schoolinfosystem.org
Institute for Reforming Government more. The Licensing Racket Much more on licensing, here.
Alex Tabarrok Summary: Governments enact occupational-licensing laws but rarely handle regulation directly—there’s no Bureau of Hair Braiding. Instead, interpretation and enforcement are delegated to licensing boards, typically dominated by members of the profession. Occupational licensing is self-regulation. The outcome is predictable: Driven by self-interest, professional identity and culture, these boards consistently favor their own members […]
Kayla Huynh: Over 10% of the Madison school district’s teachers are relying on one-year emergency licenses to work in classrooms, according to figures obtained by the Cap Times under state open records laws. A majority of the Madison Metropolitan School District’s nearly 300 emergency licensed educators were teaching classes in bilingual education, English as a […]
Karen Sloan: Bar admission authorities in California will consider applicants’ participation in campus protests on an “individual basis” during the moral character process, following an internal review. A State Bar of California working group, which took up the issue of whether and how the bar should continue to weigh applicants’ participation in campus protests when […]
Joe Pompliano: Amazon is releasing a new docuseries that follows LSU athletes as they started to make money through NIL.
FT The Financial Times today announced a strategic partnership and licensing agreement with OpenAI, a leader in artificial intelligence research and deployment, to enhance ChatGPT with attributed content, help improve its models’ usefulness by incorporating FT journalism, and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for FT readers. Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will […]
By Sara Merken Delaware’s top court on Tuesday lowered the score required to pass the state’s bar exam and adopted other changes to lawyer licensing requirements in the state, which is a major hub for business litigation. The Delaware Supreme Court said in a statement that the changes include reducing the “cut” score from a scale […]
Scott Girard Wisconsin schools are increasingly turning to emergency licenses to get staff into classrooms with some using those licenses longer than may have been intended. According to a new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state Department of Public Instruction issued 3,197 emergency licenses to teach in Wisconsin in the 2021-22 school year, up […]
Talia Richman & Trisha Powell Crain: For Dallas schools, “it’s about the passion, not about the paper,” said Robert Abel, the district’s human capital management chief. Dallas’ uncertified hires — who must have a college degree — participate in training on classroom management and effective teaching practices. Abel said the district is getting positive reports […]
Jessica Holmberg and Will Flanders: Teachers are fundamental in supporting and molding the minds of America’s future workforce. Unfortunately, the teaching workforce is experiencing crisis-level shortages. Research estimates that the national gap between supply and demand for teachers will grow to more than 100,000 by 2024. While there are many factors contributing to enrollment declines, […]
Joanne Jacobs: Only 45 percent of would-be elementary teachers pass state licensing tests on the first try in states with strong testing systems concludes a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Twenty-two percent of those who fail — 30 percent of test takers of color — never try again, reports Driven by […]
Kelsey J. Griffin: Nearly 200 third-year Harvard Law School students signed a letter to Law School administrators Thursday asking for the school to publicly advocate for an emergency diploma privilege — a policy granting graduating students their law licenses without requiring the bar examination. The letter asked the Law School to take four specific actions […]
Joanne Jacobs:: 1. Which of the following is true of qualitative measures of text complexity? A. They describe statistical measurements of a text. B. They rely on computer algorithms to describe text. C. They involve attributes that can be measured only by human readers. D. They account for the different motivational levels readers bring to […]
Wisconsin Reading Coalition E-Alert: We have sent the following message and attachment to the members of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, urging modifications to the proposed PI-34 educator licensing rule that will maintain the integrity of the statutory requirement that all new elementary, special education, and reading teachers, along with reading specialists, […]
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: Thanks to everyone who contacted the legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) with concerns about the new teacher licensing rules drafted by DPI. As you know, PI-34 provides broad exemptions from the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (FORT) that go way beyond providing flexibility for […]
Matthew Mitchell & Anne Philpot: Over the past six decades, occupational licensing has expanded rapidly. In 1950, just 5 percent of all US workers needed a license to do their jobs. Today, one in four Americans must be licensed by a state to do his or her job. When federal licensing requirements are included, the […]
John Davis: Some educators in western Wisconsin aren’t completely sold yet on changes to the state’s teacher licensing, implemented in part to address a shortage of teachers. But one rural school superintendent said the new system should work if schools maintain control over personnel decisions. Whitehall School Superintendent Mike Beighley said he generally supports the […]
Amber Walker: “Candidates graduating from new (teacher preparation) programs will be able to teach in all of the areas…(Teachers) that weren’t prepared in that manner retain the same ability to teach only in the narrow area, such as biology,” McCarthy said in an email to the Cap Times. “We will continue to support pathways for […]
Virginia Postrel: This has driven economic development since the 19th century. It encouraged mass production, national distribution and labor mobility. That calculus is changing as services, from home repair to hospitality to health care, make up a bigger chunk of personal spending and a higher proportion of jobs. You can still build a successful enterprise […]
Will Flanders & Collin Roth: Occupational licensing laws, or state permission slips to work in certain regulated professions, serve as a major barrier to entry for workers in America. For aspiring cosmetologists, manicurists, massage therapists, and aestheticians, licensing requirements can mean thousands of hours of training, tens of thousands of dollars for school, and regular […]
Eric Boehm: Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta says state lawmakers should work to eliminate unnecessary state licenses. Speaking Friday to state lawmakers gathered in Denver for the annual American Legislative Exchange Council’s conference, Acosta called for repealing licensing laws that exist solely to block competition or create a privileged class within the workforce. While only one […]
Nicolas W. Allard: Traditional bar exam and licensing practices have outlived their sell-by date. In their present state they are increasingly hard, if not impossible, to justify as serving the best interests of the profession or the public. Dissatisfaction with “take it or leave it” business as usual by the bar testing industry is not […]
Jessie Opoien: Under Walker’s budget, teachers and school administrators would no longer have to renew their licenses every five years, which the governor’s office said would save faculty more than $750 over a 30-year career. Teachers could still be fired for misconduct and school districts would still be required to perform background checks. “I’m not […]
Molly Beck: A group of school officials, including state Superintendent Tony Evers, is asking lawmakers to address potential staffing shortages in Wisconsin schools by making the way teachers get licensed less complicated. The Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, created by Evers and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators executive director Jon Bales, released last […]
Nick Sibilla Occupational licenses are “one of the most substantial barriers to opportunity in America today,” a new study by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found. According to WILL’s estimates, licensing laws raise prices for consumers by $1.93 billion each year and results in roughly 31,000 fewer jobs. Over the past two […]
Morgan Chesky: A King County letter that ended up in the mailboxes of thousands of pet owners is raising concerns over privacy. The letter told pet owners to license their pets or face a $250 fine. “It feels weird to me, it feels like they’re kind of snooping around in a place where they shouldn’t […]
Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): The Department of Public Instruction receives 36,000 teacher license applications each year (initial and renewal applications). To help make this process more efficient, DPI created the Educator Licensing Online (ELO) System in December, 2013. DPI no longer accepts paper applications for license renewal; one […]
Stephen Sawchuck: Minnesota’s teacher-licensing system is broken—and should be overhauled, beginning by consolidating the two state agencies that administer it, the state’s Office of the Legislative Auditor said in a report released March 4. There isn’t any easy way to summarize just how convoluted this all gets over the report’s 100 pages, which detail the […]
Molly Beck: The motion also adds a proposal allowing teachers or school administrators who have licenses from other states and have taught or worked for at least one year in that state to receive Wisconsin licenses. Administrators must have been offered a job in Wisconsin before they can apply for a license, the proposal says. […]
Melissa S. Kearney, Brad Hershbein and David Boddy: With such large potential consequences for worker opportunities and consumer prices, balancing the pros and cons of licensing would seem to be critical, but remarkably the status quo seldom takes such a careful approach. Thoughtful reform of state occupational licensing practices should garner support from across the […]
Mitch Henck (video). Related: When A stands for average.
Erin Richards: The proposal comes amid continuing discussion over the rigor and selectivity of university teacher education programs. Jon Bales, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, said there are issues in Wisconsin around the recruitment of would-be teachers and the quality of their preparation. But he said the provision championed by […]
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): The Department of Public Instruction receives 36,000 teacher license applications each year (initial and renewal applications). To help make this process more efficient, DPI created the Educator Licensing Online (ELO) System in December, 2013. DPI no longer accepts paper applications for license renewal; […]
Madison Teachers, Inc. eNewsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF)::
In a recent post on her blog, Diane Ravitch shared concerns about alternative routes to certification; in particular Teach for America (TFA). Her post centered on a parent’s letter to Senator Tom Harkin after her daughter had a bad experience with TFA. Ravitch posted two responses: Harkin’s actual response to the parent; and a mock response crafted by Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig, University of Texas. Harkin serves as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and as Chair of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. While Harkin “read” his constituent’s letter, it is apparent he did not incorporate Close reading strategies; his mind was made up. Harkin has supported funding for TFA and even tried to weaken the definition of “highly qualified”, so as to include teachers in training (thus enabling TFA teachers to be assigned to schools). Dr. Heilig points out several of the issues with TFA, primarily the turnover rate of the teachers in this program, which our federal government funds. He also notes that while these “teachers” don’t meet the standards of highly qualified, they are the teachers being disproportionately assigned to schools serving poor and minority children. Heilig also exposes the fact that TFA has access to and direct influence over the legislative process, as they provide cost-free education staffers for legislators on the Education and Workforce Committee. TFA lobbyists working inside the Capitol? No wonder Teach for America has been able to extend its reach so efficiently into so many districts around the country.
The developers of a new performance-based teacher-licensing test have a clear message for states that want to use it: Set the passing bar high, but not too high.
Striking that balance will be among the key decisions states must now make about the edTPA, which had its official launch at a press conference today in Washington. Where states set the cutoff score will determine which candidates will be granted or denied a teaching license; as such, it’s the major “stake” attached to the performance-based test.
In development since 2009, the edTPA includes a 15-minute videotape of each candidate’s teaching skill. Seven states—Hawaii, Washington, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, Georgia, and Wisconsin—have formally committed to using the edTPA for certification, or to gauge the quality of teacher-preparation programs; four other states are considering adopting it. (Twenty-two other states and jurisdictions have individual programs that have piloted the test.)
A technical report issued today by the Stanford Center on Assessment, Learning, and Equity, or SCALE, recommended that states not set a passing bar higher than 42 out of 75 total points—a cutoff point that would allow only 58 percent of candidates to pass on their first try. The figure is based on field-test data collected over the past year.
States that chose a different cutoff point would have a different yield: A passing score of 37 would boost passing rates up to 78 percent of candidates.
For many critics of contemporary American public education, Finland is the ideal model. It performs at the top on international tests and has a highly respected teaching corps, yet it doesn’t rely on policies like test-based accountability and school choice that are the cornerstones of U.S. reform. So, the critics argue, let’s change course and follow Finland.
It’s facile, at best, to look to a small, largely homogenous, country, with a very different educational pedigree as a model for a nation like ours. Still, the “go- Finland” crowd is onto something: Finland long ago decided to professionalize its teaching force to the point where teaching is now viewed on a par with other highly respected, learned professions like medicine and law. Today, only the best and brightest can and do become teachers: Just one in every 10 applicants are accepted to teacher preparation programs, which culminate in both an undergraduate degree and subject-specific Master’s degree. Even after such selective admissions and competitive training, if there are graduates who are not deemed ready for the classroom, they will not get appointed to the system.
Like law and medical schools, education schools shouldn’t be able to survive if fewer than half their students can pass a rigorous professional exam.
Contrast that with America, where virtually anyone who graduates from college can become a teacher, and where job security, not teacher excellence, defines the workforce culture. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, “The U.S. attracts most of its teachers from the bottom two-thirds of college classes, with nearly half coming from the bottom third.” And, today, more than a third of math teachers in the U.S. don’t have an undergraduate degree in math, let alone a Master’s degree. Yet, even with this remarkably low threshold for entry, once someone becomes a teacher in the U.S., it’s virtually impossible to remove him or her for poor performance.
What explains this cross-national difference? It does not seem to be teacher pay. Although teacher salaries in Finland are slightly higher than the average salary there, they are comparable to teacher salaries in other European countries. And when adjusted for national price indices, they’re lower than teacher salaries in the U.S.
Instead, the difference seems to be rooted directly in the relative professionalization of the position. In addition to setting high standards of entry and providing high-quality professional education, Finland has established a culture that motivates teachers to excel at school and then innovate in the classroom. As a result, teaching holds an appeal comparable to that of other high-status careers in Finland.Wisconsin has taken a baby step toward teacher content knowledge requirements via the adoption of MTEL.
The idea that a handful of college instructors and student teachers in the school of education at the University of Massachusetts could slow the corporatization of public education in America is both quaint and ridiculous.
Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson.
The UMass students say that their professors and the classroom teachers who observe them for six months in real school settings can do a better job judging their skills than a corporation that has never seen them.
They have refused to send Pearson two 10-minute videos of themselves teaching, as well as a 40-page take-home test, requirements of an assessment that will soon be necessary for licensure in several states.
“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.”
2011 WISCONSIN ACT 166, via a kind reader:
Section 21. 118.19 (14) of the statutes is created to read:
118.19 (14) (a) The department may not issue an initial teaching license that authorizes the holder to teach in grades kindergarten to 5 or in special education, an initial license as a reading teacher, or an initial license as a reading specialist, unless the applicant has passed an examination identical to the Foundations of Reading test administered in 2012 as part of the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure [blekko]. The department shall set the passing cut score on the examination at a level no lower than the level recommended by the developer of the test, based on this state’s standards.
(c) Any teacher who passes the examination under par. (a) shall notify the department, which shall add a notation to the teacher’s license indicating that he or she passed the examination.
and….
115.28 (7g) Evaluation of teacher preparatory programs.
(a) The department shall, in consultation with the governor’s office, the chairpersons of the committees in the assembly and senate whose subject matter is elementary and secondary education and ranking members of those committees, the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, do all of the following:
1. Determine how the performance of individuals who have recently completed a teacher preparatory program described in s. 115.28 (7) (a) and located in this state or a teacher education program described in s. 115.28 (7) (e) 2. and located in this state will be used to evaluate the teacher preparatory and education programs. The determination under this subdivision shall, at minimum, define “recently completed” and identify measures to assess an individual’s performance, including the performance assessment made prior to making a recommendation for licensure.
2. Determine how the measures of performance of individuals who have recently completed a teacher preparatory or education program identified as required under subd. 1. will be made accessible to the public.
3. Develop a system to publicly report the measures of performance identified as required under subd. 1. for each teacher preparatory and education program identified in subd. 1.
(b) Beginning in the 2013-14 school year, the department shall use the system developed under par. (a) 3. to annually report for each program identified in par. (a) 1. the passage rate on first attempt of students and graduates of the program on examinations administered for licensure under s. 115.28 (7) and any other information required to be reported under par. (a) 1.
(c) Beginning in the 2013-14 school year, each teacher preparatory and education program shall prominently display and annually update the passage rate on first attempt of recent graduates of the program on examinations administered for licensure under s. 115.28 (7) and any other information required to be reported under par. (a) 1. on the program’s Web site and provide this information to persons receiving admissions materials to the program.
Section 18. 115.28 (12) (ag) of the statutes is created to read:
115.28 (12) (ag) Beginning in the 2012-13 school year, each school district using the system under par. (a) shall include in the system the following information for each teacher teaching in the school district who completed a teacher preparatory program described in sub. (7) (a) and located in this state or a teacher education program described in sub. (7) (e) 2. and located in this state on or after January 1, 2012:
1. The name of the teacher preparatory program or teacher education program the teacher attended and completed.
2. The term or semester and year in which the teacher completed the program described in subd. 1.Related:
- A Capitol Conversation on Wisconsin’s Reading Challenges
- 9.27.2011 Wisconsin Read to Lead Task Force Notes
- Excellence in Education explains Florida’s reading reforms and compares Florida’s NAEP progress with Wisconsin’s at the July 29th Read to Lead task force meeting
- The Economist on Florida’s Education Reform
- July 29 Wisconsin Read to Lead task force meeting notes
- Notes and links on Wisconsins’s oft criticized WKCEGeorgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
- Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
- When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
This is a sea change for Wisconsin students, the most substantive in decades. Of course, what is entered into the statutes can be changed or eliminated. The MTEL requirement begins with licenses after 1.1.2014.
In 1998, Massachusetts debuted a set of tests it created for people who wanted teaching licenses. People nationwide were shocked when 59% of those in the first batch of applicants failed a communications and literacy test that officials said required about a 10th-grade level of ability.
Given some specifics of how the tests were launched, people who wanted to be teachers in Massachusetts probably got more of a bum rap for their qualifications than they deserved. But the results certainly got the attention of people running college programs to train teachers. They changed what they did, and the passing rate rose to about 90% in recent years.
One more thing: Student outcomes in Massachusetts improved significantly. Coming from the middle of the pack, Massachusetts has led the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade scores in reading and math on National Assessment of Education Program (NAEP) tests for almost a decade.
Could this be Wisconsin in a few years, especially when it comes to reading?
Gov. Scott Walker and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers released last week the report of a task force aimed at improving reading in Wisconsin. Reading results have been stagnant for years statewide, with Wisconsin slipping from near the top to the middle of the pack nationally. Among low-income and minority students, the state’s results are among the worst in the country.
The Wisconsin adoption of teacher content knowledge requirements, on the form of MTEL 90 (Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure) by 2013-2014 would (will?) be a significant step forward via the Wisconsin Read to Lead Report), assuming it is not watered down like the oft criticized (and rightfully so) WKCE.
There are significant implications for :Education School preparation/curriculum with the addition of content knowledge to teacher licensing requirements.
Much more on Read to Lead, here and a presentation on Florida’s Reading Reforms.
www.wisconsin2.org
The Minnesota Senate has passed a bill that creates a new method of obtaining teacher licenses.
The alternative licensing plan is aimed at meeting projected teacher shortages in the future. It’s designed to give Minnesota schools an infusion of new, mostly young teachers who don’t attend traditional teaching colleges, and help close an achievement gap between white and minority students that’s one of the worst in the country.
Critics say it will harm schoolchildren by making it too easy to become a teacher. But the bill the Senate passed Thursday reflects a compromise between Gov. Mark Dayton and bill sponsors, and it’s expected to get his signature.Related: Janet Mertz: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
Minnesota was hoping for $330 million in grants, which go to states deemed innovative in their school policies. In the next round, Minnesota can’t get more than $175 million.
Pawlenty wants more latitude to let experts become teachers without going through traditional routes, to reassign teachers based on effectiveness and to more closely link teacher pay to student performance.
Democratic state Rep. Mindy Greiling said the alternative licensure proposal has a better shot than the others.Related: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria by Janet Mertz:
Part of our disagreement centers around differing views regarding the math content knowledge one needs to be a highly-qualified middle school math teacher. As a scientist married to a mathematician, I don’t believe that taking a couple of math ed courses on how to teach the content of middle school mathematics provides sufficient knowledge of mathematics to be a truly effective teacher of the subject. Our middle school foreign language teachers didn’t simply take a couple of ed courses in how to teach their subject at the middle school level; rather, most of them also MAJORED or, at least, minored in the subject in college. Why aren’t we requiring the same breathe and depth of content knowledge for our middle school mathematics teachers? Do you really believe mastery of the middle school mathematics curriculum and how to teach it is sufficient content knowledge for teachers teaching math? What happens when students ask questions that aren’t answered in the teachers’ manual? What happens when students desire to know how the material they are studying relates to higher-level mathematics and other subjects such as science and engineering?
The MMSD has been waiting a long time already to have math-qualified teachers teaching mathematics in our middle schools. Many countries around the world whose students outperform US students in mathematics only hire teachers who majored in the subject to teach it. Other school districts in the US are taking advantage of the current recession with high unemployment to hire and train people who know and love mathematics, but don’t yet know how to teach it to others.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
In classrooms across Wisconsin, students learn mathematics, reading, social studies, art, science, and other subjects through integrated projects that show great promise for increased academic achievement. The catch: the collaboration between students and teachers often involves multiple academic subjects, which can present licensing issues for school districts.
“There is no question that parents and students want innovative programs,” said State Superintendent Tony Evers. “The reality of some of today’s educational approaches requires that we look at our licensing regulations to increase flexibility and expand routes to certification to ensure that these programs are taught by highly qualified teachers.”Related, by Janet Mertz: “An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria”
Bennett says instead of assuming people will pick teaching careers and stay for life, schools could consider front-loading pay for beginning teachers to lure more people in, while also instituting closer evaluations for those rookie teachers to make sure they’re qualified.
The Professional Standards Board is scheduled to discuss Bennett’s call to license teachers based on non-school experience at its November 18 meeting. Bennett says he expects the board to make some changes to the details of the plan, but says he hopes for final approval before year’s end.
I’m a little confused about The New York Times’ position regarding states’ rights. On one hand, it’s down with California’s desire to enact CO2 emissions regulations that trump national standards. On the other hand, when it comes to teen licensing, it asserts “What the country needs is a uniform set of rules, based on the soundest research. That is the best way to keep teenage drivers, and everyone who shares the roads with them, safer.” The Old Gray Lady argues that “Congress flexed its muscle in the mid-1980s and pressed states to adopt a minimum drinking age of 21. More recently, it did so to pass tougher drunken driving laws. The country’s highways are safer for those efforts. Congress now needs to do the same for teenage driving.” To that end, the paper supports Senator Chris Dodd’s proposal to withhold federal highway funds from states that refuse to set the minimum driving age at 16 and adopt graduated licensing for 16- and 17-year-olds (including nighttime and passenger restrictions).
Pauyl Knopp: According to a United Nations estimate, 230 languages went extinct between 1950 and 2010. If my profession doesn’t act, the language of business—accounting—could vanish too. The number of students who took the exam to become certified public accountants in 2022 hit a 17-year low. From 2020 to 2022, bachelor’s degrees in accounting dropped […]
By Kayla Huynh But the school failed to ensure the teacher had the proper licensing to teach a portion of the students’ instruction. The error meant Steffen’s son, Theodore, and his son’s six classmates would need to redo thousands of minutes of instruction to stay on track with other students. “I don’t think the problem […]
Jessie Van Berkel: Investigators are examining potential Medicaid fraud among Minnesota autism services, and state lawmakers say they will consider licensing the providers, whose numbers have increased dramatically across the state. The Minnesota Department of Human Services has 15 active investigations into organizations or individuals providing certain autism services and has closed 10 other cases, […]
Rory Linnane: Milwaukee School Board members could fire Superintendent Keith Posley or take other disciplinary action against him at a meeting Monday night, according to a meeting noticeupdated Friday evening, days after board members found out MPS had failed to submit key financial reports to state officials. According to the meeting notice, board members could discuss […]
MMAC The school district’s non-compliance with federal and state statutes should have been disclosed to the Milwaukee taxpayers, the majority of whom are working families, before they were asked to increase the district’s budget by more than a quarter-billion dollars annually in April. It would have changed the narrative and forced the electorate to think […]
Aaron Sibarium: Long considered one of the best medical schools in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles’s David Geffen School of Medicine receives as many as 14,000 applications a year. Of those, it accepted just 173 students in the 2023 admissions cycle, a record-low acceptance rate of 1.3 percent. The median matriculant took difficult science […]
Edward Zitron: The Reddit IPO is one of the biggest swindles in corporate history, where millions of unpaid contributors made billions of posts so that CEO Steve Huffman could make $193 million in 2023while laying off 90 people and effectively pushing third party apps off of the platform by charging exorbitant rates for API access, which in turn prompted several prolonged “strikes” […]
Corri Hess: .@GovEvers just vetoed a bill that would have allowed Wisconsin school administrators to be hired without a license or experience.Previous: My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results And: Quinton Klabon: The teacher shortage is massive. @GovEvers vetoed @RepPenterman’s bill to fix it with teacher apprenticeships to do […]
Erin Geary: For school choice to be realized, parents must create a mass movement When trying to find the best restaurant in an area, people tend to turn to the internet, look for a list of eateries in the area, and visit their website. The more diligent may search out Yelp for reviews. If at […]
Matthew Yglesias: The American K-12 school system is expansive, with millions of students attending thousands of schools. And one of the great frustrations of education policy research is that while many interventions appear to be highly effective at small scale, they almost all flop when implemented at the scale that would actually move the needle […]
Patrick Mcilheran: DPI series has history of speakers peddling ‘critical’ view of race in America As part of a training program, an initiative of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is bringing in high-profile left-wing speakers, including Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, to speak to potentially thousands of Wisconsin teachers about “educational equity.” Earlier […]
Liz Rowlinson: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
Jeremy Howard: Proposals for stringent AI model licensing and surveillance will likely be ineffective or counterproductive, concentrating power in unsustainable ways, and potentially rolling back the societal gains of the Enlightenment. The balance between defending society and empowering society to defend itself is delicate. We should advocate for openness, humility and broad consultation to develop […]
Kayla Huynh: The University of Wisconsin-Madison will extend its Wisconsin Teacher Pledge for another two academic years in an aim to address teacher shortages across the state and nation. With a $5 million gift from bestselling author James Patterson and his wife Susan Patterson, a children’s book author and UW-Madison alum, the program will now […]
Sandra Stotsky: It is an oft-quoted truism that teachers cannot teach what they do not know. In the past half century, most states have tolerated a weak licensing system for prospective teachers. This weak system has been accompanied by an increasingly emptier curriculum for most of our students, depriving them of the knowledge and skills […]
Sammy Roth: The $1.1 billion in federal money comes from the infrastructure law passed by Congress and signed by President Biden last year. It should allow PG&E to pay back most of the $1.4-billion loan for Diablo that state lawmakers approved at Newsom’s urging. That state money is slated to help PG&E cover the costs of relicensing at the U.S. Nuclear […]
Edward Luce: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
John McWhorter The Association of Social Work Boards administers tests typically required for the licensure of social workers. Apparently, this amounts to a kind of racism that must be reckoned with. There is a Change.org petition circulating saying just that, based on the claim that the association’s clinical exam is biased because from 2018 to […]
David Blaska: Daniel Buck’s Bottom Line: “Legislators should ease teacher licensing requirements and support any reforms that stop the flow of ideology from schools of education to America’s classrooms.”
Pilot Clark: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
Malcolm Moore: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
Paul Thacker: This of course, is laughable. We have plenty of evidence that medical boards are incapable of regulating physician behavior simply by looking at the history of drug scandals in America, none of which could have occurred without the complicity of corrupt doctors—few if any of whom were later sanctioned by their own profession. Anyone notice […]
Joshua Benton: Benton: So it’s the big academic publishing companies that bought up rights to microfilm that was created 50 or 80 years ago? Kahle: There’s a play I really want to see put on at the Repertory Theatre in Harvard Square — a two-person play, fictitious, of Binkley meeting Eugene Power.5 Eugene Power started University Microfilms, and […]
Taylor Nicole Rogers and Gary Silverman: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month […]
Jennifer Jenkins: When works go into the public domain, they can legally be shared, without permission or fee. That is something Winnie-the-Pooh would appreciate. Community theaters can screen the films. Youth orchestras can perform the music publicly, without paying licensing fees. Online repositories such as the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and Google Books can make works […]
Tim Bradshaw: My tweet was one of dozens identified by the record label as “unlicensed reproductions” of the Beastie Boys track. If I reposted it, or other infringing material, Twitter warned, I face the prospect of “permanent account suspension”. While some Twitter users have been “cancelled” by an online mob, my copyright infringement was most […]
George Leaf: Law schools in the U.S. used to be run by no-nonsense individuals who, whatever their personal politics, thought that their institutions existed to teach students about the law, not to engage in advocacy or speculation. That began to change in the 1980s, as some younger law professors started to push into previously forbidden terrain, […]
Andrew Jack: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
George Soros: The underlying cause is that China’s birth rate is much lower than the statistics indicate. The officially reported figure overstates the population by a significant amount. Xi inherited these demographics, but his attempts to change them have made matters worse. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top […]
Joe Mullin: Imagine this: a limited liability company (LLC) is formed, for the sole purpose of acquiring patents, including what are likely to be low-quality patents of suspect validity. Patents in hand, the LLC starts approaching high-tech companies and demanding licensing fees. If they don’t get paid, the company will use contingency-fee lawyers and a […]
Robert Cherry: Using 2019 FBI statistics — the most recently available data — I computed black and white perpetrators of hate crimes as a percentage of men 18 to 44 years old in their populations. The black rate was 40 percent, 76 percent and 303 percent higher than the white rate for hate crimes against the Asian/Pacific […]
Devi Shastri: State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor announced a year ago that she would not seek another term. Gov. Tony Evers named Taylor as his replacement in the post in 2018, when he was elected governor. This is the first open race for the position in 20 years. The candidates are: Deborah Kerr, the former superintendent of […]
Rana Foroohar: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
Maciver Institute: When there’s trouble in Milwaukee, there’s usually a small army of young people leading the charge. It’s no coincidence. Milwaukee Public Schools spends considerable time and effort developing its students to become young revolutionaries. The district was one of many across Wisconsin (and the country) that spent the entire first week of February […]
Emma Jacobs: Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article […]
National Conference of Bar Examiners: Allowing this year’s law graduates to skip the bar exam amid the coronavirus pandemic risks unleashing unqualified new lawyers on the public and hobbling law school accreditation efforts, according to the group that designs the test. Jurisdictions across the country are grappling with the July bar exam and whether it […]
Luca Vebber: For example, bureaucrats published an entirely new licensing scheme for “real estate appraisal management companies.”[2] That rule has been in the works for almost two years, did we really need to wait until the middle of a healthcare emergency to publish it? I am willing to make the bold prediction that our state […]
Logan Wroge: “I don’t think that actually stating they’re supporting these policies actually means that anything will change,” said Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison psychology professor. “I don’t take their statement as anything more than an attempt to defuse some of the controversy and some of the criticism that’s being directed their way.” While there’s broad […]
Chris Rickert: In at least two cases, principals left under a cloud. In 2017, district officials decided not to pursue legal action against former Black Hawk Middle School Principal Kenya Walker, who abandoned her position and oversaw more than $10,000 in spending on the school’s credit card that could not be accounted for. In 2018, […]
The ultimate nightmare scenario for teachers unions isn’t a case like Janus but large numbers of African-American parents rejecting them as legitimate and not viewing them as partners in a shared cause. And this is why the Warren affair is so important. — James Merriman (@JamesMerriman6) November 25, 2019 Item 10.11: $100,000 contract to WestEd […]
Dana Ansel: Last year, the Massachusetts Legislature decided that the time had come to understand the state of education that gifted students receive in Massachusetts. They issued a mandate for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to review the policy and practices of education in public schools for gifted students as well as for […]
Kevin Currie-Knight: Imagine a US state where locksmiths, pastoral counselors, home security companies, and acupuncturists do not have to be licensed by the government to do business. They could pursue certification with a private organization if they wanted to, but they could decide not to as well. Would chaos ensue? Recently, the state legislature in […]
WILL Policy Brief: Today WILL is releasing “A Deep Dive into Governor Evers’ K-12 Budget Proposal” that goes through nearly every single education proposal in Evers’ budget while utilizing new research as well as LFB analysis and JFC testimony. For each proposal, we explain how it impacts schools and students across Wisconsin. We dive deep […]
Max Planck: The President and scientific council members of the Max Planck Society (MPS), one of the world’s largest research performing organizations, counting 14,000 scientists who publish 12K new research articles a year—around 1500 of which in Elsevier journals, have mandated the Max Planck Digital Library to discontinue their Elsevier subscription when the current agreement […]
Orly Nadell Farber: The AWOL students highlight increasing dissatisfaction and anxiety that there’s a mismatch between what they’re taught in class during those years and what they’re expected to know — or how they’re tested — on national licensing exams. Despite paying nearly $60,000 a year in tuition, medical students are turning to unsanctioned online […]
Wisconsin Reading Coalition: Despite the written and oral testimony of many concerned stakeholders around the state, the legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules made no changes to the PI-34 teacher licensing rule that was submitted by the Department of Public Instruction. As a result, graduates of any teacher preparation program (along with other […]
German Rectors’ Conference: “The excessive demands put forward by Elsevier have left us with no choice but to suspend negotiations between the publisher and the DEAL project set up by the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany.” That was the verdict of the lead negotiator and spokesperson for the DEAL Project Steering Committee, Prof Dr […]
Eugene Volokh: Say that you apply to many schools, including some where other students have much better predictors (chiefly test scores and grades from earlier institutions) than you. And you get in! Maybe it was affirmative action (whether based on race, socioeconomic status, or something else), maybe it was a preference because your relatives had […]
Alan Borsuk: But consider a couple other things that happened in Massachusetts: Despite opposition, state officials stuck to the requirement. Teacher training programs adjusted curriculum and the percentage of students passing the test rose. A test for teachers In short, in Wisconsin, regulators and leaders of higher education teacher-prep programs are not so enthused about […]
Alan Borsuk: Overall, the Read to Lead effort seems like the high water mark in efforts to improve how kids are taught reading in Wisconsin — and the water is much lower now. What do the chair and the vice-chair think? Efforts to talk to Walker were not successful. Evers said, “Clearly, I’m disappointed. . […]
Senator Steve Nass: Senator Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) was outraged today by the most recent example of the radical politicization of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The DPI is currently seeking applicants for a career executive for the Assistant Director for Teacher Education/Professional Development/Licensing position. The position is supervised by Sheila Briggs an Assistant […]
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: Wisconsin Reading Coalition has alerted you over the past 6 months to DPI’s intentions to change PI-34, the administrative rule that governs teacher licensing in Wisconsin. We consider those changes to allow overly-broad exemptions from the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test for new teachers. The revised PI-34 has […]
Karen Sloan: A decline in the average MBE score from the February 2018 bar exam does not bode well for pass rates, which are beginning to trickle out. Performance of law graduates taking the attorney licensing test in February has hit the lowest point in more than a decade, while scores for those taking the […]
Gail Heriot: A college education is not everyone’s cup of tea. The United States needs other ways to instill job skills in the younger generation. The German apprenticeship system is sometimes viewed as an appealing alternative. But substantially increasing apprenticeship opportunities in the United States may not be as easy or inviting as it sounds. […]
Cori O’Connor Petersen and Libby Sobic: This is shocking and should send chills down the spines of state lawmakers in Madison. Republicans in Madison have worked tirelessly to roll back the administrative state. Yet, as DPI indicates, at least one state agency is finding a way to work around state law by relying on federal […]