Ed Stannard:

NEW HAVEN >> Yale University’s Calhoun College will be renamed to honor Grace Murray Hopper, a Yale alumna who was a “trailblazing computer scientist, brilliant mathematician and teacher, and dedicated public servant,” Yale President Peter Salovey announced Saturday.

The decision, made Friday by the 19-member Yale Corporation, reverses the trustees’ decision in April not to rename Calhoun, at the end of an academic year in which debates and discussions were held across campus.

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie::

If you ask Jill Price to remember any day of her life, she can come up with an answer in a heartbeat. What was she doing on 29 August 1980? “It was a Friday, I went to Palm Springs with my friends, twins, Nina and Michelle, and their family for Labour Day weekend,” she says. “And before we went to Palm Springs, we went to get them bikini waxes. They were screaming through the whole thing.” Price was 14 years and eight months old.

What about the third time she drove a car? “The third time I drove a car was January 10 1981. Saturday. Teen Auto. That’s where we used to get our driving lessons from.” She was 15 years and two weeks old.

The first time she heard the Rick Springfield song Jessie’s Girl? “March 7 1981.” She was driving in a car with her mother, who was yelling at her. She was 16 years and two months old.

Price was born on 30 December 1965 in New York City. Her first clear memories start from around the age of 18 months. Back then, she lived with her parents in an apartment across the street from Roosevelt Hospital in Midtown Manhattan. She remembers the screaming ambulances and traffic, how she used to love climbing on the living room couch and staring out of the window down 9th Avenue.

Erik Wemple:

Former Atlantic contributing editor* Marc Ambinder is showing appropriate contrition for having participated in some dubious journalistic practices back in July 2009. As exposed by some Freedom Of Information Act documents secured by J.K. Trotter of Gawker, Ambinder was pursuing a copy of the speech that then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to make at the Council on Foreign Relations. So he emailed renowned Clinton advocate and spokesperson Philippe Reines.

The back-and-forth confirms anyone’s worst suspicions about access journalism. The transaction went like this:

Ambinder asks for a copy of the speech;
Reines says he’ll send it, with conditions;
Ambinder writes back, “ok”;
Reines lays out the conditions:

1) You in your own voice describe them as “muscular”
2) You note that a look at the CFR seating plan shows that all the envoys — from Holbrooke to Mitchell to Ross — will be arrayed in front of her, which in your own clever way you can say certainly not a coincidence and meant to convey something
3) You don’t say you were blackmailed!

Ambinder writes, “got it.”

The story, it turns out, rated Clinton’s speech “muscular” and indeed made reference to the seating thing: “The staging gives a clue to its purpose: seated in front of Clinton, subordinate to Clinton, in the first row, will be three potentially rival power centers: envoys Richard Holbrooke and George Mitchell, and National Security Council senior director Dennis Ross,” wrote Ambinder, completing his compliance with Reines’s conditions.

Jenny Peek:

When it comes to selecting a leader of the public school system, Wisconsin is the only state in the country that calls on “qualified electors” to make the choice.

The state superintendent of public instruction, a position established by the Wisconsin constitution, lasts four years and is housed within the executive branch of state government. In most states, superintendents are appointed by a state school board or governor.

John Witte, UW-Madison professor emeritus of public affairs and political science, says while the post is meant to be nonpartisan, it has always toed the political line.

“Everybody knows which party they’re in and who is supporting them,” Witte says.

The superintendent runs the administrative apparatus of the state’s schools — across 424 school districts — overseeing teacher licensing, curriculum standards and student aid, and implementing educational programs, some of which are mandated by state law. The superintendent also sits on the Wisconsin Technical College System Board and the UW Board of Regents.

“Around the 1980s things began to change throughout the U.S., and they changed dramatically here in Wisconsin. Superintendents became much more proactive for education, and as the roles of the states increased, so did the roles of state superintendents,” says Witte, referring to state oversight of curriculum and testing standards. “The state superintendent is like a governor for the state school system.”

This spring, Wisconsinites will vote for the next school “governor.” The Feb. 21 primary includes three candidates on the ballot: incumbent Tony Evers; John Humphries, a school administration consultant; and Lowell Holtz, a retired district superintendent. Rick Melcher, who teaches math at Park High School in Racine, is running a write-in campaign. The two candidates with the most votes in the primary will face off in the April 4 general election.

Jessie Opoien:

Under Walker’s budget, teachers and school administrators would no longer have to renew their licenses every five years, which the governor’s office said would save faculty more than $750 over a 30-year career. Teachers could still be fired for misconduct and school districts would still be required to perform background checks.

“I’m not sure why the governor did it, I guess,” Fitzgerald said. “If he thinks it’s going to bring all the teachers back into the fold for the Republicans he’s probably wrong.”

Much more on Wisconsin’s weak teacher licensing requirements (and a proposal to further water them down), here.

Cary Funk:

A solid majority of Americans believe vaccinating their children against measles, mumps and rubella has high preventive health benefits. But several groups – particularly parents of young children – are less convinced of the benefits and more concerned about the safety of the MMR vaccine.

They stand apart from the 73% of Americans who see the MMR vaccine as a benefit, the 66% who say there is a low risk of side effects and the 88% who say the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Further, some 82% of Americans support requiring children attending public school to be vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella because of the potential health risk to others. By contrast, 17% of Americans say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate and 10% believe the risks outweigh the benefits.

Lee Rainie

Lee Rainie, director of Internet, Science and Technology research at the Pew Research Center, discussed the Center’s latest findings on digital divides based a survey conducted from Sept. 29 to Nov. 6, 2016. The presentation was to the board of Feeding America. Rainie looked at differences tied to internet access, home broadband ownership, and smartphone ownership by several demographic measures, including household income, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, age, and community type. He also discussed the Center’s research related to “digital readiness gaps” among technology users.

Scott Alexander:

There was some argument about the style of this graph, but as per Politifact the basic claim is true. Per student spending has increased about 2.5x in the past forty years even after adjusting for inflation.

At the same time, test scores have stayed relatively stagnant. You can see the full numbers here, but in short, high school students’ reading scores went from 285 in 1971 to 287 today – a difference of 0.7%.

There is some heterogenity across races – white students’ test scores increased 1.4% and minority students’ scores by about 20%. But it is hard to credit school spending for the minority students’ improvement, which occurred almost entirely during the period from 1975-1985. School spending has been on exactly the same trajectory before and after that time, and in white and minority areas, suggesting that there was something specific about that decade which improved minority (but not white) scores. Most likely this was the general improvement in minorities’ conditions around that time, giving them better nutrition and a more stable family life. It’s hard to construct a narrative where it was school spending that did it – and even if it did, note that the majority of the increase in school spending happened from 1985 on, and demonstrably helped neither whites nor minorities.

I discuss this phenomenon more here and here, but the summary is: no, it’s not just because of special ed; no, it’s not just a factor of how you measure test scores; no, there’s not a “ceiling effect”. Costs really did more-or-less double without any concomitant increase in measurable quality.

So, imagine you’re a poor person. White, minority, whatever. Which would you prefer? Sending your child to a 2016 school? Or sending your child to a 1975 school, and getting a check for $5,000 every year?

I’m proposing that choice because as far as I can tell that is the stakes here. 2016 schools have whatever tiny test score advantage they have over 1975 schools, and cost $5000/year more, inflation adjusted. That $5000 comes out of the pocket of somebody – either taxpayers, or other people who could be helped by government programs.

Locally, Madison spends about $18k/student annually. This, despite its long term disastrous reading results.

Thomas Edsall

While the polarized belief systems that exploded in the battle between Trump and Clinton are driving both policymaking and an invigorated opposition, researchers continue to provide empirical evidence on the difficult issues of race, poverty and intergenerational mobility.

Rucker C. Johnson, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, has followed two generations of black families and concluded that integration has been an effective tool for raising educational levels and living standards.

“Equal opportunity education policies generally are motivated to try to break the cycle of poverty, to break the vicious cycle of disadvantage from one generation to the next, and create a virtuous cycle where being born poor isn’t a life sentence,” Johnson told the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in 2016. “We have a very rare opportunity where a major intervention” — desegregation — “has been shown to be very effective on one generation’s lifetime outcomes, and then to be able to show that those beneficial effects extend into the next generation – particularly the black children whose parents went to desegregated schools.”

Twitter notes.

Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center’s Internet Project is pleased to offer scholars access to raw data sets from our research. All uses of this data should reference the Pew Research Center as the source of the data and acknowledge that the Pew Research bears no responsibility for interpretations presented or conclusions reached based on analysis of the data.

Our data sets are made available as single compressed archive files (.zip file). Pew Research is interested in learning about other ways that scholars use our data. If you publish something based on our data, please let us know by sending us an email. Individuals will need to fill out a brief registration before downloading data. Questions concerning the data sets may be directed to the Pew Research Center.

Quoctrung Bui

Almost half of people in their early 20s have a secret, one they don’t usually share even with friends: Their parents help them pay the rent.

Moving into adulthood has never been easy, but America’s rapidly changing labor market is making it harder to find economic security at a young age. Skilled work is increasingly concentrated in high-rent metropolitan areas, so more young people are tapping into their parents’ bank accounts.

According to surveys that track young people through their first decade of adulthood, about 40 percent of 22-, 23- and 24-year-olds receive some financial assistance from their parents for living expenses. Among those who get help, the average amount is about $3,000 a year.

Shelby Webb:

After a week and a half in immigration custody, 16-year-old Katy High School student and Jordanian national Mohammad Abu Khadra is back in Texas.

Mohammad flew from Chicago and landed in Houston late Wednesday morning, where his brother, Rami, picked him up. Mohammad’s arrival marked the end of a chapter in a case that has raised questions about President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order on immigration and how it affects travelers from Muslim-majority countries, including those not explicitly listed in the order.

Ali Zakaria, an attorney representing Mohammad and his family, said he was relieved Mohammad was reunited with his brother.

“I have a 16-year-old myself at home, I couldn’t imagine if something like that happened to my son,” Zakaria said. “It’s a happy day, and we want to let it sink in so they can enjoy the moment now. Then we’ll come up with legal strategy and address legal issues at that time.”

Mohammad was flagged by Customs and Border Protection agents at a Houston airport on Jan. 28, the day after Trump signed an executive order barring all refugees for 120 days and banning all travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, including Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya and Iran. It included an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees entering the U.S.

Chris Rickert, using facts:

For context, Wisconsin employees who get health insurance through their work pay about 22 percent of the annual premium, on average, or about $1,345 a year for single coverage, according to 2015 data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The average salary for a private- sector worker in Wisconsin was $45,230 in 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Madison teachers made, on average, $55,600 a year last school year and contribute 3 percent of premium costs, or about $205 a year for single coverage. Bringing that contribution up to 12 percent would mean the average teacher contributing about $600 more per year for single coverage.

While spending more than most ($18k/student), Madison’s benefit spending is substantial. This, despite its long term, disastrous reading results.

Related: an emphasis on adult enployment.

United States Government Accountability Office:

Discipline rates (out-of-school suspension and expulsion rates) at District of Columbia (D.C.) charter schools dropped from school years 2011-12 through 2013-14 (the most recent years of national Department of Education data available). However, these rates remained about double the rates of charter schools nationally and slightly higher than D.C. traditional public schools and were also disproportionately high for some student groups and schools. Specifically, during this period, suspension rates in D.C. charter schools dropped from about 16 percent of all students to about 13 percent, and expulsions, which were relatively rare, went down by about a half percent, according to GAO’s analysis. However, D.C. Black students and students with disabilities were disproportionately suspended and expelled. For example, Black students represented 80 percent of students in D.C. charter schools, but 93 percent of those suspended and 92 percent of those expelled. Further, 16 of D.C.’s 105 charter schools suspended over a fifth of their students over the course of school year 2015-16, according to D.C. data.

Cydney Alexis:

I know that is the image in most people’s brains because it is the one I’ve read or heard described hundreds of times by the news media, in popular culture, by writers themselves, in books written by writers on writing, by my students and by friends. It is also the image most strangers (or distant family members) produce when I tell them my field is writing studies, a discipline dedicated to the academic study of writing of all kinds: college writing, digital writing, and workplace writing, just to name a few examples.

Joseph Treaster:

At Georgia State’s nursing school, the faculty used to believe that students who got a poor grade in “Conceptual Foundations of Nursing” probably wouldn’t go on to graduation. So they were surprised, after an analysis of student records stretching back a decade, to discover what really made a difference for nursing students: their performance in introductory math.

“You could get a C or an A in that first nursing class and still be successful,” said Timothy M. Renick, the vice provost. “But if you got a low grade in your math courses, by the time you were in your junior and senior years, you were doing very poorly.”

The analysis showed that fewer than 10 percent of nursing students with a C in math graduated, compared with about 80 percent of students with at least a B+. Algebra and statistics, it seems, were providing an essential foundation for later classes in biology, microbiology, physiology and pharmacology.

Jonathan Zdziarski:

With the current US administration pondering the possibility of forcing foreign travelers to give up their social media passwords at the border, a lot of recent and justifiable concern has been raised about data privacy. The first mistake you could make is presuming that such a policy won’t affect US citizens. For decades, JTTFs (Joint Terrorism Task Forces) have engaged in intelligence sharing around the world, allowing foreign governments to spy on you on behalf of your home country, passing that information along through various databases. What few protections citizens have in their home countries end at the border, and when an ally spies on you, that data is usually fair game to share with your home country. Think of it as a backdoor built into your constitutional rights. To underscore the significance of this, consider that the president signed an executive order just today stepping up efforts at fighting international crime, which will likely result in the strengthening of resources to a JTTFs to expand this practice of “spying on my brother’s brother for him”.

Josh Kenworthy :

But today, Lawrence is home to one of the most remarkable turnaround stories in the country, thanks in no small part to a program that got high school dropouts like Difo reengaged.

Now in its sixth year, that turnaround approach is seen by some as a first of its kind – both for its academic results and, education experts say, for the inclusive and pragmatic way it got traditional public schools, charters, nonprofits, and families to work together. During that time, Lawrence – once the third-worst ranked district in the state – has climbed out of the bottom 10 percent.

“When you look at the annals of state intervention in local school districts across the country … there’s virtually no track record, nor extant examples of states effectively turning around academic performance in local school districts until Lawrence arrived on the scene,” says Paul Reville, a professor of education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.

Open Culture:

Back in December, you hopefully thoroughly immersed yourself in The Map of Physics, an animated video–a visual aid for the modern age–that mapped out the field of physics, explaining all the connections between classical physics, quantum physics, and relativity.

You can’t do physics without math. Hence we now have The Map of Mathematics. Created by physicist Dominic Walliman, this new video explains “how pure mathematics and applied mathematics relate to each other and all of the sub-topics they are made from.” Watch the new video above. You can buy a poster of the map here. And you can download a version for educational use here.

Clive Thompson:

WHEN I ASK people to picture a coder, they usually imagine someone like Mark Zuckerberg: a hoodied college dropout who builds an app in a feverish 72-hour programming jag—with the goal of getting insanely rich and, as they say, “changing the world.”

But this Silicon Valley stereotype isn’t even geographically accurate. The Valley employs only 8 percent of the nation’s coders. All the other millions? They’re more like Devon, a programmer I met who helps maintain a ­security-software service in Portland, Oregon. He isn’t going to get fabulously rich, but his job is stable and rewarding: It’s 40 hours a week, well paid, and intellectually challenging. “My dad was a blue-­collar guy,” he tells me—and in many ways, Devon is too.

Efosa Ojomo:

How can we alleviate extreme poverty? It’s the question that underpins the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs), and almost all development projects.

Because poverty almost always shows itself as a lack of resources in poor communities – food, safe water, sanitation, education, healthcare – it’s reasonable to theorise that poverty is a resource problem. So, based on that assumption, we execute a push strategy of development – pushing the resources poor communities lack in order to solve the issue. But while we might alleviate poverty, we don’t do much else.

Our strategies will not create sustained growth that leads to prosperity because we are solving the wrong problem.

Consider this example. To achieve SDG 6 – ensure water and sanitation for all – the Indian government in 2014 created the Clean India campaign, committing to provide toilets to more than 60m Indian households by 2019. More than two years and over 10m toilets later, India’s government is finding many Indians are not using the toilets and is now considering paying people to do so. The government’s assessment suggested a lack of toilets was the problem, leading to a push strategy – which is failing.

Michael Schuman:

I was hurtling through Shanghai in a cigarette-scented taxi, not quite sure where I was headed. Cab jaunts through unfamiliar places can be a bit stressful for anybody. You feel vulnerable and too dependent on a driver you don’t know and can’t necessarily trust. But for me, such trips in rickety taxis rattle my nerves even more than my spine—because I’m almost blind.

I have a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is causing my sight to deteriorate over time until there will be little, or possibly nothing, left. Even now I can’t see in the dark and have almost no peripheral vision. As my taxi sped through Shanghai, I couldn’t read the street signs or building numbers. After the sun began to set, it became difficult to tell one street from the next. And I couldn’t read the taxi meter. I’ve gotten ripped off before by unscrupulous cabbies, and I prefer not to rely on them to tell me how much I owe.

Alexander Smith:

People who want to visit the United States could be asked to hand over their social-media passwords to officials as part of enhanced security checks, the country’s top domestic security chief said.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told Congress on Tuesday the measure was one of several being considered to vet refugees and visa applicants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

“We want to get on their social media, with passwords: What do you do, what do you say?” he told the House Homeland Security Committee. “If they don’t want to cooperate then you don’t come in.”

Amber Walker:

Though the Madison Metropolitan School District revised its advanced learner program in recent years, some schools are still struggling to provide tailored classroom instruction for qualified students.

The district defines advanced learners as students who demonstrate, or have the potential to demonstrate, high performance in one or more areas.

MMSD contracted with the consulting firm RMC Research to evaluate its advanced learner program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade during the 2015-2016 school year. That included surveying teachers, advanced learners and their parents about the effectiveness of the program.

Laurie Fellenz, interim director of advanced learning, and Lisa Kvistad, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, presented survey findings to the Madison School Board on Monday night.

The evaluation found that the district’s new process for identifying advanced learners decreased the number of students eligible for the program but provided enrolled students a more tailored experience. At the same time, the survey found an increase in the percentage of advanced learners from underrepresented populations, including African-American and Latino students.

Related: TAG Complaint, English 10 and Small Learning Communities.

Ashe Schow:

Across the country, colleges and universities have been setting up “bias response teams” that allow students to report, often anonymously, incidents of alleged bias on campus. As one might expect, incidents of “bias” typically only refer to conservative viewpoints.

For example, two professors at the University of Northern Colorado were reported for relaying conservative viewpoints. The professors made no indication that they themselves believed the viewpoints discussed, but still they were investigated by the teams. One professor had his students read an article in the Atlantic about hiding from controversial ideas. The professor then instructed his students to address controversial topics, including abortion, gay marriage and transgenderism. A student who identified as transgender reported the professor for saying transgenderism is controversial.

The spring elections are right around the corner. The primary election on Feb. 21 will take the number of candidates in any given race down to two, and the voters will choose the winner April 4.

This election features races for state superintendent of public instruction, some court seats, Madison City Council and Madison School Board. There are primaries for the state superintendent of public instruction post as well as for two Madison School Board seats.

The Capital Times invited candidates with primaries to write columns making their cases to voters.

Today we are running the columns by candidates for state superintendent of public instruction. Next Tuesday and Wednesday we will run columns by Madison School Board candidates.

Molly Beck:

The law, known as Act 10, required local governments who offer a state health insurance plan to their employees to pay no more than 88 percent of the average premiums. Walker’s 2017-19 state budget will now require the same of all school districts, regardless of which health insurance plans they offer.

That spells trouble for the Madison School District, which for years after Act 10 was enacted didn’t require staff to pay any portion of their health insurance costs.

The district does now require employees to pay something toward their monthly health insurance premiums, but the contributions do not reach the 12 percent threshold proposed by Walker. The contribution levels in Madison range from 1.5 percent for lower-paid staff to 10 percent for school district administrators.

“While we have not done an exhaustive review, we are only aware of the Madison School District that did not capture the reform savings,” said Walker’s spokesman Jack Jablonski.

Much more on the Madison School District’s healthcare costs (a long term issue, including WPS coverage).

The District spent 25.62% of its budget on benefits (!) in 2014.

Sandy Cullen:

Madison police and school district officials are taking extra safety precautions following what the principal of West High School described as messages “threatening violence against our school.”

In an email sent to families Tuesday evening, West Principal Beth Thompson said, “We plan to continue our safety precautions tomorrow, including a full search of our building before school begins and additional security personnel and police presence at school throughout the day.”

Madison police Lt. Kelly Donahue said extra officers were at the school Tuesday and will be again on Wednesday.

Related: Police calls to area schools, including data.

Gangs and school violence forum.

Congress.gov

All Bill Information (Except Text) for H.R.899 – To terminate the Department of Education.
115th Congress (2017-2018)

Why do we have a federal department of education?

Mo Bitar:

Privacy isn’t about you. It’s about all of us. To worry about privacy today, even though you may have no compelling reason to, is one of the largest contributions you can make to the future of humankind and the nature of governance.
Privacy is about power. Many of us have taken a middle school course on civics, and the functioning of the U.S government. You know, three branches of government and checks and balances, or you may remember it as, like that’s ever going to come up.

Lee Rainie & Janna Anderson:

Algorithms are instructions for solving a problem or completing a task. Recipes are algorithms, as are math equations. Computer code is algorithmic. The internet runs on algorithms and all online searching is accomplished through them. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling. Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms. GPS mapping systems get people from point A to point B via algorithms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms. The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Every time someone sorts a column in a spreadsheet, algorithms are at play, and most financial transactions today are accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms. Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Algorithms are often elegant and incredibly useful tools used to accomplish tasks. They are mostly invisible aids, augmenting human lives in increasingly incredible ways. However, sometimes the application of algorithms created with good intentions leads to unintended consequences. Recent news items tie to these concerns:

ELIANA JOHNSON and ELI STOKOLS:

Many political onlookers described Trump’s election as a “black swan” event: unexpected but enormously consequential. The term was popularized by Nassim Taleb, the best-selling author whose 2014 book Antifragile—which has been read and circulated by Bannon and his aides—reads like a user’s guide to the Trump insurgency.

It’s a broadside against big government, which Taleb faults for suppressing the randomness, volatility and stress that keep institutions and people healthy. “As with neurotically overprotective parents, those who are trying to help us are hurting us the most,” he writes. Taleb also offers a withering critique of global elites, whom he describes as a corrupt class of risk-averse insiders immune to the consequences of their actions: “We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability. They game the system while citizens pay the price.”

It might as well have been the mission statement of the Trump campaign. Asked in a phone interview this week whether he’s had meetings with Bannon or his associates, Taleb said he could not comment. “Anything about private meetings would need to come from them,” he said, though he noted cryptically he’s had “coffee with friends.” He has been supportive of Trump but does not define himself as a supporter per se, though he said he would “be on the first train” to Washington were he invited to the White House.

Julie Chang:

Hundreds of Texas primary and secondary teachers lost or surrendered their teaching licenses since 2010 after being investigated for improper relationships with a student. More than half were never criminally charged. In all of those cases, information about the alleged misconduct isn’t easily accessible from the Texas Education Agency and in many instances is kept secret by school districts, allowing those teachers to move on to other teaching jobs or jobs involving contact with children.

The American-Statesman reviewed the cases of 686 teachers who surrendered their teaching licenses or whose teaching licenses were revoked by the Texas Education Agency between 2010 and 2016, after the TEA launched investigations for possible improper teacher-student relationships. Allegations ran the gamut, including sending flirtatious text messages, kissing students and having sex with students in their classrooms.

Thomas Sowell:

An opportunity has arisen — belatedly — that may not come again in this generation. That is an opportunity to greatly expand the kinds of schools that have successfully educated, to a high level, inner-city youngsters whom the great bulk of public schools fail to educate to even minimally adequate levels.

What may seem on the surface to be merely a matter of whether the U.S. Senate confirms or rejects the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be head of the U.S. Department of Education involves far bigger stakes.

The teachers’ unions and the education establishment in general know how big those stakes are, and have mounted an all-out smear campaign to prevent her from being confirmed.

What makes Mrs. DeVos seem so threatening to the teachers’ unions and their political allies?

She has, for more than 20 years, been promoting programs, laws and policies that enable parents to choose which schools their children will attend — whether these are charter schools, voucher schools or parochial schools.

Gustavo:

I’ve been thinking about some of the features of the Red Church Collective Intelligence (CI) that made it cohere independently of the idologies, values and feelings of its congregation. This was written in response to Jordan Greenhall’s excellent Situational Assessment 2017: Trump Edition , accepting his characterisation of Blue Church and Red Church CI for the sake of discussion. Specifically this is about Front One: Communications Infrastructure
What is collective intelligence?

Nanette Byrnes:

Automated trading programs have taken over the rest of the work, supported by 200 computer engineers. Marty Chavez, the company’s deputy chief financial officer and former chief information officer, explained all this to attendees at a symposium on computing’s impact on economic activity held by Harvard’s Institute for Applied Computational Science last month.

The experience of its New York traders is just one early example of a transformation of Goldman Sachs, and increasingly other Wall Street firms, that began with the rise in computerized trading, but has accelerated over the past five years, moving into more fields of finance that humans once dominated. Chavez, who will become chief financial officer in April, says areas of trading like currencies and even parts of business lines like investment banking are moving in the same automated direction that equities have already traveled.

Hannah Buehler:

Harris says she filed documents at Buffalo City Hall, following all the steps, informing the district of her intent to homeschool her children. According to documents she provided to 7 Eyewitness News, they’re dated December 7th and the district says it received her paperwork.

“I spoke directly to the homeschool coordinator and she told me from this point on my children were officially un-enrolled from school.”

Things took a turn when she says a week later, Child Protective Services called, wondering why her kids weren’t in school.

Kevin Williamson:

During the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama gave an off-the-record speech to a group of Wall Street financial executives in which he shared his frustration with the sclerotic and bureaucratic state of American education, and declared that he was close to publicly endorsing a nationwide school-choice program. (This is according to one of those in attendance.) The moneymen were enthused by this, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, Obama went hard in the opposite direction, working to gut the school-choice program in Washington, D.C., a popular program, which benefited urban black families almost exclusively. You don’t have to be a hard-boiled cynic to suspect that this has to do with the manpower and money-power of the teachers’ unions, who could have done a great deal more than they did to elevate Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama that year.

Related: WEAC: $1.57M for four senators.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Much more on the candidates, here: Seat 6 and Seat 7.

Nostalgic visitors might find past school board election links and videos of interest.

I’m glad that we’re blessed with choice. I’m also glad that several candidates mentioned our abundance of resources (we spend far more than most) and our longstanding disastrous reading results.

I appreciated seat 6 candidate Cris Carusi’s statement that she does not support relaxing teacher standards and Matt Andrzejewski’s comment on phonics and the District’s long term, disastrous reading results.

……

I was somewhat surprised to read current Madison Superintendent Cheatham’s words (I assume that she wrote this…) lamenting this or that:

It is absurd to me that some policymakers believe that the solution is simply to give parents “choice” — or in other words, drain more and more resources from public schools.

My key question to our legislators is this: What is your agenda for helping our public schools better serve the vast majority of students in the United States and in Wisconsin? How can you help us do more of what we know works in education?

What can you do to help us address gaps in students’ health and well-being, making it possible for every child to attend school daily and be fully attentive and ready to learn? Even if our academic strategies are perfect, if a child is not ready to learn, we won’t see better results. We have to find ways for our system to ensure those needs are met so that children are ready to excel.

Here in Madison, we are embracing the community school model. Community schools take our support of students and families to the next level through power sharing and integration of coordinated services into schools, where our students and families are every day.

Madison has “plenty of resources” (18k/student budget background), yet our long term disastrous reading issues continue…. I am surprised that the Superintendent, in light of these issues, spent time focusing on state and national rhetoric, rather than the real issues we face.

2013: Superintendent Cheatham: “What’s different, this time?” More, here.

2015: “Reverting to the mean“.

Nearly 12 years ago, on then Superintendent Rainwater’s achievement gap rhetoric.

Amber Walker’s event summary

David Harsanyi:

Actually, teachers unions are the only organizations in America that openly support segregated schools. In districts across the country — even ones in cities with some form of limited movement for kids — poor parents, most typically black or Hispanic, are forced to enroll their kids in underperforming schools when there are good ones nearby, sometimes just blocks away.

The National Education Association spent $23 million last cycle alone working to elect politicians to keep low-income Americans right where they are. Public service unions use tax dollars to fund politicians who then turn around and vote for more funding. The worse the schools perform, the more money they demand. In the real world we call this racketeering.

Yet according to Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, it is people like DeVos who are “a grave threat” to the public schools “that made America great.”

Well, for starters, studies consistently show that minority groups in America’s largest cities are lagging in proficiency in reading and math. Most of them are at the bottom 5 percent of schools in their own state. There is only so much an education secretary can accomplish, but being accused of being a “grave threat” to this system is a magnificent endorsement.

Karis Hustad:

If you want to know the consequences of tech’s gender gap, look no further than Britain after World War II, says Marie Hicks, assistant history professor at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Hicks is the author of “Programmed Inequality,” a book just published from MIT Press, that explores why Britain’s computing industry, which was among the best in the world after World War II was nearly gone by the 1970s. Hicks argues that discriminatory hiring practices against women after World War II, who were a critical part of the computing’s industry’s labor force during and after the war, crippled innovation in the public and private sector.

While this is an example from across the pond, Hicks notes this story can shed light on conversations around diversity in tech in the United States and around the world: What are the long term consequences of having a tech industry that doesn’t draw talent from all available pools?

Jason Stein and Erin Richards:

Gov. Scott Walker’s budget would do more than just increase state aid to schools — it would also double down on a significant change to how that aid gets divvied up among districts.

Under the GOP governor’s two-year budget bill, the state would put $509 million more into a relatively new form of school aid that doesn’t account for the poverty of school districts or their students.

Walker wants the money to go to districts in the form of a flat per pupil payment that in 2011 he and Republican lawmakers added to the state’s main form of school aid. As proposed, the per student payment would rise from $250 this year to $450 in the 2017-’18 school year and $654 in the 2018-’19 school year.

Each district gets the same amount per student regardless of how much district residents could afford to pay for schools through the property tax. That’s different from the state’s general aid formula, which takes into account local property values in districts when determining how much state aid they’ll get.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via email:

On January 27th, the Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, convened by DPI Superintendent Tony Evers and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators (WASDA) Executive Director Jon Bales, issued its Full Summary of Preliminary Licensing Recommendations. Together with earlier recommendations from the State Superintendent’s Working Group on School Staffing Issues and the Wisconsin Talent Development/Professional Standards Council Strategic Plan, this document identifies the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (WIFoRT) as a roadblock to licensure for potential teachers.

The WIFoRT, written into State law in 2012, is supposed to be a roadblock to licensure for those who cannot pass it, as it objectively measures a candidate’s knowledge of the foundations of reading acquisition and effective pedagogical approaches. Given our stagnant reading scores since 1992, our low reading proficiency rates, the large gaps in proficiency between different subgroups of students, and our diminished national ranking in reading performance, the legislature agreed with the Read to Lead task force that something needed to be done. The WIFoRT was selected as one way to improve reading education for our children.

The WIFoRT, along with the requirement that student passage rates be reported annually, serves three purposes:

1. Provides incoming college students and their families with comparative WIFoRT passage rates for all institutions of higher education
2. Assures that new teachers are equipped to effectively teach reading (practicing teachers are not covered)
3. Serves as a litmus test on the quality of teacher preparation in reading in our colleges of education

WIFoRT passage rates have not yet been published by DPI or the individual teacher preparation programs (though the test has been required since January of 2014), so our incoming college students lack this information in comparing programs.

The three reports referenced above indicate that inadequately prepared teachers are in fact not being licensed. While that is unfortunate for those aspiring teachers, and reduces number of the candidates in the hiring pool, it is also safeguarding our young and struggling readers by imposing some minimum quality assurances.

Based on the groups’ concerns over the WIFoRT failure rates, we can surmise that there is room for improvement in our teacher preparation programs when it comes to reading. The WIFoRT is a rigorous but not impossible test. A well-prepared college student should not have trouble passing. However, none of these reports addresses improving the standards for teacher preparation. Instead, they suggest lowering the cut score, changing state statutes, putting teachers in charge of classrooms without passing the exam, and allowing unspecified alternative ways to judge a teacher’s competency in foundational reading skills.

Once again, we see our DPI and its advisory groups prioritizing adults over children, and seeking to hide or ignore uncomfortable facts. This is unfair to Wisconsin children as well as potential teachers who deserve to be adequately prepared. If you expect better from our state educational agency, be sure to vote in the February 21st primary and the April general election for state superintendent.

Complete Wisconsin Reading Coalition Commentary “DPI’s Response to Reading Educator Preparation Problem is a Case Study of Evers’ Tenure: Obfuscate the Evidence Rather than Solve the Problem”:

It seems to be official: too many potential educators are failing the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (WIFoRT). It’s been difficult to find this information. We have yet to see any of the statutorily-required annual reports listing passage rates for the WIFoRT, first given in 2014. Allowing itself 2-1/2 years to get results posted, DPI is still working on the 2012-13 year, and individual campuses are following suit. However, three separate DPI-convened groups in the past year have identified WIFoRT as a significant impediment to aspiring educators receiving initial teaching licenses. There must be a problem here. Some relevant quotes:

• “Members asserted that otherwise qualified candidates struggle to pass the state-required reading exam, reducing the supply of potential educators in certain disciplines.”
• The State Superintendent’s Working Group on School Staffing Issues, Final Report, June, 2016 “State statute 118.19 (14) (a) went into effect January 30, 2014 which requires special education teachers to pass the Foundations of Reading Test for Wisconsin. This additional requirement may cause some teacher candidates to take longer to complete preparation programs in order to post a passing score on the test.” Wisconsin Talent Development Framework/Professional Standards Council Strategic Plan Recommendations Draft, November, 2016
• “Members also raised significant concerns about the Foundations of Reading Test (FoRT). While members acknowledged the importance of raising the knowledge and preparation level of all elementary and special education teachers in teaching reading, they also cited the law’s rigidity as a significant barrier to entry. Without a waiver policy or other flexibility, students who have been successfully trained and are sought by school districts are currently unable to achieve full licensure unless they pass this exam. This lack of flexibility is of increasing concern, particularly as recent law changes allow a teacher prepared out of state with only one year of teaching experience to become eligible for a teaching license in Wisconsin without passing the FoRT exam. . . . [T]here are candidates currently on emergency licensure who have completed every portion of their preparation except for successfully passing this exam.” Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, January, 2017

Let’s be clear: the WIFoRT is doing exactly what it is intended to do: assuring that new teachers in our elementary children’s classrooms, plus new special education teachers, reading teachers, and reading specialists, have a minimum of competency in the critical area of reading. State law requires these potential educators to pass the WIFoRT before obtaining an initial teaching license and becoming responsible for the reading education of our students. We wish that out-of-state teachers coming to Wisconsin with just one year of experience were held to the same standard.

The WIFoRT is identical to the MTEL 90 reading test pioneered in Massachusetts and now used in other states. It covers information about reading acquisition and effective pedagogical methods that are both fundamental and critical for teachers to be effective. If candidates have been properly prepared by their educator preparation programs, the WIFoRT should not be a difficult test to pass. The cut score for passing in Wisconsin is no higher than it is in other states.
So what is the appropriate response if large numbers of potential educators fail the WIFoRT one or more times? We would hope that our Department of Public Instruction, which sets standards for teacher preparation programs, would look to improving those standards in reading education so that more education students could realize their dream of becoming licensed and effective educators. The failing scores aren’t the problem, they are the symptom of the problem.
Sadly, that is not what has happened in Wisconsin under the tenure of Superintendent Tony Evers. In fact, a DPI process begun over three years ago to create new reading standards for educator preparation programs was never completed. And now we see these troubling recommendations from the three groups mentioned above:

• Adjust the passing cut score on the WIFoRT
• Recommend statute changes [presumably to eliminate or diminish the WIFoRT]
• Delay taking the WIFoRT for a “significant time” while the “otherwise qualified” provisional educator practices teaching and implementing reading strategies as a classroom teacher
• Create a new “Tier 1” license under which an aspiring educator could teach for a year without passing the WIFoRT
• Allow Tier 1 educators to show competence in an alternative way, such as providing “multiple measures of improved student performance in reading,” gaining full licensure without ever passing the WIFoRT
• Allow educators prepared out-of-state to be fully licensed if they have passed the edTPA
• Allow educators prepared out-of-state without passing the edTPA to obtain a Tier 1 license for a year without passing the WIFoRT, then become fully licensed after a year of “successful teaching experience in Wisconsin based on multiple measures of success”

In other words, pass the test unless you can’t pass the test. What kind of safeguard is that for our children? Nowhere is there any mention of working on the standards in reading for teacher preparation programs. The emphasis once again is on making things convenient for the adults while ignoring the damage we will inflict on our students. How will we select which children are assigned to the classroom, reading intervention, or special education care of a new teacher who cannot pass a test in reading foundations? Wisconsin deserves better solutions.

Much more, here on relaxing Wisconsin’s thin K-12 teacher standards.

Via.

Jennifer Cheatham:

With a contested race for state superintendent of public instruction and a legislative session that is swinging into gear, much is at stake for public education in Wisconsin.

One of the fundamental issues at the center of the debate is the potential expansion of “school choice,” which is the term used to describe using public school funds to expand independent charter schools, school vouchers, and a more recent phenomenon called “education savings accounts.”

The way “choice” works is that state lawmakers force public school districts to pay for vouchers for private schools or the creation of charter schools that have no accountability or connection to our local districts.

In other words, even if the state provides us with more aid, which some have promised, it is then drained from our public schools and given to independent charters and private schools on the back end.

This is the thing. Over 50 million students are served in K-12 public schools in the United States. In comparison, 5 million are served in private or independent charter schools. Public education is paramount to the success of our students, our communities and our country.

As a public school superintendent and longtime educator, I am exhausted by the oversimplification of the problem and the potential solutions. That’s because the persistent correlation between socioeconomic status and educational achievement in our country is real. And race, structural racism in particular, is the driving force behind it.

It is absurd to me that some policymakers believe that the solution is simply to give parents “choice” — or in other words, drain more and more resources from public schools.

My key question to our legislators is this: What is your agenda for helping our public schools better serve the vast majority of students in the United States and in Wisconsin? How can you help us do more of what we know works in education?

What can you do to help us address gaps in students’ health and well-being, making it possible for every child to attend school daily and be fully attentive and ready to learn? Even if our academic strategies are perfect, if a child is not ready to learn, we won’t see better results. We have to find ways for our system to ensure those needs are met so that children are ready to excel.

Here in Madison, we are embracing the community school model. Community schools take our support of students and families to the next level through power sharing and integration of coordinated services into schools, where our students and families are every day.

What can you do to help us personalize the educational experience for students? Our students deserve unique educational opportunities that build on their strengths and interests and help them meaningfully explore future college and career options so that they can be successful at each stage of their education and graduate ready for today’s world and today’s economy.

We are doing that locally — through the implementation of our technology integration plan and through the establishment of personalized pathways to graduation at the high school level.

Unfortunately, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results. This, despite “plenty of resources“.

Related: Jennifer Cheatham on “what’s different, this time?“.

Cary Funk:

A solid majority of Americans believe vaccinating their children against measles, mumps and rubella has high preventive health benefits. But several groups – particularly parents of young children – are less convinced of the benefits and more concerned about the safety of the MMR vaccine.

They stand apart from the 73% of Americans who see the MMR vaccine as a benefit, the 66% who say there is a low risk of side effects and the 88% who say the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Further, some 82% of Americans support requiring children attending public school to be vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella because of the potential health risk to others. By contrast, 17% of Americans say parents should be able to decide not to vaccinate and 10% believe the risks outweigh the benefits.

Kristina Rizga:

When I was about 10, a classmate in my small-town school in Latvia liked to tell me in between classes that he hated Jews. I was the only Jewish kid in school, and one day as I walked home I heard steps behind me. My eyes caught his, and we stood there for a moment. I still remember his face—hazel eyes, closely cropped blond hair—and his navy uniform jacket over a white shirt. Suddenly, I heard a crunch as his fist landed on my left cheekbone, and I fell backward on a sidewalk damp with melting snow. I still remember the hollow ringing in my left ear. I looked around to scream for help, but the streets were empty. I’ve never felt more terrified and alone.

“There is nothing we can do to change him,” my father said in our garage the next day. He wore a large black boxing glove on his left hand that he made me practice hitting late into the night. “You have to throw the punch from your shoulder, and pack the weight of your entire body into it,” he said. “As soon as you show any fear, you’ve already lost.”

Andrew McCarthy:

he West is abuzz with reports of a populist wave: rolling through Europe, sweeping across the Atlantic, and crashing into Gomorrah-by-the-Potomac. Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States—a watershed event as unthinkable as it was improbable to many across the ideological spectrum of American punditry—followed hard on the British people’s vote to exit the European Union, a cognate popular rejection of bipartisan elite opinion.

In short order, Matteo Renzi was the next shoe to drop. Italy’s now-former prime minister, a young, attractive, politically “progressive” technocrat, darling of the European cognoscenti, had been hailed—it seemed like only yesterday—as Rome’s (or is it Brussels’s?) answer to Barack Obama. He resigned in November, though, after the Italian people resoundingly defeated his proposed constitutional “reform.” The scare-quotes are offered advisedly: Italy having been virtually ungovernable since Garibaldi forced what passes for its unification, Sig. Renzi’s reform was a scheme to end the paralysis by accreting power to himself at the expense of the legislature. Think of it as a gambit to codify U.S. President Barack Obama’s “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” style of centralized rule.

Karen Herzog and Jason Stein:

After extending a tuition freeze into a fifth year for resident undergraduates at University of Wisconsin System campuses, Gov. Scott Walker announced Tuesday that he wants to cut tuition by 5% beginning in fall 2018.

He said he would make up for the lost tuition dollars by giving campuses $35 million from taxpayers.

The GOP governor pitched several initiatives for the UW System as part of his 2017-’19 state budget — costing roughly $100 million beyond the $35 million — during a three-campus sweep Tuesday, starting in La Crosse and continuing in Eau Claire and Green Bay. He didn’t say where the new money would come from — an issue raising questions from lawmakers of both parties.

Well, guess what, America? The humanities are also full of difficult concepts—insignificant crap, like the meaning of life—which is why we should acknowledge their need for specialized vocabulary. Difficult concepts sometimes call for big words. Deconstruction is hard. Heidegger is hard. Nietzsche, bless his giant moustache, is hard.

Speaking of which: Alas, Will’s excoriation of lieber Friedrich’s influence is also technically correct, if by accident. In the somewhat obscure, posthumously published essay “On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche attacks the concept of “truth” as “a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms and anthromorphisms”—before himself launching into several apt metaphors that illustrate why this is the case. A century and change later, Nietzsche’s radical skepticism creeps around the edges of slightly kookier-sounding versions of the same problem, such as when NYU philosophy professor Avital Ronell chides a documentarian for introducing the concept of “meaning” without acknowledging its “fascistoid nonprogressive edges.” But that doesn’t mean Nietzsche didn’t have a point. When, as he said, I write “the stone is hard,” how am I to know that anyone reading is going to conjure the “correct” concepts of “stone” or “hard” in their big fat noggins? I can’t. (Language skepticism. BOOM.) And even if you don’t believe that “meaning” has fascistoid nonprogressive edges—which I don’t, at least I don’t think I do—it’s interesting to talk about why people think it does.

So where, then, does that leave the perpetually maligned users of the term resurgently normative as we transition from the most unabashedly intellectual president in modern history to his satsuma-tinted polar opposite? To demonstrate a utopia under a new class of real intellectuals who properly worship the Western canon without all of that pesky big wordage, one must look no further than that nonofficial inauguration poem you may have seen, which itself may or may not be another fun hoax:

Ava Kofman:

The FBI’s Rap Back program is quietly transforming the way employers conduct background checks. While routine background checks provide employers with a one-time “snapshot” of their employee’s past criminal history, employers enrolled in federal and state Rap Back programs receive ongoing, real-time notifications and updates about their employees’ run-ins with law enforcement, including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions. (“Rap” is an acronym for Record of Arrest and Prosecution; ”Back” is short for background). Testifying before Congress about the program in 2015, FBI Director James Comey explained some limits of regular background checks: “People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this.”

A majority of states already have their own databases that they use for background checks and have accessed in-state Rap Back programs since at least 2007; states and agencies now partnering with the federal government will be entering their data into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) database. The NGI database, widely considered to be the world’s largest biometric database, allows federal and state agencies to search more than 70 million civil fingerprints submitted for background checks alongside over 50 million prints submitted for criminal purposes. In July 2015, Utah became the first state to join the federal Rap Back program. Last April, aviation workers at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport and Boston Logan International Airport began participating in a federal Rap Back pilot program for aviation employees. Two weeks ago, Texas submitted its first request to the federal criminal Rap Back system.

Brook Larmer:

When I first met Yang Jinkai, two days before he boarded a plane for America, the smog hanging over his industrial home city, Shenyang, had turned the sun into a ghostly orb. The 16-year-old paced around the family apartment as his mother labeled his suitcases and packed them with the comforts of home: quilted pajamas, chopsticks, instant noodles. She gestured toward a lone memento that would remain in his bedroom, a life-size needlepoint portrait of her only child, woven in shimmering gold thread. “I worked on that all year,” she said. “I knew this moment would come.”

Yang had never traveled outside China. But he had already chosen a new first name for his life in America, Korbin (“That sounds American, right?”), and was daydreaming about the adventure ahead. “It will be magical,” he said. “I’ll make lots of American friends. I’d like to have an American girlfriend. Maybe” — he shot a glance at his father — “I’ll even get a gun.” Over the summer, Korbin had been working on his English by watching, perhaps too zealously, the American television series “Criminal Minds.”

Molly Beck:

A group of school officials, including state Superintendent Tony Evers, is asking lawmakers to address potential staffing shortages in Wisconsin schools by making the way teachers get licensed less complicated.

The Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, created by Evers and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators executive director Jon Bales, released last week a number of proposals to address shortages, including reducing the number of licenses teachers must obtain to be in a classroom.

Under the group’s proposal, teachers would seek one license to teach prekindergarten through ninth grade and a second license to teach all grades, subjects and special education.

The group also proposes to consolidate related subject area licenses into single subject licenses. For example, teachers would be licensed in broad areas like science, social studies, music and English Language Arts instead of more specific areas of those subjects.

Wisconsin adopted Massachusett’s (MTEL) elementary reading content knowledge requirements (just one, not the others).

Much more on Wisconsin and MTEL, here.

National Council on Teacher Quality ranks preparation programs…. In 2014, no Wisconsin programs ranked in the top group.

Foundations of Reading Results (Wisconsin’s MTEL):

Wisconsin’s DPI provided the results to-date of the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading exam to School Information System, which posted an analysis. Be aware that the passing score from January, 2014 through August, 2014, was lower than the passing score in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Since September of 2014, the Wisconsin passing score has been the same as those states. SIS reports that the overall Wisconsin pass rate under the lower passing score was 92%, while the pass rate since August of 2014 has been 78%. This ranges from around 55% at one campus to 93% at another. The pass rate of 85% that SIS lists in its main document appears to include all the candidates who passed under the lower cut score.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s proposed changes: Clearinghouse Rule 16 PROPOSED ORDER OF THE STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION REVISING PERMANENT RULES

A kind reader’s comments:

to wit “Of particular concern is the provision of the new rule that would allow teachers who have not otherwise met their licensure requirements to teach under emergency licenses while “attempting to complete” the required licensure tests. For teachers who should have appropriate skills to teach reading, this undercuts the one significant achievement of the Read to Lead workgroup (thanks to Mark Seidenberg)—that is, requiring Wisconsin’s elementary school and all special education teachers to pass the Foundations of Reading test at the MTEL passing cut score level. The proposed DPI rule also appears to conflict with ESSA, which eliminated HQT in general, but updated IDEA to incorporate HQT provisions for special education teachers and does not permit emergency licensure. With reading achievement levels in Wisconsin at some of the lowest levels in the nation for the student subgroups that are most in need of qualified instruction, the dangers to students are self-evident”.

Related, from the Wisconsin Reading Coalition [PDF]:

Wisconsin 4th Grade Reading Results on the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

Main takeaways from the 2015 NAEP 4th grade reading exam:

• Wisconsin scores have been statistically flat since 1992
• 37% of our 4th graders score proficient or advanced
• Our 4th graders rank 25th nationally: we have been in the middle of the pack since 2003
• Our African-American students have the second lowest scores in the country (behind Michigan) and statistically underperform their national African-American peer sub-group
• We have the second largest white/black score gap in the country (behind Washington, D.C.) Our Asian students statistically underperform their national Asian peer sub-group
• Only our English Language Learners statistically outperform their national peer sub-group

Statements by our Department of Public Instruction that there was a “positive upward movement” in reading (10/28/15 News Release) and especially that our 4th graders “might be viewed” as ranking 13th in 4th grade reading (11/5/15 DPI-ConnectEd) are inaccurate and misleading.

Proficiency Rates and Performance Gaps
Overall, 8% of Wisconsin 4th graders are advanced, 29% are proficient, 34% are basic, and 29% are below basic. Nationally, 9% of students are advanced, 27% are proficient, 33% are basic, and 31% are below basic.

As is the case around the country, some student groups in Wisconsin perform better than others, though only English Language Learners outperform their national peer group. Several groups are contrasted below.

Subgroups can be broken down by race, gender, economic status, and disability status. 44% of white students are proficient or advanced, versus 35% of Asian students, 23% of American Indian students, 19% of Hispanic students and 11% of African-American students. 40% of girls are proficient or advanced, compared to 34% of boys. Among students who do not qualify for a free or reduced lunch, 50% are proficient or advanced, while the rate is only 19% for those who qualify. Students with disabilities continue to have the worst scores in Wisconsin. Only 13% of them are proficient or advanced, and a full 68% are below basic, indicating that they do not have the skills necessary to navigate print in school or daily life. It is important to remember that this group does not include students with severe cognitive disabilities.

When looking at gaps between sub-groups, keep in mind that a difference of 10 points on The NAEP equals approximately one grade level in performance. Average scores for Wisconsin sub-groups range from 236 (not eligible for free/reduced lunch) to 231 (white), 228 (students without disabilities), 226 (females), 225 (non-English Language Learners), 222 (Asian), 220 (males), 209 (Hispanic), 207 (American Indian or eligible for free/reduced lunch), 198 (English Language Learners), 193 (African-American), and 188 (students with disabilities). There is a gap of almost three grade levels between white and black 4th graders, and four grade levels between 4th graders with and without disabilities.

Scores Viewed Over Time
The graph below shows NAEP raw scores over time. Wisconsin’s 4th grade average score in 2015 is 223, which is statistically unchanged from 2013 and 1992, and is statistically the same as the current national score (221). The national score, as well as scores in Massachusetts, Florida, Washington, D.C., and other jurisdictions, have seen statistically significant increases since 1992.

Robust clinical and brain research in reading has provided a roadmap to more effective teacher preparation and student instruction, but Wisconsin has not embraced this pathway with the same conviction and consistency as many other states. Where change has been most completely implemented, such as Massachusetts and Florida, the lowest students benefitted the most, but the higher students also made substantial gains. It is important that we come to grips with the fact that whatever is holding back reading achievement in Wisconsin is holding it back for everyone, not just poor or minority students. Disadvantaged students suffer more, but everyone is suffering, and the more carefully we look at the data, the more obvious that becomes.

Performance of Wisconsin Sub-Groups Compared to their Peers in Other Jurisdictions
10 points difference on a NAEP score equals approximately one grade level. Comparing Wisconsin sub-groups to their highest performing peers around the country gives us an indication of the potential for better outcomes. White students in Wisconsin (score 231) are approximately three years behind white students in Washington D.C. (score 260), and a year behind white students in Massachusetts (score 242). African-American students in Wisconsin (193) are more than three years behind African-American students in Department of Defense schools (228), and two years behind their peers in Arizona and Massachusetts (217). They are approximately one year behind their peers in Louisiana (204) and Mississippi (202). Hispanic students in Wisconsin (209) are approximately two years behind their peers in Department of Defense schools (228) and 1-1/2 years behind their peers in Florida (224). Wisconsin students who qualify for free or reduced lunch (207) score approximately 1-1/2 years behind similar students in Florida and Massachusetts (220). Wisconsin students who do not qualify for free and reduced lunch (236) are the highest ranking group in our state, but their peers in Washington D.C. (248) and Massachusetts (247) score approximately a grade level higher.

State Ranking Over Time
Wisconsin 4th graders rank 25th out of 52 jurisdictions that took the 2015 NAEP exam. In the past decade, our national ranking has seen some bumps up or down (we were 31st in 2013), but the overall trend since 1998 is a decline in Wisconsin’s national ranking (we were 3rd in 1994). Our change in national ranking is entirely due to statistically significant changes in scores in other jurisdictions. As noted above, Wisconsin’s scores have been flat since 1992.

The Positive Effect of Demographics
Compared to many other jurisdictions, Wisconsin has proportionately fewer students in the lower performing sub-groups (students of color, low-income students, etc.). This demographic reality allows our state to have a higher average score than another state with a greater proportion of students in the lower performing sub-groups, even if all or most of that state’s subgroups outperform their sub-group peers in Wisconsin. If we readjusted the NAEP scores to balance demographics between jurisdictions, Wisconsin would rank lower than 25th in the nation. When we did this demographic equalization analysis in 2009, Wisconsin dropped from 30th place to 43rd place nationally.

Applying Standard Statistical Analysis to DPI’s Claims
In its official news release on the NAEP scores on October 28, 2015, DPI accurately stated that Wisconsin results were “steady.” After more than a decade of “steady” scores, one could argue that “flat” or “stagnant” would be more descriptive terms. However, we cannot quibble with “steady.” We do take issue with the subtitle “Positive movement in reading,” and the statement that “There was a positive upward movement at both grade levels in reading.” In fact, the DPI release acknowledges in the very next sentence, “Grade level scores for state students in both mathematics and reading were considered statistically the same as state scores on the 2013 NAEP.” The NAEP website points out that Wisconsin’s 4th grade reading score was also statistically the same as the state score on the 2003 NAEP, and this year’s actual score is lower than in 1992. It is misleading to say that there has been positive upward movement in 4th grade reading. (emphasis added).

Regarding our 4th grade ranking of 25th in the nation, DPI’s ConnectEd newsletter makes the optimistic, but unsupportable, claim that “When analyzed for statistical significance, the state’s ranking might be viewed as even higher: “tied” for . . . 13th in fourth grade reading.”

Wisconsin is in a group of 16 jurisdictions whose scores (218-224) are statistically the same as the national average (221). 22 jurisdictions have scores (224-235) statistically above the national average, and 14 have scores (207-218) statistically below the national average. Scoring third place in that middle group of states is how NAEP assigned Wisconsin a 25th ranking.

When we use Wisconsin as the focal jurisdiction, 12 jurisdictions have scores (227-235) statistically higher than ours (223), 23 jurisdictions have scores (220-227) that are statistically the same, and 16 have scores (207-219) that are statistically lower. This is NOT the same as saying we rank 13th.

To assume we are doing as well as the state in 13th place is a combination of the probability that we are better than our score, and they are worse than theirs: that we had very bad luck on the NAEP administration, and that other state had very good luck. If we took the test again, there is a small probability, less than 3%, that our score would rise and theirs would fall, and we would meet in the middle, tied for 19th, not 13th, place. The probability that the other state would continue to perform just as well and we would score enough better to move up into a tie for 13th place is infinitesimal: a tiny fraction of a percentage. Not only is that highly unlikely, it is no more true than saying we could be viewed as tied with the jurisdiction at the bottom of our group, ranking 36th.

Furthermore, this assertion requires us to misuse not only this year’s data, but the data from past years which showed us at more or less the same place in the rankings. When you look at all the NAEP data across time and see how consistent the results are, the likelihood we are actually much better than our current rank shrinks to nearly nothing. It would require that not only were we incredibly unlucky in the 2015 administration, but we have been incredibly unlucky in every administration for the past decade. The likelihood of such an occurrence would be in the neighborhood of one in a billion billion.

Until now, DPI has never stated a reason for our mediocre NAEP performance. They have always declined to speculate. And now, of all the reasons they might consider to explain why our young children read so poorly and are falling further behind students in other states, they suggest it may just be bad luck. Whether they really believe that, or are tossing it out as a distraction from the actual facts is not entirely clear. Either way, it is a disappointing reaction from the agency that jealously guards its authority to guide education in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition PDF summary.

Cordelia Hebblethwaite:

Assyrian and Babylonian – dialects of the language collectively known as Akkadian – have not been spoken for almost 2,000 years.

“This is a heroic and significant moment in history,” beamed Dr Irving Finkel of the British Museum’s Middle East department.
As a young man in the 1970s Dr Finkel dedicated three years of his life to The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Project which is based at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

That makes him something of a spring chicken in the life story of this project, which began in 1921.

Almost 90 experts from around the world took part, diligently recording and cross referencing their work on what ended up being almost two million index cards.

National Asphalt Pavement Association

Today, this dark, resilient material covers more than 94 percent of the paved roads in the United States; it’s the popular choice for driveways, parking lots, airport runways, racetracks, tennis courts, and other applications where a smooth, durable driving surface is required. Called at various times asphalt pavement, blacktop, tarmac, macadam, plant mix, asphalt concrete, or bituminous concrete, asphalt pavements have played an important role in changing the landscape and the history of the U.S. since the late 19th century.

Nitasha Tiku:

Last February, the online lending company SoFi paid $5 million for a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. The spot begins at a busy city crosswalk, panning from person to person as the narrator assesses their worth. “Jim is great. Sarah is not great at all,” a male voice intones as the focus swoops from a white dude to a white woman. “This guy? Never been great,” the narrator continues, as the camera settles on a smiling bro, who has no idea he just failed a financial test. The commercial ends with an order: “Find out if you’re great at SoFi.com.”

Lauren Kravets:

Summit Christian Academy in Cedar Park is using its 3D printer to help kids in need of a prosthetic hand. On Thursday, fifth-grade students were working on computers, adjusting designs to print prosthetic hands. Engineering students then put the pieces together to form a functional hand.

Senior Paris Varnier got the first finished product. She flexes her wrist which allows the prosthetic hand to open and close. But there’s a learning curve, especially after going her whole life without a left hand; Varnier wasn’t born with one. “So I think with time it will get easier, but it’s more control, even driving, I have to push my arm up against the wheel, whereas I can grip now so it’s simple tasks that I think people don’t think about,” explains Varnier.

Leslie Nguyen-Okwu:

From Siri handling our schedules to smart cars driving themselves, artificial intelligence (AI) has turned our world upside down — except in education. Computers are trading on the stock markets for us, but our schools might as well be stuck in the 12th century. Children sit in the same orderly rows they have for centuries, learning Euclidean geometry while being bored to tears. Sure, modern students are glued to iPads, but technology hasn’t done much to boost their learning — at least not yet. The promise of AI might just be the long-awaited breakthrough that will change the way we all learn.

Just ask Vivienne Ming, a theoretical neuroscientist who claims to predict everything from how much money your children will make to how long they will live. She can forecast grades, even pointing to which questions they’ll get wrong on a final exam. No, she’s not wielding a crystal ball; instead, she has AI-powered software to study your child’s learning habits and social interactions through a combination of cognitive modeling and machine learning. Why all the Big Brother snooping? “Essentially, we’re talking about the same sorts of systems that beat the best poker players in the world … being repurposed to understand high school students,” says Ming, explaining how they will help today’s pupils build better futures. From AI systems that warn when and where a student will struggle to intelligent personalized tutors, here’s a glimpse of education’s future.

Kevin Hartnett:

Math conferences don’t usually feature standing ovations, but Francis Su received one last month in Atlanta. Su, a mathematician at Harvey Mudd College in California and the outgoing president of the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), delivered an emotional farewell address at the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the MAA and the American Mathematical Society in which he challenged the mathematical community to be more inclusive.

Su opened his talk with the story of Christopher, an inmate serving a long sentence for armed robbery who had begun to teach himself math from textbooks he had ordered. After seven years in prison, during which he studied algebra, trigonometry, geometry and calculus, he wrote to Su asking for advice on how to continue his work. After Su told this story, he asked the packed ballroom at the Marriott Marquis, his voice breaking: “When you think of who does mathematics, do you think of Christopher?”

Ernest Oppetit:

Everything, everywhere, will soon be continuously recorded and uploaded to the internet. This will start with dense, urban areas, but over time every single square meter of every part of the globe will be recorded. Advances in computer vision & AI mean this data will be usable at scale, which will revolutionise advertising, law enforcement, and bring us back to a pre-privacy world.

(and yes, you guessed it, the movie to pair this post with is Minority Report)

Hannah Kuchler:

In chalets scattered across the snow in California’s ski country, a school of the future is taking shape. Warm inside a classroom, teenage twins Laurel and Bryce Dettering are part of a Silicon Valley experiment to teach students to outperform machines.

Surrounded by industrial tools, Bryce is laying out green 3D-printed propellers, which will form part of a floating pontoon. The 15-year-old is struggling to finish a term-long challenge to craft a vehicle that could test water quality remotely.

So far, the task has involved coding, manufacturing and a visit to a Nasa contractor who builds under-ice rovers. “I suck at waterproofing. I managed to waterproof one side, did a test of it, it proved waterproof. I made sure the other side was waterproof, put both sides on and both of them leaked!” he laughs.

Laurel, already adept in robotics, chose a different kind of project, aimed at developing the empathy that robots lack: living on a reservation with three elderly women from the Navajo tribe. “The experience was just, honestly, it was really . . .” she trails out, her navy nails fiddling with her dark-blonde hair. “They didn’t have running water, didn’t have electricity, they had 54 sheep and their only source of income was weaving rugs from wool.”

Joel Kotkin:

American greatness was long premised on the common assumption was that each generation would do better than previous one. That is being undermined for the emerging millennial generation.

The problems facing millennials include an economy where job growth has been largely in service and part-time employment, producing lower incomes; the Census bureau estimates they earn, even with a full-time job, $2,000 less in real dollars than the same age group made in 1980. More millennials, notes a recent White House report, face far longer period of unemployment and suffer low rates of labor participation. More than 20 percent of people 18 to 34 live in poverty, up from 14 percent in 1980.

Cara Lombardo:

Wisconsin school administrators hope they’ll soon be able to start the school year prior to Sept. 1.

A state law enacted in 2000 and pushed by the tourism industry prohibits public schools from starting earlier than September. Republican Rep. Jim Ott is circulating a bill that would remove that restriction, and school groups that have made the date change a priority say support has never been so high.

“We are hearing increasingly from our members that they want the flexibility to begin school earlier,” said Dan Rossmiller, lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

Schools have pushed, unsuccessfully, for years for the option of starting earlier to align with high school sports practices and free up time for advanced placement exams in the spring. But businesses that rely on tourists don’t want school years shifting back into August, one of their most profitable months.

Alan Borsuk:

In what ways are parents the answer and in what ways are parents the problem? I’m talking about the role parents do or could play in getting (or impeding) better schooling outcomes for children, especially kids who are most likely to end up at the sad end of all those achievement gaps.

My formerly idealistic self paid less attention to parents and focused on what schools might do. A lot of that person still survives. But my less idealistic current self — influenced by all the school reforms that haven’t moved the needle — is focused more on parents.

Parents are a hot subject these days.

Justin Caruso:

A black University of Pennsylvania student recently declared that his fall semester at the Ivy League institution was “traumatic” because he had three white professors who refused to acknowledge their privilege, and one scholar in particular who “constantly perpetuated these systems of oppression … [that] led to me mentally breaking down in the classroom.”

Student James Fisher wrote about his experience earlier this month in an op-ed in the Daily Pennsylvanian campus newspaper.

Isabel Tessier:

Hundreds of students, faculty and community members participated in a walkout and march on Wednesday, Feb. 1, to protest President Donald Trump’s recent executive order restricting U.S. entry and to demonstrate solidarity with members of the college community who were affected by the order. A smaller group of students also staged a sit-in in President Biddy Martin’s office.

The order, signed by the president on Jan. 27, temporarily restricts entry for nationals and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries, suspends all refugee admission for 120 days and indefinitely halts the movement of Syrian refugees to the U.S. The Trump administration has claimed that the act will reduce the threat of terrorism in the U.S., though most experts and other public officials who have commented on the ban disagreed.

According to The New York Times, 721 people were detained or denied entry to the U.S. by Jan. 31 because of the order, which has been met with protests across the country.

The size of the crowd grew as protesters marched at noon from Valentine Dining Hall to Converse Hall, where student speakers waited to give speeches. Led by organizer Ana Ascencio ’18, they shouted chants such as “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here” and “No ban, no wall, protection for all.”

Joanne Jacobs:

In The Book of Isaias: A Child of Hispanic Immigrants Seeks His Own America, Daniel Connolly follows Isaias Ramos in his final year of high school and the next two years. He’s a math star at his low-performing Memphis high school — and an undocumented immigrant. Will he go to college?

Although he passed a prestigious national calculus test as a junior and his counselors are pushing Harvard, Isaias has doubts. “Why should I go to college?” he asks. “Why? I mean everybody tells you to get a good job, right? But I think about a good job doing what? A college degree gives you the ability, but not the actual job. And I guess from my mindset I just don’t see college as being that important.”

Stijn Debrouwere

If you’ve ever used an arithmetic mean, a Pearson correlation or a standard deviation to describe a dataset, I’m writing this for you. Better numbers exist to summarize location, association and spread: numbers that are easier to interpret and that don’t act up with wonky data and outliers.

Statistics professors tend to gloss over basic descriptive statistics because they want to spend as much time as possible on margins of error and t-tests and regression. Fair enough, but the result is that it’s easier to find a machine learning expert than someone who can talk about numbers. Forget what you think you know about descriptives and let me give you a whirlwind tour of the real stuff.

Beth Winegarner

After spending two years and $265 million on the effort, Google’s employee population was only 2% black in 2016, the same percentage as it was in 2014. Fifty-nine percent of Googlers are white, 32% are Asian, 3% are Hispanic, and 3% identified as a mix of two or more ethnicities. A roundup of diversity reports, gathered by The Hacker Life in March, finds similar numbers at many tech companies.

In the U.S., African-Americans and Hispanics make up 26% of the population over the age of 21, Knatokie Ford, the former senior policy adviser for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, recently told Essence. But they make up only 11% of the workforce in industries related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. “To see something significant where we’re actually hitting a market supply, you know, of 10% or something like that of hispanic and black Googlers, that’s going to take several years,” Nancy Lee, the company’s former diversity chief, told the PBS NewsHour in July.

Naomi Schaefer Riley:

For Sale a sober honest, and healthy Negro Girl of twenty one years, well acquainted with country work, and having fourteen years to serve. To prevent unnecessary trouble, the price is 150 dollars.” William Duer placed that ad in 1814, just a few years before he became president of Columbia College, now Columbia University. The notice is flagged in a new report from Columbia about the school’s long and extensive ties with slavery.

Columbia now joins Brown, Harvard, Georgetown and plenty of other elite institutions in uncovering this checkered past. “I do believe any institution has to face its truth,” Columbia President Lee Bollinger said last year when the project launched. “It’s always shocking when you look back and realize things we think of as deeply immoral were taken for granted as a part of life.”

Google

Computer science (CS) education is a pathway to innovation, to creativity and to exciting career opportunities. We believe that all students deserve these opportunities. That is why Google is committed to developing programs, resources, tools and community partnerships which make CS engaging and accessible for all students.

Google’s data mining practices continue to be controversial.

Lucinda Shen:

Are millennials better off than their parents were at the same age? A new analysis suggests they aren’t.

Advocacy group the Young Invincibles looked at the income, assets, net wealth, home ownership, and retirement savings of millennials and boomers when they were around the same age in a Friday reported based on data from the Federal Reserve.

The report found that millennials—15 to 34-year-olds in 2013—were worth roughly half as much as the boomer generation and are earning about 20% less in comparison to young adults in 1989. While millennials earned $40,581 on average in 2013, members of the boomer generation earned $50,910 annually in 1989.

Meanwhile, young adults with debt and a degree in 2013 earned roughly the same as those who had no degree at all in 1989: $50,000.

Emily Loeb:

More than six decades after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, increasing numbers of black children in the U.S. attend what researchers call “apartheid schools” where students of color comprise more than 99 percent of the population.

Such schools educate one-third of black students in New York City and half of the black students in Chicago; nationwide, according to a report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, they educated more than 15 percent of African-American kids and 14 percent of Latinos in 2012. Even in places where racial segregation isn’t quite so absolute, the physical divide between white kids and kids of color in public schools—and charter schools—keeps growing.

Ashe Schow:

Last Wednesday, a group of college presidents and those who handle campus sexual assault accusations met in Washington, D.C., for a briefing.

The first of the two panels put on by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities included four college presidents. The second panel included Title IX coordinators and others who work with accusers and the accused.

The second panel, which featured Jeanne Lord and Jen Luettel Schweer of Georgetown University, Candi Smiley of Howard University, Fatima Taylor of the University of Maryland, and Tammi Slovinsky of Virginia Commonwealth University, wasn’t completely hopeless as far as due process rights are concerned. Still, the bad of the panel far outweighed the good.

The context of the briefing

The meeting was held to discuss the implementation of 2011 guidance from the Obama administration that required colleges to adjudicate sexual assault accusations. The new guidance has led to a slew of hiring, as colleges need people to investigate, punish and provide resources for accusers.

In the years following 2011, students accused of sexual assault have seen their due process rights eviscerated and their presumption of innocence ignored. Meanwhile, the definition of sexual assault has been expanded to include pretty much anything.

Stephen Foley:

More than three-quarters of US universities saw their endowments shrink in the most recent financial year, as their investment portfolios lost money and spending outpaced new donations.

The figures, in a survey of more than 800 of the largest institutions published on Tuesday, suggest a looming funding crunch across US higher education as long-term investment returns sink further below target.

The average endowment shrank 2.9 per cent, according to the study by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (Nacubo) and Commonfund, amid increased spending on student financial aid and other contributions to universities’ operating budgets.

The average 10-year investment return has fallen to 5 per cent, below the 7.4 per cent target that universities say allows them to cover their spending obligations plus inflation and other costs.

Tony Evers (PDF):

1. Why are you running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction?

I’ve been an educator all my adult life. I grew up in small town Plymouth, WI. Worked at a canning factory in high school, put myself through college, and married my kindergarten sweetheart, Kathy-also a teacher.

I taught and became a principal in Tomah, was an administrator in Oakfield and Verona, led CESA 6, and have twice been elected State Superintendent. I’ve been an educator all across Wisconsin, and no matter where I worked, I put kids first. Always.

But I have to tell you, I worry for the future. Years of relentless attacks on educators and public schools have left a generation of young people disinterested in teaching. The words and actions of leaders matter.

We have to restore respect to the teaching profession.

For teachers in the field, endless requirements and policies from Washington, Madison, and district offices are drowning our best educators in paperwork and well-intended “policy solutions” you never asked for.

I know we need to lighten the load.

As your State Superintendent, I have always tried to find common ground, while holding firm to the values we share.

I worked with Gov. Doyle to increase funding for schools and with Gov. Walker around reading and school report cards. But when Walker wanted to use school report cards to expand vouchers and take over low performing schools, we pushed back together-and we won.
When Walker proposed Act 10, I fought back. From the halls of the Capitol to rallies outside, my union thug wife and I stood with the people of Wisconsin.

I champion mental health in schools, fight for school funding reform, and work to restore
respect to the teaching profession.

But I am not a fool. The world has changed.

In my previous elections, we faced weak opponents we outspent. I won 62% of the vote and all but the three counties voted Evers last time.

But last November, Diane Hendricks and Besty DeVos dropped $5 million into the “Reform America PAC” at the last minute and took out Russ Feingold. Devos is likely to be Education Secretary and Henricks has the ear of the President.

And these people are coming for us.

They’ve recruited a field of conservative candidates vying for their support.

The folks at the conservative Wisconsin Institution for Law & Liberty are doing everything they can to undermine the independent authority of the elected state superintendent. These folks have powerful friends and allies through the state and federal government.

But we ore going to win.

We hired great a campaign team in Wisconsin. We’re raising more money than ever, and we
will need to raise more. We’re mobilizing voters and activating social media.

While Wisconsin went for Mr. Trump, those voters overwhelmingly passed 80% of the referenda questions. They love their public schools. That is what we need to connect with to win.

But I need your help. You’ve stood with me before, and I need your help again. I need you to do more than you’ve ever done before. This is the last office they don’t hold, and it is the first electoral battle in the new world. We cannot afford to lose.

2. Do you believe that public schools are sufficiently funded? If no, describe your plan to provide sufficient funds?

No.

My current state budget request restates our Fair Funding proposal. Under my proposal, all students will receive a minimum amount of aid. To provide an extra lift for some students, the general aid formula will weight students living in poverty.

Additionally, the per-pupil categorical aid will be weighted to account for foster kids, English learners and students that come from impoverished families.

Furthermore, changes to the summer school aid formula will incentivize all schools, but
especially those districts that have students who need extra time to achieve at higher levels to engage in fun, summer learning activities.

The people of Wisconsin are on record that they want to keep their schools strong. An
astounding 88% of the districts (600,000 voters) approved revenue limit exemptions just this last November. Ultimately, I come down on the side of local control and support the eventual elimination of revenue limits. In my budget proposal, I requested a reasonable increase in revenue limits. In the future, these increases should be tied to the cost of living.

3. Madison schools have experienced increasing attrition over the past five years and increasing difficulty in attracting highly qualified candidates in a growing number of certification areas. What factors do you have as the causes of this shortage? What measures will you take to promote the attraction and retention of highly qualified teachers and other school employees?

There are several main factors impacting these issues. The first is the negative rhetoric that occurs all too often around the teaching profession. The second is that Wisconsin educators’ pay has taken a significant hit in recent years -an actual decrease of over 2 percent over the past few years (and changes to benefits and retirement have further eroded take home pay). Our current high school students pick up on this, and increasingly they are not look at teaching as a viable career path, and in Wisconsin, our teacher preparation programs are reporting record lows.

We need to continue to highlight the excellent work our teachers do each and every day and bring back teacher voice in to what goes on in the classroom. I am currently working with a small group of Wisconsin educators, including several from Madison, on a project we are calling “Every Teacher a Leader,” an effort to highlight and promote instances of excellent teacher voice and leadership. Let’s highlight the leadership and critical decision-making our educators use every day in their roles. The cultures of our schools must be strong and support teachers as they work with our students. I continue to advocate for additional resources in our schools to address the most pressing needs of our students and to provide resources for teacher to do their jobs.

4. What strategies will you enact to support and value Wisconsin’s large, urban school districts?

I have championed several initiatives to support large, urban school districts, including
expanding access to:

Small class sizes and classroom support staff to help teachers effectively manage behavioral issues;

Restorative justice and harm reduction strategies that reduce the disproportionate impact of discipline on student of color;

Fun summer learning opportunities for students to accelerate learning or recover credits (increased funding, streamlined report requirements);

Community schools, wrap around services and out-of-school time programs that because schools are the center of our communities;

Culturally-responsive curriculum and profession development that helps educators meet the needs of diverse students;

Mental health services and staff integrated with schools to meet students’ needs.

I also support school finance policies that recognize that many students in poverty, English learners, foster youth, and students with special needs require additional resources to succeed.

Finally, I strongly support a universal accountability system for schools enrolling
publicly-funded students. All schools should have to meet the same high bar.

5. What strategies will you enact to support and value Wisconsin’s rural school districts?

In addition to the proposing the Fair Funding changes, my budget:

Fully-funds the sparsity categorical aid and expands it to more rural schools;

Expands the high cost transportation programs; and

Provides funds for rural educator recruitment and retention.

6. How do you feel about the present Educator Effectiveness (teacher) evaluation system? What changes would you like to see to that system?

I support the Educator Effectiveness (EE) system. It was created with input from teachers, administrators as well as school board members and legislators. I believe we have administered the EE program with great care, listening to stakeholders from across that state.

That said, I believe changes need to be made. Recently, I have recommended that results from the state achievement test (Forward Exam) not be a required element in the evaluation process.

We must also continually message that the EE system was created to support professionals through a learning centered continuous improvement process. Evaluation systems implemented in isolation as an accountability or compliance exercise, will not improve educator practice or student outcomes.

7. What is your plan to work with Milwaukee Public Schools to assure that all students receive a quality public education?

While achievement gaps persist across the state, our city of the first class presents unique challenges and requires a multi-pronged approach. Milwaukee is ground zero for our state’s efforts to accomplish major reductions in achievement gaps.

I have worked closely with Dr. Darienne Driver, MTEA and Milwaukee community leaders to support improvement efforts. We are working hand-in-hand to provide more learning time when needed, expand access to summer school, establish community schools, and create a best-in-state educator workforce.

We must continue to have honest conversations about our challenges and provide the resources and support for improvement. Divisive legislative solutions from Washington and Madison have not worked. We need more support for our students and schools, not less.

8. Do you believe the position of State Superintendent of Public Instruction should continue to be an elected position as currently provided in the State Constitution?

Absolutely yes.

The creators of our constitution got it right. Public education was so important they made the State Superintendent independently elected and answerable directly to the people. However, Governors and special interests always try to usurp this authority. The Supreme Court has consistently held up the independent power of the State Superintendent-mostly recently in the Coyne case advanced by MTI. Undeterred by their loss, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is currently working to circumvent the authority of the State Superintendent over the federal ESSA law. Rest assured we are fighting back and must again prevail.

9. Describe your position on the voucher program?

Powerful special interests and the majorities in Washington and Madison have spent years cutting revenue, growing bonding, and expanding entitlement programs like school vouchers. The result: historic cuts to education followed a slow trickle of financial support for public school amidst the statewide expansion of vouchers.

My friend former Sen. Dale Schultz often said, “We can’t afford the school system we have,
how can we afford two-a public and private one?”

It is a good question. A recent Fiscal Bureau reports indicate that over 200 districts (almost half) would have received more state aid without the changes in voucher funding that shifted cost to loca I districts.

When we move past the ideological battles, we’re left with tough choices about priorities and responsibilities. Bottom line: we have a constitutional obligation to provide an education for every kid in this state, from Winter to West Salem.

Our friends and neighbors are stepping up to pass referenda at historic rates to keep the lights on in rural schools. It is an admirable, but unsustainable effort that leaves too many kids behind. Expanding vouchers while underfunding rural schools exacerbates the problem.

That said, we all know the current majorities and proposed U.S Education Secretary support voucher expansion, so here are some key principles for moving forward:

1. The state should adequately fund our public school system before expanding vouchers;

2. The state, rather than local school districts, should pay the full cost of the voucher program;

3. Accountability should apply equally to all publicly-funded schools, including voucher schools;

Finally, we should talk more about the great things Wisconsin schools are doing and less about vouchers. They suck the air out of the room and allowing them to dominate the
conversation is unhelpful.

Around 96 percent of publicly-funded students go to a school governed by a local school board. Regardless of whether legislators support or oppose vouchers, they need to support our public schools. That’s where our focus needs to be and what I will champion.

10. Describe your position on independent charter schools.

In general, charter schools work best when authorized by a locally-elected school board that understands their community’s needs, and is accountable to them.

As both State Superintendent and a member of the Board of Regents, I am concerned the new UW System chartering authority could become controversial and disruptive. New schools are best created locally, not from a distant tower overlooking the city.

11. Wisconsin teacher licensing has the reputation as being one of the most rigorous and respected systems in the country. Recently, proposals were made that would allow any individual with a bachelor’s degree or work experience in trades to obtain a teaching license. Do you support these proposals? Why or why not?

I do not support any proposal that would ignore pedagogical skills as a key component of any preparation program. Content knowledge is not enough. A prospective teacher must know “how” to teach as well as “what’ to teach.

12. Teachers report a significant increase in mandated meetings and “professional development” sessions that are often unrelated or not embedded to the reality of their daily work with children. What will you do as State Superintendent to provide teachers with the time needed to prepare lessons, collaborate with colleagues, evaluate student work, and reflect on their practices?

When I travel the state and talk to educators, I hear this sentiment a lot, but it’s quickly followed by an important caveat: When educators believe that the meeting, the professional development opportunity, the extra responsibility, or the new idea will truly make a difference for kids they serve, they become the first and best champion of it–always.

We absolutely must find ways to lighten the load for our teachers so that the work we do out of the classroom is meaningful, manageable and powerful for kids. My Every Teacher a Leader Initiative focuses on highlighting cultures that support teacher leadership, and this often means that a principal or a superintendent has created systems that value and honor the expertise teachers bring to an initiative. They involve teachers early in decisions rather than convening them after a decision is made to implement it.

I just heard from an educator in a school district that is receiving national attention for its dramatic academic improvement over the past five years. When asked what the recipe for success was, she said the superintendent convened a team of veteran educators on his first day, listened to what they needed, worked long and hard to meet those needs, andkept them involved the whole way. That’s it.

13. Do you support restoring the rights of public sector workers to collectively bargain over wages, hours and conditions of employment?

Yes.

I have been a champion for collective bargain and workers’ rights my entire career. I signed the recall petition over Act 10 – and I haven’t changed my mind about it.

14. Are you interested in receiving MTI Voters endorsement? If so, why?

MTI has been a great partner of mine over the years. I would be honored to continue that collaboration going forward. Additionally, I have five grand-kids Madison Public Schools, and I want to them to continue to be proud of the strong relationship I have with Madison educators.

15. Are you interested in receiving financial support for your campaign from MTl-Voters?

Yes, my opponents will be seeking funding from organizations that have very deep pockets and MTI full financial support is more important than ever.

16. Is there anything else you’d like MTI members to know about your candidacy and why you are seeking election to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction?

I hope our work together, mutual commitment, and shared values continue for another four years.

Much more on Tony Evers, here.

The 2017 candidates for Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent are Tony Evers [tonyforwisconsin@gmail.com;], Lowell Holtz and John Humphries [johnhumphriesncsp@gmail.com].

League of Women Voters questions.

Seat 6: Cris Carusi, Ali Muldrow and Kate Toews

Seat 7: Matt Andrzejewski, Ed Hughes and Nicki Vander Meulen

I’ve added links to the SIS home page as well. Please email updates, corrections and additions to zellmer@gmail.com Thank you.

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (PDF):

Across the country, more than 300 new charter public schools opened in the fall of 2016. Charter schools are public schools that have exibility to meet students’ unique needs, while being held accountable for advancing student achievement. Every year, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (National Alliance) collects data on the number of charter schools that opened and closed in each state that has operating charter schools. This information
is used to determine the current number of charter schools in each state, as well as to estimate total charter school enrollment at the state and national levels.

In 2016-17, there are more than 6,900 charter schools, enrolling an estimated 3.1 million students. Over the past 10 years, enrollment in charter schools has nearly tripled—from 1.2 million students in 2006-07 to an estimated 3.1 million in 2016-17. Between 2015-16 and 2016-17, estimated charter school enrollment increased by over 200,000 students. The estimated 7 percent growth in charter school enrollment between fall 2015 and fall 2016 demonstrates continued parental demand for high-quality educational options.

The Economist:

READING John F. Kennedy’s application to Harvard College is a study in mediocrity. The former president graduated from high school with middling marks and penned just five sentences to explain why he belonged at Harvard. The only bit that expressed a clear thought was also the most telling: “To be a ‘Harvard man’ is an enviable distinction, and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain.” America’s premier universities, long the gatekeepers for the elite, have changed greatly since their days as glorified finishing schools for scions. But perhaps not as much as thought.

New data on American universities and their role in economic mobility—culled from 30m tax returns—published by Raj Chetty, an economist at Stanford University, and colleagues show that some colleges do a better job of boosting poor students up the income ladder than others. Previously, the best data available showed only average earnings by college. For the first time, the entire earnings distribution of a college’s graduates—and how that relates to parental income—is now known.

Dennis P. Saccuzzo & Nancy E. Johnson:

Considerable concern is being expressed concerning the effects on diversity and access to the profession due to proposed changes in ABA accreditation standards and changes in the format and scoring of the bar, such as those in California. According to Lawrence P. Nolan, President of the State Bar of Michigan, for example, ABA’s proposed amendments to the current accreditation standards will “adversely impact efforts to diversify the profession.”

Indeed, 90 law school Deans have asked the Council of the ABA Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar to slow down and think about its proposal to tighten accreditation requirements on bar pass rates. Again, the effects on diversity and access to the profession are among the main concerns. Access not only includes women and minorities, but also non-traditional students such as those who have no family members who ever graduated from college. An important justification for lower tier law schools is that they increase access to the profession.

Free Range Kids

Imagine if this had happened to any other group: If we kept restricting the rights of women, or minorities — it would be seen as a terrifying, intolerable assault on their freedom.

But because it is done in the name of “safety,” and because we get so used to the restrictions that they begin to seem like common sense — and maybe not quite strict enough — the right of children to any kind of unsupervised, unstructured, independent life keeps washing away. How much freedom has this family lost?

Jeff Jacoby:

A report issued this month by American Transparency, a nonpartisan watchdog that compiles data on public expenditures, chronicles the explosive — and expensive — trend toward militarizing federal agencies, most of which have no military responsibilities. Between 2006 and 2014, the report shows, 67 federal bureaus, departments, offices, and services spent at least $1.48 billion on ammunition and materiel one might expect to find in the hands of SWAT teams, Special Forces soldiers — or terrorists.

The largest share of that spending has gone to traditional law enforcement agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the US Secret Service. But the arms race has metastasized to federal agencies with strictly regulatory or administrative functions. The Internal Revenue Service, for example, now spends more than $1 million annually on firearms, ammunition, and military gear, double what it was spending a decade ago. Since 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs — which has been sharply criticized for episodes of fatal incompetence in patient care — has poured nearly $11.7 million into guns and ammo. Even the Smithsonian Institution and the Social Security Administration have each devoted hundreds of thousands of dollars to weaponry.

The Economist:

FOR a glimpse of the Soviet Union’s influence on English education, head to a sixth-form college in Lambeth, a 20-minute stroll from Parliament. There, in a former 1930s bath-house sunk low amid housing estates, sits King’s College London Mathematics School (KCLMS). Inside, pupils can spend their free time solving mathematical problems on whiteboards mounted in pods. On a recent visit the common room was quiet; the only pupils huddled in a corner playing Salem, “a strategic card game of deception”. Desks were set up for chess. The mood was more low-cost Oxbridge college than inner-London state school.

That is by design. The school is modelled on the Kolmogorov Physics and Mathematics School in Moscow, which from the mid-1960s took Russia’s smartest 15-year-olds and exposed them to the best maths teaching in the country. Michael Gove, Britain’s education secretary from 2010 to 2014, imported the idea, pushing universities to start specialist maths colleges. The aim was to make it possible for any child to have an “Eton-level education” in maths or physics, recalls Dominic Cummings, a former adviser to Mr Gove.

Andie Judson:

Most teachers start their day off with attendance, but a local teacher has found his own unique way to connect with students before they enter Room 219.

Barry White Junior teaches fifth-grade literacy at Ashley Park PreK-8 School.
The Title I school encourages teachers to find creative ways to engage with students. But before Mr. White incorporates “vocabulary shootout” and shoe-tapping songs into his curriculum, he tries to connect with each of his students.

The Economist:

WHEN politicians in the rich world speak of job losses and stagnant incomes brought about by immigration and foreign competition, they usually have blue-collar work in mind—car manufacturing, steelmaking and the like. But even the cognitive 1% can be adversely affected by foreign competition.

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Human Resources, George Borjas of Harvard University, and Kirk Doran and Ying Shen of the University of Notre Dame, study the effects of globalisation on a select group of particularly brainy Westerners: professors of mathematics. Distinguishing between cause and effect is always hard in the social sciences. One approach researchers use is to search for a “natural experiment”, and that is exactly what Drs Borjas, Doran and Shen found when they examined what happened to the productivity of American mathematicians after China’s liberalisation in 1978.

Stephan Buryani:

One morning last summer, a German psychologist named Mathias Kauff woke up to find that he had been reprimanded by a robot. In an email, a computer program named Statcheck informed him that a 2013 paper he had published on multiculturalism and prejudice appeared to contain a number of incorrect calculations – which the program had catalogued and then posted on the internet for anyone to see. The problems turned out to be minor – just a few rounding errors – but the experience left Kauff feeling rattled. “At first I was a bit frightened,” he said. “I felt a bit exposed.”

Dean Baker.

via a kind email:

Milwaukee Public Schools is hosting our 1st Annual Business Symposium on February 23, 2017 at ManpowerGroup 100 Manpower Place, Milwaukee, WI 53212. Contractors and vendors interested in doing business with the district are encouraged to attend the event which includes a series of workshops focused on diversification and economic and workforce development.

Sessions include: 1) Doing Business with the District, 2) Leveraging Certifications for Historically Underutilized Businesses, 3) MPS Strategic Partners, 4) Effective Capacity Building Resources and closes with businesses matched to department contract sponsors.

Space is limited. Please reserve your seat by completing and submitting the registration form and agenda to Renee Stanley at stanlerl@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

Details and registration information are available here.

Graham Vyse:

Black History Month began Wednesday, and this year’s theme is “The Crisis in Black Education.” According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the group that founded BHM—this crisis “has grown significantly in urban neighborhoods where public schools lack resources, endure overcrowding, exhibit a racial achievement gap, and confront policies that fail to deliver substantive opportunities.”

President Barack Obama championed these publicly funded but independently run schools, whose promise is that freedom from traditional bureaucratic regulation will allow educators to innovate, thus improving student outcomes. Unlike vouchers—essentially publicly funded passes for select students to attend private school, which Democrats typically oppose—charters are a public form of “school choice” that enjoys bipartisan support. In particular, supporters see them as a lifeline to poor and minority families; most are located in urban and other low-income areas across the country.

But the charter movement was dealt a devastating blow last year when both the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter–aligned Movement for Black Lives called for a moratorium on these schools. With its resolution, the NAACP listed four conditions under which the nation’s oldest civil rights group would support further charter proliferation:

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School several years ago.

Bill McMorris:

The two Republicans who broke ranks with their party and announced they would vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos have received thousands of dollars from the nation’s largest teachers union.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have each benefited from contributions from the National Education Association. Collins received $2,000 from the union in 2002 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murkowski, meanwhile, has received $23,500.

The NEA represents 3 million members, making it the wealthiest and most influential union in the country. The NEA, along with other labor groups like the American Federation of Teachers, has waged a fierce campaign against DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and school choice activist.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

The Economist:

TEACHERS for maths, science and for special and bilingual education have long been hard to find and keep. Filling empty slots in rural and in low-achieving urban districts is not easy either. This is not new, but districts, states and colleges are devising new ways to tackle the problem. Some are allowing unqualified teachers into the classroom. A survey last year of 211 California school districts found that 22% allowed teachers to teach subjects outside their expertise. Others are paying maths and science teachers more, which is anathema to unions, who want to treat all teachers the same. To avoid their wrath, a few states plan to use separate grants to pay bonus salaries, bypassing school districts altogether.

Some districts, such as the Cherokee County School District in South Carolina, pay teachers a $10,000 signing bonus to work in rural areas. Math for America, a privately funded programme in New York city, gives teachers up to an extra $15,000 a year for four years. New York city’s public schools lose 9% of maths and science teachers each year. Math for America’s attrition rate is less than 4%. It provides 20% of the city’s public school maths teachers and are in half of its high schools.

Jim Guszcza, Harvey Lewis, Peter Evans- Greenwood:

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has experienced a number of “springs” and “winters” in its roughly 60-year history, it is safe to expect the current AI spring to be both lasting and fertile. Applications that seemed like science fiction a decade ago are becoming science fact at a pace that has surprised even many experts.

The stage for the current AI revival was set in 2011 with the televised triumph of the IBM Watson computer system over former Jeopardy! game show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. This watershed moment has been followed rapid-fire by a sequence of striking breakthroughs, many involving the machine learning technique known as deep learning. Computer algorithms now beat humans at games of skill, master video games with no prior instruction, 3D-print original paintings in the style of Rembrandt, grade student papers, cook meals, vacuum floors, and drive cars.1

Charles Cole III::

I attended more than 10 schools before the fifth grade and I had an attitude problem in each and every classroom.

I was born in Chicago to young, drug-addicted parents that had a penchant for moving and staying in and out of jail. I moved from Chicago to Paducah, Kentucky to stay with my grandmother and then back to Chicago and then back to Paducah, you get the point: I moved a lot. Which also meant I transferred schools a lot. I was always the new kid trying to catch up on coursework, make new friends, all the while knowing that I wouldn’t be at that school for long.

When my grandmother passed, my father rounded me and my siblings up, and we moved to Oakland, where my father’s sister lived. At the time, my mother was in jail, so the rest of us hopped on a Greyhound and took the three-and-a-half day bus ride to the Bay. My mother eventually joined us.

Despite the move to Oakland, my parents would continue to struggle with drugs, and as a result we lived in several shelters.

Victor Davis Hanson

After the election, Democrats could not explain the inexplicable defeat of Hillary Clinton, who would be, they thought, the shoo-in winner in November. Over the next three months until Inauguration Day, progressives floated a variety of explanations for the Trump win—none of them, though, mentioned that the Clinton campaign had proven uninspired, tactically inept, and never voiced a message designed to appeal to the working classes.

When a particular exegesis of defeat failed to catch on, it was mostly dropped—and then replaced by a new narrative. We were told that the Electoral College wrongly nullified the popular vote—and that electors had a duty to renege on their obligations to vote for their respective state’s presidential winner.

Then followed the narrative of Trump’s racist dog-whistle appeals to the white working classes. When it was reported that Barack Obama had received a greater percentage of the white votes than did either John Kerry in 2004 or Hillary Clinton in 2016, the complaint of white chauvinism too faded.

Then came the allegation that FBI Director James Comey had given the election to Trump by reopening the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before Election Day. That fable too evaporated when it was acknowledged that Comey had earlier intervened to declare Clinton without culpability and would so again before November 8.

John Robb:

Trump is rolling back neoliberalism and everything connected to it.

To understand what this means, here’s a narrative of Trump’s insurgency. It explains what he is doing and what he is likely to do. It starts with the rise of neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is an ideology of extreme free market capitalism that was popularized by Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet. By the end of the cold war in the 90’s, it became the default economic ideology of the United States when both the Republicans and the Democrats adopted it. Neoliberalism improved the world. Unfettered access to US markets (the most valuable in the world) led to twenty plus years of rapid economic globalization that lifted billions of people out of poverty and made many countries rich. However, neoliberalism came at a cost to the US. Worse, it destroyed the only engine of prosperity and political stability in the US, the US middle class. It did this through:

Janne Hukkinen:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS luring science into dangerous waters. To make scientific publishing more efficient, commercial publishers now rely more and more on editorial software systems. These are beginning to transform peer review from interaction between humans into interaction between humans and AI. We should think twice before allowing autonomous AI systems to decide what research warrants publication.

Sarah Favot:

orty-two percent of last year’s graduating class from the Los Angeles Unified School District retook a class they had previously failed or needed some other kind of credit recovery in order to graduate, district officials said Thursday.

Superintendent Michelle King announced in August that the preliminary graduation rate was a record 75 percent, but the district had not calculated how many students needed to take credit recovery courses to get across the graduation stage.

The Economist:

IN AN old factory building in lower Manhattan a fintech startup is seeking answers to a question that has tormented teachers and students for decades: what is the value of a given course, teacher or institution? Climb Credit, with just two dozen employees, provides student loans. The programmes it finances bring returns far higher than can be expected from even highly rated universities.

Climb does not claim to nurture billionaires, nor to care much about any of the intangible benefits of education. Rather, it focuses on sharp, quantifiable increases in earnings. The average size of its loans is $10,000 and it normally finances programmes of less than a year. The subjects range from coding to web design, from underwater welding to programming robots for carmakers (which has the highest rate of return). Some students have scant formal education; others advanced degrees. The rate of return they get is calculated as the uplift in earnings after the course of study, minus its cost (which includes that of servicing the loan, and takes account of the absence of earnings during the course).

NBER:

Online coursework has been heralded as potentially transformative for higher education, but little is known about whether it increases the number of people pursuing education or simply substitutes for existing options. In Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education? (NBER Working Paper No. 22754), Joshua Goodman, Julia Melkers, and Amanda Pallais provide the first evidence that online education can expand access to students who would not otherwise have enrolled in an educational program. They study the earliest educational model to combine the inexpensive nature of online education with a degree program from a highly-ranked institution.