Lom3z

The historical longhouse was a large communal hall, serving as the social focal point for many cultures and peoples throughout the world that were typically more sedentary and agrarian. In online discourse, this historical function gets generalized to contemporary patterns of social organization, in particular the exchange of privacy—and its attendant autonomy—for the modest comforts and security of collective living.

The most important feature of the Longhouse, and why it makes such a resonant (and controversial) symbol of our current circumstances, is the ubiquitous rule of the Den Mother. More than anything, the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior. Many from left, right, and center have made note of this shift. In 2010, Hanna Rosin announced “The End of Men.” Hillary Clinton made it a slogan of her 2016 campaign: “The future is female.” She was correct.

As of 2022, women held 52 percent of professional-managerial roles in the U.S. Women earn more than 57 percent of bachelor degrees, 61 percent of master’s degrees, and 54 percent of doctoral degrees. And because they are overrepresented in professions, such as human resource management (73 percent) and compliance officers (57 percent), that determine workplace behavioral norms, they have an outsized influence on professional culture, which itself has an outsized influence on American culture more generally.

Richard Hanania has shown how the ascendance of the Civil Rights legal regime, and its transformation into the HR bureaucracy that manages nearly all of our public and private institutions, enforces the distinctly feminine values of its overwhelmingly female workforce. Thomas Edsall makes a similar case in the New York Times, emphasizing how female approaches to conflict and competition have become normative among the professional class. Edsall quotes evolutionary biologist Joyce Benenson’s summary of those approaches:

Peter Wood:

elissa Baumann, President of Ohio Northern University, after she and Law School Dean Charles Rose initiated an investigation of Professor Scott Gerber. The university has so far refused to explain to the Professor what deed caused his banning and forced removal from campus. This is a clear abuse of process and of the Professor’s rights. Professor Gerber has detailed his experience in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

We have sent the following letter to Dr. Melissa J. Baumann, President of Ohio Northern University.

Dr. Melissa J. Baumann
President Ohio Northern University
525 South Main Street
Ada, Ohio 45810

May 14, 2023

Dear President Baumann:

I am writing on behalf of Professor Scott Gerber, a member of the National Association of Scholars and professor of law at Ohio Northern University. NAS is an organization of professors, administrators, graduate students, teachers and independent scholars who share our mission focused on the traditional liberal arts in undergraduate education, to traditional standards of academic freedom and free expression on campuses, and to the observance of objective, uniform standards of due process in procedures relating to academic disciplinary matters.

I am appalled by the treatment ONU’s senior administrators have meted out to Professor Gerber. His account published in The Wall Street Journal and the statement issued by FIRE are powerful indictments of the unfairness, callousness, and abuse of process that ONU has exhibited—I would say “in this case,” but in fact there is no case. As far as we on the outside can tell, there was only administrative whim.

I have known Professor Gerber for many years, and I know him to be sharp-witted and undeterred by pressures to conform himself to reigning ideology. He speculates in his WSJ op-ed that his criticisms of ONU’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies may have prompted the effort to purge him from the faculty. While that seems likely, we don’t know. But whatever motivated the administration to take this action, the manner of taking it is inexcusable. What could possibly justify interrupting a professor’s class in order to take him under escort to the dean? In the real world we call this bullying. Then to demand his capitulation on the spot without naming charges or following the university’s written procedures? In the real world we call this contempt and intimidation.

Gorsuch redeemed himself today.

What a glorious indictment of our governments and leaders — and our sheepish people.

On the record. Preserved for history. pic.twitter.com/YMj29rKPeG

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 19, 2023

Taxpayer supported mandates via unelected administrators: Dane County Madison Public Health.

Chris Rickert:

In the Madison area, MGE is proposing to increase electricity rates by 3.75% and gas rates by 2.56% in 2024. MGE spokesperson Dana Brueck said increased electricity revenues would go toward solar and grid-modernization projects, while increased gas revenues would go toward modernizing the distribution system and covering the cost of uncollected bills, such as those seen during the pandemic.

“We are sensitive to any rate impacts on customers,” Brueck said in a statement, “which is why we continue to work hard to contain costs throughout the organization while advancing cleaner energy for the benefit of all customers.”

Under the utility’s plan, the monthly electric bill for the typical user would rise from $98 this year to $103 in 2024. From 2016 through 2025, the typical customer would see an average 1.5% increase in their gas bills, she said.

Alliant Energy subsidiary Wisconsin Power and Light — which provides service to much of the area outside of Madison, stretching from Plainville south to Monroe — is asking for a 14.25% increase in electric rates, but a requested surcharge related to higher-than-anticipated fuel costs would bump that up to 18.4%, CUB said.

It’s also seeking a 6.3% increase in its natural gas rates, CUB said.

Hamilton Nolan:

There is nothing that the public (you, and me, inclusive) loves to do more than to complain about the cheap, unserious nature of the media, while also being the cause of that. “The press should be writing about serious issues—not this celebrity garbage and lifestyle fluff and ginned-up controversies,” the public often says. Then you look at the numbers. Nobody reads the serious stories and everyone reads the fluff. The most you can hope for is that publications will be enlightened enough to use the garbage to enable the good reporting. And indeed, that’s how it is. The Iraq bureau is paid for by the Styles section. The public, generally speaking, gets what it wants, even if they don’t admit it. 

There are nuances to this though. Sometimes, the public wants something—local news, for example—but they can’t have it because the economic model that delivered it is broken, and nobody has come up with a new one that works yet. When every newspaper amounted to a local advertising monopoly with huge profit margins, as was the case for most of the 20th century, there was a lot of local news coverage, because the publications in each city were rich. Then the internet came around and huge tech platforms diverted most of the ad money into their own pockets and local newspapers saw their revenue dry up and now, there is little local news. It’s a journalism problem, and a civic problem, caused by an economic problem. (The solution to this is to either tax tech companies to fund journalism or just have the government fund journalism directly. That is not exactly the subject of this post, though.) 

Ever since the internet smashed print media and Google and Facebook et al smashed the economic model for online media, we’ve all been caught in a period of casting-about. Entrepreneurs and media thinkers cast about for ideas of how to fix the broken model, and then they cast about for funders to give them the money to try it. The production of journalism in America depends to a remarkable degree on fooling rich people into thinking it’s a good idea to fund some publication, and then feverishly publishing as much stuff as possible before the rich person figures out that journalism is not a good investment. 

An unfortunate consequence of this, though, is the profusion of publications designed from the ground up to appeal to the demographic of “business people who incorrectly imagine themselves to be ideas people.” That’s who the funders are, and to get the funding the funders need to like the pitch. This sort of publication can hire great journalists and can do good reporting, but its reporting must be forced into an execrable Powerpoint-style package in order to catch the eye of media investors whose brains, after years of abuse by capital, are unable to process anything more languorous than a pitch deck. Say what you will about Gawker (dead) and Buzzfeed (dying) and Vice (bankrupt), but the era of online media defined by those companies was full of all types of whimsy and radicalism that was the downstream effect of a wave of money that fueled the hiring of thousands of young writers and gave them unprecedented freedom. (The freedom was purely due to the fact that tons of content had to be produced to fill the maw of the internet. Any socially redeeming qualities were a side benefit.)

Marc A. Thiessen

It was the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee that funded the Steele dossier, which relied on a Russian with suspected ties to Russian intelligence. The FBI then included the dossier as part of the materials it used to investigate Trump, paralyzing our country, undermining a newly elected president for two years while costing tens of millions of dollars — all over what ended up being a conspiracy theory.

Commentary.

Dell Cameron:

EACH YEAR, AT the request of police and intelligence agents across the country, the United States Postal Service conducts surveillance on physical pieces of mail going to and from the homes and businesses of tens of thousands of Americans, a group of United States senators says. 

To initiate this surveillance, the department or agency has at least one hurdle to climb. First, they must submit the request in writing. Then … well, nothing. That is the entire hurdle. 

In practice, this serves less as an evidentiary threshold than an IT ticketing system. For more than a handful of senators, that’s unacceptable. And in a letter today to the nation’s chief postal inspector, Gary Barksdale, the group explains why: “There is a long history of documented abuses of postal surveillance.”

Florian Sohnke:

Sixth grade Jewish day school curriculum “drives a wedge between parents and children” around gender identity

Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, an elite Jewish day school on the North Side of Chicago which is accredited by the National Association of Independent Schools, has mandated “controversial ideology” as part of its gender education program for middle schoolers as early as sixth grade, Chicago Contrarian has learned.

A long-time “BZ parent” who describes himself as a “committed Jew and devout liberal” told Contrarian that the school’s “Human Growth & Development” program in sixth grade instructs kids that they can choose their own gender alongside “a decidedly non-kosher smorgasbord of sexual identities.”

The initiative is “driving a wedge between parents and students,” the parent notes, by “appropriating, without parental consent, for BZ’s teachers the final say on parenting and acceptable beliefs around these topics.”

This parent notes that he decided “not to share his name on-the-record” because he has “every expectation that the teachers and HS counseling staff would surreptitiously undermine my children’s applications to high school if they were to find out.”

According to the parent, Zell is using material with students from TSER or Trans Student Educational Resources to suggest that gender identity “is fluid” and can include not only “female/woman/girl” and “male/man/boy” but also “other gender(s)” as well. This BZ parent went on to say: “My child accused me of being ‘transphobic’ when I relayed the fact that some biologists take the position that sex is a fact based on chromosomes.”

Emily Hanford notes the “surge in legislative activity” amidst our long term, disastrous reading results [link].

Longtime SIS readers may recall a few of these articles, bookmarking our times, so to speak:

2004: [Link]

“In 2003, 80% of Wisconsin fourth graders scored proficient or advanced on the WCKE in reading. However, in the same year only 33% of Wisconsin fourth graders reached the proficient or advanced level in reading on the NAEP.”

2005: [Link]

“According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading.”

2008: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”

2010: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

2010: WEAC $1.57M !! for four state senators.

2011: A Capitol Conversation:

1. How teachers are taught. In Wisconsin as in much of the US, prospective teachers are not exposed to modern research on how children develop, learn, and think. Instead, they are immersed in the views of educational theorists such as Lev Vygotsky (d. 1934) and John Dewey (d. 1952). Talented, highly motivated prospective teachers are socialized into beliefs about children that are not informed by the past 50 years of basic research in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience.

Wisconsin adopted MTEL for elementary reading teachers only. Our version is known as the Foundations of Reading Test…

2013: Alan Borsuk:

The Massachusetts test is about to become the Wisconsin test, a step that advocates see as important to increasing the quality of reading instruction statewide and, in the long term, raising the overall reading abilities of Wisconsin students. As for those who aren’t advocates (including some who are professors in schools of education), they are going along, sometimes with a more dubious attitude to what this will prove.

2017: Foundations of Reading Test Results…

May 2013 – August 2014 (Test didn’t start until January 2014, and it was the lower cut score): 2150 pass out of 2766 first time takers = 78% passage rate .xls file

September 2014 – August 2015 (higher cut score took effect 9/14): 2173/3278 = 66%

September 2015 – August 2016: 1966/2999 = 66%

September 2016 – YTD 2017: 1680/2479 = 68%

2017 [3 minute transcript]:

2018: Wisconsin DPI efforts to weaken the Foundations of Reading Test for elementary teachers.

Also, 2018: “We set a high bar for achievement,” DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said.

Still 2018: Alan Borsuk:

But consider a couple other things that happened in Massachusetts: Despite opposition, state officials stuck to the requirement. Teacher training programs adjusted curriculum and the percentage of students passing the test rose.

More 2018: “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”

2019: My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results.

2019, continued – Alan Borsuk:

The latest report on reading was really bad. here are some possible solutions. Mississippi got a lot of attention when the NAEP scores were released. It was the only state where fourth grade reading scores improved. Mississippi is implementing a strong requirement that teachers be well-trained in reading instruction. Massachusetts did that in the 1990s and it paid off in the following decade.

2020: Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

2021: Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Jill Underly:

All right. Um, as far as the Foundations of Reading (FORT) test is concerned, I would support eliminating it. And I’ll tell you why. I believe it’s an unnecessary hoop. Um, it makes it difficult and much harder for people to become teachers, particularly when we are already struggling. Right. With recruiting and retaining teachers.

2021: Wisconsin Governor Evers vetoes AB446 and SB454 (Friday afternoon):

The bill would mandate school boards and independent charter schools to assess the early literacy skill of pupils in four-year-old kindergarten to second grade using repeated screening assessments throughout the year and to create a personal reading plan for each pupil in five-year-old kindergarten to second grade who is identified as at-risk. It would also mandate the Department of Public Instruction establish and maintain lists of approved fundamental skills screening assessments, universal screening assessments, and diagnostic assessments on its Internet site based on alignment with model academic standards in reading and language arts, and a mandatory minimum sensitivity rate and specificity rate.

2023: Wisconsin Legislative hearing on our long term, disastrous reading results: “Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

2023: Further attempts to kill our only teacher content knowledge requirement: elementary reading “!”. Corrinne Hess:

“Only 54 percent of first-time Teacher test takers passed for the 2020-21 school year. That’s down from 66 percent in 2014-15”

Louise Matsakis

OpenAI told a leading company that provides data to Washington lobbyists and policy advocates that it can’t advertise using ChatGPT for politics.

The booming Silicon Valley startup took action after the Washington, D.C., company, FiscalNote, touted in a press release that it would use ChatGPT to help boost productivity in “the multi-billion dollar lobbying and advocacy industry” and “enhance political participation.”

Afterward, those lines disappeared from FiscalNote’s press release and were replaced by an editor’s note explaining ChatGPT could be used solely for “grassroots advocacy campaigns.”

A FiscalNote spokesperson told Semafor it never intended to violate OpenAI’s rules, and that it deleted that text from its press release to “ensure clarity.”

An important thread on SFUSD math de-tracking.@SFUSDMath misled itself – and the nation – with claims that de-tracking improved outcomes and equity.

Full story in 🧵.

‘SFUSD knew for years its flagship “repeat rate” claim was a mirage, but touts it still today.’ https://t.co/ZhPBObmGRR

— Karen Vaites (@karenvaites) May 17, 2023

Progressive allies of Mayor Brandon Johnson have released a financial blueprint titled – and I’m not joking – “First We Get the Money” calling for $12 billion in new taxes, including:

“Head tax” of $33 per worker for companies with 50+ employees

Quadrupling the tax on jet fuel.… pic.twitter.com/lRoQOZP58a

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) May 17, 2023

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 times over, but we know better than that. This story never dies. Every time you shoot at it, it splits into six new deep state fantasies.

I’ve given up. Nearly seven years ago this idiotic tale dropped in my relatively uncomplicated life like a grenade, upending professional relationships, friendships, even family life. Those of us in media who were skeptics or even just uninterested were cast out as from a religious sect — colleagues unironically called us “denialists” — denounced in the best case as pathological wreckers and refuseniks, in the worst as literal agents of the FSB.

Paul Thacker:

For years, Twitter executives provided favored access to a pack of select technology and “disinformation” reporters, giving them insider entrée to new products, responding quickly to their reporting needs to identify and suspend “disinformation” accounts—even helping one Washington Post reporter shut down an account that delved into her background as a wealthy child of privilege who attacked conservatives. In another example, CNN reporters requested that Twitter alter their algorithm to create a “read only mode” to guard them from criticism.

By changing Twitter’s culture and firing the majority of employees, Musk severed these ties between Twitter executives and privileged journalists—relationships that were so close one executive referred to some journalists as “our reporters.” Reporters who were close to Twitter, returned the favor to company executives by giving them positive press—even helping the company deal with lawmakers by relaying drafts of pending bills and providing advice on product development.

“Our DC-based tech reporters have gotten advance copies of at least five draft House bills that may get introduced today or early next week that would make changes to federal law and give more power to regulators,” wrote one Twitter executive in a June 2021 email. “This is in line with what we’re hearing about the Biden administration’s priorities to address antitrust concerns.”

In a separate example, Twitter held a meet-and-greet with their “news partners” in New York City later that same year to “solidify key relationships, encourage intel sharing, and, more broadly, help to reinforce comm’s network of trusted reporters.” Reporting back on the meeting, Twitter’s Elisabeth Busby wrote that journalists were “excited to meet” and profiled each reporter’s needs and what Twitter might expect in return.

“Please keep this information close hold,” Busby emailed.

In her report, Busby provided detailed insight into Twitter’s relationship with multiple journalists—many who work in the “disinformation” space and who are now some of Elon Musk and Twitter’s greatest online critics

Okay, that was a fucking powerful statement by @elonmusk

I’m very impressed because he was committed to his words. RESPECTpic.twitter.com/JiYecgdLe8

— MAGS (@TAftermath2020) May 17, 2023

George Soros has been so uniquely destructive to law & order in American cities that there’s a name for the carnage he’s wrought: “Soros DAs.” His organization described its strategy to Politico in a 2016 article: it would change the law, not by going through legislatures, but…

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) May 17, 2023

This is a small comment, but a very telling one: Establishment Dem acting as though it’s absurd to trust a *journalist* over the *FBI*

Of course, that’s entirely backwards. (And @Julio_Rosas11 is great) https://t.co/wKng50yDfZ

— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) May 16, 2023

To understand why most of corporate media has deservedly lost all public trust, look at how they are minimizing the Durham Report.

For decades in DC, John Durham was heralded as one of the US's most apolitical, trustworthy federal prosecutors. NYT, 2009:https://t.co/DU01bEVvgR pic.twitter.com/Fp7ECNmPkJ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 17, 2023

Joanne Jacobs:

“Equitable grading” is supposed to be fairer to students who have trouble completing homework, getting to school on time and studying for tests, writes Sara Randazzo in the Wall Street Journal.

Typically, students get multiple opportunities to retake tests and complete assignments. If they never turn in work, the minimum grade is 50 percent, so they don’t give up on earning a passing grade for the course. Students don’t lose points for behaviors such as poor attendance or get extra credit for good behavior.

School systems across the country, including the giant Clark County, Nevada district, which includes Las Vegas, are going “equitable,” writes Randazzo.

At first, Las Vegas English teacher Laura Jeanne Penrod liked the idea of evaluating students on end-of-course mastery rather than their ability to meet deadlines. However, she noticed even her 11th-grade honors students aren’t brainstorming and writing rough drafts of essays the way they used to. Few teenagers have the “intrinsic motivation” to work harder than they have to, she said.

Sharon Luyre:

It’s a cliché that Kymyona Burk heard a little too often: “Thank God for Mississippi.”

As the state’s literacy director, she knew politicians in other states would say it when their reading test scores were down — because at least they weren’t ranked as low as Mississippi. Or Louisiana. Or Alabama.

Lately, the way people talk about those states has started to change. Instead of looking down on the Gulf South, they’re seeing it as a model.

Mississippi went from being ranked the second-worst state in 2013 for fourth-grade reading to 21st in 2022. Louisiana and Alabama, meanwhile, were among only three states to see modest gains in fourth-grade reading during the pandemic, which saw massive learning setbacksin most other states.

The turnaround in these three states has grabbed the attention of educators nationally, showing rapid progress is possible anywhere, even in areas that have struggled for decades with poverty and dismal literacy rates. The states have passed laws adopting similar reforms that emphasize phonics and early screenings for struggling kids.

“In this region, we have decided to go big,” said Burk, now a senior policy fellow at ExcelinEd, a national advocacy group.

These Deep South states were not the first to pass major literacy laws; in fact, much of Mississippi’s legislation was based on a 2002 law in Florida that saw the Sunshine State achieve some of the country’s highest reading scores. The states also still have far to go to make sure every child can read.

"Alabama ranked 49th in NAEP reading scores for low-income fourth-graders; in 2022, it ranked 27th. Amid the pandemic that saw most states lose ground, Louisiana soared from 42nd to 11th. Mississippi ranks second-highest in the country, after Florida." https://t.co/qRBWSNo2pQ

— Emily Hanford (@ehanford) May 17, 2023

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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?

Joshua Nelson:

A Wisconsin school district charged a legal group over $11K to fulfill their open records request regarding an incident that involved a transgender woman allegedly violating the privacy rights of four other female students.

The Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty (WILL) on April 19, 2023, wrote a letter to the Sun Prairie Area School District [SPASD] claiming that they have not “adequately” addressed a violation of students’ privacy rights after a transgender woman walked into a shower with four high school freshmen girls inside of it. Additionally, the letter consisted of an open records request. 

According to the letter, titled “Serious Violation of Girls’ Privacy Rights in Sun Prairie East Locker Room,” four Sun Prairie East High School freshmen girls were disturbed when an alleged “undressed” 18-year-old transgender woman came into the locker room and got into the showers with the girls.

Matt Barnum

Eric Hanushek, a leading education researcher, has spent his career arguing that spending more money on schools probably won’t make them better. 

His latest research, though, suggests the opposite. 

The paper, set to be published later this year, is a new review of dozens of studies. It finds that when schools get more money, students tend to score better on tests and stay in school longer, at least according to the majority of rigorous studies on the topic

More.

Madison, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported k-12 systems, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Skip Hollandsworth:

It was at that moment, Kim would later tell me, that she had a feeling—“something like a mother’s intuition, a voice speaking to me,” she said—that she should withdraw Lexi from school for the rest of the day. Maybe, she thought, she would take her to the Dairy Queen for one of Lexi’s favorite treats, a mint-chocolate-chip Blizzard, to celebrate the end of another successful school year.

Our “officials” seem to be installed, not elected these days. https://t.co/exsSiuH24X

— Scott McNealy (@scottmcnealy) May 16, 2023

Spoke to @SenFeinstein today for a brief minute. I asked her how she was feeling and also about the well-wishes she's heard from colleagues. This is how she responded. https://t.co/vuAQYkHfAj pic.twitter.com/jXkapAVFRo

— Benjamin Oreskes🦅 (@boreskes) May 16, 2023

Christopher Rufo:

Last spring, executives at Texas Children’s Hospital announced that they would cease performing transgender medical procedures on children, citingpotential legal and criminal liability. The hospital’s chief pediatrician, Catherine Gordon, an advocate for “gender-affirming therapy,” abruptly resigned.

I have obtained exclusive whistleblower documentsshowing that, despite its public statements, the Houston-based children’s hospital—the largest in the United States—has secretly continued to perform transgender medical interventions, including the use of implantable puberty blockers, on minor children. (When reached via email, hospital spokeswoman Kelley Carville responded: “We have no comment.”)

As an institution, Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) has openly promoted “gender-affirming care” to its physicians. In January of this year, TCH and Baylor College of Medicine, which works in partnership with the children’s hospital, hosted a “pediatric grand rounds” presentation titled “Medical and Psychological Care of Gender-Diverse Youth,” describing the process of sex-change interventions, from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones to genital surgeries.

According to this presentation, TCH and Baylor College of Medicine encouraged doctors to begin treatment with puberty blockers and hormones during adolescence, and then consider surgeries, including breast removal and genital reconstruction, in adulthood—though the presenters explained that some surgical procedures could be appropriate for “adolescents on [a] case-by-case basis.”

This @nytimes oped by the author of the book, Sold, laments that “Pen America reported last month that ‘Sold’ was one of the most banned books in the US at the start of the 2022-23 school year.” But the book can be found in almost all of those libraries. Here’s proof. 🧵1/ https://t.co/gJWMYNufpu

— Jay P. Greene (@jaypgreene) May 16, 2023

Mike Masnick:

Enter: Moderator Mayhem. It’s a browser-based mobile game, and you will learn that you have to make your moderation decisions by swiping left (take down) or right (keep up), and try to align content with the policies of the company (a fictional review site called TrustHive). Of course, users of your site may not like your decisions. They might appeal the decisions, and you might realize you missed some important context (or not!). Your manager might disagree with your decisions, and might not think you’re suited for the job. Your CEO might have his own views on how your moderation is going. So might the media.

Dan King:

At the end of April, IJ filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s ruling providing qualified immunity to a mayor and a police chief who threw a 72-year-old grandmother in jail, after she criticized a city manager, their ally.  

Since then, five groups consisting of public interest organizations, renowned advocates, and acclaimed scholars filed their own briefs asking the Supreme Court to grant review and overturn this grievously wrong decision.   

“The outpouring of support has been absolutely remarkable,” said IJ Attorney Anya Bidwell. “This has been such a morale boost for Sylvia Gonzalez, our client, who’s been terribly hurt by this whole experience. In addition, it has shown that we’re absolutely right in our interpretation of the law.” 

Sylvia was arrested in 2018 after she petitioned her government to remove the city manager. As it turns out, the city manager had powerful friends determined to ensure that Sylvia and others opposing the powers that be knew their place. To punish Sylvia for speaking out, the mayor and the police chief engineered an arrest of the 72-year-old grandmother. Her offense? She supposedly tried to steal the petition to remove the city manager that she herself championed.

Alaina Demopoulos

Americans have long been called out for their phony British accents – think Madonna in her Guy Ritchie era, or the friend who just came home from studying abroad in London. But Gen Z has embraced bad imitations of Cockney slang or a Yorkshire dialect, using obviously fake, theatrical voices to make light of low-grade daily dramas.

What’s behind the trend? Green, who is 26 and appeared on the US version of Love Island, blames it on her love for the original UK dating show.

“The accent really took over when I started watching the show,” she said. “It blew the accent the fuck up, and everyone was obsessed with their cute little sayings, like ‘doing bits’.” (For the uninitiated, that means getting intimate but not having sex.)

It’s not just Love Island: “fake British accent” videos have over 188,000 views on TikTok, where young people say they use the voice whenever they feel uncomfortable.

Asher Lieberman, a 21-year-old college student and content creator from Miami, said he picked his voice up from watching old X Factor auditions on YouTube.

Tom Kane and Sean Reardon

Parents have become a lot more optimistic about how well their children are doing in school.

In 2020 and 2021, a majority of parents in the United States reported that the pandemic was hurting their children’s education. But by the fall of 2022, a Pew survey showed that only a quarter of parents thought their children were still behind;  another study revealed that more than 90 percent thought their child had already or would soon catch up. To hear parents tell it, the pandemic’s effects on education were transitory.

Are they right to be so sanguine? The latest evidence suggests otherwise. Math, reading and history scores from the past three years show that students learned far less during the pandemic than was typical in previous years. By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.

Jonathan Turley:

Below is my column in The Hill on the continued media blackout on evidence of influence peddling and corrupt practices by the Biden family. The coverage of the recent disclosure of dozens of LLCs and bank accounts used to funnel up to $10 million to Biden family members captured the growing concerns over a de facto state media in the United States. Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

Here is the column:

This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

Jonathan Turley:

Below is my column in The Hill on the continued media blackout on evidence of influence peddling and corrupt practices by the Biden family. The coverage of the recent disclosure of dozens of LLCs and bank accounts used to funnel up to $10 million to Biden family members captured the growing concerns over a de facto state media in the United States. Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

Here is the column:

This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

Jonathan Turley:

Below is my column in The Hill on the continued media blackout on evidence of influence peddling and corrupt practices by the Biden family. The coverage of the recent disclosure of dozens of LLCs and bank accounts used to funnel up to $10 million to Biden family members captured the growing concerns over a de facto state media in the United States. Under the current approach to journalism, it is the New York Times that receives a Pulitzer for a now debunked Russian collusion story rather than the New York Post for a now proven Hunter Biden laptop story.

Here is the column:

This week, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) tried to do the impossible. After he and his colleagues presented a labyrinth of LLC shell companies and accounts used to funnel as much as $10 million to Biden family members, Donalds tried to induce the press to show some interest in the massive corruption scandal. “For those in the press, this easy pickings & Pulitzer-level stuff right here,” he pleaded.

The response was virtually immediate. Despite showing nine Biden family members allegedly receiving funds from corrupt figures in Romania, China and other countries, The New Republic quickly ran a story headlined “Republicans Finally Admit They Have No Incriminating Evidence on Joe Biden.”

For many of us, it was otherworldly. A decade ago, when then-Vice President Joe Biden was denouncing corruption in Romania and Ukraine and promising action by the United States, massive payments were flowing to his son Hunter Biden and a variety of family members, including Biden grandchildren.

What I find depressing about RussiaGate is not the collusion of police & intel with Democrats to cripple a president, participation of the press, nor the passivity of the GOP. That’s just the Left winning, BAU. That so many Americans believed this nonsensical story is a bad omen.

— Fabius Maximus (Ed.) (@FabiusMaximus01) May 16, 2023

Stanley Goldfarb and Mark J. Perry:

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is no conservative bastion. Staffed mostly by liberal career attorneys, and situated within one of the government’s most aggressively woke departments, it is charged with upholding federal antidiscrimination laws in education, including Title VI and Title IX. OCR is required by law to investigate complaints of discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance. The office is rejecting much of what higher education is attempting to do at the behest of woke ideologues.

Consider so-called racial affinity groups, a common woke initiative. These segregated entities, which many campuses have attempted to introduce, are open only to students of a specific race. An April article in the New England Journal of Medicine praised the separation of medical students by race while calling for the establishment of white-only affinity groups whose members would be “held accountable.” The authors also cast affinity groups for black medical students as protecting them from “otherwise-common denial, gaslighting . . . and White fragility.” This toxic language harks back to segregationists’ claims that separating whites and blacks benefitted both groups.

Such blatant racial discrimination is precisely what Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws—and what OCR was created to stop. In October 2022, we filed a complaint challenging the racial affinity groups at the University of California, San Francisco’s School of Medicine, the institution at the heart of the New England Journal of Medicine article. OCR opened an investigation, prompting the university to cancel its racial affinity groups before the investigation could conclude. OCR pressured the university to agree that if affinity groups return, they will be open to medical students of all races. Something similar happened when we submitted a Title VI complaint against Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In both cases, OCR effectively ruled that racial affinity groups are illegal.

Scott Girard:

Madison School board members indicated interest in the longer of two search timelines presented to them Monday by consultant Alma Advisory Group. Alma CEO Monica Santana Rosen spoke to the board at a meeting for the first time since board members chose the firmfrom a field of three finalists to lead the search process, paying $95,000 for Alma’s services.

Monday’s presentation included two potential timelines for the search, a result of Superintendent Carlton Jenkins announcing his retirement in early February.

The timeline that a majority of board members indicated support for during discussion includes community input in the fall, with planning done over the summer. That will have a final candidate chosen in March 2024, with the person likely to take over the role in summer 2024.

“This is a process you should do if you’re feeling that a longer timeframe may give you better stakeholder engagement, if you’re feeling that your current interim is able to stay through the end of the school year and can support any sort of stability and strengthening of the organization, potentially readying the organization for your next leader,” Rosen told the board.

The board selected retired longtime MMSD educator Lisa Kvistad as the interim last month. Board member Ali Muldrow said that choice helped her comfort level with the longer timeline.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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?

Corrinne Hess:

Since the pandemic, fewer Wisconsin students have reliably made it to school. The state’s attendance rate reached a new low of 91 percent last year and chronic absenteeism continues to be an issue, with more than 22 percent of students missing at least a month of school. 

The picture is even more grim for high school students. The latest state data shows more than a quarter — 26 percent — of Wisconsin high school students missed a month of the 2021-2022 school year.  

A student is considered chronically absent when they attend less than 90 percent of school days. The overall attendance rate for Wisconsin high school students was 89.7. Milwaukee Public Schools high school students attended only 70 percent of the time.

Attendance is an important measure of student engagement and a predictor of future achievement, dropout or late graduation. And attendance rates have been dropping since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

School avoidant behavior, also called school refusal, is when a school-age child refuses to attend school or has difficulty being in school for the entire day. Several mental health experts told USA TODAY it has become a crisis that has gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Scott Girard:

This year, the two sides are about $11.7 million apart, with MMSD offering a 3.5% increase in its draft budget and MTI, the teachers union, asking for the maximum 8%. MTI, as it did last year, has rallied and spoken out publicly about its concerns should the district remains at 3.5%, including intensifying the district’s ongoing staff shortage.

District officials have said the 3.5% is the best they can do right now amid uncertainty surrounding the state budget and long-term fiscal challenges like decreasing enrollment and the coming end of federal COVID-19 aid.

Below, the Cap Times explains the numbers behind the disagreement. (Budget deep dive)

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

David Cox:

The scale of this challenge is exponentially greater than the Human Genome Project, the international effort to sequence all 3 billion base pairs in human DNA and map all 20,000 human genes, which took more than a decade to complete. The data in the human immunome is millions of times larger and vastly more complex. It does not merely include the legions of lymphocytes, neutrophils, and monocytes/macrophages, which biologists have pieced together and studied over many decades, but all of the interactions these cells have, over a person’s life, with pathogens, toxins, and the consequences of their diet and lifestyle.

How all of this shapes an individual’s immunity does not just vary from person to person based on their genetics and exposures but is constantly shifting over the course of their lifetime.

Owen Kichizo Terry

Look at any high school or college academic integrity policy, and you’ll find the same message: submit work that reflects your own thinking, or face discipline. A year ago, this was just about the most common-sense rule on Earth. Today, it’s laughably naive.

There’s a remarkable disconnect between how those with influence over education systems –– teachers, professors, administrators –– think students use generative AI on written work and how we actually use it. As a student, the assumption I’ve encountered among authority figures is that if an essay is written with the help of ChatGPT, there will be some sort of evidence –– the software has a distinctive “voice,” it can’t make very complex arguments (yet), and there are programs that claim to detect AI output. This is a dangerous misconception. In reality, it’s very easy to use AI to do the lion’s share of the thinking while still submitting work that looks like your own. Once this becomes clear, it follows that massive structural change is needed if our schools are going to keep training students to think critically.

Sarah E. Needleman:

Younger generations are increasingly using avatars to represent themselves in the digital realm, and half of Gen Zers change their avatars’ clothing at least weekly, according to a study by Parsons and videogame-company Roblox.

“We dress in the physical world and we dress in the digital world,” Ben Barry, Parsons’ dean of fashion, said in a recent panel discussion. “We are in a new era,” he added.

So these days, some aspiring fashion designers are more interested in making dapper duds for those digital muses than actual models.

The more-than-a-century-old Parsons School boasts big-name fashion-industry alumni, including Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, Anna Sui and Donna Karan, and it is where the first few seasons of the hit reality show “Project Runway” were filmed.

Parsons added an avatar-design course called “Collab: Roblox” this semester through a partnership with Roblox, which operates in the so-called metaverse with thousands of games and occasional concerts. Its users, many still in high school or younger, appear as avatars they can dress up in countless ways. The new course teaches students how to make digital clothing for those figures on the Roblox platform. No scissors, measuring tape or pouty-lipped supermodels are required.

Imagine a defendant telling the FBI — “Look, if I knew then what I know now, it wouldn’t have happened; I would have done things differently. Let’s just move on now, bro.” https://t.co/3pq8BpTHUL

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 15, 2023

Ex-CIA head John Brennan, re Mueller report: “They found no conspiracy.”

Brennan on MSNBC: “I suspected there was more than there actually was.”

Years of Trump-Russia hysteria, based on suspicion only. It was Mickey Mouse intelligence: “A dream is a wish your heart makes.” pic.twitter.com/1rI8YBsD8M

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) May 15, 2023

Never let them tell you that the Twitter rules were meant to prevent the dissemination of misinformation, disinformation or just plain knowing lies https://t.co/NGoFM53bol

— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) May 15, 2023

Maciver:

Wisconsin lawmakers are fast tracking a plan to bailout Milwaukee to prevent it from declaring bankruptcy. AB245 was introduced earlier this month and it’s already scheduled for a floor vote on May 17th.

Lawmakers claim if Milwaukee declared bankruptcy, it would be devastating for everyone in Wisconsin if that happened. They point to Detroit‘s 2013 bankruptcy as proof. That caught our attention at the MacIver Institute. We wanted to know, how exactly did Detroit’s bankruptcy affect the rest of Michigan?

Did Detroit’s bankruptcy affect Michigan’s bond rating? Did Michigan lose population because of Detroit’s bankruptcy? Did MIchigan lose industry because of Detroit’s bankruptcy?

The answers to those questions could provide critical insight into what might happen if Milwaukee declared bankruptcy. Like Milwaukee, it’s the largest city in a midwestern state with a strong manufacturing background. Michigan tried everything to bail Detroit out of its self-made financial problems, including several revenue raising options not available to any other city in the state, direct intervention, and eventually allowing it to declare bankruptcy. Wisconsin is starting down that same path with Milwaukee. It is currently trying to give Milwaukee the ability to raise a special 2% sales tax available to no other local government in the state.

Will Flanders and Matt Levene:

Forward Exam scores show that Wisconsin students are struggling in reading. Currently statewide, only about 36.8% of students scored proficient or higher on the Forward Exam, meaning the majority of students are falling behind. Reading problems cut across all socioeconomic and racial lines. Much attention has been focused on the “Science of Reading,” and the persistence of reading curricula around the state that are not focused on these metrics. The Science of Reading is a ‘back to the basics’ approach that is focused on learning phonics, increasing vocabulary, and sounding out words rather than the context-clue based “guessing” techniques that have become popular in recent decades. Until now, it has not been possible to take a statewide look at what curricula districts are using for reading, and whether this choice has a relationship to student outcomes.

This paper takes advantage of a new dataset available from the Department of Public Instruction that details the curricula used in each district around the state. We correlate reading outcomes on the Forward Exam with some two of the most widely criticized curricula that rely on “Whole Language” techniques—Lucy Calkins and Fountas and Pinnell.

Key takeaways include:

Whole Language techniques are still in wide use. About 44% of schools around Wisconsin under the high school level are still using Lucy Calkins and/or Fountas and Pinnell.

Use of Lucy Calkins is correlated with lower proficiency. Controlling for a number of other factors that are known to affect reading scores, the use of Lucy Calkins is correlated with about a 2.1% decline in ELA proficiency. No relationship was found with Fountas and Pinnell, possibly due to lower usage rates.

Combined, use of either curriculum is correlated with lower proficiency. Controlling for a number of other factors known to affect reading scores, the use of Lucy Calkins or Fountas and Pinnell is correlated with 2.7% lower reading scores.
Policymakers should consider adopting best practices from the Science of Reading. States like Mississippi have seen significant jumps in reading proficiency by moving away from Whole Language methods to science-based methods. The evidence here suggests Wisconsin could benefit from doing the same.

A list of district-level reading curricula is available on WILL’s School Scorecard. Visit https://will-law.org/school-scorecard/ to see what is in use in your community.

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

If you get the chance, I suggest everyone look at the US budget from 2019 to 2022. Its completely insane.

Unemployment was similar in 2019 to 2022 but SNAP spending increased 136%, from 63 billion to 149 billion.

Student Loan Program wasnt even a line item in 2019. 2022 its… pic.twitter.com/I2bLFq5FUG

— Woke Zombie 🇺🇸😊 (@AWokeZombie) May 12, 2023

Christina Brown, Supreet Kaur, Geeta Kingdon, and Heather Schofield

Schooling may build human capital not only by teaching academic skills, but by expanding the capacity for cognition itself. We focus specifically on cognitive endurance: the ability to sustain effortful mental activity over a continuous stretch of time. As motivation, we document that globally and in the US, the poor exhibit cognitive fatigue more quickly than the rich across field settings; they also attend schools that offer fewer opportunities to practice thinking for continuous stretches. Using a field experiment with 1,600 Indian primary school students, we randomly increase the amount of time students spend in sustained cognitive activity during the school day—using either math problems (mimicking good schooling) or non-academic games (providing a pure test of our mechanism). Each approach markedly improves cognitive endurance: students show 22% less decline in performance over time when engaged in intellectual activities—listening comprehension, academic problems, or IQ tests. They also exhibit increased attentiveness in the classroom and score higher on psychological measures of sustained attention. Moreover, each treatment improves students’ school performance by 0.09 standard deviations. This indicates that the experience of effortful thinking itself—even when devoid of any subject content—increases the ability to accumulate traditional human capital. Finally, we complement these results with quasi-experimental variation indicating that an additional year of schooling improves cognitive endurance, but only in higher-quality schools. Our findings suggest that schooling disparities may further disadvantage poor children by hampering the development of a core mental capacity.

Wall Street Journal:

April is typically the best month for the federal fisc because it’s the tax payment deadline for the previous year. But this year the April budget surplus fell by $135 billion from a year earlier. Including adjustments for timing shifts in federal outlays, the decline was $274 billion, or 73% from April 2022.

That portends bigger budget deficits for the rest of the fiscal year. The deficit for the first seven months is already $928 billion, or 236% higher than in 2022 with timing adjustments. Keep in mind that this is happening when the economy is still growing and the unemployment rate is still low.

The big culprit is spending, which is up 12% in the first seven months or nearly $400 billion, including timing adjustments. Entitlements are up 11% and education spending owing to student-loan changes is up 56%. Chalk this up to the spending pipeline enacted by the last Congress that has years to go unless it’s pared back by this Congress.

And get this: Interest on the national debt rose 40%, or $107 billion, and is already $374 billion for the first seven months. That’s what happens when interest rates rise 500 basis points in a year to fight the inflation that runaway federal spending helped to ignite.

Elaine Gunthorpe:

In his recent Fox News op-ed, Campus ReformHigher Education Fellow Nicholas Giordano discusses the “unholy alliance” forming between government bureaucrats and the academic elites. 

Citing President Dwight Eisenhower’s concern for the ties between government funding and higher education, Giordano writes that the fear “has become a reality.”

“[T]hroughout the country, professors on college campuses have been recruited to develop tools for monitoring and restricting discourse, betraying the values of free speech,” Giordano writes, pointing to an example from Wisconsin.   

“[T]he University of Wisconsin has been awarded a $5 million grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF),” Giordano explains, “to develop a system that can detect and ‘strategically correct’ what the government perceives as misinformation relating to COVID, elections, and vaccines.”

He goes on to elaborate:

Paul Lockhart:

As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely. One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way.”

In their wisdom, educators soon realize that even very young children can be given this kind of musical instruction. In fact it is considered quite shameful if one’s third-grader hasn’t completely memorized his circle of fifths. “I’ll have to get my son a music tutor. He simply won’t apply himself to his music homework. He says it’s boring. He just sits there staring out the window, humming tunes to himself and making up silly songs.”

Philip Amman:

I think, first of all, primarily, we’re training them for their own sake, not for ours. Of course, community benefits will come out of the situation in some way. But mostly, it’s about their individual fulfillment that we’re here for when we’re educating them. How they find meaning in life, it’s up to them.

Secondly, I think mathematical sophistication is very important in understanding the world at present in many possible ways. You definitely need to have a sophisticated mathematical view that you combine with other things to understand the world. Now, if there are a lot of such people in society, then people who teach and produce new mathematics, it’s hard to think that they wouldn’t benefit from it. If, in other words, you have a mathematically sophisticated society, the status of the people who are specialists in mathematics [will improve].

Dick Bauer:

During the pandemic, this same university chose not to send its foreign students to their native homes during the two-year period of the COVID pandemic. The reason: The F2F tuition the school was charging the students (and this school was in the top 100 in Forbes magazine for their graduate school) was three times the in-state or U.S. citizen tuition. Sending foreign students home would eliminate a very lucrative revenue source. 

Additionally, such foreign nationals were required, according to the school’s pandemic-era policies, to attend at least three classes in-person each semester to maintain matriculation status and keep their student visas. That meant that there needed to be instructors on campus to teach these classes, but of course the full-time faculty could not be forced to endanger themselves by breaking COVID lockdown rules. So it was left to adjuncts like myself, who did not receive any medical insurance from the school, to drive to campus to hold in-person classes for these high-revenue students.

Despite teaching as many as eight courses in one term, I was never offered any of the benefits that are customarily associated with a full-time academic salary in America. Some schools have elected to restrict the hours adjunct faculty are allowed to work in order to avoid the Affordable Care Act requirement that would otherwise require them to provide health insurance to their employees. According to AdjunctNation, more than 200 schools set limits on adjunct working hours. Adjuncts typically earn between $20,000 and $25,000 annually, while the average salary for full-time instructors is $84,300, according to the American Association of University Professors.

Some adjuncts cobble together a full-time teaching schedule by offering classes at more than one university—as many as three or four. However, professors who “moonlight” at multiple colleges rarely earn the same salary or benefits as full-time instructors.

Founder of SunMicro Scott McNealy (@scottmcnealy) joins me to discuss the concept of open-source education, the problems with the state’s educational system, the importance of the private sector, money, #Bitcoin, and the urgent need to bring back traditional family values. pic.twitter.com/CnEFsWwoWJ

— Robert ₿reedlove (@Breedlove22) May 13, 2023

Antonia Noori Farzan

The Barrington School Committee has reached a settlement with three teachers who were fired for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Brittany DiOrio, Stephanie Hines and Kerri Thurber will each receive a payment of $33,333, a spokesperson for the school district announced Thursday in a news release. Additionally, they will receive back pay: $65,000 for Hines, $128,000 for Thurber and $150,000 for DiOrio. The three teachers’ legal counsel will receive $50,000 in attorney’s fees.

Jessica Winter:

Travis came to live at his ninth home the day before he started kindergarten. When his new foster parents, Elizabeth and Dan, enrolled Travis at their neighborhood public school, in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, they learned that Travis was eligible for special-education services. (Some names in this story have been changed.) Several languages had been spoken in Travis’s past homes, which had included foster-care placements and homeless shelters, and he had not begun speaking until he was three and a half. A neuropsychiatric evaluation of Travis, conducted when he was four, estimated that he had a grasp of twenty words; it also noted that he still wore pull-up diapers and “tends to speak very loudly to his peers.”

Elizabeth noticed a line in Travis’s paperwork that read “Disability Classification,” and, next to it, the initials “E.D.” The school’s principal told her that they stood for “emotional disturbance.” Elizabeth and Dan, who later adopted Travis and his infant brother, Kieran, did not yet know that Travis had suffered abuse and neglect in previous homes. Nor did they know that Travis had been kicked out of two preschools for violent behavior. But, Elizabeth told me, “it was almost immediately apparent that he had aggressive and violent coping skills. That was how he interacted with the world, because that was how the world had interacted with him.”

That fall, when Elizabeth visited Travis’s kindergarten classroom for her first parent-teacher conference, one of the teachers gestured toward a comfy reading nook, piled with pillows. “See that calm-down corner? We built that for Travis,” the teacher said. Elizabeth, who is a stay-at-home mother, began receiving frequent calls about Travis acting out at school: tantrums, hitting other children, throwing books. A behavioral paraprofessional was assigned to Travis, but the incidents persisted. “We started getting calls like, ‘There’s a field trip coming up, and it would probably be best if Travis stayed home.’ Or, ‘Could he not come into school tomorrow? It would just be easier,’ ” Elizabeth said.

David Blaska:

Requiring prospective employees to attest to their DEI faithis a prohibited political test, President Rothman told legislators. “If people think we are imposing litmus tests on them at that stage in the employment process, we are not being inclusive,” he said. “We need to be inclusive.”

Doubtless, the UW system boss was responding to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who threatens to reduce system funding by the $16 million spent annually on DEI enforcement. 

“I have heard from people who have had to fill out DEI statements to apply for a UW job and graduate students who have had to admit to their white privilege. This is preposterous!” — Assembly Speaker Robin Vos

Melissa Whitler:

“If graduation rates are going up, are our children prepared for life after school?” El-Amin asked at the board meeting. 

Interim Superintendent Rochelle Cox said that this is one of the reasons why the intervention triads will be at middle and high schools, and not just in elementary grades, next year. 

“I want every parent out there of an eleventh grader or tenth grader or ninth grader to know that there is support next year if their student is struggling in reading or math,” Cox said.

Cox also said that within high schools, there are many accommodations happening for students who are struggling with basic literacy and numeracy in other content areas. 

Senior Academic Officer Aimee Fearing explained that the district is currently auditing high school courses to determine whether or not they meet all State standards. As part of that process, she said the district has already told at least one high school, “You are assigning graduation credit for a course that we don’t believe meets State standards.”

Todd Richmond:

In just the past two weeks, the state’s top Republican announced a push to defund the University of Wisconsin System’s diversity efforts — a move the Democratic governor lambasted as ridiculous. A student from UW-Madison posted racial slurs online, triggering bitter protests but no announced discipline. And a state medical college canceled a diversity symposium featuring Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson out of concerns the discussion would be too disruptive, resulting in cries of bias from conservatives.

Amid that backdrop, Republican legislative leaders are set to hold a hearing Thursday with only invited speakers to discuss “how the lack of free speech and intellectual diversity on college campuses affects the quality of higher education.” The speakers include John Sailer, policy director at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that advocates against diversity policies, and Tim Higgins, a former UW regent appointed by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

“I think people are talking about viewpoint diversity as being as important or more important than other types of diversity,” said Republican Rep. David Murphy, chairman of the state Assembly’s colleges committee, who will preside over the hearing. “And I think (diversity efforts aren’t) showing any benefits.”

Jeffrey Brainard:

His findings underscore what was widely suspected: Journals are awash in a rising tide of scientific manuscripts from paper mills—secretive businesses that allow researchers to pad their publication records by paying for fake papers or undeserved authorship. “Paper mills have made a fortune by basically attacking a system that has had no idea how to cope with this stuff,” says Dorothy Bishop, a University of Oxford psychologist who studies fraudulent publishing practices. A 2 May announcement from the publisher Hindawi underlined the threat: It shut down four of its journals it found were “heavily compromised” by articles from paper mills.

Sabel’s tool relies on just two indicators—authors who use private, noninstitutional email addresses, and those who list an affiliation with a hospital. It isn’t a perfect solution, because of a high false-positive rate. Other developers of fake-paper detectors, who often reveal little about how their tools work, contend with similar issues.

Still, the detectors raise hopes for gaining the advantage over paper mills, which churn out bogus manuscripts containing text, data, and images partly or wholly plagiarized or fabricated, often massaged by ghost writers. Some papers are endorsed by unrigorous reviewers solicited by the authors. Such manuscripts threaten to corrupt the scientific literature, misleading readers and potentially distorting systematic reviews. The recent advent of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT has amplified the concern.

Cornel West and Jeremy Wayne Tate:

Gov. Ron DeSantis just gave a welcome boost to the classical-education movement. He signed legislation allowing high-school students to qualify for Bright Futures scholarships, a state fund for college education, by submitting scores from the Classic Learning Test instead of the SAT alone.

This move will likely be portrayed, wrongly, as partisan and conservative. But the greatest works of civilization have always been about spurring—not preventing—radical change. They teach us about the revolutionary ideas of the past and help us better understand the present. The richest ideas of what it means to be human are those that have stood the test of time.

Many of the seminal works of literature, history, philosophy, science and theology were revolutionary in their respective ages. Turn the pages of Galileo Galilei’s “Two New Sciences” and you’ll experience the alteration of humanity’s view of itself in relation to the heavens. By disproving the then-common belief that the planets revolved around the Earth rather than the sun, Galileo laid the foundation for modern science. Isaac Newton, swept aside what remained of the Old World’s scientific superstitions—only to find himself upstaged two centuries later by Albert Einstein’s “Relativity.”

Like revolutionary ideas today, the ideas of yesterday were provocative and, in many cases, much more consequential. Galileo was put on trial because he upset the status quo. In the 13th century, Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris condemned key works of theologian Thomas Aquinas for being too radical. Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn and civil-rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. were imprisoned for their views. In colonial America, James Madison and his co-authors feared printing their names on the Federalist Papers, so they hid under aliases. Even the most mild-mannered of philosophers stirred trouble for thinking against the grain. Plato watched his great teacher Socrates put to death for his teachings.

Cash for Color: Iowa School District offering $$ based on race. New BIPOC teachers at @CRSCHOOLS get $3,000 hiring bonus. White teachers, not so much. “Screamingly unconstitutional,” to quote a famous CA7 judge.
H/T @fedjudges pic.twitter.com/otul2WWqis

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) May 12, 2023

Alex Tabarrok

The misunderstanding came from thinking that we need every user of fuel to find substitutes. Not at all! In reality, as fuel prices rise, those with the lowest substitution costs will switch first, freeing up fuel for users who have more difficulty finding alternatives. Just one industry with favorable substitution possibilities, combined with a few moderately adaptable industries, can produce a significant overall effect. Moreover, there are nearly always some industries with viable substitution options. To see why reverse the usual story and ask, if fuel prices fell by 50% could your industry use more fuel? And if fuel prices fell by 50% are their industries that could switch into the now cheaper fuel?

People often find it easier to imagine new uses rather than ways to reduce existing consumption. However, it is typically the new uses that are scaled back first. Tyler and I illustrate this with our jet and rubber ducky graph. Although jet aircraft won’t shift away from oil even at high prices, rubber (actually plastic) duckies, which are made from oil, can find substitutes–wood, for example–when oil prices rise. And if plastic ducky manufacturers cannot find substitutes, they go out of business, freeing up more oil for other uses. In this way, the market identifies the least valuable goods to cease production, another kind of substitution.

Steven McGuire:

The guide states that “it is not intended to constrain the academic freedom or free speech rights of members of the Stanford community,” but it takes positions on topics that remain matters of public and academic controversy, and it is part of the university’s official “Identity Guide.”

The entry for “gender, gender identity” says that “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid using both sexes, either sex, or opposite sexes to encompass all people.” Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist, maintains that sex is binary, as do many other scientists and doctors. Should a university communications office be canonizing beliefs that may well be pseudoscientific?

Seth Barrett Tillman and Josh Blackman

This Article is the third installment of a planned ten-part series that provides the first comprehensive examination of the offices and officers of the Constitution. The first installment introduced the series. The second installment identified four approaches to understand the Constitution’s divergent “Office”- and “Officer”-language. This third installment will analyze the phrase “Officers of the United States,” which is used in the Appointments Clause, the Impeachment Clause, the Commissions Clause, and the Oath or Affirmation Clause.

This Article proceeds in six sections. Section I describes our methodology, which includes textualism, original public meaning originalism, original methods originalism, and consideration of historical practices during the founding-era and later-in-time. Section II explains that the phrase “Officers of the United States” is defined by the Appointments Clause. This phrase refers to appointed positions in the Executive and Judicial Branches. Our position here is supported by the drafting history of the Appointments Clause, as well as Supreme Court precedent. Section III turns to the Impeachment Clause, which applies to “civil Officers of the United States.” This latter category refers to non-military appointed positions in the Executive Branch and Judicial Branch. Members of Congress, as well as appointed positions in the Legislative Branch, are not “civil Officers of the United States,” and therefore such positions cannot be impeached.

I think this is broadly correct, but there are strong teacher unions across Europe too. They were overruled by a political consensus in favor of kids. The US lacked this consensus. We don’t put kids first. https://t.co/OqW1XfnWa6 pic.twitter.com/H0jn2VFHUl

— Anya Kamenetz (@anya1anya) May 12, 2023

Pre-pandemic test score results (blue bubbles) show enormous district-level inequality. Post-pandemic results (orange arrows) are generally worse.

District-level info is available. https://t.co/YQRjKkxalg pic.twitter.com/At3K5aucnz

— Alexander Russo (@alexanderrusso) May 12, 2023

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

I wonder if your average Wisconsinite knows how much better Mississippi’s students are doing than Wisconsin’s.

READING
White: 0.5 years ahead
Black: 2.0 ahead
Latin: 1.0 ahead

MATHEMATICS
White: tied
Black: 2.0 ahead
Latin: 1.5 ahead

Not insulting him; I wouldn’t have guessed! https://t.co/TOT3CtG3WG

— Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) May 12, 2023

“More than 30 states have already adopted laws or are moving towards requiring school districts to use the science of reading approach.

“But partisan gridlock in Wisconsin has kept the state from moving forward on a comprehensive reading plan…” https://t.co/CbAlExCotq

— Mark Sommerhauser (@msommerhauser) May 12, 2023

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Will-Law

Recently Wisconsin Watch released articles criticizing the Wisconsin parental choice programs and incorrectly claiming that private schools may “discriminate.” This memo provides resources and information about the false claims made in the article and talking points to refute them. 

The claims that private schools may “discriminate” are false. 

These claims are false. Wisconsin Watch claims that federal law “allows religious entities to discriminate against LGBTQ+ students” and that schools in the parental choice program may discriminate against LGBTQ+ students or those with disabilities “once that student is enrolled.” 

Private schools are governed by different laws than public schools.  There are specific prohibitions of discrimination that apply to private schools participating in the parental choice program. For example, Wisconsin law requires private schools in the choice programs to do a blind admission process. Schools are not permitted to create barriers for enrollment for student based on anything other than the DPI application and income verification forms. Private schools are allowed to give existing students and their siblings eligibility preferences.  

Private schools are not permitted to “discriminate” against students with disabilities. 

The Obama Administration began a misguided investigation into private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program in 2011. DPI, at that time, correctly stated that private schools in the program have a different legal standard to serve students with disabilities. Despite a three-year investigation, there were no instances of discrimination found. 

Private schools have a different legal standard than public schools for students with disabilities. 

Public schools are subject to several state and federal laws regarding the education of students with disabilities including the requirement that public school districts may not deny any student access to a “Free and Appropriate Public Education” and receive specific funds to educate children with disabilities. Even within public school districts, not all individual schools are required to provide a full range of special education services.

Private schools must meet a different legal standard. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Title III of the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) set forth requirements for private schools. 

Title III of the ADA requires private schools to make “reasonable modifications” for individuals with disabilities to access the facility and prohibits private schools from discriminating against individuals based on their disability. Changes to accommodate may not fundamentally alter the nature of the goods and services provided by the private school or impose an undue financial or administrative burden on the private school. Similarly, Section 504 requires private schools to make “minor adjustments” for individuals with disabilities to access the facility. Private schools may consider  the nature of the program provided and the expense of accommodations sought when serving individuals with disabilities under Section 504. 

Furthermore, private schools participating in the Wisconsin Special Needs Scholarship Program, to specifically serve students with disabilities, must meet with families to complete an agreement to discuss the educational needs of each student and to explain special education resources available at the school. Participating private schools are also required to provide reports to parents about student progress.

The Wisconsin Watch articles do not specifically claim a private school violated the federal laws regarding students with disabilities. 

Private schools in Wisconsin serve hundreds of students with disabilities.

Academic research found that private schools in Wisconsin parental choice programs serve many students with disabilities. Reported disability rates are often lower because choice schools lack the financial incentive public schools have for identification.

This is further supported by the growing participation in the Special Needs Scholarship Program, a state-funded program to give students with disabilities funding to attend a private school of their choice. Since the program’s creation in 2015, participation has grown by 815%, from 215 to 1,986 students. 

Private schools in the choice program welcome all students. 

Private schools in the choice program choose to participate in the program, with full knowledge that they are opening their doors to students and families from all different backgrounds and beliefs. Many of these schools participate because they want to serve as many students as possible. 

Private schools in the choice program may not require participation in religious classes. 

Once enrolled, all students are subject to the policies of the school, religious policies included. If families disagree with the religious beliefs of the school, state law permits families to opt their children out of religious instruction. 

Additionally, the choice program is a voluntary program that empowers families to choose the school that best fits their child’s needs. Families are always free to choose to send their children to a school that matches their values.

Religious schools have a constitutional protection to serve students based on their beliefs. 

The U.S. Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. This allows religious schools to teach and make decisions based on their religious beliefs. For private, religious schools, this includes decisions relating to policies and procedures at the school. 

Both the Wisconsin Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court have determined that parental choice programs are legal. 

The claims that taxpayer dollars should not go to schools that enforce their religious beliefs has been litigated both in Wisconsin and most recently in the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that if states choose to create and provide a parental choice program the state may not discriminate against faith-based schools and may not bar students from using public funds to attend religious schools. 

With private schools, the choice ultimately lies with the student, parent, and family. 

All families deserve to access high-quality schools that meet their child’s needs. Far too many families are stuck in their assigned public schools, but school choice provides families with the option to attend the school that is the best fit for their child.

Ultimately, parents and students have every right to go to a school that matches their moral convictions.  The whole idea behind school choice is if a parent or student is upset with how a school is run, then they can in fact go somewhere else and take their money with them. 

For additional questions, please contact:

Nic Kelly, kelly@parentchoice.org

Libby Sobic, libby@will-law.org

Notes and links on “Wisconsin Watch”

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Ray Teixeira

Democrats are very shaky indeed on the idea of merit today but that wobbliness goes back quite a way to the origins of affirmative action as a tool for allocating jobs and school admissions. As it evolved in practice, affirmative action became bound up with preferences based on race (later also on gender) that were used to override allocations based on conventional measures of merit. While these practices have been with us for a long time, they have never been popular. Voters have been stubbornly resistant to the idea that it’s fair to allocate sought-over slots on the basis of race rather than merit.

This is true today as the Supreme Court prepares to render a decision next month on affirmative action in higher education as practiced byHarvard and the University of North Carolina. The Harvard case turns particularly on whether Asians have been discriminated against in admissions to that college. Given the proclivities of the Court and the blindingly obvious pattern of such discrimination—denying it seems as plausible as professing one’s belief in the Easter Bunny—it is a safe bet that the Court will decide against the universities. In so doing, the Court will find itself on the good side of public opinion and Democrats, who will no doubt denounce the decision in histrionic terms, will find themselves very much on the wrong side.

In typical polling from Pew in 2022, just 7 percent of the public thought high school grades should not be a factor in college admissions and a mere 14 percent thought standardized test scores should not be a factor. But an overwhelming 74 percent thought that race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions.

Rob D’Amico:

The TSHA committee responsible for a nomination to a vacant seat had put forth an academic to fill it, which would have made the balance 12–8 in favor of academics. TSHA backers of a more traditionalist history of Texas (think “Remember the Alamo!”) were upset because they said the meeting’s board election was about to throw the organization’s governance out of whack, in violation of its bylaws. Many in that camp felt that academics often promoted a more progressive version of Texas history that unduly questioned the motives of Texas revolutionaries and overemphasized the shortcomings of other historical figures and groups: for example, blaming Texas Rangers in general for the racist and murderous acts of some of that group’s members, especially during its earlier days.

Executive director J. P. Bryan Jr.—a former TSHA president whose ancestor helped found the association and who leans toward the more traditional take on Texas history—had a wild card to play at the meeting. Bryan told the voting members in attendance that instead of just considering the committee-anointed academic nominee, they should consider a nomination from the floor of Wallace Jefferson, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and a nonacademic, to maintain balance. Jefferson, who is Black, also would help advance the association’s diversity goals.

MD Kittle:

The Star News Network is suing the Federal Bureau of Investigation alleging the law enforcement agency has broken a critical First Amendment guard in repeatedly denying Freedom of Information Act requests seeking the Covenant School killer’s manifesto.

Filed Wednesday, the federal lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee to order the FBI to release Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s manifesto and related documents and to issue a declaration that the agency violated FOIA in denying the request for the information.

The Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is representing three plaintiffs, Nashville-based Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns and operates The Star News Network, Michael Patrick Leahy and Matt Kittle.

Austin Henley:

We identified 6 categories of pain points:

• Where are students struggling? It is a huge challenge for instructors to know when students are struggling. There is often not an effective feedback loop since instructors often rely on students to ask questions. However, two instructors expressed why this doesn’t work: “I can’t see where they get stuck and many don’t ask questions” and “students are doing lots and lots of things but I can’t process all they are doing”.
• Answering student questions. In contrast, instructors and TAs are overwhelmed with responding to questions and problems. These questions are often last minute, repetitive in nature, and require technical troubleshooting. For example, “Why does Python no longer exist?”.
• Limited TA support. You might be thinking that teaching assistants will just solve all these challenges! Sadly, most departments are understaffed with TAs, if they have any at all, despite growing enrollments. Instructors said that even when they have TAs, they sometimes require considerable time to manage and may not be reliable.
• Grading and feedback. Nearly every instructor brought up the time and tedium of grading. In fact, one instructor told us “grading is probably the biggest burden of the courses”. Instructors also described how critical it is to design a rubric and feedback mechanism that is transparent and minimizes lawyering.
• Course material preparation. Instructors lamented about the high cost of creating and maintain course materials, such as lectures, assignments, and quizzes. They often don’t update them over the years because they “just don’t have the resources”. The shift to online courses because of COVID-19 required significant upfront investment, though instructors complained they saw little engagement from students.
• Administrative tasks. The grunt work of running a course includes managing social dynamics, accreditation tasks, enforcing academic honest policies, dealing with LMS issues, etc. Several instructors said they wished they could spend this time improving the course instead. Dealing with cheating was probably the least favorite task of all!

Jonathan Turley:

Northwestern University has long been a school hostile to free speech. My alma mater was ranked 197 out of 203 universities for free speech in a major survey by FIRE. (Fortunately, my other alma mater, the University of Chicago, was ranked number one for free speech). This month showed why Northwestern developed a reputation for speech intolerance and a lack of ideological diversity. Northwestern University’s Associated Student Government suspended the funding for the College Republicans due to objections to posters for an event featuring writer and critical race theory critic James Lindsay. The justification was a poster featuring a skull and crossbones, an objection that seemed more of a pretense than a principle. This move reportedly came after Lindsay’s speech was the subject of protests on campus.According to the Daily Northwestern, one of the posters displayed a skull and crossbones that was superimposed over the LGBT Pride flag. ASG co-president, Molly Whalen, seemed disappointed that the group did not have the power to ban Lindsay but took solace from the fact that they could deny the Republicans any funding:

“We can’t prevent a speaker from coming to campus as student government. That’s done by administration. We focused on the part that we could control, which is student group conduct and student group finances.”

It is doubtful that other groups from the College Democrats to Black Lives Matter to pro-choice groups would be sanctioned for using the common symbol to express their opposition to the MAGA movement or racism or pro-life positions.

THREAD🧵: New docs obtained by @America1stLegal show DHS plan to produce videos training bystanders to take action against political speech by “Middle-Aged Pro Life Advocates” & “Old High School Friends” who are “Budding Conspiracy Theorists.”

Report: https://t.co/cI20CKPMYC

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) May 9, 2023

Robert Nozick:

What percentage of people would choose to live under socialism? The communist countries do not help us to answer this question, for neither through elections nor through emigration do they offer their people any choice. What about the electoral experience of democratic societies such as England or Sweden? Even this does not enable us to disentangle (imagined) self-interest from our topic: the desire to participate in socialist interpersonal relations of equality and community.

To find out what percentage of people especially want to live under socialism, we need a situation where people have a reasonably attractive socialist option and also a reasonably attractive nonsocialist one. If it is not precisely the optimal experiment to answer our question, the Israeli experience with kibbutzim comes as close as the real world can.

Not only have the kibbutzim offered socialist personal relations in a socialist community, but these communities have been widely admired for performing the important functions of reclaiming the land, aiding Jewish self defense, and “normalizing” the occupational structure of the Jewish people. Unlike 19th-century utopian communities in America or 20th-century “communes, membership in a kibbutz brought respect and support from the wider society, aiding members through difficulties. Furthermore, no natural population provides a more fertile ground for socialist commitment than the Ashkenazi Jewish population. No people is more prone to being captured by an “idealistic” ideological position, especially one emphasizing group solidarity. Indeed, there was selective entry into Israel early in the century; many came in order to help build socialism and did their best to instill their ideals in their children.

Skrable, Kenneth; Chabot, George; French, Clayton¹

After 1750 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the anthropogenic fossil component and the non-fossil component in the total atmospheric CO₂concentration, C(t), began to increase. Despite the lack of knowledge of these two components, claims that all or most of the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been due to the anthropogenic fossil component have continued since they began in 1960 with “Keeling Curve: Increase in CO₂ from burning fossil fuel.” Data and plots of annual anthropogenic fossil CO₂ emissions and concentrations, C(t), published by the Energy Information Administration, are expanded in this paper. Additions include annual mean values in 1750 through 2018 of the ¹⁴C specific activity, concentrations of the two components, and their changes from values in 1750. The specific activity of ¹⁴C in the atmosphere gets reduced by a dilution effect when fossil CO₂, which is devoid of ¹⁴C, enters the atmosphere. We have used the results of this effect to quantify the two components. All results covering the period from 1750 through 2018 are listed in a table and plotted in figures. These results negate claims that the increase in C(t) since 1800 has been dominated by the increase of the anthropogenic fossil component. We determined that in 2018, atmospheric anthropogenic fossil CO₂ represented 23% of the total emissions since 1750 with the remaining 77% in the exchange reservoirs. Our results show that the percentage of the total CO₂ due to the use of fossil fuels from 1750 to 2018 increased from 0% in 1750 to 12% in 2018, much too low to be the cause of global warming.

Via Wispolitics:

Accordingly, I am directing that each of you take action to eliminate the requirement for a mandatory diversity statement as part of any written employment application at your respective university. Please effect this change for all postings on or after June 30, 2023.

Wall Street Journal:

The union also wants reparations for black students to remedy alleged historic injustices. How about instead remedying the enormous learning deficits the union has caused by protecting bad teachers and closing schools during the pandemic? Perhaps the district could extend the school year, or, better yet, provide families with private school vouchers?

Instead, the union wants the first week of school each year to focus on creating a “positive school culture,” whatever that means, rather than instruction. It is also demanding a “Climate Justice Day for standards-based teach-ins, workshops, action, and field trips.” Maybe kids can’t read, but they can be unemployed climate warriors. 

The Oakland union is taking cues from the National Education Association. “When we expand the continuum of bargaining, we build power, and go on the offense in order to fight for social and racial justice, for our kids, for our schools, for our communities, and for the future,” the NEA states on its website. 

Tired of being criticized for prioritizing their own interests over those of children, unions are now pretending to promote what they call the “common good.” Yet in doing so they are substantiating the Supreme Court’s landmark Janus decision (2018), which held that government collective-bargaining implicates workers’ First Amendment rights.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

More.

Florian Sohnke:

And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that has the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.

Bond reform designed to make sure no one stays in jail while their cases are pending with no safety net to handle more criminals on the streets, shorter parole periods, lower sentences for repeat offenders, the malicious and unnecessary prosecution of law enforcement officers, the overuse of diversion programs, intentionally not pursuing prosecutions for crimes lawfully on the books after being passed by our legislature and signed by a governor, all of the so-called reforms have had a direct negative impact, with consequences that will last for a generation.

Many years ago, my family found a nice corner of the suburbs. Now my son, who is only 5, hears gunfire while playing at our neighborhood park, and a drug dealer is open-air selling behind my house (the second one in two years). If it were just me to consider, I’d stick it out. I’ve been through enough stupid State’s Attorney policies before. But this Office’s complete failure to even think for a moment before rushing into one popular political agenda after another has put my family directly in harm’s way.

The current people in charge of this state, including the SAO, suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding…we live in a society with adversarial court and criminal justice processes. Defense attorneys, legal aid clinics, Public Defenders, defendant advocate groups…they fight like hell to protect the rights of criminal defendants. Andy they should. Their work is as noble as ours. But we have an obligation to fight like hell on behalf of the People. It should go without saying that this must be done ethically and evenhandedly. When both sides vigorously defend their positions, a balance is reached between protecting rights while preserving some sort of order and safety. Once we start doing too much of the defense’s job, once we pull our punches, once we decide it’s worth risking citizens’ lives to have a little social experiment, that balance is lost. The unavoidable consequences are what we are witnessing in real time, an increase in crime of all kinds, businesses and families pulling up the stakes, and the bodies piling up; the whole time with a State’s Attorney who insists there is nothing to see here, and if there is, it must be someone else’s fault. And then they wonder why they cannot retain experienced prosecutors or even hire new ones…it’s because any true prosecutor recognizes the importance of this balance, and they will not be permitted to be a prosecutor under this administration.

SUSAN SCHMIDT, ANDREW LOWENTHAL, TOM WYATT, TECHNO FOG, AND 4 OTHERS

This is why the Trump-Russia scandal in the United States will likely be remembered as a crucial moment in 21st-century history, even though the investigation superficially ended a non-story, fake news in itself. What the Mueller investigation didn’t accomplish in ousting Trump from office, it did accomplish in birthing a vast new public-private bureaucracy devoted to stopping “mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” while smoothing public acquiescence to the emergence of a spate of new government agencies with “information warfare” missions. 

The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.

Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy. 

They suggest we must rethink old conceptions about rights, and give ourselves over to new surveillance techniques like “toxicity monitoring,” replace the musty old free press with editors claiming a “nose for news” with an updated model that uses automated assignment tools like “newsworthy claim extraction,” and submit to frank thought-policing mechanisms like the “redirect method,” which sends ads at online browsers of dangerous content, pushing them toward “constructive alternative messages.”

Alex Zimmerman:

New York City’s elementary schools will be required to use one of three reading curriculums, a tectonic shift that education officials hope will improve literacy rates across the nation’s largest school system.

Beginning in September, elementary schools in 15 of the city’s 32 districts will be required to use one of three programs selected by the education department, Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday. By September 2024, all of the city’s roughly 700 elementary schools will be required to use one of the three. Chalkbeat first reported the plans in March. 

The new mandate won support from the teachers union, whose leaders expressed faith in the city’s efforts to train thousands of teachers on new materials. Training for the first year is expected to cost $35 million, though city officials declined to provide an estimate of the effort’s overall price tag, including the cost of purchasing materials.

Meanwhile, the plan earned a strong rebuke from the union representing principals, who have long had wide latitude to choose which materials their teachers use. That freedom has allowed school leaders to use programs that vary widely in their approach and quality, Banks has argued.

Daniel Wiessner

A union for U.S. federal government employees filed a lawsuit on Monday claiming a law setting a $31.4 trillion debt ceiling is unconstitutional as political leaders seek to avoid a historic default expected as soon as next month.

The National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) says the debt limit law adopted in 1917 violates the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers because it forces the president in the event of a default to cut spending already authorized by Congress.

Scott Gerber

Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested, prosecuted and killed by an inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. I’m Josef K.

Around 1 p.m. on Friday, April 14, Ohio Northern University campus security officers entered my classroom with my students present and escorted me to the dean’s office. Armed town police followed me down the hall. My students appeared shocked and frightened. I know I was. I was immediately barred from teaching, banished from campus, and told that if I didn’t sign a separation agreement and release of claims by April 21, ONU would commence dismissal proceedings against me. The grounds: “Collegiality.” The specifics: None.

Josef K. never learns what he’s alleged to have done wrong. The offenses I’ve allegedly committed haven’t been revealed to me, either. But I have an educated guess.

Like many universities, ONU is aggressively pursuing “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives. I have objected publicly as vice chairman of the University Council, an elected faculty governance body, and in newspaper op-eds and on television, to DEI efforts that don’t include viewpoint diversity and would lead to illegal discrimination in employment and admissions. The same week I was led out of my classroom by police and campus security, I published an op-ed defending Justice Clarence Thomas’s right to have friends—even rich ones. …

If Legacy Media is going to shove bigotry porn down our throats it should at least do so in an honest manner so people have an accurate understanding of racial dynamics.

Time and time again, Legacy Media has failed to do just that.

H/T: @DavidRozado pic.twitter.com/bsB6rVV7Yn

— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) May 9, 2023

Ross Douthat

In recent months, there have been several instances of elite universities or their faculty members offering some kind of institutional pushback to a censorious progressivism. Prominent examples include Cornell’s refusal to create a trigger warning requirement demanded by the undergraduate student assembly, the formation of a Harvard faculty group defending academic freedom and Stanford’s official condemnation of the disruptions at a conservative judge’s law school talk.

These developments dovetail with the argumentmade earlier this year by Musa al-Gharbi at Columbia, a perceptive observer of the culture war, that the Great Awokening as a period of intense moral fervor may be winding down — that after “10 straight years of heightened unrest in knowledge-economy institutions and knowledge-economy hubs” we’re seeing a partial depoliticization, a diminishment of ideological policing and cancellation attempts. And they also dovetail, to some extent, with an essay this week from Matt Yglesias, the Vox co-founder turned Substacker, arguing that critics of wokeness risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy if they constantly emphasize the obstacles to free speech and the professional penalties for heterodoxy, rather than simply encouraging journalists and academics to have courage and recognize that you can take a controversial position without being immediately professionally disappeared.

I agree with al-Gharbi that the recent intellectual trends within liberal institutions are somewhat more favorable to free debate, and I agree with Yglesias that intellectual courage is necessary and that the language of anti-wokeness sometimes encourages people to imagine a more Soviet situation than actually exists. But I also think that there are different ways that an era of “heightened unrest” and ideological revolution can give way to relative cultural peace.

In some situations, the revolution might be rolled back or resisted or collapse of its own accord. But in others, peace might arrive because the revolution feels confident in its path to ultimate victory and no longer feels an urgent need to make examples of its enemies; it can move comfortably to entrenchment, the institutional long march.

George Orwell:

MOST people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

Stevens Malange

Public school districts across the United States closed for unprecedented periods during the Covid-19 pandemic. Enrollments plunged, as students either headed to private schools or stayed home for schooling. Other children simply disappeared from schools and remain unaccounted for even today by school officials. Now, because of this exodus, school districts nationwide are grappling with another kind of closing: empty classrooms and underused school buildings are prompting waves of school shutdowns, as education officials look to downsize their operations in response to smaller student populations and disappearing Covid bailout funds. In many communities, the process is messy, with parents, teachers, and teachers’ unions objecting. But failing to act will only worsen budget deficits at a time of economic uncertainty.

According to an international study, American schools closed for an average of 70 weeks during the pandemic—far longer than schools shut down in most European countries, though the length of closures varied by state. Schools in Texas and Florida, for example, were closed for just a fraction of the time that schools in California and New York were shuttered. In all, public schools lost some 1.2 million students in the first two years of the pandemic. Some migrated to private institutions, where enrollments grew by 4 percent, while homeschool numbers rose by 30 percent.

Among states sustaining the biggest losses are California, which saw public school enrollment shrink by some 245,000 in two pandemic years, and New York, where enrollments fell 80,000 in the same period. In these states and elsewhere, Covid accelerated a trend already underway. School enrollment had peaked in many states in the mid-2010s and begun slipping shortly after, a result of fewer births, outmigration, and modest growth in homeschooling and alternative schools. New York State, for instance, has lost about 6 percent of its students, or 120,000 children, since 2016. California’s enrollment has dropped by 382,000 students since the 2014 school year.

Busqueros:

I had a meeting arranged with one of my undergraduate students for 10am last Friday. At around 9.30 I received an email from her saying that since she was “struggling with [her] mental health” she wouldn’t be able to physically come to the building. It would be “too much”. So could we please have the meeting via Zoom instead?

This kind of thing has become completely normal. Vast swathes of students have diagnoses of ADHD or the ubiquitous ‘anxiety and depression’; the rest, who don’t, still feel no compunction in disclosing their ‘struggles’ at the drop of a hat. Working around these issues is now simply a fact of life for academics. We confront them literally on a daily basis.

Debate around the mental health crisis among the young tends to bifurcate into two camps – which, unusually in our times, doesn’t tend to cleave neatly to the political Left or Right. On the one hand, there are those who think it is real and that the conditions young people grow up in (too much screen time, too little socialising, too much pressure in school, family breakdown, consumer capitalism, structural racism or sexism, worries about climate change, take your pick) are conducive to bad mental health. On the other there are those who think the issue is overblown and probably a matter of overdiagnosis (either because adults are too soft or because of financial incentives for child psychologists and doctors and ultimately ‘Big Pharma’).

NEWS: Tucker Carlson is bringing his show to Twitter. https://t.co/f9HqNNCbDh

— T(w)itter Daily News  (@TitterDaily) May 9, 2023

Stanley Druckenmiller:

Let me give you some facts. The share of fiscal spending going to seniors has been growing dramatically since the 1960’s when Medicaid and Medicare joined social security as federal entitlements. Today we spend 6x more per senior than per child in the US. Think social security vs education. Almost 40% of all our taxes are spent on seniors, and this trend is only starting. As the chart shows {Slide #2 below}, we are just getting under way in terms of the fiscal consequences of the grey boom. In 25 years, spending on seniors will grow to take 70% of all taxes. Effectively, with entitlements compounding away, everything else gets squeezed.
In this context, the fiscal recklessness of the last decade has been like watching a horror movie unfold. Look at this chart {Slide #3 below}. During the last decade, our debt grew from $15T to $31T today… a level of indebtment only comparable to that after WWII. But what is worse is that this debt does not account for what the government has promised it will pay you in terms of social security and Medicare. It actually assumes these payments will be ZERO. In the 1950s this “off‐the‐book” debt was small as baby boomers were just being born so actual debt was a reasonable measure of the country’s indebtedness. Not anymore. There are credible estimates that if you assume the government will pay the same to seniors in the future as it is paying today, the present value of that debt approaches $200T. That’s trillion with a “T”.
What makes the last 10 years particularly horrific is that we had some golden opportunities to reduce the fiscal gap ahead of the demographic storm that is under way. After WWI and II, the US quickly repaid its debt by raising taxes and restricting spending. Contrast that with today. After the GFC but pre covid {Slide #4 below}, when the economy boomed in 2018 and the unemployment rate hit a 50‐year low, and even under a Republican administration, the deficit could not go lower than 5% of GDP! And then post covid, we had a booming economy where tax revenues were augmented by high inflation, nominal growth of

Tania Branigan:

Chongqing saw some of the era’s fiercest fighting, with the rift between Red Guards descending into warfare. The Kuomintang had made it their capital while battling the Japanese occupation, and it was home to multiple munitions plants; when armed struggles broke out in 1967, the military backed one side and helped its fighters seize what they needed. The factions battled with grenades, machine guns, napalm, tanks and ships upon the river – everything except planes, a resident recalled.

They executed in cold blood too: even the injured, even the pregnant. Tens of thousands fled the city and at least twelve hundred people died, though the true toll was probably much higher. Some were caught in the violence by chance, like the eight-year-old killed by a ricocheting bullet as he played on the street. The others were not so much older, and you could blame chance there too, even if they saw themselves as soldiers. They never thought it would be so serious, that people would die, that so many would die. By the time they saw their friends fall they’d been battling for hours. They were numb; none of it seemed possible. Had it really happened at all?

Norden and Van den Keere:

Both sets of maps ended up in the collection of Robert (1661-1724) and Edward (1689-1741) Harley, the 1^st and 2^nd Earls of Oxford, thousands of manuscripts, printed books and associated materials which became one of the founding collections of the British Museum in 1753. Norden’s work, produced for and originally owned by James VI and I, came into the Harleys’ possession in 1710, whilst Van der Keere’s maps reached the collection in 1725.

In addition to their shared provenance, it is interesting to note that the two mapmakers knew and worked with each other. As well as his surveying work and devotional writing, Norden conceived of a grand multi-volume county-by-county geography or ‘chorography’ of Britain, having recognised, like others, the public appetite for maps and geographical writings following the success of Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579. Norden’s Speculum Britannia was not completed, but he started work on a number of counties, and even published some of them. The first published county, in 1593, was Middlesex, containing maps including ones of London and Westminster engraved by one Pieter Van den Keere.

Robert Rudolf & Dirk Bethmann

Using PISA 2018 data from nearly half a million 15-year-olds across 72 middle- and high-income countries, this study investigates the relationship between economic development and adolescent subjective well-being. Findings indicate a negative log-linear relationship between per-capita GDP and adolescent life satisfaction. The negative nexus stands in stark contrast to the otherwise positive relationship found between GDP per capita and adult life satisfaction for the same countries. Results are robust to various model specifications and both macro and micro approaches. Moreover, our analysis suggests that this apparent paradox can largely be attributed to higher learning intensity in advanced countries. Effects are found to be more pronounced for girls than for boys.

Commentary.

Troy Closson:

In a recent interview, Mr. Banks said that the city’s approach had been “fundamentally flawed,” and had failed to follow the science of how students learn to read.

“It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault,” Mr. Banks said. “This is the beginning of a massive turnaround.”

Over the next two years, the city’s 32 local school districts will adopt one of three curriculums selected by their superintendents. The curriculums use evidence-supported practices, including phonics — which teaches children how to decode letter sounds — and avoid strategies many reading experts say are flawed, like teaching children to use picture clues to guess words.

The move represents a sea change in a city where principals have historically retained authority over approaches to teaching at their individual schools.

Half of the districts will begin the program in September; the others will start in 2024. Waivers to opt out will only be considered for schools where more than 85 percent of students are proficient in reading, a threshold that only about 20 schools meet.

WILL

• Of Wisconsin-based teachers, 88.5% of donations went to Democratic candidates or organizations. Even when considering only those who list a Wisconsin address, donations still disproportionally favor Democrats.
• 100% of donations from the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) Conduit went to Democrats. This is via the donation pass-through organization of state teachers’ unions. Those who give to the intermediary organization “WEAC We Can Do It” have donations earmarked to specific candidates that are “pro-public education.”
• WILL has created a map of donations from teachers on our website. This will allow policymakers to take a more granular look at teacher ideology in their own communities.
• The position of teachers’ unions on issues like school choice is at odds with the general public. As of February 2022, a School Choice Wisconsin survey found that 77% of Republicans expressed support for school choice, as did 53% of Independents and 36% of Democrats.
• This paper also serves to highlight further potential evidence of the leftward leanings of Wisconsin classrooms. With public school teachers overwhelmingly giving donations to Democrat candidates, it is highly likely that their ideology flows into the teaching they provide to students across the state, at least to some extent. WILL has previously highlighted this.

Political Contributions of Wisconsin Teachers and Education Reform

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

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.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

NEW: New College of Florida will begin accepting the Classic Learning Test (CLT) as an alternative to the SAT and ACT. We are building America’s first public classical liberal arts college and recruiting students from classical K-12 schools, including homeschool students. pic.twitter.com/JTyQtNLWO8

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 8, 2023

more, here.

Caroline Dade:

27 News has asked the Sun Prairie Area School District to share its current policies and practices for locker room use. However, the district’s attorney responded and said the district will not share anything beyond its original statement about the incident

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The @OaklandNAACP is right. Learning disruption has devastating effects and, as an organization that has been fighting racial injustice for over a century, they are well aware of how this strike will impact Black families disproportionately in Oakland. pic.twitter.com/XW37Mv7cc0

— Lakisha Young (@LakishaYoungCEO) May 8, 2023

MacIver:

Questions That Need To Discussed And Answered:

• Are local governments truly destitute and in desperate need of a massive increase of taxpayer funding? See charts above.   
• Why should state taxpayers bail out the lavish and reckless pension plans of the city of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County?
• How much has the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County paid towards their pension plans for the last twenty years? Is this a case where the irresponsible local politicians, rather than fully paying for the pension they promised their government employees, just kicked the can down the road to create this bailout crisis?
• Since all the locals that testified said it wasn’t enough, how long before the state is back at the table with another influx? 
• During negotiations, how much did the locals say it would take to actually solve the problems?
• Was there any consideration of placing limits on local governments preventing them from allowing outside funding and administration of elections?
• Some of these communities have gone to referendum to ask for more money and been denied.  Towns under 3,000 population, and there are more than a thousand of them, can raise taxes by a vote at an annual meeting.  Does the state want to be in the business of second-guessing the residents, and simply taking tax dollars out of a different pocket?

Reasonable! Related, the 2023 staff reports just came out.https://t.co/gPn9sS4F5Phttps://t.co/jfzTRe5GOp

2023 student-staff ratio/2022 teacher salaries:
Racine: 6.3/$60,320
Madison: 6.5 (155th)/$61,284 (68th)
Green Bay: 7.0/$60,243
Milwaukee: 7.9/$70,162
Kenosha: 8.0/$62,627

— Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) May 8, 2023

Jennifer Kingson:

What they’re saying: “What the research generally shows is that this is a net negative for student achievement, mostly in scho0ls that see a big drop in instructional time as a result,” Thompson says.

Zoom out: The 4-day school week “unambiguously hurts student achievement over time,” Christopher Doss, a RAND policy researcher, tells Axios.

Rob Garver:

Providing further proof that U.S. children suffered significant learning loss when schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Assessment Governing Board released a report Wednesday that showed test scores measuring achievement in U.S. history and civics fell significantly between 2018 and 2022.

The tests, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the “nation’s report card,” were given to thousands of eighth-grade students across the country. Scores on the U.S. history assessment were the lowest recorded since 1994, while the scores on the civics test fell for the first time ever.

Only 13% of students tested in U.S. history were considered proficient, meaning that they had substantially mastered the material expected of them. That was 1 percentage point lower than in 2018. Another 46% tested at the NAEP “basic” level, meaning they had partial mastery of the material, down 4 percentage points. The remaining 40% of students tested did not meet the bar for basic knowledge, an increase of 6 percentage points.

In civics, 20% of students tested qualified as proficient, and 48% had basic knowledge of the material — both down 1 percentage point from 2018. Another 31% failed to demonstrate even basic knowledge, an increase by 4 percentage points over 2018.

Christina M Roberts, David A Klein, Terry A Adirim, Natasha A Schvey, Elizabeth Hisle-Gorman:

Our results suggest that >70% of TGD individuals who start gender-affirming hormones will continue use beyond 4 years, with higher continuation rates in transfeminine individuals. Patients who start hormones, with their parents’ assistance, before age 18 years have higher continuation rates than adults.

Sarah DiGregorio;

The idea of Nightingale, the lady with the lamp, as the prototypical nurse—this mythic origin story—has served to further white supremacy in nursing and to strip nursing history of its truer, broader kaleidoscopic power. The real history of nursing is utterly radical in its vastness—and in what it says about the care we owe each other. Maybe that radicalness is why that history has been so elided, even as nursing historians have sought to bring it forward.

Mdmakowsky:

To become an academic researcher is to make an enormous upfront investment in human capital, often remaining in school until someone’s late 20s, even early 30s. These are people who often have a relatively high opportunity cost of time, even early in their careers, and they do this while also staring down the possibility of technical obsolescence within a decade of graduation. An academic, if they make a major contribution, often knows it will happen before they turn 40 (30 if they’re a mathematician). This is not a trivial endeavor or decision.

Building a critical mass of high quality employees when such high opportunity costs underlie the requisite labor pool presents a financial challenge. In the face of these costs, as much as half of academic compensation takes the form of non-pencuniary benefits (lifestyle, freedom, flexibility, status, etc). And there’s one more problem, and it might be the biggest. For those in more technical fields, the full career’s worth of (discounted) wages would have to be collected in their first 8 years on the job. To put it another way,for the academic labor market to clear absent these non-pecuniary benefits, salaries would have to double or more.

History Today:

While we might take issue with the idea that there is less local news, it is undeniable that there is a decline in the legacy local newspaper with which we associate its delivery. This decline is in the numbers of titles and also, significantly, in their visibility. The move to digital has put papers online and also removed the surrounding trappings, such as town centre offices or newspaper sellers, from our streets. Financial pressures mean fewer staff, who are reliant on remote methods of communication rather than being visible in communities.

This loss of the physical newspaper is significant to the historian because the local newspaper’s physical legacy is that most often accessed by both professional and amateur historians. I would suggest, though, that we need a more nuanced understanding of where we are in the decline of the local newspaper. For instance, the peak number of local titles was in 1914, while newspaper wars meant circulations reached their peak in the mid-1970s. In the 19th century, titles were dominated by reports of national affairs or lengthy verbatim reports of Parliament; hardly the stuff of local record. Evidence suggests that local, targeted content only became the dominant feature of local newspapers in the early 20th century to support the sale of advertising. By the 1990s, the continued consolidation of the local newspaper industry meant that, while there were still numerous titles, many were being condemned as, in the words of Bob Franklin, ‘local in name only’. This lack of local content recalls the origins of the provincial press in the 18th century when publishers relied on ‘cut and paste’ content lifted from other newspapers rather than producing content about their own circulation areas.

Andrew Rotherham:

In related news, new NAEP data on history and civics out today, it’s not good news. Some of the data suggest our social divides are getting worse with students furthest from opportunity more impacted. 

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona made the following statement:

“The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress further affirms the profound impact the pandemic had on student learning in subjects beyond math and reading. It tells us that now is not the time for politicians to try to extract double-digit cuts to education funding, nor is it the time to limit what students learn in U.S. history and civics classes. We need to provide every student with rich opportunities to learn about America’s history and understand the U.S. Constitution and how our system of government works. Banning history books and censoring educators from teaching these important subjects does our students a disservice and will move America in the wrong direction.”

This stirred up a little tempest on Twitter. People are doing gymnastics to try to argue this isn’t a politicized response. NAEP expert Tom Loveless thinks it’s a sign of coming attractions with the new timing on NAEP releases. I hope he’s wrong but he’s probably right. Marty West says stop worrying, they’re on it.

Dave Cieslewicz

The fundamental problem with these programs is that the ideology behind them conflicts with both common sense and long-held American values. As Vos said, the vast majority of us want a color blind society and most of us recognize that, while we’ve made great progress toward that goal, we’ve still got a ways to go. 

But the “cutting edge” view in the DEI world is that we can’t address past discrimination without discriminating now to make up for it. Too many of these programs ask people to accept their own deep-seated racism or “unconscious bias.” There is a huge disconnect here. You’re asking people who have grown up believing that being a racist is one of the very worst things you can be to accept the notion that they’re racists simply because of the color of their skin. Whatever you might actually think, whatever you might actually have done as an individual doesn’t matter. It’s about identity groups, good ones and bad ones. 

Nobody outside of DEI staff views the world this way. In fact, it’s ludicrous. So when your company or your department forces you into one of these programs you leave it changed for the worse. It’s natural for employees to feel resentful and wrongfully accused. If you weren’t a racist going in, you might well be one coming out.