code and federal contracts swell the coffers of wealthy Ivy League universities that teach hatred is OK. Taxpayers should cut them off. →

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 →

Patrick Mcilheran: Huge taxpayer savings are at risk, but beyond that is the question of who controls government, voters or organizers The unions’ lawsuit to overturn Act 10, Wisconsin’s 2011 labor reform, isn’t primarily about money. Money is involved. When the Legislature and then-Gov. Scott Walker took away most of the control that public employee … Continue reading Just over half of Wisconsin’s school districts no longer have teachers unions certified to bargain a contract. That is entirely because, in those districts, a union couldn’t get enough teachers to say yes. And unions claim this is “anti-democratic.” →

Rachel Saslow: The first rule of Portland Public Schools budget cuts: Don’t call them budget cuts. “We refer to it as a ‘gap,’” says Will Howell, a PPS spokesman. So, the school district faces a $130 million gap because of the labor contract it signed last week with the Portland Association of Teachers—an agreement that … Continue reading How Can Portland Public Schools Afford Its New Teacher Contract? With These Taxes and Layoffs. →

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 →

Abbey Machtig: The Madison School District is in the middle of two referendums approved by voters in 2020. The $317 million capital referendum has gone toward building a new elementary school and funding significant high-school renovations. The smaller operating referendum gave the district an additional $33 million to work with over four years. Despite this … Continue reading “Districts seeing a 10% decline in enrollment, for example, are almost two times more likely to go to referendum than districts with rising enrollments” →

Rikki Schlott The academic was fired after almost 20 years of his data — including figures used in an explosive study, which claimed the legacy of lynchings made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives — were found to be in question. College authorities said he was being fired for “incompetence” … Continue reading Professor fired for ‘faking data to prove lynching makes whites want longer sentences for blacks,’ 6 studies retracted →

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” →

Teo Armus and Hadley Green “So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly ‘Unite the Right’ rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze…. With a flash of bluish white … Continue reading It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too.” →

Luke Andrews: Dr Melissa Kearney, an economic professor at the University of Maryland, previously told DailyMail.com: ‘There has been a greater emphasis on spending time building careers. Adults are changing their attitudes towards having kids. ‘They are choosing to spend money and time in different ways… [that] are coming into conflict with parenting.’ There are … Continue reading America’s fertility crash laid bare: Interactive map shows how birth rate has plummeted since 2007 – falling by up to a THIRD in some states →

Hardika Singh: “Now it’s like, ‘forget the orange juice.’ That money will go toward the tip,” said Underwood, a 69-year-old optical wholesaler from Ridgeland, Miss. “Some things you just don’t need like you used to because prices are up.” Orange juice prices have been climbing as citrus groves have faced a spreading greening disease and … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Prices at the grocery store are up more than 10% from last yearK-12 Tax & Spending Climate: →

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 →

Peter Gray, David F. Lancy and David F. Bjorklund: It is no secret that rates of anxiety and depression among school-aged children and teens in the US are at an all- time high. Recognizing this, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psy- chiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association issued, in 2021, … Continue reading Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence →

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 →

Jill Varshay: Amid the growing debate over how best to teach math, there is another ballooning problem: grades. They’re becoming increasingly untethered to how much students know. That not only makes it harder to gauge how well students are learning math and catching up from pandemic learning losses, but it’s also making math grades a … Continue reading ACT study finds grade inflation is most pronounced in high school math as colleges de-emphasize test scores in admissions →

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 →

More. And. More. And. More.

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. →

Gail L. Heriot Alison Somin It is a not-so-well-kept secret that many colleges and universities discriminate against women in admissions. Believing that there are “too many” qualified women seeking admission, these schools resort to holding female applicants to higher academic standards than they hold male applicants. Title IX prohibits federally-funded public institutions as well as … Continue reading Affirmative Action for Men?: Strange Silences and Strange Bedfellows in the Public Debate Over Discrimination Against Women in College Admissions →

Mike LaChance For 58 years, the accreditation system of higher education has stood, enshrined in federal law and reaffirmed with each reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965. Now, a federal lawsuit from the state of Florida is looking to upend that entire system, which is a key part of the federal accountability system … Continue reading “seeks injunction to block Education Department from enforcing accreditation-related provisions of the Higher Education Act” →

Abby Machtig; How do you plan to address the achievement gaps between students in Madison schools, specifically around literacy? We put brand new, high-quality standards-aligned materials in every single teacher’s classroom. We also had to support teachers to actually use those because that is a lift. … Do we always get it right the first … Continue reading “We also had to support teachers to actually use those because that is a lift” – interim Madison Superintendent →

Vijay Prasad: FIRE— an organization devoted to championing free speech on university campuses— has broken the story of Mike Joyner, a Mayo Clinic Professor suspended for comments he made to the news media. They even published his disciplinary letter.  It appears Mike Joyner is in part being punished for comments he made about fairness when trans-athletes … Continue reading Mayo Clinic Suspends A Doctor Who Commented in NYTimes About Testosterone’s impact when Trans-athletes compete in Women’s sports →

Troy Closson: As New York embarks on an ambitious plan to overhaul how children in the nation’s largest school system are taught to read, schools leaders face a significant obstacle: educators’ skepticism. Dozens of cities and states have sought to transform reading instruction in recent years, driven by decades of research known as the “science of reading.” But … Continue reading New York is the latest large city to join a national push to change how children are taught to read. But principals and teachers may resist uprooting old practices. →

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 →

Freddie DeBoer: where men are far more comfortable being more educated and higher-income than their partners. (With many exceptions.) And you can imagine how this dynamic plays out in specific dating pools: as more hard-charging women flood a given dating market, while the number of eligible men drags behind because of increasing advantages for women … Continue reading Like so many other aspects of progressive belief, it seems that our express attitudes (it doesn’t matter who wears the pants, love is love!) are way out ahead of our actual lived behaviors →

Daniel Mediavilla: Exercise can boost your memory and thinking skills, says neurologist Scott McGinnis in a press release published by Harvard Medical School, where he works. David Jacobs, a professor of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, agrees: “For generally healthy people, exercising regularly can enhance brain function over a lifetime — not just … Continue reading The University of Granada researcher talks about the limitations of studies showing beneficial effects of sports and other physical activities on brain function →

Dave Zweifel: Although you might never know it by last week’s meeting of the Madison School Board, school districts are very much included in the law that requires government — which belongs to and is paid for by the public after all — needs to be transparent in all that it does. There is no room for … Continue reading Commentary on the taxpayer funded Madison school district’s non open records practices →

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 →

California Reading Report Card: As in the 2019 Report Card, funding and share of high-need students had very little correlation with results. There are top performing districts with over 90% high-need enrollment, and low performing districts with less than 40%. The clear message is that it is not the students themselves, or the level of … Continue reading “the primary drivers are district focus on reading, management practices, and curriculum and instruction choices” →

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 →

Michael J. Totten Wilson’s presidential campaign pledged to keep the country out of the meat-grinding war across the Atlantic, and he kept that promise for nearly three years until Congress declared war on Germany in April 1917. But American Midnight isn’t about the First World War. It’s about what happened at home during and after it. The … Continue reading Civics: A terrific new account of America’s social and political turmoil during the 1910s and ’20s provides some much-needed perspective on the problems afflicting the country today. →

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 →

Bryan Greene: John Stauffer, a Harvard English professor who edited The Works of James McCune Smith, says that Smith is one of the underappreciated literary lights of the 19th century, calling him “one of the best-read people that I’ve encountered.” “The closest equivalent I really can say about [him] as a writer is [Herman] Melville,” adds … Continue reading An activist, writer, doctor and intellectual, James McCune Smith, born enslaved, directed his talents to the eradication of slavery →

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 →

AP Dillon: The USDOE’s “Aiding and Abetting” report looks at how provisions enacted in 2015 during the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) are protecting students from sexual abuse in schools. Specifically, a look at the provisions in Section 8546 related to “aiding and abetting,” have been implemented in State … Continue reading USDOE report found that an estimated 10% of K–12 students will experience sexual misconduct by a school employee by the time they graduate from high school and that a single offender can have up to 73 victims. →

IFS: “School boards across the country should take note. Rules for public comments must respect the First Amendment rights of speakers. If you are limiting which opinions may be shared, you’ll be held liable for violating First Amendment rights,” said Alan Gura, Vice President for Litigation at the Institute for Free Speech. A federal court ruled in November … Continue reading Pennsbury school board officials used unconstitutional policies and bullying tactics to silence criticism of diversity, inclusion and equity agenda →

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 →

Rachel Cohen: There were early signs that this narrative didn’t explain the full story. If allegiance to former President Donald Trump (in schools that opened) or teacher unions (in those that stayed closed) were all that mattered, why did support for reopening schools also drop among Republican voters over the summer? And what about the conflicting recommendations coming from … Continue reading “Early analyses indicated that Covid-19 health factors had virtually nothing to do with reopening decisions, and partisan politics could explain nearly all the variation” →

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

Bruno Sauce, Magnus Liebherr, Nicholas Judd & Torkel Klingberg Digital media defines modern childhood, but its cognitive effects are unclear and hotly debated. We believe that studies with genetic data could clarify causal claims and correct for the typically unaccounted role of genetic predispositions. Here, we estimated the impact of different types of screen time … Continue reading The impact of digital media on children’s intelligence while controlling for genetic differences in cognition and socioeconomic background →

Scott Girard: Districts have varied in their approach to pandemic health and safety measures, with some making decisions at the School Board level and others leaving it to administrators. With a few exceptions, the Madison School Board has mostly left it to administrators, including on the mask mandate. Christina Gomez Schmidt, the School Board member … Continue reading “The fact that everybody else is doing something different, I think that’s OK,” Wald said. “It doesn’t trouble me so much. I think we’re doing the right thing.” →

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 →

Peter Cordi: NPR recently published an article in which several interviewees share what skin color emojis they use and why they choose that specific color. The article then listed academics’ arguments for why using a yellow emoji is an act of “white privilege.”  “For me, it does signal a kind of a lack of awareness of your white … Continue reading ‘Why does everything have to involve race?’: Students react to that NPR article about ‘white privilege’ emojis. →

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.
→

Will Flanders, DPI itself has also contributed to this problem in a number of ways.  Nearly $150,000,000 of state education spending is retained at the state level for operations.  In addition, DPI has contributed and created the barriers for teachers to access the classroom. With barrier upon barrier to get licensed to teach, it is difficult to recruit and … Continue reading almost half of education spending in the state goes for activities other than instruction, including nearly 23% on administrative costs. →

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 →

Christopher Ferguson: Dear American Psychological Association: It is with a heavy heart that I write to officially resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA) at this time effective when my current year’s membership expires. I do so because I increasingly feel the APA has lost its way as either a science organization or … Continue reading The American Psychological Association No Longer Represents Good Science or Clinical Practice: An Open Letter on My Resignation from the APA →

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 →