National Law Journal:

After failures in district courts, a handful of students have taken their COVID-19 tuition refund fights to appellate courts in cases that are being closely watched by the higher education community.

Many of the lawsuits, alleging universities breached contracts by shifting to virtual courses while charging in-person prices, were dismissed by district court judges, though results have been mixed. Claims that survived tended to be those seeking compensation for specific fees, such as student activities promised but not delivered during campus closures, observers say.

No circuit courts have issued decisions on the matters yet, but recent oral arguments hint that the idea schools overcharged for remote learning has weight with some judges, said Stetson University Law School professor Peter Lake.

“If you would have called me a month ago, I probably would have said the general trend is unmistakable, the tuition cases are dying … and the exception would be where there was a very specific promise to a particular class of people to deliver something,” Lake said. “It may well be that the circuit upholds the dismissals … but I’m sensing there could be change.”

“I am noticing that there is a certain amount of energy at this moment that’s gathering around this idea of unjust enrichment,” he said. “That’s why we’re watching the outcome like a hawk in this D.C. case because that could be a game changer.”

This tweet promotes COVID disinformation at least as false and harmful as anything a Rogan guest said, but because authoritarians believe disinformation only comes from independent voices, not large corporations, and it advances rather than questions COVID hysteria, it’s allowed: https://t.co/wGWF2qNOtm

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 4, 2022

Ainsley Erzen:

The 800-meter time that made me a national champion and state record holder was bettered by 85 Iowa boys at a single meet.

An open letter to the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union from one of the state’s top female high school track and soccer athletes:

To the Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union, 

My name is Ainsley Erzen, and I’m writing to you concerning comments in the Cedar Rapids Gazette that the union needs guidance regarding transgender athletes in sports. 

This summer, I won the girls 800-meter high school national championship in track, and broke the Iowa state record. It was such an honor to represent my state as the first Iowa female high school runner to win a national track title, and so humbling to have my name listed among such talented women as Shelby Houlihan and Joy Ripslinger. I believe this is a prime example of some of my most core beliefs: that if you work hard and put your faith in the Lord, He can, and will, accomplish things within you that you could never even dream of on your own.

That being said, my time of 2:06.52, the time that made me the fastest Iowa high school female 800 runner of all time, the time that earned me the title of national champion, was easily beat by 85 high school boys at the 2021 Iowa high school state track meet alone. Eighty-five. Just in our small state of Iowa. The results of the 2021 Drake Relays proved to be no different, as the last male runner came through the line in a time of 2:03. That same year, a time of 2:13 was enough to make me the 800-meter Drake champion. The slowest boy was easily 10 seconds faster than the first-place girl. But I don’t need to explain this to you. Iowa track officials already know there are huge biological differences between boys and girls. Why else would the 2021 girls blue standard (the automatic qualifying time for the Drake Relays) have been 2:16, while the boys was set 20 seconds faster, at 1:56?

Tara Westover:

I wrote about these and other experiences in my 2018 memoir, “Educated,” which surprised me by becoming a best seller. My story was one of extremes: born in the mountains of Idaho to Mormon parents who kept me out of school, I had never set foot in a classroom before my first semester of college at Brigham Young University. I graduated in 2008 and won a scholarship to the University of Cambridge, where I earned a Ph.D.

A curious thing happens when you offer up your life for public consumption: People start to interpret your biography, to explain to you what they think it means. At book signings, in interviews, I’m often told that my story is uplifting, that I am a model of resilience, an “inspiration.” Which is a nice thing to be told, so I say thank you. But every so often someone takes it a bit further, and says something to which I do not have a response. They say, “You are living proof of the American dream. That absolutely anything is possible for anybody.”

Marketwatch

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s name will be displayed on a new building at the National Air and Space Museum and in several additional places throughout the Smithsonian Institution for at least 50 years in exchange for his $200 million donation.

The terms of the agreement, which MarketWatch obtained through a public-records request, do not include a “morals clause,” a provision that would allow the Smithsonian to terminate the naming rights if Bezos’s behavior brought disrepute to the institution. …

Big-dollar donations like this one are typically trumpeted by institutions (this one was covered in major media outlets and came with an inspirational video), but the legally binding contracts that surround the gifts are usually kept private. Bezos’s gift agreement with the Smithsonian offers a rare glimpse into how institutions and their wealthy benefactors engineer a mutually beneficial exchange. …

[T]he requirement to prominently display Bezos’s name for the next 50 years comes as naming rights have been under scrutiny. Most notably, the Sackler family name has been removed from museums and other institutions they helped fund with profits from OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which is now seen as playing a pivotal role in the opioid epidemic that’s killed some 500,000 people since 1999. …

In light of the Sackler controversy, and amid broader debates about the soft power exercised by elite philanthropists, nonprofits are rethinking how to recognize benefactors’ generosity without tattooing themselves in perpetuity with a donor’s name.

James Causey:

Stop passing kids you know are behind. It sets them up for a lifetime of failure. If they can’t read, nothing else will matter. They will be on the road to dropping out and a life of unemployment or low-paying, dead-end jobs.

In Milwaukee Public Schools, only half of the Black boys who are freshmen today, will walk across the stage in four years. Wisconsin has the highest percentage of Black fourth graders with skills considered below basic — 69%. In reading alone, Black students in Wisconsin trail every other state and the District of Columbia.

Former Milwaukeean, Michael Pratt, who is an educator in Nashville, Tenn., noticed the troubling trend. He conducted his own study, asking boys why they didn’t like to read. Most of them said they didn’t like reading because they didn’t see Black men around them reading. Many didn’t have books in their homes.

Pratt, the son for former acting Mayor Marvin Pratt, said that prompted him to start the grassroots mentorship and reading program he calls “Fatherhood Fridays.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Amy Schwabe:

Two years ago, I never thought I would homeschool one of my children.

Of course, two years ago, I never thought that leaving the house with a face mask would become second nature. Or that my grandma would become computer-literate enough to Zoom with me every few weeks. A lot has changed.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, my daughter Wendy would have days — in hindsight, too many days — when she begged to stay home from school. She cried nearly every morning, and she seemed to have constant stomachaches and nausea. My husband Jonathan and I spent a year taking her to doctors, scheduling medical procedures and giving her various medications, trying to figure out what was going on with her.

I remember standing over her as she cried in her closet one morning, wondering what I was going to do if she actually refused to go to school. What if she really wouldn’t get up? I couldn’t pick her up and force her into the car, force her into school, force her to learn.

I didn’t have to find out what would happen in that scenario because March of 2020 arrived, and we all stayed home. For months. And a curious thing happened. Wendy stopped getting nauseous. She stopped vomiting. We took her for a follow-up at the doctor, and her acid reflux had improved. Stress and anxiety turned out to be her triggers.

Jay’s Blog:

One important thing that I think about a lot, even though I have no formal expertise, is the replication crisis. A shocking fraction of published research in many fields, including medicine and psychology, is flatly wrong—the results of the studies can’t be obtained in the same way again, and the conclusions don’t hold up to further investigation. Medical researcher John Ioannidis brought this problem to wide attention in 2005 with a paper titled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False; attempts to replicate the results of major psychology papers suggest that only about half of them hold up. A recent analysis gives a similar result for cancer research.

This is a real crisis for the whole process of science. If we can’t rely on the results of famous, large, well-established studies, it’s hard to feel secure in any of our knowledge. It’s probably the most important problem facing the entire project of science right now.

There’s a lot to say about the mathematics we use in social science research, especially statistically, and how bad math feeds the replication crisis.¹ But I want to approach it from a different angle.  Why doesn’t the field of mathematicshave a replication crisis? And what does that tell us about other fields, that do?

Why doesn’t math have a replication crisis?

Maybe mathematicians don’t make mistakes

Chris Rickert:

Nearly three weeks after La Follette High School students reportedly beat a special-needs classmate so badly at the Southeast Side school that he could require surgery, police made an arrest in the case Wednesday and anticipate making another one.

Tayshon J. Ross, 17, of Madison, is tentatively charged with felony substantial battery in the Jan. 13 incident, according to police spokesperson Stephanie Fryer.

Police said last month that the 15-year-old victim told them a group of students was making fun of him before the fight and that school surveillance video of the incident shows the victim and another teen preparing to fight one another and several teens punching or attempting to punch the victim.

Terry Gross:

The origins here … go back to that summer of 2020. There’s a researcher there named Christopher Rufo, who was then with the Discovery Institute in Seattle. This is in a conservative educational institute centered around the promotion of intelligent design. And Christopher Rufo wrote a series of articles for an online website called City Journal. And in his City Journal articles, he detailed what he described as indoctrination in K-12 schools or in employee training programs in businesses or state agencies, programs that he said were training people to become critical race theorists. 

Those articles caught the attention of Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, and Rufo appeared on his program in early September of 2020. The very next day, he received a phone call from Mark Meadows, then chief of staff for the Trump administration. Apparently, Trump had watched the program that evening. He’d seen what Rufo had to say, and within a matter of days, Rufo was in conversation with the Trump administration on some sort of legislative or executive response. The product of that conversation was Trump’s executive order in late September, where he prohibited any state agency from discussing certain ideas as part of employee training or [training for] a state contractor that wishes to do business with the federal government.

William Broad:

Fermat’s last theorem, a riddle put forward by one of history’s great mathematicians, had baffled experts for more than 300 years. Then a genius toiled in secret for seven years to solve it, according to the usual narrative. That shy Englishman, Andrew Wiles, made his feat public in the early 1990s and amassed a glittering array of tributes. In 2016, he won the Abel Prize, math’s top award. It came with a $700,000 purse.

Now, a wealthy Texas philanthropist is recounting how his financial support created a community of Fermat innovators that, over decades, lent moral and mathematical support to Dr. Wiles. That patronage drew top mathematicians to the puzzle after great minds had given up, succeeded in bringing the moribund field back to life, and may have helped make Dr. Wiles’s breakthrough possible.

“We solved the problem,” the philanthropist, James M. Vaughn Jr., 82, president of the Vaughn Foundation Fund, said in an interview. “If we hadn’t put the program together as we did, it would still be unsolved.”

In interviews, top experts described Mr. Vaughn’s foundation and its early financial support as sparks that had lit an intellectual fire, although they stopped short of saying that his backing had been responsible for Dr. Wiles’s Fermat breakthrough. Dr. Wiles did not respond to inquiries.

Recently, Mr. Vaughn gave the University of Texas a collection of 125 rare and foundational books in the history of mathematics, and the gift has prompted him to speak publicly of other foundation projects that have gone largely unheralded.

While gregarious, Mr. Vaughn, heir to a Texas oil fortune, is an extremely private man who has never before claimed publicly that his philanthropy begot the mathematical feat. Even so, he takes immense pride in what he characterizes as his legacy. Mr. Vaughn said that he and his wife had no children and that the Fermat triumph was how he hoped he would be remembered.

Keith Whittington:

The Academic Freedom Alliance has released a public letter to the Georgetown University Law Center objecting to its treatment of a senior lecturer. Ilya Shapiro was director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. It was recently announced that Shapiro had been appointed to be the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitutionand a senior lecturer at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was to begin his duties on February 1, 2022.

On January 26, Shapiro posted a series of tweets on the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer and President Joe Biden’s declaration that he would be selecting a black woman to fill the spot. Shapiro contended that Biden’s announced limitation on the candidate pool would exclude the person Shapiro thought was “objectively best” for the position and as a consequence the president would be choosing a “lesser black woman” in his stead. Shapiro subsequently deleted the posts and apologized, but a controversy erupted that included demands that he be fired by GULC. The dean of the law school announced that Shapiro would be suspended until an investigation was concluded on whether the tweets had violated any university policies.

Molly Beck:

Two Republicans running for governor said this week they would sign legislation that dissolves the state’s largest school district while the Democratic incumbent who spent a career in education said the idea would throw Milwaukee’s children into “chaos.”

Gov. Tony Evers, a former state superintendent and public school educator, signaled Tuesday he would not support a package of bills being proposed by Republican lawmakers that would break up Milwaukee Public Schools within two years and replace it with smaller school districts.

The future of Milwaukee’s school district suddenly depends on the outcome of this year’s governor’s race with the Republican field’s top two candidates endorsing an idea that has failed in the past but has new support sprung from scrutiny born during the coronavirus pandemic over how schools are run.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Chester Finn

Monday’s Washington Post featured a long, front-page article by the estimable Laura Meckler titled “Public schools facing a crisis of epic proportions.” In it, she skillfully summarized a laundry list of current woes facing traditional public education:

The scores are down and violence is up. Parents are screaming at school boards, and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.

For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes, or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.

Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades….

As I’m sure Ms. Meckler would agree, this is a “supply side” lamentation, a catalog of woes as seen from the perspective of those inside the education system. She might instead have written a very different article describing the “crisis” as viewed by consumers of public education. (You know—students, parents, taxpayers, us folks.) Such a piece might have read more like this:

The schools our kids attended were closed so long that students lost whole years of learning. Those from families with limited means lost even more. Those schools were closed far longer than they needed to be, apparently because the adults who work in them didn’t want (or were scared) to return and those running them put their employees’ interests ahead of those of their students and parents. We watched the firemen and nurses and utility workers keep coming to work despite the pandemic. Why not the teachers?

Worse, the closed schools’ failure to supply satisfactory forms of remote instruction meant that millions of children forgot how to study, how to get along with other kids, how to relate to grown-ups outside their families. Idleness, lassitude, and frustration took a toll of their physical and mental health and made life extremely difficult for us parents and other caregivers, including messing up our own work lives. Many of us had no choice but to quit our jobs. No wonder many of us took education into our own hands, seeking out other schools that managed to stay open, getting serious about homeschooling, hiring tutors when we could afford it, and teaming up with neighbors to create quasi-schools. Yes, we’re angry, furious even, and yes, our kids are upset and acting out. And it didn’t get any better when we got them back into school only to discover that, instead of the Three R’s, our schools were obsessing over racial and political issues. No wonder we’re protesting at school board meetings. No wonder a bunch of politicians are using our unhappiness to get themselves elected. And it’s no help at all when folks in Washington seem more interested in sending money and coddling misbehavers than in whether our children are learning. 

Yes, it would have been a very different sort of lamentation. The point, though, isn’t journalism per se. It’s what’s the proper perspective from which to view the semi-meltdown of traditional public education: the system’s perspective or the perspective of those for whose benefit it exists and whose tax dollars pay for it? If the nation is still—or again—at grave risk because its children aren’t learning enough (and in many cases seem not even to be in places of learning), where ought responsibility for the melting be placed?

I’m not exactly saying the public schools had it coming. Nobody (except perhaps the denizens of a mysterious Wuhan laboratory) had any idea what was coming, and nobody is ever fully prepared for a full-scale catastrophe. No giant system that’s been doing the same thing for decades can be expected to turn on a dime. The inertia is profound. And yet, in many ways, the educational failures of the past several years were far worse than they needed to be because of long-standing characteristics of American public education. It’s worth recounting three of those.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

“A child who attends a traditional public school in Milwaukee is worth more than $4,000 more in the eyes of government than that same child if they attend the private choice school down the street.”https://t.co/cg2mB7LZ4L

— WILL (@WILawLiberty) February 3, 2022

This is a Renaissance painting.
No, the opposite of a Renaissance.
Dégringolade.
20 years.
2 stalls.
A full press conference.
A toilet paper ribbon.
No scissors.
Idiocratically oblivious pride in this “accomplishment”.
And a model that is being exported all over America. https://t.co/zn4phGBbOF

— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) February 3, 2022

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Megan Basham:

In September, Wheaton College dean Ed Stetzer interviewed National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on his podcast, “Church Leadership” about why Christians who want to obey Christ’s command to love their neighbors should get the Covid vaccine and avoid indulging in misinformation.

For those not familiar with Stetzer, he’s not just a religious liberal arts professor and this wasn’t just another dime-a-dozen pastorly podcast. To name just a few of his past and present titles in the evangelical world, Stetzer is also the executive director of the Billy Graham Center and the editor-in-chief of Outreach media group. He was previously an editor at Christianity Today and an executive director at LifeWay, one of the largest religious publishers in the world. That’s to say nothing of the dozen-plus books on missions and church planting he’s authored.

In short, when it comes to leveraging high evangelical offices to influence everyday Christians, arguably no one is better positioned than Ed Stetzer. You may not know his name, but if you’re a church-going Protestant, it’s almost guaranteed your pastor does.

Which is why, when Stetzer joined a line of renowned pastors and ministry leaders lending their platforms to Obama-appointee Collins, the collaboration was noteworthy.

During their discussion, Collins and Stetzer were hardly shy about the fact that they were asking ministers to act as the administration’s go-between with their congregants. “I want to exhort pastors once again to try to use your credibility with your flock to put forward the public health measures that we know can work,” Collins said. Stetzer replied that he sometimes hears from ministers who don’t feel comfortable preaching about Covid vaccines, and he advises them, in those cases, to simply promote the jab through social media.

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

Economist:

Bad Bunny may not be a household name in the English-speaking world. Yet the Puerto Rican rapper, whose verses are usually in Spanish (and, on one occasion, Japanese), was the most played artist in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming platform. Such success might have been harder to achieve 30 years ago when English was dominant. In the new digital era, it is becoming ever more common.

Dylan Brogan:

And there is pressure to ignore the realities of missed work: “A kid zones out the entire semester, doesn’t do any work, and we’re being told [from administrators] to get them to quickly make up a couple of assignments and give him a passing grade. It’s a terrible message we are sending.”

…..

“But I don’t believe in pushing back or challenging the administration in order to virtue signal to the community.”

For one veteran teacher at East, that lack of pushback has looked more like a rubber-stamping of whatever the central office is proposing.

“I do think some of them are starting to wake up. I’ve seen Ali Muldrow way more engaged here at East when we needed it; that was appreciated and made a big difference,” says the teacher. “But that kind of involvement by a school board member has been pretty much nonexistent.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

This is a Renaissance painting.
No, the opposite of a Renaissance.
Dégringolade.
20 years.
2 stalls.
A full press conference.
A toilet paper ribbon.
No scissors.
Idiocratically oblivious pride in this “accomplishment”.
And a model that is being exported all over America. https://t.co/zn4phGBbOF

— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) February 3, 2022

Wisconsin State Senator Alberta Darling:

Wisconsin has a reputation for reform. It’s time we regain our status as a national leader and innovator for education reform,” Darling said, “We are putting parents and their children firstw , we are going to increase transparency and accountability, and we will be funding students, not systems.”

• Parental Bill of Rights – Establishes several parental rights relating to decisions regarding a child’s religion, medical care, records, and education, and creates a cause of action for the violation of these rights. Allows a parent to bring a suit if those rights are violated.
• School Choice Expansion – Opens school choice to all Wisconsin families by removing state enrollment caps, family income limits, and grade entry points – marking the beginning of true school choice for all our students and families.
• Milwaukee Public School Reform– Establishes by 2024, MPS will be divided into smaller community districts that are more manageable and accountable to parents and their communities. The new community district boundaries will be developed by a commission made up of elected officials with a vested interest in the community, including the Mayor of Milwaukee, the Governor, and the State Superintendent.
• School Accountability Reports – Establishes uniform standards for school accountability reports. Our state’s educational accountability system relies heavily on the state school and district report card. This bill improves the accountability reports to provide a consistent assessment of student success.
• High-Performing Charter Replication and Creation of Statewide Charter Board – Charter schools are public schools that operate with less red tape. This bill will streamline replication for the highest performing charter schools in our state and will increase opportunities for more students and families statewide.
• Property Tax Credit after Virtual School – Increases the school property tax credit for residents of school districts that are closed to in-person instruction for more than 10 days of instruction during the second half of the 2021-22 school year. Many working families were left last minute to find options for their children, and this money will help offset some of those incurred costs.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Ann Althouse:

Said an unnamed 2021 graduate, quoted in “Remote learning led to rampant cheating at NYC’s Stuyvesant High School” (NY Post). Stuyvesant is a phenomenally elite public high school, with admission based on the Specialized High School Admissions Test.

Also quoted, an unnamed sophomore: “A lot of people didn’t actually learn as much last year because of how easy it was to cheat on things, which is sort of sad. Remote learning changed the playing field. It was closer to [an] honor system, so I felt that most people were more likely to push the rules a bit.”

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Didi Rankovic:

YouTube has a brand new censorship tactic that appears to be affecting small creators – and one that, on the face of it, makes no sense.

Several livestreams posted on Google’s platform last weekend by truckers protesting in Canada have had their audience limited. The reason given to viewers trying to access the videos? They were too popular.

Many taxpayer supported K-12 school districts use Google services, including Madison.

There is a long line of clear case law, including from the Supreme Court, holding that the First Amendment’s free speech clause is violated when state officials pressure or coerce private actors to censor for them.https://t.co/WOJu9FwB1g https://t.co/GkiRhR6re9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 2, 2022

Sleepingdog:

Once upon a time, in a country with a proud name of the USSR did not even know about any such-computers. No, of course, suspected that something is. I’ve even for the first time in their lives saw the 1st of September of 1988 – when we, first-graders, a tour of the school and led to a class of computer science. I remember as a teacher is proud to announce something about the only school in the district, which has a computer class … And I, transfixed, staring at the strange mysterious car standing on the desks. And three years later, I, a reading child, took in the library wonderful book called “Encyclopedia professor Fortran”. There’s a comic book tells what komputerom and what they eat, and I finally realized that in a fairy tale, called the computer, I get in this life is not destined.

Stephen Moore:

The tally for how much the federal government spent to combat COVID-19 is now estimated to be $5 trillion. It is more than the combined costs of World Wars I and II. The Left is celebrating that politicians in Washington saved us. Really? From what exactly?

Two years later, it is time for an honest assessment. Could things have worsened for the country if the government had spent nothing and done nothing? What would have happened if we had not shut down our businesses? Our churches, schools, and restaurants. Our parks and basketball courts and playgrounds.

Would the public have made worse decisions regarding protecting its health and the health of its families and its employees than the politicians have made?

The Left believes that it was government intervention that saved millions of lives. But even with all the federal spending, some 875,000 (and counting) have perished from the virus. It was politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo whose awful decision-making contributed to the deaths of thousands of seniors exposed to infected patients in nursing homes. In addition, politicians didn’t shut down the New York subway system for many weeks into the virus, costing thousands more avoidable deaths.

Suppose the government is here to save us. How do we explain the shameful malfeasance of the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, and other government medical agencies and programs that spend roughly half a trillion dollars each year to keep us healthy? All of that money couldn’t stop a virus from wreaking havoc on the country for two years and counting.

McNamara Fallacy:

Nonetheless, the United States lost the Vietnam War. How could that have happened?

The US military walked straight into the McNamara Fallacy.

Quantification at War

The McNamara Fallacy is named after Robert McNamara. As U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968, McNamara was responsible for organizing American strategy in the Vietnam War.

As a business executive, McNamara had learned to put a priority on quantitative metrics. Following along with the professional culture of scientific measurement established under Frederick Taylor, McNamara decided that he could win the Vietnam War by quantifying it.

McNamara tracked the progress of the war by focusing on the ratio of enemy fatalities to American fatalities. As long as there were more enemy deaths than American deaths, McNamara concluded that the military was on the path to victory.

What McNamara didn’t keep track of was the narrative of the war, the meaning that it had both within the military forces of each side, but also in the civilian populations of the nations involved. Instead, he applied the business aphrorism that you can’t manage what you can’t measure and treated his metrics as if they were in themselves the definition of success. McNamara insisted that if factors could not be quantified, they were not relevant to the management of the Vietnam War.

PDF:

Move to modify the ARPA federal funding plan submitted by DPI on April 1, 2021, as follows:

1. Reduce funding for administrative costs by $662,189, so that $1,200,000 remains for administration of ESSER III.

2. Delete the $600,000 minimum aid proposal provided under DPI’s plan, except increase the minimum aid proposed under DPI’s plan for the state’s residential schools for blind pupils to $300,000, the residential school for deaf pupils to $400,000, the Syble Hopp School operated by the Brown County Children with Disabilities Board to $700,000, and the Lakeland School operated by the Walworth County Children with Disabilities Board to $700,000 (frees up $37,261,355).

3. Delete the provision in DPI’s plan that would allocate the funds earmarked for learning loss using a formula grant process (frees up $77,039,242).

4. Provide a payment of $781 per pupil to Lincoln Academy, a new independent charter school located in Beloit, based on its September, 2021, headcount.

5. Use the amounts resulting from (1), (2), and (3), less the amount in (4) (totaling an estimated $114,642,576), to establish a per pupil minimum grant award of $781 for any local educational agencies (LEAs) that provided in-person instruction in the 2020-21 school year for at least 50% of the total instructional hours offered by the LEA, using the definition of in-person instruction and the data collection methodology under the in-person incentive under the plan for ESSER II funds as modified by the Committee. (A portion of the funds equal to $77,039,242 must be used to address learning loss, and must meet the other requirements for the earmark funds established under federal law.)

Under the Title I Part A formula used to allocate 90% of ESSER III funds, 153 LEAs receive less than $781 per pupil and could be eligible for a portion of this funding depending on the number of in-person instructional hours provided by the LEA.

6. After funding the aid entitlement under (5), allocate any funds remaining according to the methodology used for the in-person incentive funding under the ESSER II plan, as modified by the Committee. Only LEAs that receive less than $781 per pupil under the ESSER III Title I Part A allocation would be eligible to receive funding in this round. (Under this provision, LEAs are eligible to receive aid based on the number of in-person instructional hours provided to pupils in the 2020-21 school year. The amount of aid that will be received by each LEA will be calculated by dividing the number of in-person instructional hours provided by the LEA by the total number of in-person instructional hours provided by all eligible LEAs, with that proportion multiplied by the total amount of available funding.)

Decoding: ARPA: American Rescue Plan.

ESSER III

Without Clear Rules, There’s No Way to Judge How School Relief Funds Are Being Spent. Setting Student Progress as a North Star Would Be a Game Changer

Rick Mayer:

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have concluded that lockdowns have done little to reduce COVID deaths but have had “devastating effects” on economies and numerous social ills.

The study, titled “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality,” said lockdowns in Europe and the U.S. reduced COVID-19 deaths by 0.2 percent.

Shelter-in-place orders were also ineffective, reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%, the study said.

“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote in the report, issued Monday.

The study concluded that lockdowns “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Urgency of Normal:

In much of the United States, adults have the option of returning to life essentially as we knew it in 2019. However, children continue to experience disproportionate restrictions, and the costs are mounting. 

Youth depression, suspected suicide attempts, drug overdose deaths, and obesity have all risen dramatically during the pandemic. The unintended consequences of pandemic restrictions are now a greater risk to our children than COVID, and we must act on that reality. 

Meanwhile, children’s already-low risk from COVID has become even lower. Vaccines are available to children aged five and up, the Omicron variant is causing milder disease, and vaccines continue to be extremely protective against severe disease in the Omicron era.

Based on a careful review of all of this evidence, we believe it is time to allow children the same return to normalcy that adults have enjoyed. Children’s schools, athletics, and activities should be restored to their 2019 norms. Masks should become optional in US schools (we suggest, by February 15), and we can also return to pre-pandemic norms for quarantines: if you are sick, stay home. 

We can and should protect medically-vulnerable children and adults using focused protection strategies that protect individuals with risk, as we did in the years before COVID, rather than prolonging harmful restrictions on all children.

In order to make these shifts, we must reassure families about the low risk to children from COVID infections in the Omicron era, and also from long COVID. We must also share the best available evidence on the benefits and harms of COVID mitigation measures affecting children, which can reassure families, educators, policymakers, and all who care for children’s well-being about the safety and healthfulness of a return to normalcy for kids.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Zachary Stein:

The need to rediscover and reinvigorate education as the deeper codes and sources of culture is aided by Zak’s skilful reviving of the spirit of John Amos Comenius, an educator of world-historical importance.

But why education exactly? Because education is not just children in uniform with their feet under desks holding pencils expectantly while looking at their teacher. Zak understands Education – as I believe we all should – in the expansive Deweyian sense as a practice of social autopoiesis – the process by which society renews itself, including an intelligent patterning of institutional deaths and cultural births. We are called upon to be enlightened undertakers and visionary midwives.

As this essay reminds us, Education is the means by which we make it possible for new worlds to be born within worlds that are dying. It is in this sense that Zak rightly argues that Education must make history again.

And so, back to the question ‘What am I to do?’ The point of this essay is that this question should be informed, as a matter of urgency, by the deep story of being in a time between worlds. That story comes alive through the way Zak conveys the inspiration of John Amos Comenius, who developed his visions and theories four hundred years ago. It is up to all of us to make sense of what they mean today.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Eugene Volokh:

Something Georgetown might want to keep in mind when deciding when Tweets from faculty members are punishable as “discrimination” or “harassment”: D.C., like many jurisdictions, bans employment discrimination based on “political affiliation,” though defined narrowly to refer only to “belonging to or endorsing any political party.” It also bans discrimination in educational programsbased on political affiliation. Unsurprisingly, Georgetown’s antidiscrimination policy covers political affiliation alongside other characteristics.

If Georgetown were to interpret its policies on discrimination and harassment as forbidding tweets that are seen as offensive or derogatory to particular racial groups, then I think it would be bound to apply the same rules to future tweets that are seen as offensive or derogatory to people who belong to or endorse any political party as well. I don’t think the policies should be thus interpreted, and in particular I don’t think the Ilya Shapiro tweet should be seen as violating those policies. But if they are thus interpreted, then that would have to cover future public statements by other Georgetown faculty related to political party (and, of course, religion) as well as race or sex.

UPDATE: I revised this slightly to make clear that I’m talking about how a decision in this case would affect future cases, in which the tweets were seen as offensive or derogatory to, say, Republicans or Democrats. (I thought it was clear at the outset, but some commenters thought otherwise, so I wanted to make sure my point came across.)

Lee Gaines:

Karla knew something was wrong. Her daughter still couldn’t read by the time she reached the fifth grade.

In early elementary school, Karla’s daughter was diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder, among other conditions. Her daughter’s school district in northwest Indiana provided her with special education services under an individualized education program, or IEP, intended to help her progress. 

But Karla said her daughter had failed to make significant academic gains during her fourth grade year. She was concerned the school was missing something.

Karla paid thousands of dollars to have her daughter evaluated by a neuropsychologist. She scored a 91 on a nonverbal intelligence test, which placed her in the average range. That was nearly 50 points higher than what the school reported from its own IQ testing, which placed her in the extremely low range. 

The results validated Karla’s suspicion about her daughter’s potential.

Daniel Schmidt:

Last week, University of Chicago administrators informed on-campus students and the Chicago Thinker that unvaccinated students are banned from eating in dining halls—a policy that appears to be inconsistent with city law. After the Chicago Thinker further inquired, the dining policy was reversed with no explanation. It is unclear whether the university ever actually enforced the policy. Currently, the university is ignoring all questions from the Chicago Thinker. 

On January 22, UChicago students living in Liew House, a UChicago dorm community, were informed by a university-employed resident head that unvaccinated students “are not allowed to eat in the dining halls” because “per the Chicago ordinated in place, any unvaccinated individual is not allowed to eat inside a restaurant. This also means that those unvaccinated now have unlimited to go meals.”

Clive Thompson:

I still do this! Old books are socially and culturally fascinating; they give you a glimpse into how much society has changed, and also what’s remained the same. The writing styles can be delightfully archaic, but also sometimes amazingly fresh. Nonfiction writers from 1780 can be colloquial and funny as hell.

And man, they wrote about everything. Back in those centuries they wrote books about falling in love via telegraph wires, and about long-distance balloon travel. They wrote books that soberly praised eugenics, and ones that inveighed against it. They published exuberant magazines of men’s fashion and books on how to adopt vegetarian diets. The past being the past, there’s a ton of flat-out nativism, racism, and gibbering misogyny — but also people fighting against that, too.

It’s rarely dull.

Still, sifting through old books can be a hassle. You have to go to those search sites and filter for the right vintage (and public domain status). It’s a pain.

Aaron Sibarium:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Yale University has required all students to mask indoors in public spaces. But it was 9:30 p.m on a Saturday night, and the library was deserted. With no one within at least 150 feet of him, a Yale senior decided to relax with a movie—and without a mask.

It got him reported to the school’s COVID hotline.

According to the Yale senior, another student walked into the library and demanded he mask up. Since he didn’t have one on him, the senior said he would leave. As he was gathering his belongings, the other student pulled out her phone and began filming him. When the senior asked for her name, the student raised her middle finger and stormed off.

Two days later, he received a notice from the Yale administration that he had been reported for violating the school’s “Community Compact,” a set of rules put in place to “promote the health and safety of all community members.” The student was given 24 hours to provide the “Compact Review Committee” with “any relevant information” he would like it to consider during the official “evaluation” of his conduct. He was ultimately found guilty of a violation and threatened with a “public health withdrawal.”

Glenn Reynolds:

It’s not that the problem isn’t noticed — a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 53% of people view the federal deficit and thus the debt as a serious problem, significantly outweighing other more-discussed issues such as climate change, terrorism or racism.

freespeech@mit:

We, the undersigned MIT faculty members, urge that the Institute improve its written commitment to academic freedom and free expression by officially adopting the Chicago Principles, as articulated in a 2014 University of Chicago report.¹

The Principles, adapted below for MIT (with no changes other than swapping University of Chicago identifiers for MIT identifiers), have been adopted by Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, BU, and 78 other universities and colleges.

If you are an MIT faculty member and wish to add your name to the list of signatories or have any questions, please email freespeech@mit.edu. 

The Chicago Principles (adapted for MIT)

Because MIT is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the MIT community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the Institute, MIT fully respects and supports the freedom of all members of the MIT community “to discuss any problem that presents itself.”

Of course, the ideas of different members of the MIT community will often and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of the Institute to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive. Although the Institute greatly values civility, and although all members of the MIT community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to some members of our community.

The freedom to debate and discuss the merits of competing ideas does not, of course, mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish. The Institute may restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of the Institute. In addition, MIT may reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the Institute. But these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is inconsistent with the Institute’s commitment to a completely free and open discussion of ideas.

John Torinus:

UW Health, a $3.8 billion health system that operates in several states and earned $550 million in 2021. It contributed $50 million to the mother ship, arguably, an inadequate return to UW Madison, which owns its buildings and receives below market rent.

Quartz, an HMO insurance company operates in four states. It had revenues of $1.8 billion in 2021. Its profits are murky because of payments to a range of owners. This is a non-core asset that could be worth as much as $500 million. What is the university doing in the health insurance business? A spin-out, as already done by Northwestern University, could provide funds for other UW System priorities. One example is the strategically necessary expansion of the engineering facilities at our two flagship campuses.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) manages the university’s intellectual property. It has a long track record and now has assets of a whopping $3.9 billion. It runs as a separate entity. Its financials are not consolidated with UW Madison’s. Its license revenues have fallen off.

UW Madison Foundation, is another separate but related entity with more than $3 billion in assets.

At the system level is another complex of resources including 25 other campuses, other smaller foundations and a rich array of “centers” doing work in strategic academic sectors. All of the above require sophisticated, transparent and accountable governance.

The case can be made that financial oversight of the system as a whole and UW Madison in particular has been lacking. Inadequate governance can lead to problems. For example, some members of the Board of Regents in the past and at present have worked for organizations doing major business with UW Madison. Some UW affiliated board members are paid, others are not. The cross-overs may not rise to the glaring example of the Enron mess uncovered in 2001. But the cross-overs are certainly not transparent.

Benjamin Yount:

It’s the latest snapshot of just how many parents in Wisconsin want to explore educational options for their kids.

Tuesday was the first day for parents to enroll in the state’s Private School Choice Program. By midday, the state’s website crashed because of a flood of applications.

“Due to high volume, the system is temporarily unavailable,” read a note at the Department of Public Instruction’s website.

Jim Bender with School Choice Wisconsin is not surprised.

“We know from talking to schools that interest in the program is very high. Many new parents are seeking options,” Bender said.

Bender said it won’t be known just how many more parents will opt their kids out of traditional public schools until the fall.

But the trend is that more parents will make a choice.

Enrollment figures from last year showed more students enrolled in Wisconsin’s four school choice programs.

While Tuesday brought a flood of parents to Wisconsin’s private school enrollment, next week could see even more parents apply for the state’s  Public School Open Enrollment, which begins next week.

Bender said parents shouldn’t have to wait, either for enrollment periods or overwhelmed websites, to improve their child’s education.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Lao Dongyan:

A township Communist Party Committee secretary in Shandong warned petitioners that there are a hundred ways to “criminalize” them.  The county government head of a certain county in Henan Province was even more aggressive in shouting that those who maliciously return home during the Spring Festival should be isolated and detained.

All of the above, how I wish it was just isolated instances but unfortunately they are not. The township party secretary, who claimed to have a hundred ways to “criminalize” petitioners, must not think what she said was wrong; she only blamed herself for being politically naive and said what they had been doing and for her statement to be accidentally recorded. Indeed, her words reflected reality. Criminal law is full of means to deal with petitioners, including the crime of provocation, extortion and blackmail, as well as the crime of disturbing the working order of state organs. All these pretexts are commonly used in practice.

Cori Petersen:

“I want to see parents more involved with the board of education,” said Scarlett Johnson who leads the Mequon-Thiensville parents group and is seeking election to the school board. “And I want to see less ideology in the classroom.”

National School Choice Week is a celebration of parents using publicly funded vouchers to send their children to private schools. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about a movement of parents who want more say in directing their child’s public-school education.

When schools went virtual in March 2020, parents became very involved in their children’s education overnight and needed the schools to open up as soon as possible. When Mequon decided to go virtual in the fall of 2020, a group of concerned parents began meeting and held some of the town’s first protests.

Once schools opened in later September 2020, this parent group shifted their attention to curriculum concerns exposed through virtual learning. For instance, in spring 2020, Mequon Thiensville paid $42,000 for Blaquesmith Consulting to bring “The Talk” and “Realizing Our Vision” to the district.

Jane Kitchen:

Socially, it wasn’t entirely what I expected. The people at Bryn Mawr were the wealthiest and most liberal I had ever encountered. During my first week on campus, a girl I met suggested over dinner that 9/11 was justified because the United States had meddled in Middle East politics. She went on to say that the 9/11 memorial should be changed so as to show more respect to Muslims. One of the girls in my hall casually mentioned that Michelle Obama had been in a spin class she had taken in the Hamptons that summer. At first, I thought she was kidding. 

I joined a sketch comedy group, which often started meetings by asking members to answer a question. One day, the question was “How is your semester going?” A few people answered directly, and then one girl said “I’m having a great semester, but I totally acknowledge that some students, especially BIPOC students, face a lot of challenges on campus.” Then, every person after her prefaced their answer by saying that students who aren’t white were probably having a worse semester than them.

I didn’t sit around with my friends all night arguing about big questions like I thought I would. It was assumed that we all agreed on the answers. But I made friends, and I loved my classes. I went to parties at nearby colleges, and I was making plans to study abroad in Ireland, which, as someone who had only left my home state twice, was a huge deal for me. 

That was supposed to be in the Fall of 2020, but of course it never happened. I remember talking about the coronavirus on the way home from a party with my friend, a self-professed germaphobe, in January of 2020. She asked if I thought we should be worried. I told her that as a campus we should be more worried about binge drinking, and we both laughed. I thought that would be the end of it. Weeks later, Bryn Mawr announced that my spring semester would be held online. 

The next few months were the worst of my life.

Commentary.

The Consilience Project:

There is no technical “fix” or simple solution for improving the overall tenor and complexity of public communication about facts. There are, however, possibilities for digital technologies to enable educational initiatives of profound depth at massive scale. The same technologies that are now being used to mislead us with facts can be used to help us piece all the facts together and place them in the right context. The now crucial nexus of digital technologies, education, and politics can be reconfigured to allow for widespread learning and mutual understanding. Even though these facts are clear, there is, as always, the question of what we choose to do with them.

MARTIN KULLDORFF AND JAY BHATTACHARYA

With millions of Americans getting infected and over 800,000 reported COVID-19 deaths, most people now realize that Washington’s pandemic policies failed. Lockdowns just postponed the inevitable while causing enormous collateral damage on cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, tuberculosis, mental health, education and much else.

So, the blame game is in full swing. At a recent Senate hearing, Dr. Anthony Fauci did not even attempt to defend his policies. Instead, he insisted that: “Everything that I have said has been in support of the CDCguidelines.”

Dr. Fauci, as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has worked closely with the two CDC directors, Drs. Robert Redfield and Rochelle Walensky, throughout the pandemic, but he is now laying the responsibility on them. He did the same with his former boss, shortly after Dr. Francis Collins resigned as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Dr. Collins fiercely defended Fauci throughout the pandemic. In October 2020, the Great Barrington Declaration criticized Fauci’s lockdown strategy, calling for focused protection of high-risk older people while letting children go to school and young adults live near-normal lives. A few days later, Collins—a geneticist with little public health experience—wrote an email to Faucisuggesting a “take down” of the declaration, and characterizing its Harvard, Oxford and Stanford authors as “fringe epidemiologists.” Fauci agreed with his boss, but when asked about the incident at the recent Senatehearing, he responded that it “was an email from Dr. Collins to me.” In other words, Fauci himself was just following orders.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Cezary Podkul:

Consider some of the episodes last year in which large quantities of personal data were stolen: 300 million customer and device records for users of a service that’s supposed to shield internet traffic from prying eyes; a 17.6-million-row database from a second organization, containing profiles of people who participated in its market research surveys; 59 million email addresses and other personal data lifted from a third company. These sorts of numbers barely raise an eyebrow these days; none of the incidents generated major press coverage.

Cybertheft conjures images of high-tech missions, with sophisticated hackers penetrating multiple layers of security systems to steal corporate data. But these breaches were far from “Ocean’s Eleven”-style operations. They were the equivalent of grabbing jewels from the seat of an unlocked car parked in a high-crime neighborhood.

Black News:

Nationwide — More than just a tennis champion, Serena Williams has always been a champion for a cause. Through the Serena Williams Fund, new schools are being built in Jamaica and in various countries on the African continent.Williams, who has a total of 39 Grand Slam titles under her belt, recently built the Marsh Elementary School in Jamaica in conjunction with the nonprofit Helping Hands Jamaica. Schools on the African continent were also built in partnership with Build Africa.

Prior to that, Williams already established grade schools in other African countries including Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya.

Tyler Cowen:

Of course this process has very little transparency and not much in the way of appeal, or even competition, or for that matter accountability to outside parties.  Might it also be a factor behind a lot of the academic conformism we witness?  You go through the early part of your career knowing that you are auditioning for a committee.  Can any voice wreck you?  Or is it majority rule?  You will never know!

Unlike a lot of the whiners, I am not saying this system is necessarily bad — I am genuinely unsure, in part because of the lack of transparency, not to mention that the relevant alternative is possibly something worse yet.  In any case, I find it striking how little discussion this method has received.  It allocates most of the best jobs in the economics profession, and it does not obviously satisfy many of the ideals that at least some of us pay lip service to.  John List, now tenured at the University of Chicago, received his initial Ph.D from University of Wyoming, not a top school, but that kind of climb up the academic ladder is extremely rare in economics.

Most lesser ranked schools, including GMU, do not rank their candidates collectively in the same manner.  There is no collective ranking, rather individual faculty, or perhaps small working groups, recommend their favored candidates.  In part they are competing against the other recommending faculty in their own department.  There is no “secret, collusive meeting,” and so you might think there is an incentive to over-recommend and to deplete the collective credibility of the department.  The market, however, understands that and takes it into account, and in that sense the credibility of the department “starts off depleted” to begin with.  The recommendations then have to be somewhat exaggerated simply to “break even” in the resulting signal-jamming equilibrium.

Lower-ranked schools don’t have the option of sending most of their Ph.D. students to Tier 1 research universities, so the notion of a uniform ranking probably doesn’t make sense there. And if you have only three graduating Ph.D. students in a year, and two of them are returning home to Asia, as is the case in many of the lower-ranked programs, does it really make sense to rank them? Furthermore, the lower-ranked schools may have a higher variance of faculty quality, which would render a consensus ranking of the graduates more difficult to achieve. In contrast, almost all of the faculty at Harvard have a pretty good sense of “what it takes” to succeed at MIT or Princeton as a junior faculty member.

Dallas News:

Rather, I want to focus the attention of readers on extremely important, disturbing data from recent years regarding student achievement in the Dallas ISD. Then, facing those facts, perhaps the community will be on firmer ground to improve and generate better student outcomes.

The nation’s best measure of student achievement is the National Assessment of Educational Progress. In the 2000s, urban districts began participating in NAEP through the Trial Urban District Assessment. Dallas ISD joined the program in 2011 and has seen its students measured every other year until 2019 at the fourth and eighth grade levels in math and reading.

Here’s the troubling news in Dallas: On both eighth grade math and reading, from 2011 through 2019, Black and Hispanic students showed a steady and substantial decline in achievement.

Fourth grade results, on the other hand, are more stagnant than down. In that regard, they resemble the results of other urban districts, such as Houston. So, while we would like more progress, especially given recent emphasis on early education, flatness has been characteristic generally across the land. Even so, however, some districts, such as Miami, have significantly outperformed the others. It can be done.

Yet, for several reasons, it is Dallas ISD’s eighth grade results that should draw our principal concern. First, they’re badly down.

In math, for example, Black students dropped steadily from 264 scale score points in 2011 to 252 in 2019. Hispanic students fell from 276 to 265 during the same period.

In reading, the drop for African American students was from 244 to 234, and for Hispanics, from 246 to 242.

During this period, all eighth grade students in DISD dropped from an average of 274 to 264 in math and from 248 to 242 in reading.

The Blogocarian:

Not long ago, Mary Beard graced us with a bit of honorable honesty in the Times Literary Supplement, in which she confessed to what is a bit of an open secret among most classicists. She can’t sight-read a complex Latin text all that well. Most classicists can’t. This admission — from someone like Beard — is good to have out there.

What irritates me is that —again like most classicists — she treats this as a self-evident fact to be just accepted rather than a problem to be dealt with, as if nobody could hope to actually read Cicero with ease. It always strikes me as bizarre and a bit embarrassing to see classicists insisting that it is impossible to acquire fluid or fluent command of Latin or Greek, that “we” can never do this. It’s not just that this assumption would be news to people like Galileo, Kepler or Descartes. It’s that people do actually acquire this kind of competence. Today. Anyone who pokes around at, say, the Conventiculum Bostoniense, will find proficient Latin-speakers as readily as Zeus finds incestuous booty-calls.

Take Msgr. Daniel Gallagher who worked for a decade at the Vatican Secretariat’s Latin Office. Here’s him delivering a lecture about the possibility of a manned mission to Mars in Latin. Here’s Jorge Tárrega teaching one of Horace’s most famous poems through the medium of Latin. Here’s Justin Slocum Bailey talking about Aulus Gellius in Latin. If you want something literary, here’s a lovely poem by Cäcilie Koch (AKA Caecilia) inspired by the discovery of the jaw-bone of a Neanderthal boy, and another poem by Alanus Divutius dedicated to the 9/11 victims. Here’s a Latin Wikipedia article about special relativity. Here’s a scene from Jurassic Park dubbed into Latin. Here’s the Quomodo Dicitur podcast in which three people (not always the same people) have unscripted conversations about various topics in Latin. I could keep spouting these links till either I or you, dear reader, die of boredom. There are plenty of people who read Latin as easily as any “modern” language that they have acquired as adults. There are entire internet forums written in it.

John Cochrane:

To be clear here, Abigail’s point is not whether classical liberalism is true or not. The point is whether a classical liberal may not be appointed to the university of California, no matter his, her, or their scientific accomplishments, or must be made to abjure and deny that political belief as a condition of employment. You can disagree with classical liberals, but you can still agree they may express their political views, and you may agree that they should not be  forced, as a condition of employment,  to abjure their beliefs and associations, to express other beliefs, and to be forced to participate in activities and associations that advance other political views.

Before the twitter mob goes nuts, the point today is the nature of the diversity statement. I’m not arguing against “diversity” either in its plain English sense, or in its current political meaning as a euphemism for racial, gender and sexual-identity quotas. I do, as required by my employer, put quite a bit of thumb on the scale in hiring and appointments.  We’ll argue about that some other day. Jerry too, in addition to being an eminent scientist, describes himself as a liberal, and believes in advancing diversity in academia. But not loyalty oaths.

What is it? 

The university not only requires the statements, but gives

these statements precedence in the hiring process, so that if your statement doesn’t exceed a minimum numerical cutoff for promoting diversity, increasing it in your past, and promulgating it in the future should you be hired, your candidacy is terminated 

My friends (anonymous!) in the UC system report that the criteria are clear and the word is out: Don’t try to be clever. Don’t quote Martin Luther King, on judgement by content of character rather than color of skin. Don’t write vibrant essays on the importance of ideological, political or religious diversity. Don’t quote federal anti-discrimination law, the 14th Amendment, and the UC’s own statements of non-discrimination in hiring. Don’t write about class diversity, diverse experiences of immigrants, such as people born under communism in Eastern Europe or the amazingly diverse experience of the colleague you just hired who came from a small village in China. Don’t write about the importance of freedom of speech, or anti-communist loyalty oaths in the 1950s. Are you thinking of writing about your hilbilly elegy background, your time in the military, your support for gun rights and Trump, and how this background and viewpoint would enrich a faculty and staff that likely has absolutely zero people like you? Don’t bother. We all know what “diversity” means. And, heaven forbid, don’t express distaste for the project. The staff are on to all these tricks, and each of these specifically will earn you a downgrade. For an example of what not to do, see UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge’s (UCLA law) posted diversity statement. Let’s see if he gets that raise.

Allison Marsh:

Graeme Clark’s dogged pursuit of the technology enabled hundreds of thousands of people to hear

“A bit of bedlam.” That’s how the physician Graeme Clark described the scene at the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, on the day before what would be the most important surgery of his career. 

Engineers and staff were running around with last-minute equipment tests. Meanwhile, Clark’s patient, Rod Saunders, was relaxed. Saunders had lost his hearing in a car accident two years earlier, and Clark planned to implant a prototype device to restore at least some of Saunders’s hearing. Perhaps Saunders’s sense of calm came from the belief that his life was about to be transformed; more likely, he was feeling the effects of the Valium he’d taken.

The following day, 1 August 1978, over the course of a 9-hour operation, Clark and surgeon Brian Pyman painstakingly inserted a multichannel cochlear implant behind Saunders’s left ear. They were able to attach electrodes to the cochlea—the spiral cavity within the inner ear that stimulates the auditory nerve—without much difficulty, moving slowly and taking steps to minimize the chance of infection. The surgery appeared to be successful, but as Clark recalled in a 2011 oral history with the Australian Academy of Science, he still slept fitfully that night, worried about his patient.

Bret Devereaux:

While last week we noted how the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West did not destroy the Roman cultural sphere so much as accelerate its transformation (albeit into a collection of fragmented fusion cultures which were part ‘Roman’ mixed with other things), it did bring an end to the Roman state in the West (but not the East) and an end to Roman governance. But here too, we have to be careful in defining what that governance meant, because the Roman Empire of August, 378 AD was not the Roman Empire of August, 14 AD. This is a point that is going to come up again and again because how one views the decline of the fifth and sixth centuries depends in part on what the benchmark is: are we comparing it to the empire of Hadrian (r. 117-138) or the empire of Valentinian (r. 364-375)? Because most students are generally more familiar with the former (because it tends to be get focused on in teaching), there is a tendency to compare 476 directly with Rome under the Nervan-Antonines (96-192) without taking into account the events of the third and early fourth century.

Roman rule as effectively codified under the first emperor, Augustus (r. 31BC – 14AD) was relatively limited and indirect, not because the Romans believed in something called ‘limited government’ but because the aims of the Roman state were very limited (secure territory, collect taxes) and the administrative apparatus for doing those things was also very limited. The whole of the central Roman bureaucracy in the first century probably consisted of just a few hundred senatorial and equestrian officials (supported, of course, by the army and also several thousand enslaved workers employed either by the state directly or in the households of those officials) – this for an empire of around 50 million people. Instead, day to day affairs in the provinces – public works, the administration of justice, the regulation of local markets, etc. – were handled by local governments, typically centered in cities (we’ll come back to them in a moment). Where there were no cities, the Romans tended to make new ones for this purpose. Roman officials could then interact with the city elites (they preferred oligarchic city governments because they were easier to control) and so avoid having to interact directly with the populace in a more granular way unless there was a crisis.

By contrast, the Roman governance system that emerges during the reigns of Diocletian (r. 284-305) and Constantine (r. 306-337) was centralized and direct. The process of centralizing governance¹ had been going on for some time, really since the beginning of the empire, albeit slowly. The Constitutio Antoniniana (212), which extended Roman citizenship to all free persons in the empire, in turn had the effect of wiping out all of the local law codes and instead extending Roman law to cover everyone and so doubtless accelerated the process.

Eric Ting:

On Sunday, both politicians — along with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — were photographed posing maskless for photos with Los Angeles Lakers legend Magic Johnson at a luxury box at the NFC Championship Game at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

Don’t let those capitalist roaders undermine our public education system by recalling the officials who incompetently oversaw the destruction and paralysis of SF schools.

Billionaires! Republicans! Privatizers!

(Note the Cleveland area code. These are all dark-money outsiders.) pic.twitter.com/DT3VBMMjkE

— Antonio García Martínez (agm.eth) (@antoniogm) February 1, 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 elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.

Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.” Her tone-deaf comments angered many parents, who have witnessed their kids’ academic and emotional struggles at home due to the school closures.

The school district has experienced such a sharp decline in student enrollment during its long closure that it had to implement a steep cut this school year to fill a budget hole of $125 million.
Social Justice at the Expense of Education

Second, the school board focused on leftist politics rather than education. In 2019, the board voted to cover a mural depicting slavery and Native Americans at George Washington High School, a decision that would cost taxpayers between $600,000 to $1 million. Fortunately, the mural will stay after a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the school board’s decision last year.

In January 2021, rather than focusing on reopening schools, the board voted to rename 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools. Even Democrat Mayor London Breed expressed her disbelief in a statement, saying, “I can’t understand why the school board is advancing a plan to rename all these schools when there isn’t a plan to have kids back in those physical schools.”

Nick Bostrom:

Information hazards are risks that arise from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm. Such hazards are often subtler than direct physical threats, and, as a consequence, are easily overlooked. They can, however, be important. This paper surveys the terrain and proposes a taxonomy.

Mel Leonor

Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push to open more privately run public schools got the support of a number of Virginia higher education leaders who signed onto a proposal by the administration to open charter schools run by their institutions and funded by the state.

On Thursday, Youngkin and more than 30 higher education officials, surrounded by children and teens from Virginia schools, touted the need for “innovation” in K-12 education in Virginia.

“We stand together because we know there is an opportunity for us to innovate in K-12 education,” the governor said during the event at the Patrick Henry Building.

Charles Schifano:

To care about the state and quality of writing today is to scream into a void while knowing that the void does nothing but laugh. Of course gripes about writing standards are a timeless and rather trite pastime: there’s always a market for shouts about how the kids these days are inarticulate. Or about the slipping of standards. Or about how so much contemporary writing is clunky and hackneyed and uninspired. There’s always an old man, always a porch, and always a lawn where the neighborhood kids bark this week’s cliché, speak in punchlines, and repeat metaphors so drained of life that you don’t even recognize them as metaphors.

What’s undeniable, however, is that there’s been a change in writing instruction. This is a change for which the evidence and the results are clear, but any discussion about the subject comes suspiciously close to snipes about language. To talk about writing instruction and its shortcoming is to be, almost certainly, muddled in a debate about style or taste or even authority. But the truth is that hardly anyone who studies how language shifts by swings and whims is troubled by the newest fashions in contemporary use. The frustration isn’t with the kids on the lawn; it is the mentality and standards and methods used to teach those kids that triggers the frustration.

And that’s true even though writing has always been a tricky subject to teach, as even great stylists are unable to explain what we might call the spooky elements that make some sentences soar and others sink. There’s no directory of good writing techniques, or surefire rules to follow, just as nobody can give you the correct order of musical notes to create a melody. Any list of the typical absolutes in contemporary writing instruction—shun adverbs, loathe the passive voice, cut latinate words, use short sentences—has the character of, at best, limiting the threat of mistakes because it removes so many tools. If you’re only permitted one note on the piano, perhaps it’s a little easier to keep it tuned. So the typical writer today ends up with a pen and paper and a very narrow range of expressions: nothing beyond what can be stated with short sentences and short words and short, crisp thoughts. This is the ethos of the contemporary writing seminar, or most communication classes, even though any template that promises to induce good prose will also shove away any potential for expansive or artful prose—it is the realm of instructions, manuals, blueprints, and checklists. Where all sentences are trapped between guardrails. Where the purpose of writing instruction is to prevent errors. Where the writer begins every sentence with nothing more than thoughts of what to avoid.

Thomas Prosser:

Admittedly, this is not always the case. In little time, the discovery of the Omicron variant has instigated major societal change, reflecting its lethal potential. But normally, the process is inverse. This occurs at macro level, epochal needs determiningparadigms, and micro level, inconvenient findings (e.g. those on partisanship) being discarded. Often, controversial results meet this fate, several inconvenient findings about race and sex being absent from public debate. Consequently, notions of being ‘led by evidence’ are suspect. Undoubtedly, academic evidence should be at the heart of policymaking. Yet those who propose this often misunderstand complexities.

Secondly, this phenomenon demonstrates alternative foundations of political behaviour. Given weak links with policy outcomes, the politically engaged have other motivations. Comparison with sports fans is useful. At one level, sports fandom shows how people behave when consequences are insignificant; all agree that the strict outcome of a sports match is trivial. But even without real world stakes, tribal behaviours still thrive. These sentiments tend not to be as strong as political rivalries, hooliganism aside(!), yet many fans have negative views of opposing teams. As a Swansea fan, I cannot purge a feeling that Cardiff fans are the enemy, despite living in Cardiff for over a decade! I blame my father. The foundations of this are primal, meaning that my conversations with myself (‘your friends support Cardiff!’; ‘your daughter was born in Cardiff!’) are fruitless.

Royal Society:

Governments and social media platforms should not rely on content removal for combatting harmful scientific misinformation online, a report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has said.

The Online Information Environment report also warns that the UK Government’s upcoming Online Safety Bill focuses on harms to individuals while failing to recognise the wider ‘societal harms’ that misinformation can cause. Misinformation about scientific issues, from vaccine safety to climate change, can cause harm to individuals and society at large. 

The report says there is little evidence that calls for major platforms to remove offending content will limit scientific misinformation’s harms and warns such measures could even drive it to harder-to-address corners of the internet and exacerbate feelings of distrust in authorities.

It recommends wide-ranging measures that governments, tech platforms and academic institutions can take to build resilience to misinformation and a healthy online information environment.

NYTimes:

In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. As they set up the equipment, the engineers made a series of calls to their bosses in Herzliya, a Tel Aviv suburb, at the headquarters for NSO Group, the world’s most notorious maker of spyware. Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.

The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO’s premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.

Since NSO had introduced Pegasus to the global market in 2011, it had helped Mexican authorities capture Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. European investigators have quietly used Pegasus to thwart terrorist plots, fight organized crime and, in one case, take down a global child-abuse ring, identifying dozens of suspects in more than 40 countries. In a broader sense, NSO’s products seemed to solve one of the biggest problems facing law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in the 21st century: that criminals and terrorists had better technology for encrypting their communications than investigators had to decrypt them. The criminal world had gone dark even as it was increasingly going global.

But by the time the company’s engineers walked through the door of the New Jersey facility in 2019, the many abuses of Pegasus had also been well documented. Mexico deployed the software not just against gangsters but also against journalists and political dissidents. The United Arab Emirates used the software to hack the phone of a civil rights activist whom the government threw in jail. Saudi Arabia used it against women’s rights activists and, according to a lawsuit filed by a Saudi dissident, to spy on communications with Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, whom Saudi operatives killed and dismembered in Istanbul in 2018.

None of this prevented new customers from approaching NSO, including the United States. The details of the F.B.I.’s purchase and testing of Pegasus have never before been made public. Additionally, the same year that Khashoggi was killed, the Central Intelligence Agency arranged and paid for the government of Djibouti to acquire Pegasus to assist the American ally in combating terrorism, despite longstanding concerns about human rights abuses there, including the persecution of journalists and the torture of government opponents. The D.E.A., the Secret Service and the U.S. military’s Africa Command had all held discussions with NSO. The F.B.I. was now taking the next step.

Harvey Risch, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Paul Elias Alexander

The time has come to terminate the pandemic state of emergency. It is time to end the controls, the closures, the restrictions, the plexiglass, the stickers, the exhortations, the panic-mongering, the distancing announcements, the ubiquitous commercials, the forced masking, the vaccine mandates.  

We don’t mean that the virus is gone – omicron is still spreading wildly, and the virus may circulate forever.  But with a normal focus on protecting the vulnerable, we can treat the virus as a medical rather than a social matter and manage it in ordinary ways. A declared emergency needs continuous justification, and that is now lacking.

Over the last six weeks in the US, the delta variant strain – the most recent aggressive version of the infection – has according to CDC been declining in both the proportion of infections (60% on December 18 to 0.5% on January 15) and the number of daily infected people (95,000 to 2,100). During the next two weeks, delta will decline to the point that it essentially disappears like the strains before it.

Omicron is mild enough that most people, even many high-risk people, can adequately cope with the infection. Omicron infection is no more severe than seasonal flu, and generally less so. A large portion of the vulnerable population in the developed world is already vaccinated and protected against severe disease. We have learned much about the utility of inexpensive supplements like Vitamin D to reduce disease risk, and there is a host of good therapeutics available to prevent hospitalization and death should a vulnerable patient become infected. And for younger people, the risk of severe disease – already low before omicron – is minuscule.

David Ramsey:

When we digitize historical maps we create copies that can be shared and used by all. But we also create the potential to repurpose these copies to advance understanding of the original maps. To do this, we create composite maps, georeferenced maps, composite views, interactive globes, composite texts and other types of digital versions that expand map interpretation and enhance use. Below are some examples of these interpretive maps that we have created over the past 20 years. To date we have created 1,674 interpretive composite maps, views, and texts as well as over 56,000 georeferenced maps.
Click on any of the images below to view the interactive online version.

The 1914 Atlas of Egypt shows the entire Nile River in 165 sheets at a large scale of 1:50,000. We combined all 165 sheets, georeferenced them, and overlaid them on modern maps below to show changes.

Alfred Aho, Jeffrey Ullman:

Computational thinking, which centers around devising abstractions for problems so they can be solved with computational steps and efficient algorithms, is a concept that serves not only computer science (CS) but progressively more of science and everyday life. After Jeannette Wing published her influential paper on computational thinking,⁵⁰ the discussion of computational thinking has greatly expanded in scale to include topics such as modeling natural processes as information processing.¹⁸

At the heart of computational thinking is abstraction, the primary subject of this essay. While abstractions have always been an essential part of computer science, the modern emphasis on computational thinking highlights their importance when teaching CS to a broad audience. 

Abstractions play an important role in shaping virtually every field of science. However, in computer science, abstractions are not tethered to a physical reality, so we find useful abstractions pervading the field. For example, we shall encounter in Section 4 a vital abstraction from physics: quantum mechanics. There is a derived computing abstraction called quantum circuits, which starts with the physical ideas, but has led to programming languages for its simulation, to theoretical algorithms that exploit its unique capabilities and that one day may be implemented on a large-scale machine.

Every abstraction in computer science consists of the following:

Chris Buckley Vivian Wang Keith Bradsher:

The police had warned Xie Yang, a human rights lawyer, not to go to Shanghai to visit the mother of a dissident. He went to the airport anyway.

His phone’s health code app — a digital pass indicating possible exposure to the coronavirus — was green, which meant he could travel. His home city, Changsha, had no Covid-19 cases, and he had not left in weeks.

Then his app turned red, flagging him as high risk. Airport security tried to put him in quarantine, but he resisted. Mr. Xie accused the authorities of meddling with his health code to bar him from traveling.

Chris Buckley Vivian Wang Keith Bradsher:

The police had warned Xie Yang, a human rights lawyer, not to go to Shanghai to visit the mother of a dissident. He went to the airport anyway.

His phone’s health code app — a digital pass indicating possible exposure to the coronavirus — was green, which meant he could travel. His home city, Changsha, had no Covid-19 cases, and he had not left in weeks.

Then his app turned red, flagging him as high risk. Airport security tried to put him in quarantine, but he resisted. Mr. Xie accused the authorities of meddling with his health code to bar him from traveling.

Emily Bobrow:

Growing up in Chicago, Pano Kanelos was expected to take over his parents’ Greek diner someday. But he loved books—he used to read in a booth at the back of the restaurant—and decided to go to college so he could keep reading. He chose Northwestern University in part because it was the only campus he had ever seen: No one in his family had gone to college. “I had no idea what to expect,” he recalls. 

The experience, Mr. Kanelos says, was “transformational.” Instead of running a restaurant he pursued a career in higher education. Last summer he resigned as the president of St. John’s College, a small liberal-arts school in Annapolis, Md., to take on his biggest challenge yet: helping to create the new University of Austin in Texas (UATX) as its first president. The plan, Mr. Kanelos explains, is to offer the kind of affordable, intellectually rigorous, ideologically heterodox experience that was available when he was a student in the late 1980s, but which he believes is increasingly rare in higher education today.

John McWhorter:

I don’t want an admissions officer to consider the obstacles my children have faced, because in 2022, as opposed to in 1972, they really face no more or less than their white peers do.

I don’t want that admissions officer to consider that, perhaps here and there, someone, somewhere, underestimated them because both of their parents aren’t white. In the 2020s, that will have happened so seldom to them, as upper-middle-class persons living amid America’s most racially enlightened Blue American white people, that I’m quite sure it will not imprint them existentially any more than it did me, coming of age in the 1970s and 1980s.

I don’t want the admissions officer to consider my children’s “diversity.” For one thing, their diversity from the other kids in their neighborhoods, classrooms and lives is something of an abstraction. They wear clothes from Old Navy, watch (and rewatch) “Frozen” and “Encanto,” and play a lot of Roblox, just like their peers. And I will never forget a line from a guidebook that Black students at Harvard wrote two decades ago: “We are not here to provide diversity training for Kate and Timmy.” Yep — and if we salute the enterprising undergrads who wrote that, we must question the general thrust of the sundry amicus briefs that will be offered in the Harvard and U.N.C. cases, about how kids of color are vital to a campus because of their diversity, echoing the statement of Harvard’s president, just this week, that “Considering race as one factor among many in admissions decisions produces a more diverse student body which strengthens the learning environment for all.”

“Diversity” has become one of those terms (and ideas) that makes us feel cozy inside, like freshly baked blueberry muffins and “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” But how would you feel about looking a Black undergraduate in the eye and saying, “A lot of the reason we wanted you here, on our campus, is your differences from most of the other students and the life lessons they can learn from them”? Someone says, “I want my kids to interact with Black students before they go out into the world.” I ask, “Just what was it about Black people that you were hoping your kids would learn?”

Russ Mitchell:

Waymo, the driverless car company operating an autonomous taxi fleet in San Francisco, is suing the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The immediate issue: whether the company, owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc., can hide from the public safety-related information by designating it as a trade secret. 

The topics Waymo wants to keep hidden include how it plans to handle driverless car emergencies, what it would do if a robot taxi started driving itself where it wasn’t supposed to go, and what constraints there are on the car’s ability to traverse San Francisco’s tunnels, tight curves and steep hills. Waymo also wants to keep secret descriptions of crashes involving its driverless cars.

That’s among the information the DMV requires to determine whether to issue permits to deploy robot vehicles on public roads.

The permit was issued last year. Waymo is focusing on San Francisco, where, for the time being, its robotaxis operate under the supervision of trained human drivers. 

The wider issue: how to handle the explosion in trade secret claims in an age of artificial intelligence, robot technology, the internet of things and pervasive data collection.

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court on Jan. 21, contends that Waymo would lose out against other driverless car companies if full permit information were shared with the public.

Martin Rees:

I sometimes worry that many who would enjoy a scientific career are put off by a narrow and outdated conception of what’s involved. The word “scientist” still conjures up an unworldly image of an Einstein lookalike (male and elderly) or else a youthful geek. There’s still too little racial and gender diversity among scientists. But there’s a huge variety in the intellectual and social styles of work the sciences involve. They require speculative theorists, lone experimenters, ecologists gaining data in the field, and quasi-industrial teams working on giant particle accelerators or big space projects.

Scientists are widely believed to think in a special way—to follow what’s called the “scientific method.” It would be truer to say scientists follow the same rational style of reasoning as lawyers or detectives in categorizing phenomena, forming hypotheses, and testing evidence. A related and damaging misperception is the mindset that supposes that there’s something elite about the quality of scientists’ thought and they have to be especially clever. Academic ability is one facet of the far wider concept of intellectual ability—possessed in equal measure by the best journalists, lawyers, engineers, and politicians.

Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E.:

As state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs expand, it is critical to investigate their short- and long-term effects. This article presents the results through sixth grade of a longitudinal randomized control study of the effects of a scaled-up, state-supported pre-K program. The analytic sample includes 2,990 children from low-income families who applied to oversubscribed pre-K program sites across the state and were randomly assigned to offers of admission or a wait list control. Data through sixth grade from state education records showed that the children randomly assigned to attend pre-K had lower state achievement test scores in third through sixth grades than control children, with the strongest negative effects in sixth grade. A negative effect was also found for disciplinary infractions, attendance, and receipt of special education services, with null effects on retention. The implications of these findings for pre-K policies and practices are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Get Access

Maria Chikina and Wesley Pegden

Hiding infections in the future is not the same as avoiding them

A keen figure-reader will notice something peculiar in Kristof’s figure. At the tail end of his “Social distancing for 2 months” scenario, there is an intriguing rise in the number of infections (could it be exponential?), right before the figure ends. That’s because of an inevitable feature of realistic models of epidemics; once transmission rates return to normal, the epidemic will proceed largely as it would have without mitigations, unless a significant fraction of the population is immune (either because they have recovered from the infection or because an effective vaccine has been developed), or the infectious agent has been completely eliminated, without risk of reintroduction. In the case of the model presented in Kristof’s article, assumptions about seasonality of the virus combined with the longer mitigation period simply push the epidemic outside the window they consider.

For example, in our work studying the possible effects of heterogeneous measures, we presented examples of epidemic trajectories for COVID-19 assuming no mitigations at all, or assuming extreme mitigations which are gradually lifted at 6 months, to resume normal levels at 1 year.With no mitigations we see nearly 500,000 deaths relatively quickly.With mitigations which let up between 6 months and a year we still see nearly 500,000 deaths, just later.

Unfortunately, extreme mitigation efforts which end (even gradually) reduce the number of deaths only by 1% or so; as the mitigation efforts let up, we still see a full-scale epidemic, since almost none of the population has developed immunity to the virus.

In the case of Kristof’s article, the epidemic model being employed is actually implemented in Javascript, and run — live — in a users web browser. This means that it is actually possible to hack their model to run past the end of October. In particular, we can look into the future, and see what happens in their model after October, assuming mitigations continue for 2 months. In particular, instead of the right-hand figure here:

Jing Tsu:

It was 1968, two years into the Cultural Revolution. Shanghai was in the middle of an unseasonal heat wave, and its people cursed the “autumn tiger.” Zhi Bingyi had more to worry about than the heat. He had been branded a “reactionary academic authority,” one of the many damning allegations that sent millions of people to their deaths or to labor camps during the Cultural Revolution. Was it still appropriate for Zhi to think of himself as one of the people? Hadn’t he betrayed them, as he’d been told?

Just four years earlier, Zhi had gone to work every day as director of the newly established Shanghai Municipal Electric Instrument and Research Office under the government’s First Ministry of Machinery Industry. It was one of the most secure jobs one could have. First Ministry was in charge of building heavy industrial machines in the early period of New China, and later split off a Fourth Ministry to oversee electronic communications technology. Zhi’s specialty was electric metering—focusing on precision meters and electronic modeling by enhancing the performance of a device’s various parts.

Quiet, cautious, and insistent, Zhi was also highly qualified. He earned a PhD in physics from Leipzig University but declined a job offer in the United States in order to return to China. He taught at two Chinese universities and later helped to devise China’s landmark 12-year Plan for the Development of Science and Technology of 1956. It was a hopeful time for scientists and technicians who were deemed useful for their contributing roles in a state-guided socialist economy.

Since his arrest in July 1968 for being a “reactionary academic authority,” Zhi had been cut off from his research, the news, and his devoted German wife. He was used to working on equations and engineering problems with teams of colleagues. No longer. His only company was the eight characters on the wall of his cell reminding him that prisoners faced two options from their minders: “Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse.”

Christopher Ingraham:

But in 2021 that all changed. The very-happies plummeted from 31 percent of the population in 2018 down to 19, while the not-too-happies surged by a nearly identical amount, from 13 to 24 percent. The balance is made up by the pretty-happies at around 57 percent, who I omitted from the chart because their numbers didn’t change from 2018 to 2021.

For the first time in polling history, in other words, Americans are more likely to say they’re not happy than to say they’re very happy. The obvious driver of this is the pandemic. In 2021 happiness took a major hit across the board — Democrats and Republicans, men and women, rich and poor, healthy and unhealthy people — all reported a decline in the quality of their life.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Rod Dreher & Bo Winegard

When I first began hearing that emigres from Communist countries see America inching towards totalitarianism, I didn’t take it seriously. Totalitarianism was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the state controlled everyone through the infliction of pain and terror. Whatever our problems in America, we don’t have that, or anything close to it.It turns out that my definition of totalitarianism, formed during my Cold War youth, was too narrow. Orwell gave us one totalitarian model, based on the Soviet reality. Aldous Huxley gave us a rival version in his novel Brave New World. Huxley’s totalitarian state controlled the masses not through pain and terror, but by manipulating their pleasure and comfort. The people of Brave New World were happy to surrender their political liberties in exchange for guarantees of sex, drugs, and entertainment. This “pink police state” is the form of totalitarianism coming to the United States. “Totalitarianism” is a term coined by Mussolini to describe a society in which the state controls all aspects of life. He defined it like this: “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Under authoritarianism, a single party or leader monopolizes all political power, but leaves it at that. Totalitarianism also monopolizes political power, but regards everything as political. And, as Orwell wrote, totalitarians not only want you to obey Big Brother, but to love him as well. Huxley gives us a society that is totally controlled through technology, and by convincing people to love their slavery. They have the drug soma to keep them blissed out, and all the sex and bodily comforts they desire. When John the Savage, a non-conformist who lives in the wild, confronts Mustapha Mond, one of the World Controllers, Mond has no intention of torturing him into submission, as Orwell’s O’Brien does to Winston Smith. Rather, Mond can’t understand why the Savage would refuse to live in a society that offers “Christianity without tears” — life in heaven without having to die.

American Federation of teachers:

Notwithstanding the considerable difficulties of the pandemic, public school parents express high levels of satisfaction with the schools serving their children and say that public schools are helping their children achieve their full potential.
• More than seven in 10 public school parents give a high performance rating to their children’s schools. Fully 72% of parents say that the public school(s) their children attend provide them with an excellent or good quality education. In contrast, just 7% feel that the education received by their children is not so good or poor (another 21% say “adequate”). Parents across the demographic spectrum give high marks to their public schools, including Black parents (70% excellent or good), Hispanic parents (67%), and parents in cities (75%).
• Parents are overwhelmingly satisfied with the job public schools are doing to help their children achieve their potential. Four in five (79%) parents are satisfied with their children’s public schools when it comes to helping their child or children achieve their full potential, while only 21% report feeling dissatisfied. This widespread satisfaction includes 83% of parents in cities, 81% of Black parents, 73% of Hispanic parents, and 81% of younger parents (under age 40).

2. Parents give very high performance ratings to their children’s teachers, recognize the challenges facing teachers during the pandemic, and appreciate the extra efforts that teachers are making to help their children.
   • A remarkable 78% of parents feel that the quality and performance of their children’s teachers is excellent or good. This positive rating is seven points higher than the last time we asked this question of a national sample of parents (71% in 2013). Teachers receive high marks from parents in cities (84%), Black parents (72%), Hispanic parents (75%), and younger parents (79%).
   • Parents feel overwhelmingly that teaching during the pandemic has been a hard job (79%), not an easy one (21%).
   • Eighty percent (80%) say that their children’s teachers have …

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

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 elementary schools last April and didn’t return to full-time in-person learning for all K-12 until fall 2021.

Board President López claimed the long delays didn’t cause any learning loss because children were “just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” and they learned more “about their families and cultures by staying home.” Her tone-deaf comments angered many parents, who have witnessed their kids’ academic and emotional struggles at home due to the school closures.

The school district has experienced such a sharp decline in student enrollment during its long closure that it had to implement a steep cut this school year to fill a budget hole of $125 million.
Social Justice at the Expense of Education

Second, the school board focused on leftist politics rather than education. In 2019, the board voted to cover a mural depicting slavery and Native Americans at George Washington High School, a decision that would cost taxpayers between $600,000 to $1 million. Fortunately, the mural will stay after a San Francisco Superior Court judge overturned the school board’s decision last year.

In January 2021, rather than focusing on reopening schools, the board voted to rename 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools. Even Democrat Mayor London Breed expressed her disbelief in a statement, saying, “I can’t understand why the school board is advancing a plan to rename all these schools when there isn’t a plan to have kids back in those physical schools.”

Kayla Huynh

“If we are a truly great nation, how could the truth destroy us? Why would we have to hide from it?” she asked. “Great people acknowledge what they’ve done, and then they work to fix it. What will destroy us are the lies that we maintain.” 

“I’m just one 5-foot-5 journalist,” she added, “yet some of the most powerful people in the nation — from the former president to sitting senators to state governors — have sought to discredit this work.” 

She denounced those unwilling to “fight for the policies and laws that Dr. King gave his life securing,” saying they have no right to determine how to best honor his legacy. Hannah-Jones also warned that U.S. democracy is on the brink of being destroyed. 

“We cannot be here talking about dreams and service and singing kumbaya,” she said. “We are in danger of losing the very democracy that Dr. King gave his life for.” 

While Hannah-Jones acknowledged that King did long for a day when his children would be judged by their character, he also understood this could not come without a “radical restructuring of our society.” 

“The real Dr. King,” she said, “did not pretend that hoping for a colorblind society one day meant ignoring the racial caste system that exists right now.” 

Hannah-Jones ended her remarks by reminding the crowd it takes action to make change.

“Dr. King did not sit around and hope for a better day,” she said. “He was determined to bring that day about. He took action.” 

“He put himself on the line,” she added. “He did what was not popular but what was right; what was not easy; what was not safe; what was not practical, and really what was not sane — because he lost his life for it.” 

She told the crowd it’s not enough simply to hope.

“We must act,” she said. “We have more power than we believe that we do, and we squander it in this moment. Our democracy is on the brink.”

Jackson Walker:

“The speaker was paid $55,000, consistent with past speakers for this event, from private funding sources; no public funds were used,” spokesperson Meredith McGlone told The College Fix via email.

The public university’s Student Affairs and its diversity office hosted the event in the student union. People who want to watch her speech again will have trouble doing so due to press and recording restrictions.

“Sharing or recording of the broadcast is strictly prohibited,” the university said in an email to participants. The only way to watch the $55,000 speech was to attend in person or watch the livestream.

Hannah-Jones is the author of the “1619 Project,” a widely criticized New York Timesinitiative which claimed the first American settlers wanted a new country to protect slavery. Hannah-Jones has also said that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. The project has warranted criticism from Republican lawmakers who see the teaching of it in schools as divisive.

The symposium began with a performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song acknowledged by the event’s presenters as the “Black National Anthem.”

Pomax:

In order to draw things in 2D, we usually rely on lines, which typically get classified into two categories: straight lines, and curves. The first of these are as easy to draw as they are easy to make a computer draw. Give a computer the first and last point in the line, and BAM! straight line. No questions asked.

Curves, however, are a much bigger problem. While we can draw curves with ridiculous ease freehand, computers are a bit handicapped in that they can’t draw curves unless there is a mathematical function that describes how it should be drawn. In fact, they even need this for straight lines, but the function is ridiculously easy, so we tend to ignore that as far as computers are concerned; all lines are “functions”, regardless of whether they’re straight or curves. However, that does mean that we need to come up with fast-to-compute functions that lead to nice looking curves on a computer. There are a number of these, and in this article we’ll focus on a particular function that has received quite a bit of attention and is used in pretty much anything that can draw curves: Bézier curves.

They’re named after Pierre Bézier, who is principally responsible for making them known to the world as a curve well-suited for design work (publishing his investigations in 1962 while working for Renault), although he was not the first, or only one, to “invent” these type of curves. One might be tempted to say that the mathematician Paul de Casteljauwas first, as he began investigating the nature of these curves in 1959 while working at Citroën, and came up with a really elegant way of figuring out how to draw them. However, de Casteljau did not publish his work, making the question “who was first” hard to answer in any absolute sense. Or is it? Bézier curves are, at their core, “Bernstein polynomials”, a family of mathematical functions investigated by Sergei Natanovich Bernstein, whose publications on them date back at least as far as 1912.

Jeremy Hainsworth:

A global ‘mass surveillance’ company ordered by B.C.’s privacy watchdog to stop collecting British Columbians’ images is challenging that order in B.C. Supreme Court.

Clearview AI claims B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act does not apply to the company as it is physically located in the United States. It calls the orders unreasonable and unenforceable.

In December, Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) Michael McEvoy ordered the facial recognition company to stop collecting, using and disclosing images of British Columbians without consent.

The order was initially a set of February recommendations that the company has refused to comply with, McEvoy’s office said.

The Quebec and Alberta commissioners issued similar orders. They found the New York-based company violated federal and provincial privacy laws.

The recommendations followed a joint investigation report by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta.

“What Clearview does is mass surveillance, and it is illegal,” Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien said at the time. “It is completely unacceptable for millions of people who will never be implicated in any crime to find themselves continually in a police line-up.”

The commissioners found Clearview scraped images of faces and associated data from publicly accessible online sources (including social media) and stored it in its database.

Ann Althouse:

[H]e began looking at the public social media pages of members of Madison’s Police Civilian Oversight Board [and found]… “29 separate instances of biased, defamatory statements — occasionally containing obscene language — impugning my race, gender and former profession, among the social media accounts of seven out of the 11 voting members in charge of hiring for this position,” he says….

Samantha West:

The board of the newly-branded Memphis-Shelby County School District on Tuesday endorsed a sweeping facilities plan that includes closing two schools, merging another two schools, and relocating several schools and programs, among other changes. 

District officials said many of the changes are designed to better use schools with declining enrollment, address overcrowding at other schools, and move students out of buildings with millions of dollars in deferred maintenance.

The board agreed Tuesday night to close Alton and Shady Grove elementary schools after this school year. Alton students will instead attend A.B. Hill Elementary, and Shady Grove students will attend either Dexter K-8 School or White Station Elementary.

Dexter elementary and middle schools will merge to form Dexter K-8 School, and Mt. Pisgah Middle School will expand to include ninth grade.

In addition, three schools will relocate: 

Paul Matzko:

President John F. Kennedy launched the most successful censorship campaign of the past half century. Its target was the Radio Right, an informal network of conservative broadcasters who reached millions of listeners across the country by the early 1960s. With Kennedy’s encouragement, the Internal Revenue Service audited conservative broadcasters to impair their ability to raise money while the Federal Communications Commission discouraged radio stations from airing their programs. The success of the counter–Radio Right campaign contradicts postrevisionist interpretations of Kennedy as a president who grew toward greatness while in office.

Mike Dubrasich

Once upon a time there was a taxonomy war waged between two armed camps: the Lumpers and the Splitters. That war is history now, long over. The Splitters won and the Lumpers lost, big time.

For the uninitiated, Lumpers were the taxonomists who believed most animals and plants should be classified as members of a few well-defined species. They lost. The victorious Splitters are those who believe every individual organism is a species unto itself.

At first glance, it’s difficult to see how mild mannered, obsequious and bespectacled academics puttering around labs and peering into dissection scopes could be accused of warfare. The assertion seems a trifle hyperbolic for mixed company. But it was a war, with territorial conquest, mass destruction, casualties of combatants and non-combatants alike, and plenty of collateral damage.

One of the bloodiest battles was over a common rodent. The Jumping Mouse (Zapus hudsonius) is a cute little furball distinguished by a long tapering tail, large hind feet, small front feet, and a propensity to hop erratically through the grass when disturbed. Sometimes called a kangaroo mouse, Z. hudsonius is native and common to Asia and North America, found from the Atlantic coast to the Great Plains, in the Southwest, in the Pacific Northwest, and northward to the arctic tree-line of Alaska and Canada, frequenting hayfields and wheat farms as well as native grasslands. Billions of the little critters live in perfect harmony with graziers and agriculturalists across two continents. They have the widest known distribution of mice in the subfamily Zapodinae.

That was before the Splitters weaponized the cowering wee beasties. Today there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of “recognized” species, sub-species, sub-subs, and Distinct Population Segments (DPS’s), including but not limited to:  Z. trinotatus orarius, Z. burti, Z. hudsonicus, Z. hudsonicus acadicus,· Z. hudsonius (Jumping Mouse), Z. hudsonius acadicus, Z. hudsonius alascensis (Alaska Jumping Mouse), Z. hudsonius alscensis, Z. hudsonius americanus, Z. hudsonius campestris, Z. hudsonius canadensis, Z. hudsonius hardyi, Z. hudsonius hodsonius, Z. hudsonius intermedius, Z. hudsonius ladas, Z. hudsonius luteus (Meadow Jumping Mouse), Z. hudsonius pallidus, Z. hudsonius preblei (Preble’s Meadow Jumping Mouse), Z. hudsonius tenellus, Z. insignis, Z. orarius, Z. princeps (Pacific Jumping Mouse), Z. princeps chrysogenys, Z. princeps cinereus, Z. princeps curtatus, Z. princeps idahoensis, Z. princeps kootenayensis, Z. princeps kootenayonsis, Z. princeps kootnayensis, Z. princeps luteus, Z. princeps major, Z. princeps minor, Z. princeps oreganus, Z. princeps oregonus (Big Jumping Mouse),  Z. princeps pacificus, Z. princeps palatinus, and  Z. princeps princeps (Western Jumping Mouse).

Is there any significant difference between these subspecies? Short answer: no. Dr. Matthew Cronin, PhD., Professor of Animal Genetics, Univ. Alaska Fairbanks, wrote in Cronin, M. A. 2007. The Preble’s meadow jumping mouse: subjective subspecies, advocacy and management. Correspondence, Animal Conservation 10 (2007) 159–161:

Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj

Last year, in an interview with the New York Times, anthropologist Heidi Larson, founder of the Vaccine Confidence Project, said that efforts to silence people who doubt the efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines won’t get us very far. 

“If you shut down Facebook tomorrow,” she said, “it’s not going to make this go away. It’ll just move.” Public health solutions, then, would have to come from a different approach. “We don’t have a misinformation problem,” Larson said. “We have a trust problem.” 

This point rings true to us. That’s why, as we face growing pressure to censor content published on Substack that to some seems dubious or objectionable, our answer remains the same: we make decisions based on principles not PR, we will defend free expression, and we will stick to our hands-off approach to content moderation. While we have content guidelines that allow us to protect the platform at the extremes, we will always view censorship as a last resort, because we believe open discourse is better for writers and better for society. 

This position has some uncomfortable consequences. It means we allow writers to publish what they want and readers to decide for themselves what to read, even when that content is wrong or offensive, and even when it means putting up with the presence of writers with whom we strongly disagree. But we believe this approach is a necessary precondition for building trust in the information ecosystem as a whole. The more that powerful institutions attempt to control what can and cannot be said in public, the more people there will be who are ready to create alternative narratives about what’s “true,” spurred by a belief that there’s a conspiracy to suppress important information. When you look at the data, it is clear that these effects are already in full force in society.

Wall Street Journal:

At his first big political rally of 2022, President Trump was again focused on 2020. “We had a rigged election, and the proof is all over the place,” he said. Mr. Trump was apparently too busy over Christmas to read a 136-page report by a conservative group in Wisconsin, whose review shows “no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

If curious Republicans want to know what really happened in 2020, this is the best summation to date. Released Dec. 7, it was written by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), a policy shop with conservative bona fides that supported many of Mr. Trump’s policies. A Wisconsin judge this month said ballot dropboxes are illegal under state law, in a challenge brought by WILL.

Its report on 2020 wallops state officials for bending election rules amid the pandemic. That mistake put ballots into legal doubt, due to no fault of the voter, while fueling skepticism. Yet the stolen-election theory doesn’t hold up. President Biden won Wisconsin by 20,682, and mass fraud “would likely have resulted in some discernible anomaly,” WILL says. “In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump. ” Here are some highlights:

***

• Only 14.7% of Wisconsin jurisdictions used Dominion voting machines. Mr. Trump won 57.2% of their ballots, up from 55.7% in 2016.

• In Milwaukee, the number of absentee votes tallied on election night is “consistent with what was reported to be outstanding.” Mr. Biden’s share, 85.7%, is plausible. The raw vote total in Milwaukee County was up only 4.4% from 2016, lower than the average rise of 10.2%. “Put simply, there was no unexplained ‘ballot dump.’”

• WILL’s hand recount of 20,000 votes from 20 wards, including in Milwaukee, found “no evidence of fraudulent ballots.” It did show “a significant number of voters who voted for Biden and a Republican for Congress.” In wards of suburban Mequon, to pick one, 10.5% of Biden ballots went for GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman.

• In 2020 only 0.2% of Wisconsin’s absentee ballots were rejected, a steep drop from 1.35% in 2016. This, however, was a nationwide trend, aided in part by dropboxes. Also, WILL says, “rejection rates were actually slightly higher in areas of the state that voted for Biden.”

• The state told clerks to correct incomplete witness addresses. Not every jurisdiction did so, and some didn’t track such fixes. WILL reviewed 29,000 ballot certificates in 29 wards. The “vast majority” of problem ballots “were simply missing a portion of the second address line, such as a city, state or ZIP Code.” State law doesn’t define how much “address” is required, so these ballots probably were valid regardless.

• The number of “indefinitely confined” voters, who are exempt from photo-ID rules, rose 199,000. Yet the election proceeded, WILL says, with “no clear statement” on whether fear of Covid could qualify as home bound. County data suggest no link between confinement rates and partisan lean. WILL polled 700 random confined voters, turning up little. Fraud here would be “risky,” it says, since real ballots by impersonated voters would then be flagged. Wisconsin has identified only four double votes.

• The state used dropboxes, which are legally disputed, and WILL says many clerks didn’t sufficiently log chain of custody. Its statistical analysis estimates that dropboxes maybe raised Mr. Biden’s turnout by 20,736. But WILL “does not claim” that such people “were ineligible voters or should have had their votes rejected.”

• A nonprofit tied to Mark Zuckerberg gave $10 million to help Wisconsin elections, mostly in five cities, a skewed distribution that WILL finds “troubling.” A statistical analysis suggests it maybe lifted Mr. Biden’s turnout by 8,000.

Commentary.

Molly Beck:

Republican lawmakers plan to propose a sweeping package of legislation to overhaul K-12 education in Wisconsin that would break up the state’s largest school district within two years and expand private-school vouchers to every student, regardless of family income.

The proposal is part of a package that expands taxpayer-funded alternatives to public schools, including increasing the number of charter schools and giving parents money to pay for additional learning opportunities outside of the normal school day, including college courses.

“These bills are in response to a number of issues parents and children are seeing as COVID-19 and failed school leadership are eliminating educational opportunities in our schools,” Senate Education Committee chairwoman Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said in an email to colleagues on Friday with summaries of each bill.

The new plan for Milwaukee public school students would be created by a commission consisting of the governor and the mayor of Milwaukee, both of whom would make two appointments each to the commission, and the state superintendent of public instruction, according to Darling’s summary of the expected legislation.

LEAKED: new documents coming in hot from multiple teachers at Madison, Wis. School District, fed up with new direction. Adoption of BLM curriculum to destroy and disrupt the nuclear family pic.twitter.com/i3rsG7Rwne

— Dan Lennington (@DanLennington) January 29, 2022

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Prof Ornery:

For some reason the question of “do parents have a right to know what their kids are being taught?” is highly contentious. It shouldn’t be. It should be a given no matter the political leanings of anybody that parents ALWAYS have a right to know what their children are being taught. 

Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s election largely because Terry McAuliffe said that parents have no right to know what’s taught in schools. This idea that children need to be removed from their parents and “educated” while parents are kept in the dark is totalitarian in the extreme. What McAuliffe, the teacher who said that children need to be educated so they don’t grow up to be like their parents, and the board of ed member in Pennsylvania, and many others, all believe is that children, once of age to go to school, no longer belong to their parents. They become the responsibility of the state at that point.

Of course, all of those spouting this theory (however they explain it) exclude their own children from the equation. I’m confident that if you asked the teacher who said that she wants to make sure kids don’t grow up to be like their parents would vociferously argue with you if you included her kids in that group. She, of course, is well-qualified to raise her children. She’s a teacher after all.

Education is a key factor in molding children to accept society’s norms and rules of interaction. It is such a big key to socialization that the left has been steadily working to control it for decades. They have largely succeeded at this point, at least in public schools and many private schools as well. 

One of the only silver linings of the Wuflu panic and shutdowns was that parents were in the same room with their kids during school hours for the first time. And for the first time many parents got a front-row view of what exactly is passing for education these days. There is so little focus on the fundamentals that most colleges and universities run freshmen through a series of remedial classes (they aren’t called that. Oh, no. These classes are labeled as freshman gen ed requirements.) before they are loosed into the general university population.

Paul Caron:

• Bellamy-Walker (NBC News), Penn Law to Sanction Professor Who Said U.S. ‘Better Off’ With Fewer Asians
• Christine Charnosky (Law.com), Amy Wax, Academic Freedom and Accountability
• Christine Charnosky (Law.com), ‘Her Detractors Do Not Have to Invite Her to Dinner!’: Pursuit of Sanctions Against Penn Law Prof Amy Wax Proves Divisive
• Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn Law to Begin Sanctions Process Against Amy Wax, Citing ‘Increasing’ Promotion of White Supremacy
• Joe Patrice (Above the Law), The Amy Wax Case Has Nothing To Do With Academic Freedom
• Greg Piper (Just the News), Politically Incorrect Professor Faces Firing After Lawmakers Show Up on Law School’s Doorstep

Carol Seidl:

This spring will mark the 3-year anniversary of the devastating fire that destroyed the roof of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. A day after the inferno, President Emmanuel Macron announced to the world that within 5 years France would “rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral, more beautiful than ever”. Since then, the ambitious project has run into a series of setbacks and unforeseen sidetracks. In addition to raising the money needed to rebuild, organizers have employed hundreds of scientists, historical experts, and tradesmen to secure the site and put a restoration plan in place. In December, France’s National Heritage and Architecture Commission gave the green light for most of the proposed renovations. Now the process of recreating a new Notre Dame, which imitates the old, is in full swing, with a goal of opening to the public on April 16, 2024.

Marguerite Roza:

This is a scenario we all know well: Responding to a crisis, the federal government quickly doles out sizable sums of relief dollars for schools with confusing rules about how education leaders can use it.

Here’s the part that’s maybe not so familiar: The federal government then discredits, prosecutes and imprisons an education leader for what amounts to a procedural error in spending the money, an error that (by the way) yields the leader no personal gain.

This is not a made-up scenario. It happened to Julia Keleher.

It’s a scenario that could have a chilling effect on district and state education leaders across the nation who are right now tasked with moving quickly to deploy federal relief funds.

Today’s crisis is the Covid-19 pandemic, and the $190 billion in federal pandemic relief money sent to states and districts is the closest thing to a blank check we’ve seen. Clearly there’s no playbook for this moment, and successive waves of U.S. Department of Education guidance have left many leaders unclear about how they’re allowed to spend the money.

Flash back to 2017, and the crisis was Puerto Rico, decimated from Hurricane Maria and facing a deepening financial predicament. With many of its historically low-performing schools in disrepair, and massive enrollment declines as families fled the island, the education system was in bad shape. The federal government sent nearly $500 million to rebuild schools and revamp the education system. Puerto Rico’s then-Secretary of Education, Julia Keleher, signed contracts to tackle the most immediate challenges quickly, including repairing buildings and working to resume and improve learning for the island’s remaining students as quickly as possible.

Colleen Hroncich:

“One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to education.” This is a phrase that education-choice advocates have voiced for years to explain why families need options. But it’s never been truer than today while dealing with Covid-19.

Before Christmas break, many Pennsylvania school districts had considered moving to remote instructiondue to concerns about the Omicron variant. Some teachers – especially in Philadelphia – called for returning to remote instruction following the holidays.

A large spike in school closures occurred nationwide in early January, according to Burbio’s K-12 School Opening Tracker. In Pennsylvania, however, most districts have continued to operate in-person. Still, schools throughout the state have closed at least some days this month, with the largest cluster in Greater Philadelphia.

Some families felt a sense of relief when their schools announced closures and a transition to remote instruction. This was especially true for households with higher-risk family members. For example, one mother, who was scheduled to have breast cancer surgery, expressed her concern to the New York Times that her procedure would be delayed if she contracted Covid. Others, meanwhile, fear their children getting Covid despite the low statistical risk of severe infection. Regardless of their reasons, these parents should be free to choose a remote learning option for their children.

Margery Smelkinson, Leslie Bienen, and Jeanne Noble

But in America about half of the country’s 53 million children remain compulsorily masked in school for the indefinite future. Sixteen U.S. states and the District of Columbia follow the CDC guidance closely and require masks for students of all ages, regardless of vaccination status; other states rely on a patchwork of policies, usually leaving decisions up to local school districts. (Nine states have banned school mask mandates, though in five of them, lawsuits have delayed implementation of the ban.) Many deep-blue areas such as Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; and New York City have gone beyond CDC guidance and are masking students outdoors at recess, in part because of byzantine rules that require an unmasked “exposed” student to miss multiple days of school, even if the putative exposure is outside.

Read: The CDC’s flawed case for wearing masks in school

Many public-health experts maintain that masks worn correctly are essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, there’s reason to doubt that kids can pull off mask-wearing “correctly.” We reviewed a variety of studies—some conducted by the CDC itself, some cited by the CDC as evidence of masking effectiveness in a school setting, and others touted by media to the same end—to try to find evidence that would justify the CDC’s no-end-in-sight mask guidance for the very-low-risk pediatric population, particularly post-vaccination. We came up empty-handed.

To our knowledge, the CDC has performed three studies to determine whether masking children in school reduces COVID-19 transmission. The first is a study of elementary schools in Georgia, conducted before vaccines became available, which found that masking teachers was associated with a statistically significant decrease in COVID-19 transmission, but masking students was not—a finding that the CDC’s masking guidelines do not account for.

Ambika Kandasamy, Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke

This systematic review and meta-analysis are designed to determine whether there is empirical evidence to support the belief that “lockdowns” reduce COVID-19 mortality. Lockdowns are defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI). NPIs are any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel. This study employed a systematic search and screening procedure in which 18,590 studies are identified that could potentially address the belief posed. After three levels of screening, 34 studies ultimately qualified. Of those 34 eligible studies, 24 qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis. They were separated into three groups: lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place- order (SIPO) studies, and specific NPI studies. An analysis of each of these three groups support the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality. More specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.

Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Amanda St Hilaire:

“This reads to me like they’re trying to give her a payout,” one employee told FOX6. “She’ll be gone, but she’ll still get something out of it and the people who let it happen will get to go onto the next thing.”

Bowers’ resignation is tucked into Monday night’s personnel consent agenda for school board approval. The agenda does not indicate whether Bowers has a resignation agreement with the district that includes a payout.

In a phone call, superintendent Demond Means declined to answer questions about whether the district had a resignation agreement with Bowers, who is under contract until June 2023. When FOX6 emailed board members with questions about how a vote for a resignation agreement would work, a district spokesperson replied saying no “separate vote” is required.

More fun publisher surveillance:
Elsevier embeds a hash in the PDF metadata that is *unique for each time a PDF is downloaded*, this is a diff between metadata from two of the same paper. Combined with access timestamps, they can uniquely identify the source of any shared PDFs. pic.twitter.com/D9KxnXkMVu

— 𝚓𝚘𝚗𝚗𝚢﹏𝚜𝚊𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚜 (@json_dirs) January 25, 2022

Max Stephens:

The BBC has purged mentions of disgraced stars Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris along with a number of racist and misogynistic jokes used in several of its classic radio comedies.

An anonymous Radio 4 Extra listener discovered the BBC had been quietly editing repeats of shows over the past few years to be more in keeping with social mores, the Times reported.

Labelling them as “woke cuts,” the listener found edits had been made to old episodes of Dad’s Army, Steptoe and Son and I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again.

In some cases entire sketches had been removed.

For example, a repeat of a 1970 episode of I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again, starring John Cleese and Bill Oddie, had a joke about a scantily clad woman removed.

In the original broadcast, Cleese, impersonating a BBC spokesman, said: “We have noticed that it is possible to see right up to the girls’ knickers, owing to the shortness of their miniskirts, so we’ve asked the girls to drop them.”

Boardhawk:

The Denver school board last week introduced a draft policy that could limit the autonomy of innovation schools and zones — district-run schools that under state law have some charter-school-like autonomy.

The policy has been given the official title of Standard Teacher Rights and Protections. If passed, the rights and protections provided would be the same as those provided by the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, the local teachers’ union, to teachers in non-innovations schools.

According to the draft, those protections include but aren’t limited to a workload consistent with 40 hours per week, minimal duties outside of classroom teaching, a uniform school calendar and compensation ranking in the top three for neighboring school districts.

Since innovation schools operate under specifically designed waivers from both the collective bargaining agreement and district rules and regulations, removing the contract waivers could limit the schools’ ability to operate as they have in the past. The waivers have long been a sore point for the DCTA.

In some cases, the waivers allow innovation schools to offer students longer school days if needed and allow teachers to be resources to students outside regular class time.

Michael Powell:

Liberal politicians, school leaders and organizers argue such schools are bastions of elitism and, because of low enrollment of Black and Latino students, functionally racist and segregated. Sixty-three percent of the city’s public school students are Black and Latino yet they account for just 15 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s population.

For Asian students, the percentages are flipped: They make up 61 percent of Brooklyn Tech, although they account for 18 percent of the public school population.

Some critics imply that the presence of so many South and East Asian students, along with the white students, accentuates this injustice. Such charges reached a heated pitch a few years ago when a prominent white liberal council member said such schools were overdue for “a racial reckoning.”

Richard Carranza, who served as New York’s schools chancellor until last year, was more caustic. “I just don’t buy into the narrative,” he said, “that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools.”

But several dozen in-depth interviews with Asian and Black students at Brooklyn Tech paint a more complicated portrait and often defy the political characterizations put forth in New York and across the country. These students speak of personal journeys and struggles at a far remove from the assumptions that dominate the raging battles over the future of their schools.

Their critiques often proved searching; most Asian students spoke of wanting more Black and Latino classmates.

Fully 63 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s students are classified as economically disadvantaged. Census data shows that Asians have the lowest median income in the city and that a majority speak a language other than English at home.

The admissions debate reaches far beyond New York’s selective high schools.