Jill Barshay: A troubling post-pandemic pattern is emerging across the nation’s schools: test scores and attendance are down, yet more students are earning high school diplomas. A new report from Washington, D.C., suggests bleak futures for many of these high school graduates, given the declining rate of college attendance and completion. The numbers are stark … Continue reading One city hits a high school graduation record but few ninth graders are predicted to end up with a college degree
Experts worry that Washington, D.C. trends are playing out across the nation →

Kaleem Caire, via email: February 28, 2023 Dear One City Parents, This is an important time for One City Schools and for education across the state of Wisconsin. Over the next several months our legislature and governor will be engaging with one another and individuals and organizations from across the state to inform what will … Continue reading Compare Legacy Taxpayer Supported Madison K-12 Spending with the One City Startup →

Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Arman Rahman Reporter Author email : According to Caire, the school was forced to take its foot off the gas by closing 9th and 10th grades, when five core subject teachers left between last September and December. “We didn’t hire teachers, enough teachers, that could retool their curriculum to serve students … Continue reading One City Schools CEO talks what led to partial closure, plan to bring 9,10th grades back →

Kaleem Caire: Thank you CapTimes for printing my OpEd. Interestingly, in a conversation with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction yesterday, state officials told us that we are legally obligated to count our students who are enrolled and present on the day of the pupil count (tomorrow, Friday). This is state law. They also told … Continue reading Why is One City Charter School Facing Legacy Madison Media Blowback? →

Scott Girard: For the full 2022-23 school year, an independent charter school like One City receives $9,264 per student from the state that the student’s resident school district would otherwise receive. The state counts students twice each school year: the third Friday of September and the second Friday of January. If a student is enrolled … Continue reading Commentary on Taxpayer Funded K-12 Education: Madison’s $597.9M budget $23k/student! vs Tiny One City Charter School →

Chris Rickert: Citing an exodus of core-class teachers, Madison charter school One City Schools told parents of about 60 students Thursday that it would shut down its first ninth- and 10th-grade classes after only one semester. The school’s vice president of external relations, Gail Wiseman, said the school lost five teachers since the beginning of … Continue reading One City Schools shutting down ninth and 10th grades →

Rhonda Foxx: Some education experts and parents fear the “summer slide” may be more troublesome due to the lasting impacts the pandemic has had on learning. For students at One City Schools, the learning doesn’t stop. Students at One City Schools eagerly don pajamas for spirit week in July because for them, it’s a regular … Continue reading Staving off the ‘summer slide’ through year-round learning at One City Schools →

Chris Rickert: The free charter school is required to meet minimum instructional hour requirements contained in state law, which Davis said the school exceeds because its school day runs from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and its year from Sept. 1 to July 31, longer than most traditional public schools. The school will continue to … Continue reading One city (charter) schools changed teacher work week: 4 days →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Dear Community Members, In November 2019, the Wisconsin Partnership Program, located within the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, awarded One City Schools a five-year, $1 million grant to support the implementation of our education programs, and the design and launch of a long-term longitudinal evaluation … Continue reading First Report on Groundbreaking Longitudinal Study of One City Schools Released! →

One City Schools (expanding in Monona…) Our formal enrollment for Elementary School period for the 2022-23 school year will begin on March 1, 2022 at 8 am. Applications will be accepted for all Elementary grades from 4K through 5th. One City Preparatory Academy enrollment period starts on April 4, 2022 for Sixth grade only for … Continue reading One City Schools’ Preparatory Academy Enrollment Begins on 4 April, 2022 →

Elizabeth Beyer: A contract, inked in February with the UW System, greenlit Caire’s 33-year dream of growing One City Schools from early childhood education and elementary to include students through grade 12, roughly a decade after the Madison School Board rejected a similar proposal for a charter school overseen by the Madison School District that … Continue reading One City Charter Schools continues to fundraise and grow (Monona) →

Elizabeth Beyer: Caire, UW-Oshkosh and Madison Area Technical College are hashing out a dual enrollment partnership that would allow students to gain college credits while in high school and potentially earn an associate degree, too, which could be used to transfer to a UW campus or an institution outside the System. The idea may even … Continue reading Notes on One City Schools’ Monona Expansion →

Scott Girard: One City Schools received a $1 million donation from the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation to support the school as it expands to serve students in grades 4K-12. “The Frautschi family has a long history of investing in initiatives to make Madison a great city for everyone, dating back to their contributions to downtown … Continue reading Frautschi’s dónate $1m to Monona’s (Madison suburb) One City School →

Logan Wroge: With a $14 million donation from American Girl founder and philanthropist Pleasant Rowland, One City Schools announced plans on Tuesday to purchase an office building in Monona that will become a new home for the fast-growing independent charter school. One City will use the donation to buy a 157,000-square-foot office building on the … Continue reading One City Schools expands – in Monona (Governor Evers’ proposed budget would once again abort this school, by eliminating the UW charter office) →

Scott Girard: The leadership of the Madison charter school signed the lease Aug. 28 after a search for new space, and D’Abell recalled the busy weekend of preparing the building while also communicating with parents about where the year would begin. “We didn’t know where we were going to be,” D’Abell said during a recent … Continue reading Expanding One City charter school moves into new south Madison space →

Logan Wroge: A Chinese approach to teaching preschool students has made its way to Madison. One City Schools, a Madison charter school founded by former Urban League president Kaleem Caire and authorized by an office within the University of Wisconsin System, was the first school in the United States to practice Anji Play and is … Continue reading Chinese model for early learning part of One City Schools’ educational approach →

Logan Wroge: In a previous attempt at a charter school, Caire proposed the Madison Preparatory Academy, which would have served a similar population as One City Schools, but would have been for grades 6-12. The Madison School Board rejected the idea in December 2011. Caire sought to bring his “change-maker” approach to the Madison School … Continue reading A crack in Madison’s non diverse K-12 governance model: independent charter One City Schools →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Madison, WI – One City Schools Founder and CEO Kaleem Caire — with support from One City parents, Board of Directors, and partners — is pleased to announce that One City’s plan to establish One City Expeditionary Elementary School in South Madison has been approved. Last Friday, One City … Continue reading One City to Establish Elementary School in South Madison →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: One City Schools, Inc., a local nonprofit operating an independent preschool and public charter school, announced today that it has been accepted into a coveted network of more than 150 schools nationwide in the EL Education (EL) program. EL Education (formerly Expeditionary Learning) is an educational model that balances … Continue reading One City Schools Admitted to EL Education’s National Network of Schools →

One City Schools, via a kind Kaleem Caire email: On Monday May 7, the Pahara and Aspen Institutes announced a new class of leaders that were selected to participate in the distinguished Pahara-Aspen Education Fellowship. One City’s Founder and CEO, Kaleem Caire, will join 23 other leaders in this highly prized two-year fellowship program. The … Continue reading One City CEO Selected to Participate in Distinguished Fellowship Program →

Via a kind email: Dear Friends. Last night, we learned that our application to establish One City Senior Preschool as a public charter school serving children in 4 year-old and 5 year-old kindergarten was approved by the University of Wisconsin System. We are very excited! This action will enable us to offer a high quality, … Continue reading University of Wisconsin System Approves One City’s Charter School Application →

Via a kind Kaleem Caire email. http://www.onecityearlylearning.org

One City Early Learning, via a kind Kaleem Caire email: A high quality preschool education, from birth to age 5, should be available and accessible to every child in the United States of America. Please join us on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 from 11:30am to 1:00pm for lunch and an important presentation and dialogue. We … Continue reading You’re Invited: One City to Launch Preschool Movement and Charter School →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: Today, One City Early Learning Centers of Madison and Edgewood College’s School of Education announced a new partnership they have formed to provide preschool teachers-in-training with significant hands-on experience in early childhood education in a community setting. Beginning this month, Edgewood College will teach its Pre-student Teaching Practicum Course, … Continue reading Edgewood College and One City Partner to Train Educators →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email (PDF): Our children all come into the world with similar bright eyes. For most of them, it takes more than their parents to pave the way and light a path for them. Thank you for being a part of our children’s community of support. We are living our name … Continue reading One City Early Learning 2016 Investors Report →

Lisa Speckhard: My mom and dad would let me go run the neighborhood. I would play with friends and I was back before the sun went down. I think kids, especially in this generation, have lost some of that, so this is giving them the play back,” he said. Bailey acknowledges that much of what … Continue reading Madison’s One City Early Learning preschool implements new international play system →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: One City Early Learning Centers of Madison, Wisconsin will be the first U.S. pilot site for the ground­breaking AnjiPlay curriculum. One City will feature environments and materials designed by AnjiPlay program founder Ms. Cheng Xueqin, and One City teachers and staff will receive training from Ms. Cheng and Dr. … Continue reading One City Early Learning Centers of Madison, WI named first U.S. pilot site outside of China to implement revolutionary new education approach →

Via a kind Kaleem Caire email: Mobilizing One City: Early Experiences Elevate Everything High quality preschool education contributes significantly to a child’s long-term success. Their first 1,000 days of life set the stage for the rest of their lives. We can close the achievement gap that’s holding back children if we start early. Join us … Continue reading One City Learning Invites You to a Special Event →

David Dahmer: Two facts that we know to be true: One, children who can read, who love to learn, and who can work effectively with others will be best prepared to lead happy lives and raise happy and healthy families as adults. Two, many children of color in low-income families don’t start their learning in … Continue reading One City Early Learning Center looks to help revitalize South Madison →

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: We had a great time at our campaign kick-off event for One City Early Learning Centers at the CUNA Mutual Conference Center on March 6! More than 350 friends and champions for children joined us on a Friday night to learn about our plans to raise $1.4 million to … Continue reading An Update on One City Early Learning Centers & Reading…. →

<A href=”http://www.channel3000.com/news/opinion/For-the-Record-One-City-Early-Learning-Center/31611302“>Channel3000</a>: <blockquote>Neil Heinen talks with Salli Martyniak and Kaleem Caire about the opening of the One City Early Learning Center.</blockquote> 

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: We’ve been quiet because we’ve been building. We have some exciting updates to share with you as we move forward to establish One City Early Learning Centers on Madison’s South Side. Since August, we have: Established a 15-member Board of Directors Filed for nonprofit recognition with the IRS Identified … Continue reading One City: New School, New Look, Great Progress →

Jennifer Miller:

At last year’s State of the City speech, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced the creation of a public high school called the Academy for Software Engineering. The school would be part of an ambitious expansion of computer science education in the city, and Mr. Bloomberg called it the “brainchild” of a local teacher named Michael Zamansky.
Mr. Zamansky was seated on the stage, a few steps from the mayor. But by that point, he said recently, the project was his in name only: he said he had been effectively cut out of the school’s planning process, and his vision of an elite program had given way to one that was more focused on practical job skills.
“I don’t know if they think my plans are too grandiose, or too unrealistic or if I’m an elitist snob,” he said.
The mayor spoke about other efforts to train the city’s future engineers and entrepreneurs. But Mr. Zamansky worried that the new school would be too small: not enough students, not enough ambition.
Mr. Zamansky, 45, had spent two decades developing the computer science program at Stuyvesant High School. Former students now working at Google and Facebook call him a mentor, a role model, a man who showed them their future.

Related: Primary School Computer Science (!) Curriculum in Vietnam and, Dave Winer comments.

Michael Lee: “I feel it is our job to lead and I support the power of choice,” Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse said after the vote Monday evening, according to reporting from Fox 11. The comments come as the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has publicly weighed the possibility of adopting an indoor … Continue reading The Beverly Hills, California, City Council voted unanimously not to enforce a Los Angeles County mask mandate should one be adopted. →

Minneapolis, among the most segregated school districts in the country, with one of the widest racial academic gaps, is in the midst of a sweeping plan to overhaul and integrate its schools. And unlike previous desegregation efforts, which typically required children of color to travel to white schools, Minneapolis officials are asking white families to … Continue reading In a citywide overhaul, a beloved Black high school was rezoned to include white students from a richer neighborhood. →

Kristin Graham: The Philadelphia School District has pushed back its reopening date for a third time. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Wednesday 9,000 prekindergarten through second-grade students won’t return on Feb. 22 as planned but will instead go back March 1 amid an ongoing building safety dispute between the district and its teachers’ union. … Continue reading Philly’s school reopening is pushed back again. City councilmembers questioned the plan. →

Somewhat ironically, Madison has unused capacity in a number of schools, yet a successful Spring, 2015 referendum will spend another $41M+ to expand certain schools, including some of the least diverse such as Hamilton Middle School. Madison School District (PDF): Key Findings 1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary … Continue reading “Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary schools and one of the 12 middle schools had Third Friday enrollment numbers above their calculated capacities.” →

Maria Sanchez Diez: Some people in the Dutch city of Utrecht might soon get a windfall of extra cash, as part of a daring new experiment with the idea of “basic income.” Basic income is an unconditional and regular payment meant to provide enough money to cover a person’s basic living cost. In January of … Continue reading A Dutch city is giving money away to test the “basic income” theory →

Jim Carlton & Caroline Porter:

The fate of City College of San Francisco, one of the nation’s largest community colleges, rests largely on the surgically repaired shoulder of a state-appointed trustee named Robert Agrella.
The 70-year-old former community-college president is in a race against time to slim down the bureaucratic behemoth with 80,000 students and 1,900 faculty before it implodes.
“In community colleges in general, we tried to be all things to all people,” he said. “We cannot afford to do that any longer.”
In July, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, said it plans to revoke the school’s accreditation at the end of the school year, giving the college a year to prove that it can turn around or be shut down.

James Causey:

The task was simple: Bring 25 at-risk black boys together, put them in a classroom, ask them questions about their lives and then have them write down their “true fears.”
Easy, right? Wrong.
None of the students mentioned money, even though 83% of the students at Westside Academy II, 1940 N. 36th St., receive free or reduced-priced lunch, a proxy for poverty.
Instead, these fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders listed the basics, the things we take for granted: having a relationship with their father, having someone help them with their homework and not having the awful sounds of gunfire break the silence of their dark nights.
As community activists and spoken word poets Kwabena Antoine Nixon and Muhibb Dyer began to gain the trust of the youths, the conversation went even deeper.
The boys were sitting in a circle as Nixon and Dyer explained how senseless violence and incredibly high rates of incarceration were making the black males an endangered species.

textually:

New York city’s controversial ban on cellphones in schools has persuaded some kids to leave their devices at home — a stranger’s home! The New York Post reports.

Dozens of students at the former Bushwick HS campus have been paying $1 per day to store their phones at an alumnus’ apartment — just down the street from the Brooklyn campus.
Academy of Urban Planning graduate Giovanni Monserrate — known affectionately as either “Gio” or “The Mayor” — has padded his income as a Broadway usher by serving as a cellphone-storage site for between 30 and 100 teens daily over the last seven years.

Alison Garfield: The mayor’s operating budget, however, is up 5.9% from 2023’s $382 million budget and would increase the city portion of taxes by $109 on a home with Madison’s average value of $424,400, to a total of $3,016, according to the proposal. Every budget since at least 2011 has seen a gap between the … Continue reading K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: City of Madison plans 5.9% spending increase →

Kappan: In the third installment of our series on literacy coverage, one of the parents featured in “Sold a Story” describes a dispiriting media response to problems at his daughter’s New York City school that continues to this day. By Alexander Russo Even before the pandemic, New York City parent Lee Gaul had sensed something … Continue reading Inadequate literacy coverage in New York City →

Wall Street Journal: Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates has called school choice racist and made it her mission to kill an Illinois scholarship program for low-income children. So how did Ms. Gates try to explain herself this week after press reports that she has enrolled her son in a private Catholic high school? … Continue reading Stacy Davis Gates wants choice for her son, but not for everyone else. →

Christian Robles: Alexandria Millet found a way to sharply cut her rent this year and move closer to her job at Central High School in Kansas City, Mo.—live in a duplex built to house teachers. A 10th-grade English and journalism instructor, Millet, 24 years old, now pays $400 a month to live with two other … Continue reading Kansas City schools rent homes to teachers starting at $400 a month to recruit more amid a national shortage →

Mike Hlas: “Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream,” the 1990 non-fiction bestseller by H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger about a prominent west Texas high school football team and societal issues in its Odessa, Texas home is one of 19 books recently removed from school shelves in Mason City. Others include Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” … Continue reading North Iowa city relies on AI in banning of 19 renowned books, including Bissinger’s bestseller about a high school football team and the world in which it lived →

Jonathan Adler: Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit revived a lawsuit agaisnt the District of Columbia for selective enforcement of the district’s defacement ordinance in violation of the First Amendment. Judge Rao wrote for the court in Frederick Douglass Foundation v. District of Columbia, joined by Judge Childs, reversing the district court’s … Continue reading Viewpoint Discrimination: The District allowed “Black Lives Matter” protestors to violate the city’s defacement ordiance, but enforced the law against groups with a different political message →

Kansas Reflector: In an unprecedented raid Friday, local law enforcement seized computers, cellphones and reporting materials from the Marion County Record office, the newspaper’s reporters, and the publisher’s home. Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the newspaper, said police were motivated by a confidential source who leaked sensitive documents to the newspaper, and the message was clear: … Continue reading Police stage ‘chilling’ raid on Marion County newspaper, seizing computers, records and cellphones →

Elle Purnell: In a preliminary injunction issued against the White House and federal agencies on Tuesday in Missouri v. Biden, Judge Terry Doughty eviscerated government actors for colluding with social media companies to censor users’ protected speech in the name of eliminating “misinformation.” Doughty, as others have done, compares the government censorship to Orwell’s hypothetical “Ministry of Truth.” … Continue reading ‘Misinformation’ Is The Vocabulary Of A Culture That Has Lost Its Capacity To Discuss ‘Truth’ →

Office of Equity and Human Rights: Language is fluid. Some individuals within groups disagree about terminology, which can discourage some from participating in discussions about identity because they don’t want to “get it wrong” or offend someone. If we avoid difficult conversations, we are not helping to build an inclusive environment. As our understanding of … Continue reading City of Portland, OR Inclusive Writing Guide →

Eva Moskowitz: American students continue to suffer the effects of pandemic learning loss, as this week’s miserable National Assessment of Educational Progress scores demonstrate. But school closures and lockdowns explain only so much. If you truly wish to understand the dysfunction plaguing U.S. public schools, consider the remarkable story of Joel Greenblatt. A hedge-fund manager … Continue reading Phonics Finally Gets Its Due in New York: It took the city’s education bureaucracy 20 years to recognize that the Success Academy approach works.Phonics Finally Gets Its Due in New York: →

Kiera Butlers Ten years ago, Marilyn Muller began to suspect that her kindergarten daughter, Lauryn, was struggling with reading. Lauryn, a bright child, seemed mystified by the process of sounding out simple words. Still, the teachers at the top-rated Massachusetts public school reassured Muller that nothing was wrong, and Lauryn would pick up the skill—eventually. Surely … Continue reading Politics and teaching children to read: Mother Jones Edition →

Rich Kremer: An effort to rework a tuition reciprocity agreement with Minnesota that would send millions of additional dollars to Wisconsin universities is gaining momentum with state lawmakers. But as drafted, the legislation could temporarily kill reciprocity if Minnesota officials don’t approve. Under the decades-old reciprocity agreement, students from Minnesota and Wisconsin pay in-state tuition … Continue reading Bill tweaking college tuition reciprocity deal with Minnesota gains momentum in Wisconsin Legislature →

Jessica Winter: Travis came to live at his ninth home the day before he started kindergarten. When his new foster parents, Elizabeth and Dan, enrolled Travis at their neighborhood public school, in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn, they learned that Travis was eligible for special-education services. (Some names in this story have been changed.) … Continue reading The Parents Who Fight the City for a “Free Appropriate Public Education” →

Ray Teixeira Democrats are very shaky indeed on the idea of merit today but that wobbliness goes back quite a way to the origins of affirmative action as a tool for allocating jobs and school admissions. As it evolved in practice, affirmative action became bound up with preferences based on race (later also on gender) … Continue reading “an overwhelming 74 percent thought that race or ethnicity should not be a factor in college admissions” →

If Legacy Media is going to shove bigotry porn down our throats it should at least do so in an honest manner so people have an accurate understanding of racial dynamics. Time and time again, Legacy Media has failed to do just that. H/T: @DavidRozado pic.twitter.com/bsB6rVV7Yn — The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) May 9, 2023

Alex Zimmerman: New York City’s elementary schools will be required to use one of three reading curriculums, a tectonic shift that education officials hope will improve literacy rates across the nation’s largest school system. Beginning in September, elementary schools in 15 of the city’s 32 districts will be required to use one of three programs … Continue reading New New York City Reading Programs →

Matt Taibbi: That interview says it all, doesn’t it?  Not long ago I was writing in defense of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When she first entered Congress as an inner-city kid who’d knocked off longtime insider Joe Crowley with a Sandersian policy profile, her own party’s establishment ridiculed her as a lefty Trump. Nancy Pelosi scoffed that her win … Continue reading Narrowing permitted ideas on both left and right, one unsuitable voice at a time →

Noah Smith: The results were highly disappointing — Black and Latino kids’ math skills did not improve, and the achievement gap widened, thanks to richer White and Asian families hiring private tutors to teach their kids algebra. This incident — whose results are sad but entirely predictable — highlights how some Americans think we can … Continue reading In 2014, the city of San Francisco decided to try to improve equity in math education by barring kids from taking algebra in 8th grade. →

Heather Knight For more than a decade, Susan Meyers’ front sidewalk proved a cheerful hub in her Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood — until one anonymous grump called 311. In this city notorious for giving tremendous credence to solitary complainers — who have the right to halt housing projects, foil their neighbors’ housing remodels and stall emergency transit … Continue reading S.F. bureaucrats give woman a choice: Remove free library or pay $1,400 after one anonymous complaint →

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner Rising crime is the number one crisis facing Chicago today. More specifically, the city’s propensity for murder. Chicago was the nation’s extreme outlier for homicides in 2022, with 697 deaths. More people were murdered here than anywhere else.  What’s worse, Chicago has out-paced the entire nation in murders for 11 … Continue reading Civics: Chicago’s pursuit of ‘criminal justice reform’ an utter failure: Windy City homicides top nation for 11th year in a row with crime still rising →

Ivy Exile: (I once asked Sig Gissler, the longtime prize administrator, why we hadn’t retracted the infamous award to Walter Duranty, the New York Timescorrespondent whose dishonest dispatches from the Soviet Union were critics’ go-to talking point. No way we’d give the right wing that satisfaction, he told me.) As a free agent now I can’t … Continue reading Civics: Legacy Media Veracity – Pulitzer Edition →

Emma Camp: One California high school has eliminated honors classes for ninth- and 10th-grade students. While school officials claim that the change was necessary to increase “equity,” the move has angered students and parents alike. “We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and … Continue reading “I was born in Cuba, and it doesn’t sound good when people are trying to achieve equal outcomes for everyone,” said one parent. →

Emma Camp: One California high school has eliminated honors classes for ninth- and 10th-grade students. While school officials claim that the change was necessary to increase “equity,” the move has angered students and parents alike. “We really feel equity means offering opportunities to students of diverse backgrounds, not taking away opportunities for advanced education and … Continue reading “I was born in Cuba, and it doesn’t sound good when people are trying to achieve equal outcomes for everyone,” said one parent. →

Sarah Karp and Tessa Weinberg: When news broke last month that Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s reelection campaign had solicited help from Chicago Public Schools and City Colleges of Chicago educators to recruit student volunteers, the incumbent candidate apologized, calling the effort a “bad mistake” by one young staffer. But the campaign had for months been sending … Continue reading Chicago Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign sent 9,900 emails seeking support from CPS, City Colleges staff, documents show →

Dear @SBF_FTX. This is not a balance sheet. A balance sheet doesn’t record “balances”, it records assets on one side of the sheet and liabilities plus equity on the other. The “balance” is whether the totals on the two sides agree. #basicaccounting pic.twitter.com/WqabBjmLli — Frances ‘Cassandra’ Coppola (@Frances_Coppola) January 20, 2023

Tom Knighton: What these two women were doing was using food to trap these feral cats, then taking them and getting them fixed so they wouldn’t keep creating more and more generations of feral cats. It’s similar to what the nearby city of Montgomery did with great success. And they weren’t hurting anyone by doing … Continue reading Civics: No one should be convicted for solving a problem the government refused to address →

Holman Jenkins: More generally, he and other officials seemed eager to abet the censorious segment of the public to berate others about masks, vaccinations and lockdowns beyond their merits. At times he also seemed to wave off responsibility for the downside of his advice aimed at reducing absolutely the number of cases, saying it was … Continue reading Virus Veracity: The virus would become endemic. All would be exposed.Virus Veracity: →

Tate LaFrenier: In a Zoom interview with The Michigan Daily, Galen Metzger, University of Denver student and prominent ET user, described ET as a community “where a whole bunch of nerdy 20-somethings routinely have the most accurate information and predictions about elections as a group.” It’s difficult to dispute this. Twitter user @umichvoter (who, in a Zoom interview … Continue reading “One of the best resources we have when it comes to making sense of these races – and those are oftentimes college kids” →

Free Black Thought: The purpose of this article and its associated downloadable Powerpoint is to make available, for parents, educators, and all who care about K-12 education, information about some of the potentially harmful ideas and practices around race that have become increasingly prevalent in K-12 education. For convenience, we call these new ideas and practices “DEI,” … Continue reading Six Unsettling Features of DEI in K-12: A guide for parents, educators, and anyone concerned about new curricular interventions →

We also discussed state report cards with @DrJillUnderly. More kids performed at ‘below basic’ levels than pre-pandemic. In MKE and Beloit, about 2/3 students are ‘below basic.’ Dr. Underly says the solution is more funding. “Revenue, honestly, is what creates opportunities.” pic.twitter.com/JaRX6bXPGQ — A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) November 27, 2022 Complete Interview. The data clearly indicate that … Continue reading K-12 Governance – Wisconsin DPI; all about the Money… →

Absolutely no shame in @nytimes giving prime time placement to essentially a con man. I wonder if they would do that for someone who doesn’t have this “pedigree.” Or perhaps next time they shouldn’t mock Facebook for chasing cheap engagement. https://t.co/cAYP1C5joY — OM (@om) November 24, 2022

Lev Golinkin: Trump’s mendacity is arguably the Second Big Lie. Four years earlier, the Hillary Clinton campaign and leading Democrats refused to acknowledge the outcome of the 2016 election, by claiming Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. These actions, while certainly not as dramatic or as immediately damaging as the events leading to Jan. 6 (and today), helped … Continue reading Civics and elections: “But Democrats need to be honest about the consequences of their actions after the 2016 election” →

Nick Fouriezos: Close your eyes and imagine a rural person. What do you see? Now hold on to that image … we’ll get back to it. Growing up, I traded urban and rural values each Wednesday and every other weekend while being shuttled between one parent who lived in the Atlanta suburbs and the other … Continue reading Tired tropes about scarcity and backwardness obscure stories about diversity and innovation. →

Christopher Rufo: I have obtained insider documents that reveal this troubling collaboration between gender activists at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and school administrators throughout the Chicago area. According to these documents, and a review of school district websites, Lurie Children’s Hospital has provided materials to school leaders promoting radical gender theory, trans activism, and sexually explicit … Continue reading In Chicago, the city’s largest children’s hospital has partnered with local school districts to promote radical gender theory. →

Jesse Signal: An article called “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” was published in JAMA Network Open late in February. The authors, listed as Diana M. Tordoff, Jonathon W. Wanta, Arin Collin, Cesalie Stepney, David J. Inwards-Breland, and Kym Ahrens, are mostly based at the University of Washington–Seattle or Seattle Children’s Hospital.  … Continue reading Researchers Found Puberty Blockers And Hormones Didn’t Improve Trans Kids’ Mental Health At Their Clinic. Then They Published A Study Claiming The Opposite. (Updated) →

Jill Tucker: The 20 soon-to-be San Francisco fourth-graders sat on the classroom rug Tuesday and puzzled over the math word problem: If you have 14 stickers and want to give three to each friend, how many friends will get stickers? “This is garbage,” said one student, frustrated by what he and many of his peers … Continue reading San Francisco hopes to finally start closing the math gap in city schools →

Lulu Cheng Meservey The correction was appreciated and felt like a small victory for truth and fairness, but I would have been happy with the outcome even if Wired had never acquiesced. The real goal was to do what I described above: reveal the bad faith of people who are attacking you, in order to … Continue reading Notes on media veracity →

Francois Balloux: A common misunderstanding is that “the science” is a set of absolute, immutable, indisputable and verifiable facts. Rather, science is a messy process eventually converging towards the truth in a process of trial and error. Many scientific publications are false – because they relied on inadequate data or analyses, but more often the results … Continue reading “One simply cannot “follow the science; Many people find it difficult to accept that a published finding may just be false” →

Elizabeth Pennisi: In their past work comparing primate gut microbiomes, Moeller and colleagues simply looked at genetic markers that broadly identified what genera of bacteria or other microbes were present. Moeller has now taken a closer look at exactly what microbial species have gone missing from the human gut by trying to compile the full … Continue reading Modern city dwellers have lost about half their gut microbes →

Ethan Strauss: On Monday, Wetzel wrote a Yahoo! column on a ruling that appears to resolve the Lia Thomas saga. His insight on this issue is the key one, in my opinion. It not only explains what the recent ruling means, but tells you what’s about to go down in all kinds of sports.  Quite suddenly, according to … Continue reading A ruling in just one sport is part of a broader cultural cascade →

WILL-Law: The News: Attorneys with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) filed a lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee on behalf of Wisconsin Lutheran High School after the City unlawfully assessed the school for $105,000 in property taxes. The City is trying to tax Wisconsin Lutheran for a campus building that is owned by the school … Continue reading Wisconsin Lutheran Sues City of Milwaukee For Unlawful Property Tax Assessment →

Ira Still: How much has Rochester been “overspending?” The website Seethroughny.com, a project of the Empire Center for Public Policy, lists 717 Rochester City School District Employees who earned more than $100,000 in 2019. The district has about 25,000 K-12 public school students, according to the state of New York. Spending runs about $20,000, a … Continue reading Biden Administration Sues a City Over “Rampant Overspending on Teacher Salaries” →

Charlottesville: As of May, only 67 students were enrolled in CCS Virtual, Katina Otey, the district’s chief academic officer, said. Almost a third of those students are currently in fifth grade. The number of students interested in continuing online next year is lower still — only 15. “We know so much more about COVID and … Continue reading City Schools will suspend once crucial virtual learning after only 15 students said they want to stay online →

George Will: Government pratfalls such as the Disinformation Governance Board are doubly useful, as reminders of government’s embrace of even preposterous ideas if they will expand its power, and as occasions for progressives to demonstrate that there is no government expansion they will not embrace. …Using radio spectrum scarcity as an excuse, even before the … Continue reading “In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration conditioned one station’s license renewal on ending anti-FDR editorials” →

Helen Dale America’s dysfunctional airports are instances of widespread low state capacity. And this is bigger than airports. Low state capacity can only be used to describe a country when it is true of multiple big-ticket items, not just one. State capacity is a term drawn from economic history and development economics. It refers to a government’s … Continue reading “Low state capacity”: spending more for less →

Washington Post didn’t mention that real public school funding per student increased by 152% since 1970. Here’s the latest national data showing inflation-adjusted changes in public school funding per student & average teacher salary since 1970 Where’s all the money going? pic.twitter.com/bbMDP6utM9 — Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) May 7, 2022

Sam Biddle Jack Paulson: According to audiovisual recordings of an A6 presentation reviewed by The Intercept and Tech Inquiry, the firm claims that it can track roughly 3 billion devices in real time, equivalent to a fifth of the world’s population. The staggering surveillance capacity was cited during a pitch to provide A6’s phone-tracking capabilities … Continue reading Civics: merge the ability to track the movements of billions of people via their phones with a constant stream of data purchased directly from Twitter →

Robby Soave: On March 16, Washington, D.C., became one of the very last major metropolitan areas in the country to finally end mask mandates for students. According to Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, kids who attend D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) no longer have to wear masks. That’s not always what happens in practice, of course. Earlier this … Continue reading “People’s irrational fears are taking over these policy decisions,” says one parent. →

Nicholas Wade: The argument is ingenious. Its fatal flaw lies in assuming that the non-market cases chosen for study were selected at random by the Chinese authorities. In fact, as Chan has noted, one of the authorities’ criteria was closeness to the market. The spatial pattern of non-market cases reflects this selection bias, not a … Continue reading Notes on Science Reporting veracity →

Pat Schneider (2018), dives into a look at the aborted Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school proposal (2011). The book includes several recommendations to improve information exchange around controversial public policies. Talk about the most important. The most important thing is that we all do our own individual work of understanding our own biases. We … Continue reading Status quo defense: “everyone was so proud of their school district and yet they had some of the largest disparities in the country” →

Keith David: At the American university where I teach, one of my assigned tasks is to advise undergraduates—mostly freshmen and sophomores. This essay describes a conversation I had in 2017 with one of those advisees. I will call him Daniel. Daniel was a sophomore at the time. He had been an advisee of mine for … Continue reading Notes on academic veracity →

The press response to NEA’s latest survey reinforced the futility of any contrary view, but after a prayer to St. Jude, I note that over the last 3 years about 4.2 million public school employees quit or retired, and we hired about 5.8 million new ones. https://t.co/feAviUrFNV pic.twitter.com/80hyBliPmD — Mike Antonucci (@UnionReport74) February 2, 2022

Helen Raleigh: Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only … Continue reading Why San Francisco’s School Board Recall May Be One Of 2022’s Most Important Elections →

Helen Raleigh: Even the Democrat-led city government of San Francisco had enough with the board. It filed a lawsuit against both the SFUSD and its board in February 2021, accusing them of ” failing to come up with a reopening plan even as numerous other schools across the U.S. have reopened.” But SFUSD reopened only … Continue reading WHY SAN FRANCISCO’S SCHOOL BOARD RECALL MAY BE ONE OF 2022’S MOST IMPORTANT ELECTIONS →