School Information System

Wall Street Journal:

The outrage flowed righteously on the left when the Trump Administration pressured private companies to suspend anti-Trump TV host Jimmy Kimmel. But there was far less media attention when Google said Tuesday that it will reinstate YouTube accounts that it had banned under pressure from the Biden Administration.

In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, a lawyer for Google parent Alphabet disclosed that senior Biden Administration officials “conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the company regarding certain user generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.”

Administration officials, including Joe Biden, “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation,” the letter said. Alphabet added, in something of a mea not-so-maxima culpa, that “it is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden administration, attempts to dictate how the company moderates content.”

Pressuring private social-media companies to crack down on views the government doesn’t like is much like the pass-through censorship that shut down Jimmy Kimmel. The left’s conviction that Covid “science” about preventive measures was a inviolable truth doesn’t excuse the coercion.

The Biden arm-twisting was in one sense more insidious because it stayed out of public view. Perhaps the White House had a guilty conscience, though more likely it didn’t want voters to know. Nor does the fact that some big tech companies may have been happy to shut down Covid content at the request of their ideological allies in the White House soften the abuse of power.

Matt Brown:

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points. 

On Wednesday afternoon, Pete Thamel and Dan Wetzel over at ESPN took a crowbar to my editorial calendar, reporting that the Big Ten is in discussions over a substantial private capital deal. 

That the Big Ten was sniffing around private capital wasn’t huge news, as multiple sports business outlets reported at least some measure of interest earlier this year. Just about every major college sports conference has taken multiple meetings with outside investors. But so far, no deal has actually been executed, despite substantial interest from both sides. 

Via the ESPN story, which other reporters have since confirmed: 

Amanda Christovich:

At least two NIL collectives have begun to pay players before the submitted deals have been approved in the clearinghouse

Multiple major power conference collectives are giving up on trying to work through the NIL Go clearinghouse and within the bounds of the new rules set up by the House v. NCAA settlement, Front Office Sports has learned.

At least two collectives have begun to pay players before the submitted deals have been approved, and are aware of instances where players haven’t logged deals at all, sources tell FOS. The inefficiencies of the system have created an unsustainable landscape, they said.

“I have deep concerns as to the longevity of this system,” a source from an ACC collective said, adding that many across the industry desperately wanted the system to work but now feel like they have no choice but to violate the rules.

“The rules created by the House settlement around third-party NIL deals are actively in place and enforceable and apply to all current NCAA Division I student-athletes,” a College Sports Commission spokesperson told FOS in response. “Pay-for-play deals are not allowed under the rules and will not be approved in NIL Go. There is no safe harbor for breaking these rules and there will be eligibility consequences for student-athletes who do not follow them.”

Pete Thamel and Dan Wetzel

The Big Ten is in discussions about a private capital deal that would infuse at least $2 billion into the league and its schools, sources told ESPN on Wednesday.

The discussions include a 10-year extension of the league’s grant of rights until 2046, sources told ESPN, which would ensure long-term stability in the Big Ten.

According to sources, the private capital deal and grant of rights extension have been discussed for months and presented in multiple forms. A deal and the grant of rights extension would also be a distinct blow to the outside entities attempting to form super leagues around college sports.

While there is support from nearly the entire league, according to sources, a few of the league’s biggest brands — including Ohio State and Michigan — are still in discussions with the league. The aim is to have unanimous support before a vote, sources told ESPN.

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Big Ten’s Latest Bad Idea: Selling Its Future for Private Capital

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What, specifically, do you need the money for?

Because the answer better not be “to pay players”. Here’s why:

Yard.Report: is your home for critical aggregation of Harvard News, from sources both within the University and outside.

Check back every day to get caught up on the current state of our beloved fallen institution.

John Burn-Murdoch:

On Wednesday we learnt that the UK birth rate has fallen to a record low, joining the US, France, Italy and dozens of other countries this year.

Concern over declining births — long considered an unhealthy hobby of the conservative right — is spreading. It featured prominently in the presentations given by central bankers Christine Lagarde, Andrew Bailey and Kazuo Ueda at Jackson Hole last week, due to the deleterious economic impacts of ageing populations.

But one section of society that continues to steer clear of the topic is the left. To progressives, worrying about birth rates is an inherently conservative concern. This seems valid enough. Wanting people to have more children can imply constraining individual freedom and setting back women’s progress. More humans also means more emissions heating an already sweating planet.

But take a closer look at the evidence and it’s less clear that the logic holds. In fact, it’s possible that in ceding the floor to the right on this issue, progressives may themselves be ushering in a more conservative, less green future.

Let’s start with the environmentalist argument that falling birth rates are good for the planet. This may appear obviously true, but the reality is less clear

Roshan Fernandez:

Stanford University tops the list of the best U.S. colleges in the latest WSJ/College Pulse rankings.

Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success? More than any other factor, it rewards the boost an institution provides to its graduates’ salaries, beyond an estimate of what they could have expected from attending any college.

Stanford returns to the top of this list for the first time since the 2017 rankings. Ivy League schools also figure prominently, with Yale University, Princeton University and Harvard University finishing third, fourth and fifth, respectively. Two other Ivy League schools—Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania—come in at eighth and ninth, respectively.

Beyond the marquee names, the rankings’ distinct methodology highlights some institutions that don’t have as much name recognition but still help their students achieve remarkable success.

Babson College—the small Wellesley, Mass., school focused on business and entrepreneurship—retained its No. 2 spot from last year. Claremont McKenna College, near Los Angeles, clocked in at No. 6, and Davidson College, near Charlotte, N.C., ranked 10th.

Sun Yu:

The University of Chicago, renowned for producing world-leading research in economics and finance, is selling a prized research centre as it struggles with heavy debt and lacklustre endowment returns.

Proceeds from the $375mn sale of the Center for Research in Security Prices — founded in 1960 by two UChicago professors — would be added to the university’s endowment and invested to boost returns, a spokesman said. 

The transaction, expected to close in the fourth quarter, comes after UChicago last month announced $100mn in spending cuts and plans to suspend or scale back several PhD and graduate programmes in an effort to rein in a deficit that ballooned to more than $200mn in recent years.

UChicago is known for its “school of economics” — an economic approach centred on neoclassical price theory and the belief that free markets are more efficient than government regulation. The university has produced some of the finest minds in the history of finance and economics, including Myron Scholes, who developed a groundbreaking model for options pricing, Eugene Fama, who created a leading framework for analysing portfolio returns, and free-market economist Milton Friedman. 

“The fact that they have to sell a celebrated part of the university now is very telling of how poor their fiscal situation is,” said Hunter Lewis, co-founder of Cambridge Associates. 

By Natalie Yahr, Wisconsin Watch and Becky Jacobs, Cap Times:

Starting this fall, UW-Madison will require applicants to fill out the CSS Profile, an online application used by around 270 colleges, universities and scholarship programs to award institutional aid, separate from a different form used to apply for federal financial aid. Students can start working on their CSS Profile Oct. 1. 

Many colleges that use the CSS Profile are private. Others are highly selective public universities, such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia. In Wisconsin, two private schools also use the application: Beloit College and Lawrence University.  

UW-Madison says requiring the application will help direct funds to students who are most in need, but some student advocates worry the extra step could hinder the very students the university aims to help.  

Wisconsin Watch and the Cap Times teamed up to find out what students and their families need to know about this new requirement.

Who needs to complete the CSS Profile?  

Only incoming undergraduate students at UW-Madison who are U.S. citizens or eligible non-citizens must complete the CSS Profile to be considered for institutional financial aid. This group includes both new freshmen and transfer students.  

Free Beacon:

Jimmy Kimmel has gotten a lot of attention in recent days. A new Senate report reveals how the Biden administration silenced Americans without the power to fight back.

The agency had received an email from the Washington secretary of state’s communications director, Kylee Zabel, flagging the post as “potential misinformation.” CISA had solicited such communication, and within 20 minutes, the agency had forwarded the complaint to Twitter. By 8 a.m. the next day, Twitter had taken the tweet down.

The incident, which has not been previously reported, is one of the many examples of government jawboning discussed in a new reporton CISA by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Ron Lieber:

The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees sent letters Wednesday to two consulting firms — along with the College Board, Oracle and a company called Ellucian — seeking information about any tuition pricing algorithms they have built and the college applicants’ data that feeds them.

The consulting companies, with names like EAB and Ruffalo Noel Levitz, may be unfamiliar to college applicants and their families. But colleges know the consultants well, since most schools hire one of the two firms, or smaller consulting companies, to help them attract students and plot financial aid offers.

“Colleges that agree to use a common pricing formula or algorithm, or knowingly do so through a third-party company, are likely violating the antitrust laws,” said the letters, which were signed by Representatives Jim Jordan and Scott Fitzgerald and Senators Charles E. Grassley and Mike Lee, all Republicans.

Dane County Executive Melissa Agaard

The operating budget totals $825,078,675. The capital budget is $78,539,000, which is a 30% decrease from the $112,466,152 included in the final 2025 budget.

The total combined Operating and Capital Budgets is $903,617,675. This is a 3% decrease from the $926,179,104 in the 2025 budget.

The tax rate is $2.48 per $1000 of Equalized Value, down from $2.57 in 2025. The budget includes a 1.29% levy increase on the average home, which amounts to an increase of $15.23 on the average Madison home currently valued at $481,300. That is down from the $19.65 increase in 2025 and is the lowest percentage increase since 2019.

County Highway:

The Homestead Act — proposed by President Abraham Lincoln and signed into law during 1862, at the height of the Civil War — was a brilliant and farseeing effort to oppose the Southern slave economy with a Jeffersonian vision of a continent-sized nation of independent property-holders, stretching from ocean to ocean. The device Lincoln created to establish this vision was simple: Allowing any American citizen, or prospective citizen, to file a claim on the millions of acres of surveyed but unappropriated public lands. Applicants for a homestead had to be at least 21 years of age, to be the head of a household, and to swear that they had never taken up arms against the US government.

Lincoln’s Homestead Act didn’t favor educated classes or elite financial institutions at the expense of ordinary people. Lincoln’s goal was for as many Americans as possible to become self-sufficient, raise healthy families, and pursue opportunity. Upon payment of a small filing fee, applicants to the Homestead Act received a grant of 160 acres of public land upon which to live, build a home, and farm. After five continuous years of residence and cultivation, and after the payment of a second small fee, applicants were deeded full ownership of their land. Instead of being slaves or slave-masters, or the captives of urban political machines, Lincoln’s new Americans would be free men and women — people who could shape a new and better American future.

In practice, of course, Lincoln’s plan did not always go the way the Great Emancipator hoped. Much of the land distributed by the Homestead Act wound up in the hands of speculators and big railroads. Many would-be farmers failed and quit, went bankrupt, or worse. But for millions of Americans who pursued the opportunity to own land, the Homestead Act proved itself a spur to independence and became a fantastically successful device in settling the West. In fact, the Homestead Act was so successful that it remained the law of the land for well over a century, until it was repealed through the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976. The last claim under the Homestead Act was granted in Alaska, twelve years later.

We at County Highway don’t favor a massive giveaway of America’s remaining public lands. In most cases, their climates are too inhospitable for viable agricultural homesteads, and are too remote for commercial endeavors. The Grand Tetons are doing just fine the way they are. We do believe, however, that America and Americans would be well served by a wise investment in programs that would make it possible for individuals and families to support themselves outside of large cities, where the housing stock is largely owned by banks and giant corporations, failing schools are the captives of teachers’ unions, the food supply consists of chemically laden and genetically altered Frankenfoods that make us sick — and where the social pyramid consists of a top layer of multimillionaires; a middle layer of their insecure professional retainers and trainers and chefs; and a giant underclass of Uber drivers, healthcare workers, and the dispossessed. 

Arnold Kling:

But whether any of this is essential knowledge in a particular field or profession is contestable. It was contestable before Large Language Models were invented, but it becomes especially contestable now. 

I can imagine a scenario in which professor Jain’s computer science course turns out to be useless knowledge for the vast majority of software engineers. The students that he thinks are cheating may be better qualified to do the job. I am not saying that this is certainly going to be the case. But do not rule out such a scenario.

Ted Dabrowski:

Pritzker and Johnson have done nothing but drive up taxes in Chicago.

Per student cost at CPS has jumped to $32K per student from $17K in eight years: an 88% spike.

Spending keeps rising even as enrollment shrinks.

Vote @TedForIllinois for change.

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Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Oyin Adedoyin

Instead, they left the ‘forgotten generation’ with a mountain of debt and regret; ‘I’m going to be working until the day I die.’

The six million-plus borrowers aged 50 to 61 have the highest average balance of any age group, at $47,857, according to Federal Student Aid data. Now, as parents and grandparents, they are passing along a skepticism toward higher education and its hefty price tag, part of the broader unraveling of America’s “college for all” ideology.

The oldest Gen Xers were born in 1965, the same year the Higher Education Act created the modern student-loan system. The baby boomers older than them didn’t have the same access, and the millennials younger than them had greater awareness of the long shadow debt can cast. But for a brief window when the “forgotten generation” was reaching college age, student loans conveyed all of the promise of American upward mobility with none of the pitfalls.

Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein:

Young, a Reagan appointee based in Boston, did not immediately order changes to administration policies, but said he will hold further proceedings on how to rein in the practices he found to violate First Amendment free-speech rights.

The ruling is the long-awaited result of a lawsuit brought by university professors who say the Trump administration is illegally chilling free speech by targeting prominent pro-Palestinian campus activists — like Mahmoud Khalil — and others who have expressed pro-Palestinian views. It followed a two week trial that featured testimony from top Trump administration officials, who described orchestrating the arrests of these activists and taking cues from an anonymously run website.

Perhaps more remarkable than the blistering ruling is Young’s assessment of President Donald Trump himself, condemning him as a bully who “ignores everything,” engages in “hollow bragging” and uses his power and gifts of communication to strip away constitutional rights.

“The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech,” Young wrote, describing the courts as the most crucial bulwark to this threat.

Theory Posted by Ethical Skeptic

This Was Never Intended for Mere Mortal Eyes to See

Exothermic Core-Mantle Decoupling – Dzhanibekov Oscillation theory (ECDO Theory) encompasses a series of hypotheses regarding climate change and its relationship to the dynamics of the Earth’s core, as well as geophysical, monument, artifact, and mythological evidence surrounding global cataclysms. It is solely the work of its author, The Ethical Skeptic, who developed the theory from 2010 until its first hypothesis publication on February 16, 2020.

This is the greatest saga ever to unfold, and it was right there before our eyes the entire time. These three original hypotheses form the foundation of The Ethical Skeptic’s ECDO Earth Cataclysm Theory.

Christopher Brunet:

For decades, a doctorate in economics was a golden ticket. It promised a path to tenure, or at worst, a lucrative role at a central bank, think tank, or tech firm.

Not anymore.

The economics job market is in freefall, and the profession’s own data proves it.

Unlike most fields, economics has a bizarrely centralized hiring ritual. Once a year, in the fall, every employer posts openings at the same time. Every candidate applies at the same time. The entire profession runs through one clearinghouse: the American Economic Association’s “Job Openings for Economists” (JOE). This makes economics PhD market uniquely measurable, and the numbers are brutal.

Scholars:

Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. From across the fearful twentieth century, here are twenty lessons about what it takes to oppose tyranny, adapted to the circumstances of today.

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.

3. Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multi-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

Gail Heriot:

In September of 2025, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a report entitled “The Federal Response to Teacher Shortage: Impacts on Students with Disabilities.”  This Commissioner Statement is part of that report.  It suggests that federal government’s role in solving any possible teacher shortage that should be limited to getting rid of federal policies that helped cause the shortage.  For example, federal policies on school discipline established during the Obama and Biden Administrations have been counterproductive and have led to more chaos in the classroom.  The Trump Administration’s recent efforts have been a step in the right direction.

What’s the meaning of “numbers” and “arithmetic operations”? We consult Georg Cantor’s turtles and look at Giuseppe Peano’s code.

Today, mathematics is regarded as a purely abstract science. On forums such as Stack Exchange, trained mathematicians may sneer at newcomers who ask for intuitive explanations of mathematical constructs. Indeed, persistently trying to relate the foundations of math to reality has become the calling card of online cranks.

I find this ironic: for millennia, mathematics was essentially a natural science. We had no philosophical explanation why 2 + 2 should be equal to 4; we just looked at what was happening in the real world and tried to capture the rules. The abstractions were important, of course, but they needed to be rooted in objectivity. The early development of algebra and geometry followed suit. It was never enough for the axioms to be internally consistent; the angles of your hypothetical triangle needed to match the physical world.

That said, even in antiquity, the reliance on intuition sometimes looked untenable. A particular cause for concern were the outcomes of thought experiments that involved repeating a task without end. The most famous example is Zeno’s paradox of motion. If you slept through that class, imagine the scenario of Achilles racing a tortoise:

David Blaska:

The tragedy of Madison’s public schools is that the minority-race students it valorizes are the ones who suffer most from its disempowering Woke racism. For its failures, the seven school board members are poised to reward itself with pay raises, health insurance, and out-of-town junkets. They meet tonight starting at 6 p.m. to consider:

• Almost doubling their annual pay to $15,000 from the current $8,000 and $200 for out-of-town retreats [UPDATE: Passed 6-0 with Pearson abstaining]
• Getting staff-level, taxpayer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance; [UPDATE: Voted down unanimously]
• $3,500/year each member for professional development. [UPDATE: Defeated 5 to 2; Nichols, Mosner Feltham voted for it.]

Proving once again, big gummint is the Left’s sugar daddy.

Board member Savior Castro justifies the goodies to make Madison’s school board “more accessible to the folks that look like the students and the families of the district,” according to Chris Rickert’s excellent reporting, rather than the despised “older, whiter, wealthier folks.” That’s straight-up, burning-cross racism but bashing whitey is still in fashion among Madison’s chardonnay progressives. 

Of course, five of the seven members are minorities, all are young, none are wealthy and (for good measure) he is the only he.

—

Chris Rickert:

She also noted that six of the seven board members are women and a majority of members are people of color, and that “devaluing our labor has a historical connotation and reality to it that we have to confront.”

The additional compensation is expected to cost $60,100 annually, and also includes increases to what members are paid for attending board retreats. They will now get $100 each for attending and participating in half-day board retreats and $200 for attending and participating in full-day retreats.

According to research by district administration, Milwaukee School Board members make $18,121, Kenosha members make $6,500, Green Bay members make $7,538.40 and Racine members make $3,600. Madison, with approximately 25,500 students, is the state’s second-largest district after Milwaukee.

Erin Gretzinger:

She asked her fellow board members not to bring the item up for discussion again for the next few years.

“My hope is that, were we to bring this up again publicly, we would have a greater exploration of what an alternative option would look like that would put us in alignment with other elected officials who are insured through their position as elected officials,” Muldrow said.

Board President Nichelle Nichols said she also intended to vote against the proposal.

“As much as I liked the sentiment of the amendment … I wanted to make sure that if board members were eligible that we did not find ourselves in a compromised position around being able to make the kinds of decisions that we need to make for employees,” Nichols said.

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Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Will Flanders:

It appears DPI got the data wrong about private school choice performance in their press release on state tests. They note a decline in performance of 2.3 percentage point in ELA and a 2.7 percentage points in math.

More from Will:

Earlier I tweeted a question to @WisconsinDPI about their press release on state tests. I deleted it because I answered my own question & nothing nefarious was going on (that portion of the PR only dealt w/ the Forward Exam and didn’t include the ACT scores that are also part of the dataset.)

——

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Jonathan I. Katz

What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career. This will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young Americans have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a reasonable middle class career path in science and are deserting it. If you haven’t yet, then join them. Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospects at home are even worse. I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs. 

If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to persuade the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists is entirely the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate education is paid for by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning the scarcity of young people interested in science when they themselves caused this scarcity by destroying science as a career. They could reverse this situation by matching the number trained to the demand, but they refuse to do so, or even to discuss the problem seriously (for many years the NSF propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and most funding agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that the best young people, who should go into science, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak American students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa.

Joanne Jacobs Summary:

Teacher training at a well-respected university focused on social justice, cultural relevance, students’ psychology — but not how to teach math, an engineer turned math teacher tells Holly Korbey in an interview. “Yellow Heights,” as he calls himself, is the author of Unbalanced: Memoir of an Immigrant Math Teacher.

Yellow Heights was a top math student in China, he tells Korbey. In the U.S., he enjoying working with students in his son’s school math club. After working for Microsoft and then in finance, his startup failed. He enrolled in a one-year master’s in teaching program to prepare for a new career.

Classes focused on justice and equity, supporting adolescent students in their identities, “culturally sustaining pedagogy” and building healthy relationships with students, he tells Korbey. There were classes on the practical part of teaching, but they also focused on culture.

“Teaching for Learning” was “pretty ideological. It’s about cultural background, adolescent development, a little focus on students with disability and how to deal with that,” says Yellow Heights.
“Content Area Methods” wasn’t about math content. “It’s basically about respecting different identities, working in different school environments — very culturally focused.”

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2014: 21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math

How One Woman Rewrote Math in Corvallis

Singapore Math

Discovery Math

Connected Math (2006!)

Graham Hillard

Earlier this year, Columbia University was hit with what sophisticated PR types call a double whammy. On the morning of May 7, New Yorkmagazine posted “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College,” a 5,000-word exposé of ChatGPT reliance at the Upper West Side institution. Later that same day, 80 pro-Hamas demonstrators stormed the campus’s Butler Library, rechristening the school “the Basel Al-Araj Popular University” and staying until hauled out by police several hours later. Although American colleges had been under popular suspicion for years—not least since elite campuses responded to the latest Gaza terrorism with an outpouring of antisemitic bile—Columbia’s day from hell seemed a culmination. If academic dishonesty was ubiquitous and campus politics had gone mad, what, exactly, was the point of higher education?

Cory Brewer

Superintendent Jill Underly delivered her annual “State of Education” address last week. If you tuned in hoping for an honest assessment of how Wisconsin students are doing, you were left disappointed. The event began, not with a frank discussion of student achievement, but with a land acknowledgment. Like much of what followed, it was a gesture more concerned with appearances than with the urgent problems facing Wisconsin classrooms.

Parents don’t need speeches to tell them what’s happening in classrooms. They see it every day. Schools are increasingly unsafe and chaotic. Teachers are leaving in frustration, and those who try to impose discipline often find themselves undermined by administrators. Children cannot focus enough to learn in disorderly classrooms. Too many Wisconsin students cannot read or do math at grade level. Even after DPI artificially inflated student performance on the state exam, more than 46% of students in the state are rated as not “meeting expectations” when it comes to reading.

That is the crisis.

Instead of addressing these realities, Superintendent Underly spent her time talking about “belonging” and “inclusivity.” Of course, students should feel welcome in their schools. But confidence and belonging are not created by slogans or buzzwords. They come from learning. A child who can read, solve math problems, and write clearly is prepared for success. A child who cannot is being failed, no matter how many times the system congratulates itself for fostering inclusivity.

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Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Pavel Durov:

About a year ago, while I was stuck in Paris, the French intelligence services reached out to me through an intermediary, asking me to help the Moldovan government censor certain Telegram channels ahead of the presidential elections in Moldova.

After reviewing the channels flagged by French (and Moldovan) authorities, we identified a few that clearly violated our rules and removed them. The intermediary then informed me that, in exchange for this cooperation, French intelligence would “say good things” about me to the judge who had ordered my arrest in August last year.

Jacob Trethen:

America funds public research largely via two federal agencies: the NIH and the NSF. Together, those agencies cost us just 1/10th the Defense budget, or 1/20th of social security spending. Yet if we end up curing cancer before the Germans, or making quantum computers before the Danes, the seeds will likely come from NIH and NSF projects. In this post, I add my two cents to the discussion of how to improve the two agencies, and where it’s time to start fresh without them.

My perspective comes from working in science philanthropy, which lives partly in reaction to gaps left open by the NIH and NSF. Many of the scientists we support at Open Philanthropy are employed at American universities: their careers are mostly funded by those universities, and by the NIH. We intentionally try only to fund projects the NIH and NSF haven’t, or can’t, or wouldn’t – meaning I have a poacher’s respect for their lush forests and a poacher’s obsession with their blindspots. Some of my own blindspots in this post come from being an outsider to both institutions: I have not had to navigate the tradeoffs they face from the inside. It is always easier to criticise, and I hope my missteps will be forgiven as lack of knowledge, not lack of empathy.

The Principal’s office:

Do parents understand that the elections with the least votes are for public school board members? Parents literally sit back and let a small group elect these lunatics who then implement harmful policies. How I wish mandating parents vote for the school board as part of the requirement for using public schools. I know, not really in line with our country’s freedoms, but I’m at a real loss here.

——-

Where would I be without the Madison School Board? 

Every month or so they provide me with fodder for this blog. Why, just last week the district touted a new logo for which they paid an out-of-state design company $100,000, only months after the voters gave them another $600 million in taxing authority to spend, we thought, on actual education.

The Board provides me with so much material that I really should pay them. But then again I don’t need to as they’re poised to double their own salaries and give themselves taxpayer financed health insurance.

——-

teachers unions casually throwing around $5 million to sway a local mayor’s race election

——-

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Carl Seaver: 

Journalist Charles Gordon Greene was responsible for the first confirmed use of the word OK in the March 23, 1839 issue of the Boston Morning Post.It was found in a humorous article about their rival paper, the Providence Journal.

There are a few theories about the origins of OK, and some of them make perfect sense. 

One such theory is that OK stems from the Scottish phrase of agreement, “och aye”. After all, OK also conveys agreement or acquiescence, and both och aye and OK sound similar. Surely that’s the most sensical answer, right? Well, it might be sensical, but it’s wrong. 

The next theory is that OK comes from the Choctaw word “okeh”, which translates to “it is so”. Again, both words sound phonetically similar, and they both convey similar ideas. This explanation also makes sense! But it’s still wrong. 

Daniel Willingham:

Which of these factors is responsible for the decline in NAEP? Looking at the list of possible contributors makes me wonder whether many might be symptoms, rather than causes.

What might make students lose stamina for their work, feel less engaged by it, seek escape in their phone for hours each day, and nevertheless feel anxious and depressed?

These sound to me like the actions of students who would like to care about the world around them, to be invested in the future, but have no faith that caring matters. It sounds like the actions of people suffering a crisis of confidence.

Why would students today think that the world is a place of threat, rather than one of opportunity? And why would they feel powerless to effect change?

Consider the messages that a typical student hears from the adults in their life. Members of the opposing political party are not merely wrong, they are evil, and actively working to destroy our way of life. Children are warned about school shootings. They are warned about scams and sexual predators online. They are told that the planet is doomed due to climate change, or that politicians and scientists—people we would hope should be respected—are perpetrating a hoax. College is unaffordable, and a college degree doesn’t help anyway. If another pandemic comes, they can rest assured it will not bring the country together, but will be an occasion for further conflict.

It’s not just that things are bad, children get the message that our problems are not fixable. Surveysshow that the adults around them don’t trust the institutions that are supposed to help us solve these problems. We do not trust Government. We don’t trust businesses. We don’t trust the media.

Eigen Moomin:

We are the descendants of those brave few who, fleeing war, fleeing famine, or perhaps just seeking their fortunes, gave up their whole world to move to a new life on this island.

They built a country which works so well, it has tamed the utter chaos that historically defined most of our forebears’ lives and given us all a neat, packaged life. A life which most of us can live formulaically, sleepwalking through it without doing a single brave thing. You are, of course, still expected to work hard, but we hold the honour of being the first immigrant nation to have so thoroughly self-domesticated, to have ourselves doused the ambition which ferried the droves of hungry poor, desperate and begging for better lives.

We are a rich land, and we have been a rich land for decades. Our people are industrious, hard-working, and well-educated. Our universities are nearlyworld-class, and they will only get better with time. We hold the privilege of being the only nation in this world with a sane government, and a competent bureaucracy.

All this effort — fifty years of non-stop toil — turning a fallow wasteland into fertile earth, and where are all the crops we have to show for it? Where are all the local companies that we can point to and be proud of? Where are our Ericssons and Nokias?

The names we give ourselves have changed over the years. We were first an “entrepôt”, a base where the riches of China and India were exchanged for opium and silver. We swapped the coolie’s rags for the standardized garments of industry, becoming a “manufacturing base” where the labour of our people etched silicon wafers and refined oil. Today, we have given up the factory overalls for the business suit and lab coat, becoming more than just a “base”, but a “hub” – of finance, biotech, and other buzzwords that print well on The Economist.

The times have changed, yet the core relationship between a Singaporean and his work has stayed the same. We are still fundamentally the comprador-par-excellence of the world. We are a service economy, in that we train our young to serve the banks, funds, labs, and factories. Where we used to serve as interpreters for the companies of the West to unlock and exploit the riches of the East, we are now PR-men for the companies of the East to whitewash themselves and fit into a world still ruled by the West. The bossman is dead, long live the bossman; he may look like us now, but we are still just his workers.

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more.

Chris Rickert:

In line with past years, suburban Madison districts have performed better than the state as a whole. Waunakee’s by-grade scores, for example, range as high as 82% of sixth graders meeting or exceeding standards in math and as high as 80% of sixth graders meeting or exceeding standards in English/language arts.

Tim Schell, Waunakee’s director of secondary curriculum and instruction, attributed the success to, among other things, updates to assessments and instructional materials. He said the district’s school board “has set a goal for all Waunakee schools to ‘significantly exceed expectations’” on state report cards by June 2029.

This past spring marked the second year of an overhauled Forward exam that state Superintendent Jill Underly says better aligns with what students should be expected to know, but that others have criticized as a dumbing down of standards to make it appear students know more than they actually do.

That change is evident in test scores from before the overhaul. In 2022-23, for example, 41.1% of students statewide were considered proficient or better in math, while 39.2% were considered the same in English/language arts.

——

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Liz Gorny:

We’ve seen in some initial research studies how this kind of relationship between AI and creative can increase homogenisation. In 2024, an online experiment with 36 ChatGPT users found that use of AI can expand how many creative ideas an individual user has, but at a group level, “users tended to produce less semantically distinct ideas”. That same year, another study reached similar results; this time it was a group of short-story writers who each managed to independently write a “more creative” story by using AI, but produced a narrower scope of novel content overall.

Greg Lukianoff:

The last few weeks have been absolutely insane, and if you’ve been keeping up with my work here on ERI and our work at FIRE — or if you’ve just…you know…been alive — lately, you know why I’m saying that.

It started, obviously, with the horrifying political assassination of Charlie Kirk on campus, in front of a crowd of thousands in person and millions more on social media. It continued with the unfortunately all-too-predictable Cancel Culture campaign, with countless people across a variety of private businesses and industries being investigated, threatened, or losing their jobs for protected speech surrounding Kirk’s death.

It was worsened by government officials, including the vice president, who enthusiastically cheered this behavior on and engaged in it themselves. We have senators calling for the firingof college professors over their comments on the Kirk assassination. We have the FCC openly calling for censorship of comedy. And we have the Attorney General promising to pursue what the administration considers to be “hate speech.”

It’s nuts, especially considering how many of these people claimed in the recent past to be ardent defenders of free speech. As I wrote in my recent New York Times op-ed, however, this kind of whiplash is unsurprising. When you defend free speech on principle, you have to expect to be disappointed.

All that mayhem nearly caused me to forget that it’s been ten years this month since Jon Haidt and I published “The Coddling of the American Mind” in The Atlantic, a piece that pointed to a serious problem in higher education. The piece was published online in August of 2015 but actually became the cover story for the September 2015 issue, and was surprisingly well received (at least at first).

Dave Zweifel:

So it was a bit surprising last Saturday when the Camp Randall crowd erupted in a chorus of boos as the Badgers, trailing 20-0 after a lackluster first half, went jogging off to the locker room.

My first reaction was to feel sorry for those college kids on the football team having to endure the humiliation. This wasn’t what they expected when they chose to play football at the University of Wisconsin, and I can’t imagine what was going through their heads as they left the field.

This is the place, after all, that proclaims to have the greatest fans, with you through thick and thin.

I actually can’t remember if the fans booed the team during Coach Johnny Coatta’s 21-game losing streak or Don Morton’s three awful seasons. I do remember a lot of grousing, jokes about the team’s play schemes, and the day a circus elephant relieved himself on the 50 yard line, as if to make a statement.

The crowds did dwindle, but the band and the antics of a guy called the Portage Plumber — and that elephant — seemed to be entertainment enough.

Wall Street Journal:

The Magnolia State has since climbed to ninth from 49th place in fourth-grade reading scores on the NAEP tests, often called the nation’s report card. Its low-income students outperform those in all other states. States including Virginia, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Indiana have followed Mississippi’s lead in recent years by returning to phonics.

Enter California, which is now jumping on the caboose. The Legislature this month passed (unanimously if you can believe it) a law to require the state Board of Education to adopt instructional materials aligned with phonics-based reading. Schools would also get more money to train teachers in phonics.

“We need to create the best opportunities for all kids to read, not just for those who can afford after-school tutors,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio, the bill’s sponsor. Hear, hear. The state has much work to do. Some 44% of California fourth-graders failed to meet basic reading standards last year on the NAEP test.

Teaching students through phonics won’t by itself solve the country’s K-12 literacy crisis, but it’s an encouraging sign that lawmakers can learn from their blunders and from success in other states.

Ernesto LondoñoHamed Aleaziz and Ann Hinga Klein:

The superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools system was detained on Friday by federal immigration authorities, who say he has been living and working in the United States illegally. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said that the superintendent, Ian Roberts, had received a deportation order from an immigration judge in May 2024. He entered the United States in 1999 on a student visa, ICE officials said, and had no work authorization. Dr. Roberts, who was born in Guyana, had faced weapon possession charges from several years ago, the officials said.

On Friday afternoon, as scores of parents and other residents gathered in downtown Des Moines, waving signs and chanting in protest of the superintendent’s detention, school officials told reporters that they needed more information to understand the situation. 

“This is challenging on many levels, and the reality is that we may not have additional answers right away,” said Matt Smith, an associate superintendent who was tapped to lead the school system temporarily after the superintendent’s detention on Friday morning. 

ICE agents approached Dr. Roberts while he was in his vehicle, and he sped off, according to a statement issued by the agency. He was later found, and his vehicle was found abandoned near a wooded area, the statement said. The agency said that he had a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a hunting knife when he was detained. 

The ICE detainee locator website showed that Dr. Roberts was being held at the Pottawattamie County Jail, in western Iowa. 

——-

To be fair, whomst amongst us can honestly say that we haven’t been an illegal Guyanese immigrant with a prior firearms charge and gotten a position as Superintendent of the largest school system in the State of Iowa?

——-

Parents in Des Moines need to blow up the Governor’s phone and email. The search firm failed to disclose the criminal record. The school board was grossly negligent in failing to review a criminal background, and every student in the district was in danger under his leadership. Do NOT underestimate the severity of this.

——-

This is what I found on the Consulting Company – I think it’s time to start doing Open records requests.

———

Ian Roberts, the Des Moines school superintendent arrested by ICE, has so many inconsistencies in his public biographies that it’s amazing that no one questioned his identity before.

———

The firm that led the search for Ian Roberts to take over as superintendent at Des Moines Public Schools has scrubbed the hire from its website.

———

The Des Moines superintendent arrested today wasn’t just an illegal alien — he oversaw an Affirmative Action Program giving teachers free degrees in “Culturally Responsive Leadership” and educating students through a “social justice lens.” 👇

——-

Des Moines Public Schools just placed Superintendent Ian Roberts on paid leave. Board Chair Jackie Norris made a statement providing some information about how Roberts was hired. She says that he claimed to be a citizen and that the outside firm hired to do a background check did not turn up any concerns about his immigration status.

She concluded with a plea to “cool down the rhetoric” and to stop spreading “misinformation,” urging people to consider how upsetting the situation is for children, who she said are on social media “24/7.”

——-

The DHS statement says Roberts entered the United States on a student visa in 1999. Roberts had a “final order of removal” in May 2024 for the deportation.

——

If you’re wondering why the Board and others are so hesitant to condemn this guy, remember that having the backing of the unions makes you practically untouchable.

———

🚨 I have confirmed from Maryland Freedom Caucus Chairman, @MattMorgan29A (R) that Des Moines Superintendent Ian Roberts has been a registered voter in Maryland since 2012.

Roberts is an illegal alien.

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Ian Roberts spoke at an event at UC Berkeley in 2019. An article written about his talk included some of the falsehoods Roberts has often told, like the claim that he had a doctorate at the time. (I’m assuming calling it a PhD instead of an EdD was the writer’s error.)

Roberts is quoted as saying, “What I learned is that I was never going to give my pen to someone else to write my story.” more.

———

Now the election official in Maryland responded:
“I must apologize. Mr. Roberts has never voted in Maryland. He was mailed a mail-in ballot April 2, 2025, but he never cast it. Mr. Roberts has never voted in Maryland. Attached is a copy of his voter history in Maryland.”
Attached as a completely blank spreadsheet.
According to what they sent us previously, Roberts’ voter record in Maryland opened Jan. 18, 2012. His status became “inactive” in July of 2014. On Dec. 14, 2016, his inactive status was canceled. In Febuary of 2017, he was made active. It appears he was sent absentee ballots beginning in 2020. I think Maryland may need to revampe its voting procedures.

——-

“School districts must cease these unlawful programs and restore merit-based employment practices for the benefit of both students and employees.”

Erin Gretzinger:

On one of his first days with Mann Carey Elementary’s staff, Brown asked people to write down all the anxieties they were carrying into the new school year. When they were done, he had them all crumble up their responses and put them into a bag.

For a staff meeting on the first Monday of the school year, Brown gathered the group on a basketball court and pulled out the bag full of notes. He then put the notes into a pan with charcoal and lighter fluid, and set it on fire.

“I said, ‘We’re burning the burdens. We’re burning the past. We’re rising out of the ashes into something new and transformational,’” he recalled. “The only way we can be better is together and not divided.”

Born and raised on Madison’s south side, Brown graduated from West High School in 1992. After studying history at Delta State University in Mississippi, he came back to Madison for a job working with youth at the Dane County Neighborhood Intervention Program. At the time, the program was based at 501 E. Badger Road — the same building where Mann Carey Elementary is now.

His first job in education came years later in 2005 at the Madison Metropolitan School District, where he worked as a minority services coordinator. Brown went on to get his masters in education with an emphasis on principalship. He also worked at Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District as a dean of students and later became the district’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, and student achievement.

——-

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Sean Davis:

Two of the Madison area’s best high school boys basketball seniors won’t be in area gyms this winter.

Former Oregon standout Vaughn Karvala and Madison West all-time leading scorer Michael Wilson both transferred to prep schools for their final season, adding their names to the recent trend of high-level players exiting Wisconsin.

Karvala, ranked no. 30 in the class of 2026 according to SC Next, transferred to Bella Vista College Prep in Scottsdale, Arizona, while Wilson is now attending Victory Rock Prep in Sarasota, Fla.

CWBChicago

The Chicago Board of Education on Thursday unanimously approved a $2 million settlement with a former student who was groomed and sexually assaulted by a security guard at Paul L. Dunbar Career Academy in Bronzeville.

The guard, Tywain Carter, is serving an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in May 2023 to criminal sexual assault of a minor by a person in a supervisory position.

Sabine Martin:

The data show a 7% decline in total international student enrollment this fall, a decrease of 490 students, and 9% fewer new graduate and professional students.

The student enrollment numbers are based on data collected on the 10th day of classes.

UW-Madison’s international student enrollment drop is smaller than a national projection from the Association of International Educators that estimated a 15% decrease for this fall based on federal data.

——-

Related: elite over production.

Tyler Durden:

The FBI deployed nearly 300 plainclothes agents to the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, in an effort that became so chaotic it caused an internal schism within the agency that led many rank-and-file at the bureau that core competencies had been lost to “wokeness,” and that employees had become “pawns in a political war,” according to an after-action reporthidden from the public for over four years until it was obtained by Just the News. 

Anonymous complaints were sent to the after-action team by scores of FBI agents and other personnel – many from the bureau’s premier Washington field office (WFO) – detailing how agents were sent into a dangerous situation without proper safety equipment or even the ability to identify themselves as armed officers to other police agencies.

Most common among the complaints was that under former directors Chris Wray and just-indicted James Comey, the bureau had become infected with political bias and liberal ideology that treated the Trump-supporting Jan. 6 protesters much differently from Black Lives Matter rioters from the summer of 2020. 

Disclose.tv:

The FBI secretly deployed 274 plainclothes agents into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot crowds, a fact hidden for over four and a half years until current Director Kash Patel’s team turned over a 50-page after-action report to Congress. Agents lacked proper safety gear and clear identification, risking misidentification by other law enforcement. One agent wrote, “I wish you all would pay more attention to our safety than what type of masks we wear.”

Rank-and-file agents slammed the bureau’s leadership, claiming political bias infected operations under James Comey and Chris Wray. “Our response to the Capitol Riot reeks of political bias,” one agent stated. Another wrote, “We have been used as pawns in a political war.”

Document.

More.

This post has gone viral, but it isn’t true. That’s not what the report shows.

It identifies that 274 agents were deployed that day in response to all the events. It does not say how many were wearing plainclothes or if any were among the crowds before the rioting.

Marcel Preuss, Germán Reyes, Jason Somerville, Joy Wu

Elites disproportionately influence policymaking, yet little is known about their fairness and efficiency preferences — key determinants of support for redistributive policies. We investigate these preferences in an incentivized lab experiment with a group of future elites — Ivy League MBA students. We find that MBA students implement substantially more unequal earnings distributions than the average American, regardless of whether inequality stems from luck or merit. Their redistributive choices are also highly responsive to efficiency costs, with an effect that is an order of magnitude larger than that found in representative U.S. samples. Analyzing fairness ideals, we find that MBA students are less likely to be strict meritocrats than the broader population. These findings provide novel insights into how elites’ redistributive preferences may shape high levels of inequality in the U.S.

Irina Manta:

My coauthors Cassandra Robertson, Zoe Robinson, and I have published a symposium piece entitled “Public Health Policy as Public Choice Failure” in the Houston Journal of Health Law & Policy, in which we use a public choice lens to examine the United States’ often-unfortunate public health journey. Here is the abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought a devastating toll, causing over a million deaths in the United States along with widespread disability and economic disruption. Yet the magnitude of these costs was not inevitable—it was shaped by the policy choices made in response to the crisis. This Article argues that the U.S. pandemic response suffered from public choice dynamics that systematically skewed policymaking away from the public interest. Examining three key policy areas—vaccine rollout, mask mandates, and ventilation standards—the Article demonstrates how misaligned political incentives led officials to prioritize short-term appeasement of a pandemic-weary public over science-based strategies that would maximize long-term welfare. In each domain, political actors faced strong incentives to downplay risks, overpromise solutions, and delay difficult decisions, resulting in a pandemic response that was often too little, too late, and too beholden to partisan interests. The Article concludes that reckoning honestly with these failures is a crucial first step toward reforming our public health institutions and ensure a more effective response to the next crisis. It offers recommendations for rebuilding public trust, depoliticizing public health communication, and institutionalizing science-based policymaking. More broadly, the Article underscores the urgent need to realign political incentives with the public interest in the prevention of and response to public health emergencies.

——-

A deep drive into taxpayer funded Dane County Madison Public Health’s covid lockdown mandates is long overdue.

Joanne Jacobs summary:

Before the pandemic, 85 percent of students attended traditional public schools, she writes. Almost 9 percent were in private schools. After the pandemic, the number fell below 80 percent. It “hasn’t rebounded.” Private school enrollment has held steady.

One third of students in mostly black districts are not in traditional public schools, Barshay notes. Students in high-poverty districts also are more likely to “lost” to their neighborhood schools.

Some of the missing students enrolled in charter schools, which saw their share of enrollment rise from 5 percent to 6 percent. “Virtual” schools’ share rose form 0.7 percent to 1.2 percent. As vouchers expand, private schools may begin growing too, but there’s not much evidence of that yet.

——

Where have all the students gone?

Robert Pondiscio

Over the past few weeks, I’ve published two major pieces about a body of psychological research that I believe deserves much wider attention in K–12 education. One appears in the October issue of National Review, titled “There’s Too Much Doom and Gloom in the Classroom.” The other is a chapter in the book Mind the Children: How to Think About the Youth Mental Health Crisis, edited by my AEI colleagues Naomi Schaefer Riley and Sally Satel. Because these pieces are either behind a paywall or between the covers of a book, I want to bring the discussion here.

The research at the center of both is Jeremy Clifton’s work on primal world beliefs, or “primals.” I consider it among the most important and eye-opening ideas I’ve encountered in over two decades in education thought and practice—important for two reasons: First, it’s almost completely unknown in K–12. In fact, the only mention I could find in a publication for educators was a 2022 Education Week interview in which Clifton offered a quiet warning: “Don’t assume teaching young people that the world is bad will help them. Do know that how you see the world matters.”

Cremieux:

We can see the Will Rogers phenomenon at work in this instance because the overall slope was -0.015 standard deviations per year. For those with less than twelve years of education the slope was -0.039, whereas for high school graduates, the slope was -0.041. For those attending college the slope was -0.034 versus -0.027 for people who had some college but didn’t graduate; the slope was -0.019 for college graduates, -0.018 for those currently in graduate or professional school, and -0.024 for those with graduate or professional degrees.

The overall slope is less than the slope for any individual level of education because people are sorting across the levels in exactly the way I suggested.

So, are we getting dumber? Unfortunately, this wouldn’t show it. If the authors ever release or return to the data to analyze whether the changes are measurement invariant and how they appear after post-stratification, then we can know. Until then, we’ll be left guessing.

Sabine Martin:

The new fee, which took effect Sunday, does not apply to existing visa holders.

The H-1B visa program, which started in 1990, is a competitive system that allows employers to temporarily hire professionals from abroad for “specialty occupations.” They must have a bachelor’s degree or higher and they can only stay in the country for a maximum of six years, including renewals.

Over the last decade, 60% or more of H-1B employees approved each year worked a computer-related job, but other top fields include architecture, engineering and education, according to the Pew Research Center.

More than 2,000 Wisconsin employers have used the program to hire nearly 30,000 employees in the last decade, averaging about 2,600 a year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.

The government grants 85,000 new H-1B visas through a lottery each fiscal year, but universities and nonprofits are exempt from that cap.

Christopher Rufo:

In the 1960s and 1970s, America witnessed a wave of political terrorism. Left-wing radicals hijacked airplanes, set bombs in government buildings, and assassinated police officers in service of political goals. The perpetrators were almost always organized, belonging to groups like the Weathermen or the Black Liberation Army. These groups demanded the release of prisoners, denounced capitalism, or called for violent revolution against the United States. Their members were radical but largely lucid, justifying their actions with appeals to a higher cause.

In recent years, a new form of terror has emerged: decentralized, digitally driven violence organized not around coherent ideologies but around memes, fantasies, and nihilistic impulses. The perpetrators of this low-grade terror campaign do not belong to hierarchical organizations or pursue concrete political aims. More often, they come from ordinary families and lash out in acts of violence without discernible purpose.

New Discourses:

Cultural Marxism is a challenging term that refers to a broad Leftist social phenomenon that took place in the West through the twentieth century into the present. Based upon but modifying the Communist religion of Karl Marx, Western (Cultural) Marxism sought to find a way to infiltrate and seize the means of production of Western Civilizational culture in the hopes of opening it up to socialism (or Communism). In the 1910s through the 1930s, the Western Marxist movement truly was a Cultural Marxism. From the 1930s to the 1970s, this line of thinking was developed primarily by the Frankfurt School, which developed Critical Theory, or Critical Marxism, sometimes referred to as Neo-Marxism. Since the 1970s, it has gone Woke, adopting Intersectionality as a form of American Maoism. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay offers a thorough beginner’s overview of the whole of Cultural Marxism in four parts: Marxism and the relevant historical context; Cultural Marxism; Critical Marxism; and Woke Marxism, connecting the highlights of this movement to the challenges of the present day. Join him and share this with your friends who are looking for a good starting place to learn about his work!

Alyssa Rosenberg

During my time as a parenting columnist, I conducted a really delightful interview with an executive at Scholastic who told me that they could never acquire enough kid-oriented non-fiction. It was the sort of observation that I never would have made on my own but that immediately made sense to me: of course kids want to understand how the world works, and there is so much to try to make sense of. There are plenty of books and series that meet that need in marvelously creative ways, from Jerry Pallotta’s “Who Would Win?” books that teach animal science through a series of imaginary cage matches to the delights of the DK Eyewitness series. 

I also think that children’s natural curiosity about the world is something to keep in mind when considering what makes for compelling picture book illustration. Now, it’s absolutely the case that an excellent combination of words and illustrations can make technical drawings and blueprints fascinating: David Macaulay’s whole career is proof of that. But especially for younger children who aren’t reading on their own, I find myself drawn to illustration that is technically specific but illustrated without obsessive precision.

A wonderful example of what I mean is “Road Builders,” a 1994 step-by-step guide to building a stretch of highway. As you’ll be able to tell from the creases and tears in the photos that follow, this is one of the Imagination Library selections that my children love the most.

No one who looks at “Road Builders” would ever think for a second that it’s anything other than hand-drawn. The wobbles and asymmetries are visible from the cover and are visible throughout the book. 

Simms Taback, the illustrator, isn’t aiming for realism here; there’s a depth of field to his scenes, but no real attempt to give the characters or vehicles mass, or to project shadows from every direction.

But despite being very deliberately hand-drawn, Taback’s illustrations include a really wonderful amount of detail. If he draws a dump truck in profile, he’ll be clear to capture the wires and hydraulics. Wheels have clearly-delineated rivets. Vehicles have model numbers. Construction helmets have tape with the owners’ name scribbled on them as well as labels with the brand name

Rana Foroohar:

Of all the attacks on valuable things that Donald Trump is mounting — on free speech, financial reporting standards, climate regulation, relations with allies — one of the most dangerous is his assault on K-12 public education in the US.

The White House, along with many Republicans, would like to see the Department of Education disbanded and schooling in America privatised with a voucher system that would give parents public money to pay for independent school tuition. Not only does this pull resources away from already underfunded public schools, but it tends to support well-off families and religious schools disproportionately.  

So I had a rare moment of pleasant surprise amid a truly dismal news cycle when I read, a few days ago, that Republican efforts to promote school vouchers have so far done very little to lower enrolment in public schools. A new study by Tulane University academics found that in the 11 states that had adopted vouchers since 2021, the system had only increased enrolment in private schools by about 3-4 per cent.

Kelsey Piper:

But scores are not slipping everywhere. In Mississippi, they have been rising year over year. The state recovered from a brief decline during COVIDand has now surpassed its pre-COVID highs. Its fourth grade students outperform California’s on average, even though our state is richer, more educated, and spends about 50% more per pupil.

The difference is most pronounced if you look at the most disadvantaged students. In California, only 28% of Black fourth graders read at or above basic level, for instance, compared to 52% in Mississippi. But it’s not just that Mississippi has raised the floor. It has also raised the ceiling: The state is also one of the nation’s best performers when you look at students who are not “economically disadvantaged.”

Consider this the latest chapter of the “Mississippi Miracle,” which has seen the state climb from 49th in the country on fourth grade reading to ninth nationally. This rise has received a great deal of coverage in publications ranging from The New YorkTimes to The New York Post. And yet, it still feels as if what’s taking place in the Deep South still has been grossly undersold.

First, it’s not just Mississippi — Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee have adopted the same strategies, stemmed the bleeding affecting states elsewhere, and seen significant improvements.

Second, many people who aren’t too focused on education policy seem to imagine Mississippi has simply stopped underperforming, that they’re now doing about as well as everyone else.

This is not true. They haven’t just caught up to your state; they are now wildly outperforming it. If you live where I do, in Oakland, California, and you cannot afford private education, you should be seriously considering moving to Mississippi for the substantially better public schools. Black students are as likely to be basic-or-above readers in Mississippi(where the median Black household income was $37,900 in 2023) as in national top performer Massachusetts (where the median Black household income was $67,000 in 2022.)

——-

Chris Rickert:

others have criticized as a dumbing down of standards to make it appear students know more than they actually do.

——

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Sarah Mervosh:

“The U.S. is an example of frogs in the boiling water when it comes to talent,” said Jamie Merisotis, chief executive of the Lumina Foundation, which is focused on higher education and work force credentials. Because the United States has a large and diverse economy, he said, “it’s harder to see when the rest of the world is catching up.”

The world’s highest-performing countries not only produce students who outscore the brightest American students at the top. They also manage to lift far more students up to a base level of skill — something some experts believe is only going to become more important in a world of artificial intelligence.

“A.I. can do the first draft of the memo or solve the math equation,” Mr. Merisotis said. “It is the worker who needs to understand what they are reading, be able to ensure it is accurate and decide what to do next.”

Fundamental reading and math skills are needed for a wide range of jobs, employers and industry leaders said, from health care workers calculating medication dosage and documenting patient care to truck drivers navigating the nation’s highways.

——-

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Will Flanders:

The full report card is needed for a deeper dive, but compared to the most fair public school group (low-income students), private school choice students once again have significantly higher proficiency levels in the MPCP, RPCP and statewide programs.

——-

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Abigail S. Gerstein and Ella F. Niederhelman:

Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli received at least $150,000 to testify against Tylenol’s manufacturer in 2023 — two years before he published research used by the Trump administration to link the drug to autism, a connection experts say is tenuous at best.

Baccarelli served as an expert witness on behalf of parents and guardians of children suing Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol at the time. U.S. District Court Judge Denise L. Cote dismissed the case last year due to a lack of scientific evidence, throwing out Baccarelli’s testimony in the process.

“He cherry-picked and misrepresented study results and refused to acknowledge the role of genetics in the etiology” of autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, Cote wrote in her decision, which the plaintiffs have since appealed.

Baccarelli, who was a professor at Columbia University’s public health school at the time, declined to comment on his involvement in the case.

The plaintiffs paid Baccareli $700 an hour for his expert testimony, according to a 2023 deposition.

“I work for more than 200 hours, so it’s about $150,000,” Baccarelli said in the deposition.

But Catherine E. Lord — a professor of Psychiatry and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles — said it is not uncommon for medical professionals to be paid for expert testimony.

Kate Niederhoffer, Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, Angela Lee, Alex Liebscher, Kristina Rapuano and Jeffrey T. Hancock:

Here’s how this happens. As AI tools become more accessible, workers are increasingly able to quickly produce polished output: well-formatted slides, long, structured reports, seemingly articulate summaries of academic papers by non-experts, and usable code. But while some employees are using this ability to polish good work, others use it to create content that is actually unhelpful, incomplete, or missing crucial context about the project at hand. The insidious effect of workslop is that it shifts the burden of the work downstream, requiring the receiver to interpret, correct, or redo the work. In other words, it transfers the effort from creator to receiver.

If you have ever experienced this, you might recall the feeling of confusion after opening such a document, followed by frustration—Wait, what is this exactly?—before you begin to wonder if the sender simply used AI to generate large blocks of text instead of thinking it through. If this sounds familiar, you have been workslopped.

Will Flanders:

The New Forward Exam results are available in Wisedash this morning. No time yet for a deep dive, but it looks as if, overall, the state has held relatively steady with the inflated performance levels of last year.

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Preston Cooper

Students are becoming savvier consumers when it comes to postsecondary education. In an AEI report published earlier this month, I documented that low-quality colleges are seeing massive declines in enrollment. These trends in consumer choice extend to what students elect to study once they arrive on campus. Increasingly, students are majoring in subjects with higher typical salaries.

In total, the Class of 2023 earned 2.1 million bachelor’s degrees—up from around 1.8 million degrees awarded to the Class of 2010. But almost all of that increase is down to rising interest in high-wage college majors such as engineering, computer science, and nursing.

The number of degrees conferred in fields of study where the median early-career salary exceeds $60,000 grew by 60 percent between 2010 and 2023. This accounted for almost all the rise in bachelor’s degree attainment during that time period. Combined, college majors paying lower starting salaries saw just an eight percent increase in degree conferrals over the same time frame.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas:

Biological computing is “massively parallel,” decentralized, and noisy. Your cells have somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 quintillion ribosomes, all working at the same time. Each of these exquisitely complex floating protein factories is, in effect, a tiny computer — albeit a stochastic one, meaning not entirely predictable. The movements of hinged components, the capture and release of smaller molecules, and the manipulation of chemical bonds are all individually random, reversible, and inexact, driven this way and that by constant thermal buffeting. Only a statistical asymmetry favors one direction over another, with clever origami moves tending to “lock in” certain steps such that a next step becomes likely to happen.

This differs greatly from the operation of “logic gates” in a computer, basic components that process binary inputs into outputs using fixed rules. They are irreversible and engineered to be 99.99 percent reliable and reproducible.

Biological computing is computing, nonetheless. And its use of randomness is a feature, not a bug. In fact, many classic algorithms in computer science also require randomness (albeit for different reasons), which may explain why Turing insisted that the Ferranti Mark I, an early computer he helped to design in 1951, include a random number instruction. Randomness is thus a small but important conceptual extension to the original Turing Machine, though any computer can simulate it by calculating deterministic but random-looking or “pseudorandom” numbers.

Parallelism, too, is increasingly fundamental to computing today. Modern AI, for instance, depends on both massive parallelism and randomness — as in the parallelized “stochastic gradient descent” (SGD) algorithm, used for training most of today’s neural nets, the “temperature” setting used in chatbots to introduce a degree of randomness into their output, and the parallelism of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which power most AI in data centers.

goacta.org:

Virginia state law requires public universities to protect the First Amendment rights of all students, faculty, and invited guests. They must do this by creating policies, developing materials, and educating students about their speech rights. Virginia’s leading public universities have adopted policies of varying quality to comply with state requirements, but, as the following survey from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and College Pulse shows, more work is needed to provide a true culture of free expression for all campus members.

Our survey of 2,345 students and recent alumni from George Mason University (GMU), James Madison University (JMU), the University of Virginia (UVA), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Virginia Tech (VT), and William & Mary (W&M) reveals high rates of self-censorship and intolerance for intellectual and political differences. Despite the state’s requirement that students be educated about their speech rights during orientation programs, only 21% of students recall receiving such training. Over half of students and alumni surveyed said the political climate on their campus prevents them from expressing their beliefs because others might find them offensive. Forty-three percent said they would feel uncomfortable expressing their views on a controversial subject during an in-class discussion. A staggering 68% of students believe professors should be reported to the university for making comments students find offensive. Our survey also reveals variations in these results between the six universities and between different student demographics. Explore the full survey report to learn more.

Barton Swaim:

A day later the Times issued a correction: “An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a post on social media and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement.”

Six Times employees worked on the story—two named in the byline, four more mentioned as contributors at the end. None, evidently, bothered to wonder how such a person as they described could also be a ferocious proponent of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. The thought process seems to have been: Kirk was a right-winger, right-wingers by definition hold retrograde opinions, so an antisemite Kirk surely was. Progressive commentators insisting, days after his assassination, that his killer was a Republican—the indefatigably mistaken Laurence Tribe is one—leaned on a similar sort of syllogism.

A columnist at the Washington Post, meanwhile, was let go this week after (among other things) posting a quotation of Kirk, the sentence slightly rewritten to make it look as if he were claiming black women generally aren’t as smart as whites. Kirk expressed his views abrasively, but common sense and love of country should have told the columnist that the exponent of such a view wouldn’t attract a mass following in 21st-century America. I choose to think she didn’t doctor the line deliberately.

Colin Woodward

The book the model is based on, American Nations, is a history of the entire continent north of the 25th parallel, including what’s now Canada and northern Mexico. Until now, I’d never had a proper map of what that looks like, facilitating research across borders. The map’s been popular with the public as well, with the post introducing it garnering unprecedented organic internet traffic. 

Note Spanish Caribbean’s extension to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The region probably includes parts of the “Spanish Main” — the northern, Caribbean coast of South America — and maybe some other island locations as well, but, it being peripheral to our core study area in North America, I haven’t done the research into all that. First Nation, of course, includes Greenland, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. 

Central and Southern Mexico likely belong to “post-Aztec” and “Maya” regional cultures, the latter extending into parts of Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. Someday, hopefully in collaboration with regional experts, maybe there will be a South American Nations map as well.

Wisconsin Eye and WILL.

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

FIRE:

Google condemns jawboning now, but it failed to stand up for the rights of its users when it mattered.

FIRE will continue to call on private institutions to stand up for their rights — no matter who is in office.

——

Jimmy Dore:

In 2021 I was censored on YouTube & Facebook for accurately reporting that the Covid Vaxx did NOT stop transmission of the virus.

Now everyone knows this, but at the time people still thought it was an actual vaccine & believed the Pharma bought & corrupted corporate media.

Glenn Greenwald:

Huge numbers now outraged by the FCC’s Kimmel threats were happy when Biden/Dems threatened Big Tech to ban dissent.

Whichever is worse, they share the same rotted principle (yet many conservatives condemned the FCC and Bondi, while almost no liberals opposed Biden’s scheme).

But Dems’ censorship under wasn’t only about coercing Big Tech to remove dissent. Key Dems like AOC forced Apple, Google and Amazon to remove the social media app Parler because they claimed it was allowing dangerous speech — and it did so once Parler had become the #1 most downloaded app in America.

One reason @rumblevideo is such a vital guarantor of internet freedom is it rejects all government censorship demands of the kind Google, Meta, etc. submitted to.

Rumble has even lost access to large markets over it (France, Brazil) but its free speech mission is paramout.

The FIRE:

Google should not have waited to acknowledge it was pressured by the Biden administration to block content on its platforms.

Google condemns jawboning now, but it failed to stand up for the rights of its users when it mattered.

FIRE will continue to call on private institutions to stand up for their rights — no matter who is in office.

Ben Thompson:

tech platforms need to lead the way in reestablishing cultural mores around free speech, and not just to get their “get out of jail free” card back. Tech is dominant culturally in a way it wasn’t when the cultural mores around free speech were established, and the most generous interpretation of their actions over the last decade is that they were afraid to assert their power, bowing to the wishes of the loudest voices in the media and in their own companies.

In fact, the best way to avoid partisanship and to be the neutral arbiter all of the platforms say they want to be is to decline to take positions on all issues but one: the importance of free expression. That is the key enabler of finding a path forward on all of those other issues, and is the foundation of a free society. That, in a nutshell, has been Stratechery’s approach to politics, and it has served me well; I think it would scale just as well to the largest companies in the world.

Off the Press:

YouTube creators kicked off the platform for “repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies” will have an opportunity to “rejoin” in line with revised policies that allow “a wider range of content” on those subjects, its parent Alphabet told the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Issued in response to committee subpoenas in February 2023 and March 2025, the letter from Alphabet’s law firm insists its commitment to free expression is “unwavering and will not bend to political pressure,” while blaming senior Biden administration officials, “including White House officials,” for “unacceptable and wrong” pressure to censor content that doesn’t violate YouTube policies.

From President Biden on down, administration officials “created a political atmosphere that sought to influence the actions of platforms based on their concerns regarding misinformation,” Alphabet said, claiming it “has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”

The letter insists that “YouTube never had Community Guidelines prohibiting discussion of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” has never operated a paid third-party checking program and “will not empower fact-checkers to take action on or label content across the Company’s services.”

——

Many taxpayer funded school districts use Google services, including Madison.

House Judiciary:

1. The Biden Administration censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”
2. Public debate should never come at the expense of relying “authorities.”
3. The company will never use third-party “fact-checkers.”
4. Europe’s censorship laws target American companies and threaten American speech, including the removal of “lawful content.”

—-

Because they support censorship as long as it targets their political opponents

——

Thrilled to see Google is now implementing what X did three years ago to support free speech. Community Notes continues to set the industry standard for a transparent, community-driven system that provides accurate context to posts, while effectively reducing its spread by decreasing engagement and virality

Neal McCluskey:

The school choice movement is not a conspiracy. It is an ordinary political effort that stems naturally from a fundamental question of mass education in a diverse society: How do you handle plural values, identities, and educational desires? But you would not know that from The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, which would have you believe that a handful of advocates, generously funded by an even tinier group of right-wing billionaires, has somehow foisted choice on an unwitting country.

The Privateers is authored by Josh Cowen, a Michigan State University education policy professor who has been in the school choice world since the early 2000s. Cowen has been an investigator on private choice program assessments, and he writes that what he has seen from the choice movement has increasingly alarmed him. So much so that “there must . . . be a reckoning” (12).

One big part of Cowen’s narrative is that a few wealthy people with names you have likely heard—DeVos and Koch—and others you likely have not, like the Bradley Foundation, have for decades funded advocacy work by choice advocates that masquerades as objective research. My own think tank, the Cato Institute, is among those identified, but more of Cowen’s attention is devoted to university denizens, especially Paul Peterson at Harvard, and his one-time students Patrick Wolf and Jay Greene, who moved on to the Walton family-funded Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, and in the case of Greene, eventually to the conservative Heritage Foundation.

——-

Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Ashley Jochim, Michael J. Petrilli, David Griffith, Ph.D and Adam Tyner, Ph.D.

Ashley Jochim, principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and mom of four, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith on the Education Gadfly Show to continue our debate on private school choice and regulation. She also discusses how Democrats’ defense of public schools often clashes with families’ real experiences, and why clear, consumer-facing information is essential to making choice work.

On the Research Minute, Adam Tyner highlights a new NBER study from Chicago showing that giving principals more autonomy can boost student achievement— though effects vary widely depending on leadership capacity.

Waldo Dib:

If you studied university in many parts of the Middle East, try asking yourself or any of your friends what their favorite part of university was, and a lot of them will say the dorm life, late-night conversations, or the campus freedom. Very few will tell you their favorite part was what they learned in class.

A few days ago, I was lazily browsing Hacker News when I came across a provocative blog post titled “Math is Erotic.” Without going into too much detail about the contents of the post itself — which, for reference, has very little erotica — the part that really caught my attention was below:

The function universities have long played is less one of educating than of credentialing.

I studied Environmental Engineering in Jordan, and more than 10 years after graduating, the above resonates on a profound level with me. I assume a lot of people from the Arab world and South Asia would relate to this, too.

At the risk of sounding like yet another entrepreneur talking smack about university education, hear me out: the German Jordanian University, where I studied, was a conveyor belt clattering along slowly to secure jobs abroad for young Jordanians. As the name implies, engineering students were meant to spend 4 years in Jordan, and another mandatory year in Germany. It started as a joint project in 2005 between the governments of Jordan and Germany.

Will Flanders Summary:

The title of this thread on the Wisconsin Reddit is both funny and sad because WI should only WISH to be Mississippi when it comes to NAEP scores.

Dan Lennington:

Tony Evers has been in charge of Wisconsin education policy since 2009 (& effectively since 2001). Republicans have been completely unable to educate voters about the generational failure he caused. He’ll ride off into the sunset without facing any electoral consequences

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The funny thing about Catholic schools is that they spend about half as much per pupil as their public schools counterparts. It’s often a very no frills education: older buildings, less technology, fewer sports fields, etc.

But it works.

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They’ll blame school funding, but Wisconsin is 21st in per pupil funding while Mississippi is 44th.

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Daniel Buck:

New study:

It charts payroll data and student test scores in 12,000 districts

It finds a negative correlation between teacher salary increases and student performance

Khari Johnson:

A California attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT.

The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up. It also noted that numerous out-of-state and federal courts have confronted attorneys for citing fake legal authority.

“We therefore publish this opinion as a warning,” it continued. “Simply stated, no brief, pleading, motion, or any other paper filed in any court should contain any citations— whether provided by generative AI or any other source—that the attorney responsible for submitting the pleading has not personally read and verified.”

The opinion, issued 10 days ago in California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, is a clear example of why the state’s legal authorities are scrambling to regulate the use of AI in the judiciary. The state’s Judicial Council two weeks ago issued guidelines requiring judges and court staff to either ban generative AI or adopt a generative AI use policy by Dec. 15. Meanwhile, the California Bar Association is considering whether to strengthen its code of conduct to account for various forms of AI following a request by the California Supreme Court last month.

Joanne Jacobs:

High school students are earning career credentials in greater numbers than ever before, writes Patrick O’Donnell on The 74. But there are “massive mismatches between the credentials students are earning and what employers seek.”

Preston Cooper

I divide colleges into five groups based on several measures of student outcomes: graduation rates, student loan repayment rates, and earnings after enrollment. Students who choose different institutions experience wildly different outcomes. At colleges in the top fifth of student outcomes, students are four times as likely to graduate, twice as likely to repay their loans, and earn over $20,000 more per year relative to their peers at colleges in the bottom fifth.

We can track enrollment patterns in each group of colleges over time. Colleges in the bottom fifth of student outcomes lost 47 percent of their undergraduate enrollment between 2010 and 2023. Together, the bottom two-fifths of colleges by student outcomes account for almost all the drop in college enrollment since 2010. Meanwhile, colleges in the top fifth grew enrollment by 8 percent.

WILL:

WILL unveiled a new report, “The WILL of The People: A Roadmap to Enforce Wisconsin’s Citizenship Voting Amendment,” which outlines a clear process to audit Wisconsin’s voter rolls using existing state and federal data. The report offers an important perspective to both elected officials and voters, ahead of the Wisconsin statewide elections in 2026.

In 2021, WILL conducted a comprehensive and highly respected audit of Wisconsin’s 2020 election. While that report addressed many areas of election administration, one key question remained unanswered: the extent of non-citizen voting. This new roadmap directly addresses that gap, providing policymakers with the tools to enforce the will of voters.

The Quotes: WILL Research Director, Will Flanders, stated, “Last November, 71% of Wisconsin voters approved a constitutional amendment making clear that only U.S. citizens may vote in our elections. Now it’s incumbent on state leaders to follow through and enforce it. Our plan gives policymakers a practical, common-sense roadmap to ensure the will of the voters is respected and Wisconsin’s elections remain secure.”

Wall Street Journal:

Chicago has been carrying on as though no reckoning would ever arrive for its chronically underfunded pensions, but is everyone awake now? Chicago’s four public pension funds are among the nation’s most underfunded, with more pension debt than 44 states, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. The city carries more than $35 billion in pension debt and a credit rating barely above junk status.

In July that didn’t stop Springfield from throwing gas on the fire for public unions. Against the advice of budget watchers, Democrats passed a bill to increase pension payments for Chicago police and firefighters that added billions of dollars to pension liabilities and tanked their funding ratios.

They knew what they were doing. In a memo emailed to Deputy Governor for Budget and Economy Andy Manar in July, Chicago chief financial officer Jill Jaworski explained that the proposed changes in the pension benefits would reduce the funded ratio for both the police and firefighter funds to under 20%. “Many actuaries consider a funded ration under 20% to be technically insolvent,” she wrote.

Ms. Jaworski said city contributions to the funds would increase by an estimated $60 million in the first year and add $6.6 billion to city contributions over 30 years. And while the bill was supposedly designed to bring city safety workers into parity with their downstate peers, the city workers aren’t required to pay the same share of their payroll toward pensions. The bill “makes no provision for funding the enhanced benefits,” she wrote.

Jamie McKane:

The University of Oxford has fallen out of the top three universities in the UK for the first time, according to The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide for 2026.

Both Oxford and Cambridge universities have been supplanted by Durham University, which now holds the third-place spot among the top universities in the UK.

Oxford and Cambridge are tied for fourth in the 2026 rankings, after falling due to their relatively poor performance in the latest National Student Survey.

Durham University was named The Times’s University of the Year, although the number-one ranked university in the UK remained the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) for the second year in a row.

Second place was held by the University of St Andrews, again for the second consecutive year

It started before Covid, and it keeps getting worse.

Matthew Yglesias:

What we do know is that federal K-12 policy used to place a hefty premium on “accountability” for local school districts. Students were supposed to either demonstrate a solid level of results, or else show clear signs of improvement. If a district couldn’t achieve one or the other, there were supposed to be consequences. 

There was significant bipartisan backlash to this accountability regime, and it was dismantled on a bipartisan basis during Obama’s second term. 

I find this backlash fascinating. The whole idea of “No Child Left Behind” (N.C.L.B.) had become a big national joke by the time the Every Student Succeeds Act passed and shifted schools away from accountability. Teachers union stakeholders didn’t like N.C.L.B. Conservative decentralizers didn’t like it. Normie high-S.E.S. parents were annoyed at their kids needing to take tests, and normie low-S.E.S. parents didn’t like to hear that their kids were doing badly in school. All around, almost everyone seems to have decided they’d prefer a system that put less emphasis on trying to tell whether kids were learning and taking action if they weren’t.

Chad Aldeman makes an interesting point about this. He notes that if you look across the full range of subjects and grade levels, the declines are not particularly concentrated in any specific demographic group, but they are concentrated among the weaker students. The trends for 12th-grade math scores are particularly stark in this regard, but it’s not unique in the history of American education outcomes.

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more

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Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

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Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average (now > $25,000 per student) K-12 tax & spending practices. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results. 

Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

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

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

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

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

Corrinne Hess:

State Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, was one of the authors of the reading bill known as Act 20. He says he now wants to create similar legislation for math. 

During a press conference on Sept. 10, Kitchens said a bill will be introduced soon that will include math screeners to provide testing and individualized plans to help struggling students catch up. 

“This bill is not going to be the full solution to the problem, but I think it’s going to be a very good first step in addressing a very serious problem,” Kitchens said. 

Act 20 was a bipartisan effort, but implementation wasn’t easy and a fight over funding made its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

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2014: 21% of University of Wisconsin System Freshman Require Remedial Math

How One Woman Rewrote Math in Corvallis

Singapore Math

Discovery Math

Connected Math (2006!)

Tyler Cowen:

Assume the courts do not strike this down (perhaps they will?).

Will foreigners still be hired at the entry level with an extra 100k surcharge?  I would think not,as university budgets are tight these days.  I presume there is some way to turn them down legally, without courting discrimination lawsuits?

What if you ask them to accept a lower starting wage?  A different deal in some other manner, such as no summer money or a higher teaching load?  Is that legal?  Will schools have the stomach to even try?  I would guess not.  Is there a way to amortize the 100k over five or six years?  What if the new hire leaves the institution in year three of the deal?

In economics at least, a pretty high percentage of the graduate students at top institutions do not have green cards or citizenships.

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University of Wisconsin Madison h1-b data.

Antigone:

Campbell Bonner’s is not quite a household name, even to professional Classicists. In his day, he was well-known and respected, and not just in his home country. But he was not a populariser, and contented himself by toiling in obscure regions, where he judged that he could do the most good. The Classical scholar described in the following essay, vigorous and versatile, is in many ways a self-portrait.

Bonner was born in 1876, the son of a Tennessee judge. He was educated first at the recently-established Vanderbilt University, before heading north to the more venerable Harvard University for his PhD. This he earned in 1900, with a Latin dissertation on the myth of the Danaids (translated here). In it he demonstrated not only the expected linguistic mastery over a wide range of ancient texts, but also an interest in the new fields of anthropology and comparative religion. Frazer’s Golden Bough is cited, as is his commentary on Pausanias. Bonner’s “strange adventure of the mind” had begun.

After graduation Bonner spent a year in Berlin, where he heard Wilamowitz lecture, before visiting the Mediterranean. In Greece he sailed through the islands with Martin Nilsson, the great Swedish scholar of ancient religion. Returning to America, he took up a position at Peabody College in Nashville, Tennessee. He would hold this until 1907, when he was offered a job at the University of Michigan. Thereafter he spent the rest of his life in Ann Arbor.

The watershed in his career came in 1920, when the University of Michigan began acquiring Greek papyri from Egypt under the initiative of Francis Kelsey. This, as Bonner describes it, “diverted the energy of several men into new channels.” He was one of that number, though too modest here to name himself. His first papyrological publication appeared in 1921; the last in 1954, the year of his death. Among these were three major editions: The Papyrus Codex of the Shepherd of Hermas, The Last Chapters of Enoch in Greek, and The Homily on the Passion by Melito, Bishop of Sardis. Hardly household names either; but there was work to be done, and Bonner did it well. In such a way a man may build his reputation.

RFK, Jr.

“And one of those things is if we lost our constitutional rights in this country and that our children were raised as slaves.”

Ann Althouse summary.

Karin Brulliard

New Mexico, long at the bottom of state rankings for child well-being and educational outcomes, is on the verge of launching a first-in-the-nation program aimed at helping reverse those trends: free child care and preschool for all resident families, regardless of income.

Daniel Willingham:

How could researchers determine whether extended use of digital devices leaves people unable to focus? A straightforward test would compare the ability to focus among students who engage in a great deal of digital activity with those who seldom engage in it. Many researchers have taken that tack. They often test children from infancy to about age six separately from older children, reasoning that the young brain is more vulnerable to change.

And the results? For both older and younger children, the average of dozens of studies reveals a modest negative correlation: More screen time is weakly associated with poor attention regulation.

Now, this kind of study has an obvious limitation—it finds a correlation, but correlation is not causation. Thus, although one is tempted to conclude that digital activities negatively impact attention, it’s also possible that children who have greater difficulty focusing attention find digital activities more appealing than children who do not have such challenges.

Researchers have tried to address this problem by conducting longitudinal studies. That means they measure screen time and attention (at, say, age nine), and then measure them again in the same children months or years later. If more screen time at age nine predicts worse attentional control at age 11—even after accounting for the level of attentional control at age nine—that suggests screen time may contribute to later attention problems. Conversely, if worse attentional control at age nine predicts increased screen time at age 11, that indicates that attention difficulties may lead children to use screens more. The temporal sequence can help clarify the direction of causality.

Using this method, most studies of younger (birth to pre-K) or older (K–12) children support the hypothesis that screen time is associated with poorer attentional control. The size of the observed relationship varies, but on average, it’s small.

Jonathan Guthrie:

Chats about the other British taboo — money — may have been equally faltering. Families will already have answered the essential question of how university costs will be met, provisionally at least. Many freshers will remain as unfamiliar with day-to-day money management as they are with set texts they were supposed to read over the summer.

Financial illiteracy is among the many defects us older people reflexively discern in the young. Under-18s scored an average of 2.3 correct answers out of 10 in a UK quiz run by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and financial website Wealthify. Mean scores rose steadily with age.

Aarya Mukherjee

One campus graduate student, who received the message and was provided anonymity due to fears of retaliation, claimed the release targeted Muslim and Arab individuals who had previously expressed support for Palestine.  

“I think (the message was sent) to anybody who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” the student said. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”

The student claimed they had been the subject of a false report of antisemitism to the campus Title IX and XI Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination, or OPHD. They said other students who received the notification had OPHD cases that were determined to be unsubstantiated or stand open. 

Gal Elidan and Yael Haramaty

Our research comes to life in Learn Your Way. The interface brings together multiple, personalized representations of content including: (1) immersive text, (2) section-level quizzes, (3) slides & narration, (4) audio lessons, and (5) mind maps.

• Immersive text: Breaks the content up into digestible sections that are augmented with generated images and embedded questions. Put together, these transform passive reading into an active multimodal experience that follows learning science principles.
• Section-level quizzes: Promote active learning by allowing a user to interactively assess their learning, and uncover existing knowledge gaps.
• Slides & narration: Offers presentations that span the entire source material and include engaging activities like fill-in-the-blanks, as well as a narrated version, mimicking a recorded lesson.
• Audio lesson: Provides simulated conversations, coupled with visual aids, between an AI-powered teacher and a student that models how a real learner might engage with the material, including the expression of misconceptions, which are clarified by the teacher.
• Mind map: Organizes the knowledge hierarchically and allows learners to zoom in and out from the big picture to the details.

The above representations give learners choice and are all adapted to their selected grade level and personal interests. Throughout the experience, the interactive quizzes provide dynamic feedback, guiding students to revisit specific content areas where they struggled. This marks our first steps towards true personalization.