20,537 results
James Howard Kunstler: Meanwhile, though, the money flows dry up as the old Big Donor Dawgs freak-out at the prospect of having their fortunes confiscated, eaten by this advancing ant-swarm, while Scott Bessent and Todd Blanche work to disassemble the giant, hive-like matrix of NGOs that, for years, laundered US taxpayer dollars through the Democratic […]
fire.org: Hosted by the FIRE Student Network, this conference brings together 100+ college students from across the country to build connections, learn from one another, and gain practical tools to support free speech on campus. Through workshops, small-group discussions, and sessions with FIRE staff and guest speakers, they’ll explore key issues at the intersection of […]
Rebecca Noel The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools board questioned – but passed – a controversial tech contract at its first meeting since Superintendent Crystal Hill was placed on leave. Instead of the proposed two years, the board only approved a one-year term. In recent weeks, parents have questioned the use of technology in CMS schools, especially early on in […]
Alex Berenson: Hospital prices have risen almost fourfold since 2000, far more than any other major economic sector. The increase in prices comes after decades of consolidation. Nearly half of medical centers have become part of bigger chains since 2000, largely erasing competition in many cities and metro areas. — (Know what hasn’t risen fourfold? A […]
J.D. Tuccille: When the state is so big and intrusive that people need its permission to do everything from building a house to merging businesses, it’s easy for the lines to blur between conversations in which government officials merely voice preferences and those in which they twist arms to get their way. That creates room […]
Chris Hoofnagle: In 1960, the California Master Plan for Higher Educationcreated an ambitious, yet pragmatic, statewide architecture to give every Californian an affordable pathway to a university degree. But today, the pragmatic aims of the Master Plan have been scrambled. A recent mandate for equal outcomes has pulled research faculty hired to work at the frontier […]
Sarah Steimer: James M. Redfield, a University of Chicago scholar renowned for his groundbreaking research on the ancient Greek world and revered for shaping generations of students, died May 28 at the age of 91. The Edward Olson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages and Literatures, in the Committee on Social Thought, the Committee […]
Teagan King: Following the statewide trend, Madison added 86.2 full-time equivalent paraprofessional positions, a 25% increase. It also added 236.4 full-time equivalent teachers, a 12.1% increase. Other licensed non-classroom employees only grew by 0.9%. The Madison School District’s student enrollment increased by 0.9%, or 223 students, over the past 16 years. It added 327 full-time […]
Williesha Morris After Auburn University made sweeping changes to faculty representation and curriculum, professors at other schools are wondering whether they are next. Last week, Auburn’s Board of Trustees dissolved its faculty senate and asserted more control over curriculum. “Faculty governance is one of the key safeguards against institutional indoctrination,” said Matthew Hudnall, a University of Alabama […]
Carolyn Iodice: Whether leaning on social media platforms or threatening broadcasters, federal officials of both parties have made jawboning — using government power, or the threat of it, to indirectly censor protected speech — a growing stain on American life. To fight back, Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden have introduced a landmark bill to […]
Bjorn Lomberg; Climate alarmism raised awareness but it skewed policy toward expansive emissions reductions rather than research into cheap clean energy Two decades ago, Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” thrust climate change into the global spotlight. Its dramatic imagery and dire warnings helped transform a niche concern into a front-page crisis, influencing rich-country leaders and elite jet-setters, and […]
Idrees Kahloon Zvezdelina Stankova has&nb;taught mathematics at UC Berkeley for nearly three decades. But in 2023, while teaching introductory calculus for the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, she noticed that something was quite wrong. The bottom 25 percent of students were not just struggling with the coursework, Stankova told me; “people […]
Freddie deBoer: Recently a bunch of young people have been using the term “point of view” in a way that’s unhelpful. I say unhelpful rather than wrong because I have zero interest in jumping into the grammar wars, which aren’t actually much of a war. Just about zero people out there are actually strict grammarians, […]
Eigen: first pass on a list of 20C-21C slippery slopes that were identified by contemporaries as slippery and which in fact turned out to be slippery
NCEE: The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 created the Reading First program to help ensure that all students can read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The law required an independent, rigorous evaluation of the program. The Reading First Impact Study Final Report provides an update of […]
“Skeptic Research Center”: Americans with the highest trust in educators are twice as likely to (falsely) believe that Europeans introduced the concept of war and conflict to Native Americans. (see graph below)
Ray A. Smith, Jason French and Stephanie Stamm: A string of cities across America’s Sunbelt are emerging as graduate-hiring hot spots in an otherwise challenging job market for young professionals, an exclusive analysis shows. Birmingham, Ala., tops the list of the places where newly minted graduates are landing jobs with a college-level career track, followed […]
Craig Barton: Bibi Groot started her career at the Behavioural Insights Team – the government unit that became famous for getting people to pay their taxes on time by changing a single line in a letter. She ran randomised control trials in further education colleges, earned a PhD in Behavioural Public Policy at UCL, had twins in […]
Richard Adams: Strict bans on mobile phones in schools have “close to zero” impact on student learning and show no evidence of improvements in attendance or online bullying, a study has found. Researchers at US universities including Stanford and Duke looked at nearly 1,800 US schools where students’ phones were kept in locked pouches and […]
Jack: In 1967, a district judge cited the influential “Lorton study” as one of his chief pieces of evidence against ability grouping. What did it find? That adult inmates could, with a year of instruction, go from around 6th grade to 8th grade reading and math levels. A brief thread Related: English 10.
Chris Rickert: The Sun Prairie School District on Thursday afternoon canceled school for Friday, citing a large number of staff who said they will be absent on a day when activists are planning a major immigrant rights and labor solidarity march in Madison. Sun Prairie’s decision to cancel classes Friday follows the Madison School District’s […]
Early Literacy Screener Map. More. Act 20. 3,887 Madison 4 year old to third grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group. Madison taxpayers have long supported far above average k-12 tax & $pending. This despite our long term, disastrous reading results. Madison Schools: More $, No Accountability The taxpayer funded Madison […]
Scott Johnson: Having just done a bit of that right here, the next step might be to examine our recent history. Is there a Stamp Act moment to be found? Are ICE agents comparable to troops marching in the city of Boston? Has Congress passed draconian laws akin to those so-called Intolerable Acts that shut […]
By Garry Tan California is projected to lose 15.7% of its public school students by 2031. That’s nearly one million kids, gone from a system that currently educates 5.9 million. When the dust settles, federal enrollment data shows California will have fewer students than Texas had in 2019. This can’t simply be shrugged off as a nationwide trend. […]
Jude Schwalbach: Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released provisional data for 2025, showing that the nation’s nearly two-decade baby bust continued, with U.S. fertility rates hitting a historic low. Since 2007, when the so-called birth dearth began, the number of births in the U.S. has dropped by 18%. This means that nearly 718,000 fewer children were born […]
Olivia Herken: But the endorsement this month from the Wisconsin Education Association Council, or WEAC, gives her a boost in a primary race just beginning to heat up. Here’s how Roys, whose campaign calls her “a dark horse” in the race, received the endorsement from an organization representing about 97,000 educators in Wisconsin: Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, […]
Michael B. Horn Over 15 percent of America’s colleges and universities have closed their doors since 2013. It’s a trend that’s only going to get worse. Hampshire College, a respected liberal arts school in Massachusetts, announced Tuesday that it would be closing its doors because of ongoing financial troubles. This should not come as any great surprise. […]
Pat Garrett:See how much three major policy changes could cost you and your family In the years leading up to 2010, property taxes in Wisconsin were on a steady upward trajectory, with residents paying roughly 20 to 30 percent more than the national average. Those trends put Wisconsin near the top nationally in property tax burden. That trajectory began to […]
Molly Beck: Guv race news: WEAC, the state’s largest teachers union, endorses Democratic state Sen. Kelda Roys for governor. —— A bit of history: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators ——— Fast Lane Literacy 1998! Money and school performance. A.B.T.: “Ain’t been taught.” 3888 (!) Madison 4k to 3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students […]
Scott Johnson: LET’S HEAR IT FOR DESIREE OSTROUSHKO. The Star Tribune somehow overlooked her in its profile of Mr. Normal: Statement from the daughter and sister of the family that attacked Savanah Hernandez yesterday. pic.twitter.com/iMw3hbdVGw more.
Daniel Boguslaw, James Baratta: This week, the Congressional Black Caucus will quietly support an effort to reauthorize surveillance powers that were used to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in 2020, the Prospect has learned. According to multiple congressional sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, CBC support for the reauthorization of Section 702 of the […]
Daisy Christodoulou Student attainment follows a continuous distribution. The image below gives a much better representation of how it works. Why this is a problem Grades are just lines drawn on an underlying distribution. They don’t correspond to sudden leaps in student attainment. When you treat them like they are discrete categories, it causes big […]
Natalie Kitroeff: And so that’s a result that, in some ways, seemed predictable and even inevitable, because Mississippi is a pretty poor state. It doesn’t spend a lot on education. But slowly but surely, they started turning things around. By 2019, they were about in line with the national average. And now, they are a […]
Kaleem Caire: We have raised nearly $52 million in private philanthropy over eleven years to bridge a gap that should never have been ours alone to bridge. What distinguishes One City from other public charter schools in Wisconsin isn’t just our academic growth. No other charter school in Wisconsin was established with the specific purpose […]
Kelly Meyerhofer:
Erin Gretzinger: Blair Mosner Feltham and Nicki Vander Meulen will retain their seats on the Madison School Board, defeating challengers Daniella Molle and Dana Colussi-Lynde in two contested races Tuesday. In the Seat 6 election, Mosner Feltham, a teacher in the Sun Prairie Area School District, received 61.8% of the vote with 100% of precincts […]
Michael Hicks: Simple measures, such as differences in standardized test scores, account for as much as one-third of the differences in home values between communities. So, measuring school quality should be a central goal of state policymakers. One key challenge in evaluating school quality is that households choose their schools. Family characteristics play a huge […]
Scott Johnson: If the facts don’t fit, you must omit (“you” in this case being the Star Tribune). Take, for example, my close encounter with Star Tribune reporter Paul Walsh in connection with the story Walsh reported on May 5, 2025. Walsh is described as a breaking news reporter who, according to Walsh himself, “writes what’s interesting […]
Samuel Hammond: Anecdotally, I suspect the spread of Potemkin civil society is the flip side of America’s overproduction of college-educated knowledge workers: if you’re unable to cut it at McKinsey, a nonprofit job is a good deal, providing lower but stable pay in exchange for social prestige. Of course, as a collective action problem, the […]
Jonathan Turley: Many in education have long pushed equity cards and “identity markers” to get students to define themselves by their race, disability, gender, or other criteria. Even computer science teachers are told to tailor their lessons to identity markers. Such markers are treated as essential to creating “Identity safe classrooms.” There are even DEI games where children are […]
Reid J. Epstein, Shane Goldmacher: Federal election law prohibits foreign citizens or people who are not permanent residents from donating directly to federal candidates or political action committees. Lying to or obstructing Congress is a crime. The memos instigated a meltdown at the highest levels of ActBlue, one of the Democratic Party’s most vital financial organs.
Scott Manley: In reality, we are funding students at a level twice as much as we were in 2000 – about $18,592 per student each year. That’s more than fifty percent higher than the tuition to attend UW-Madison this year. If we can give a world-class college education to UW students for $12,186, how is […]
Dave Cieslewicz: For example, in 2024, Madison voters approved a record $507 million capital improvements referendum. One of the largest items in that referendum was $85 million for a new, bigger building to house Sherman Middle and Shabazz High schools. Yet, that building is at only 50% of capacity, and projections are for enrollments to go down. Before […]
Tim Sands: As a university president for 12 years and a faculty member at three Power Five (now Four) institutions since 1993, I have long observed the interplay between National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I athletics and the university. Now as the chair of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors and a member of the Atlantic […]
Balaji: That brings us to the present day. While AI will disrupt Hollywood, the bureaucracy, lawyers, doctors, and many other state-licensed jobs….it has also created a window where legacy media can just publish facts (or I should say assertions) once again. However, I think there will be much more to it than that. Cryptographically verifiable […]
Corey DeAngelis: Arizona Senate passed a bill requiring school districts to spend at least 60% of their operational funding on classroom instruction and teachers. The vote was 16 to 12. All Democrats voted against it. —— Jill Barshay: Spoke with @arneduncan at @aefpweb in Chicago last week on how Democrats lost parents when it comes […]
Jay Rogers: “When the address you give the Secretary of State is a law office, and the address you give your mortgage lender is Washington, and the address you give Beijing-linked donors is wherever the money flows—your relationship with California is transactional.” ——- Somewhat related: DPI lawyer Ben Jones who oversaw sexual harassment issues appointed […]
Richard Rubin & Jeanne Whalen: Republican-led states are racing each other to flatten, cut and eliminate individual income taxes, with 23 states lowering their top income-tax rates since 2021. Mississippi and Oklahoma, among others, put themselves on paths to eliminate personal income taxes. South Carolina is setting a course this year to drop its top […]
Anna Merod: California’s Fresno Unified School District is one such district experimenting with outcomes-based contracts. During the 2024-25 school year, Fresno USD entered into an agreement with Curriculum Associates for the district’s use of the company’s i-Ready tool, said Ann Loorz, the district’s executive director of procurement. A multi-department district committee, which includes experts in […]
Erin Gretzinger: As Mosner Feltham and Vander Meulen underscored their track records and ongoing endeavors to improve the Madison Metropolitan School District, Molle and Colussi-Lynde spotlighted their ideas and what differentiates them from their opponents. The candidates share many overarching priorities, such as advocating for changes to the state funding formula for public schools and addressing salary compression for […]
www Last Thursday, Governor Greg Gianforte signed SB 212, the Montana Right to Compute Act (MRTCA), marking the state as the first in the nation to secure comprehensive rights for citizens to own and utilize computational and artificial intelligence tools. This legislation positions Montana at the forefront of safeguarding digital privacy and technology accessibility. The newly […]
Anish Koka MD (Cardiology): As a young boy, I grew up reading of the triumph of good over evil in my favorite Indian comic book: Amar Chitra Katha. The tales of the virtuous vassals imbued by a godly spirit vanquishing the forces of darkness is powerful and appealing in large measure because we believe we […]
Dissident Teacher: In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gained a bunch of new followers, so I thought I’d just reintroduce myself. I’m an ex-California public school teacher who watched the system degrade into near-universal failure from 2001-2022. My initial work was to explain the systemic incentives that have robbed millions of kids of a […]
Bernard Lane: Approved, until it wasn’t A talk to familiarise Australian family doctors with a safer treatment approach to youth gender dysphoria will not go ahead as planned after a medical college buckled to activist pressure. The well-subscribed March 10 webinar presentation by Finnish psychiatrist Riittakerttu Kaltiala—a leading clinician and researcher in the international shift […]
Melissa Clucas: Since the 2016-17 school year, enrollment in Marblehead Public Schools has declined from 3,144 students to a projected 2,389 students this year — a 24% decrease. This shift reflects long-term demographic changes in our town and is not indicative of a decline in school quality. Communities across Massachusetts and the nation are experiencing […]
Sceptic California It’s very on brand for California that one of the factors pushing Oakland towards a possible bankruptcy is environmental activists pushing the city to illegally renege on a port contract Taxpayers are now on the hook for up to $654 million, before interest
Erin Gretzinger: As authorities investigate allegations that an East High School staff member fed dog food to a student, state Rep. Shelia Stubbs and other community leaders called on the Madison school district to expedite its review and release more information. At the state Capitol Friday alongside Stubbs and others, Debra Hawkes said the staff […]
Sara Sanford Freeman: Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) has announced changes to its Revenue Recognition practices; the move follows the dismissals of 3 senior finance ppl (incl CFO & Controller) in Dec & an increase to the deficit projection for next SY. Many indicator lights blinking red, but I want to unpack the RR piece. 1/ […]
Ashley Lopez: “Right now, we only rate 18 out of 435 races as toss ups, which means that less than 5% of Americans will truly be deciding who’s in control of the House,” David Wasserman, senior elections analyst for the Cook Political Report, told NPR. This disparity in the voting power of Americans in congressional races […]
Austin Berg: The answers reveal how a hollow office wreaks havoc on the health of Chicago’s finances. Chicago’s treasurer The city’s current treasurer has made herself unusually vulnerable to criticism. Melissa Conyears-Ervin has been the subject of multiple ethics investigations and scandals since taking office in 2019. Here are the toplines:
Wyatt Eichholz Per-pupil spending by Wisconsin school districts is at its highest level since 2000 even after adjusting for inflation, according to data from the Department of Public Instruction. Statewide, school districts spent $17,400 per student in the 2023-2024 school year, more than $1,000 higher than the previous year. Total education cost per pupil — the red line on […]
Brian Fraley: DPI has a transparency problem that is quickly becoming a legal one. After a year of stonewalling our investigation into what we discovered was a taxpayer-funded Waterpark Workshop, the department has yet to release the vendor contract. Conveniently for them, it is the very document they claim restricts their ability to provide more details […]
Jeff Eager: Repeal of the tax hike in the referendum seems overwhelmingly likely. What remains uncertain is how the revolt will reshape Oregon’s political landscape. A successful repeal could fracture the progressive coalition that has dominated for decades and affect midterm election outcomes. The horse-drawn delivery of petitions to Salem was more than a quaint […]
Quinton Klabon: You MUST watch this @dgo151 journalism! Green Bay says all schools are underfunded.Reporter asks if hiring way more staff has caused deficits.(Per DPI, GB would pay 350 fewer staff if they had 2017 ratios.)GB freezes, changes mind, says it’s actually good to super-staff. —— “An emphasis on adult employment”
David Kent A majority of Americans (57%) express low confidence in journalists to act in the best interests of the public, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis from the Pew-Knight Initiative. This includes 40% who say they have not too much confidence and 17% who say they have none at all. By comparison, 43% […]
WYATT EICHHOLZFE We conducted two phases of research: a quantitative analysis of teacher loss before and after the adoption of character education programs in Wisconsin schools and districts, and follow-up interviews with teachers and administrators.
Love: 𝗙𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘆 The district spends $𝟮𝟱𝟬 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 on pensions and retiree health benefits. Every dollar goes to retired employees. Zero reaches a working teacher or a classroom. This spending spiral stems from a miscalculation the state was warned about two decades ago. 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗧𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 Stanford lecturer David Crane […]
Laura Meckler, Lydia Sidhom, Eric Lau John Sailer, director of higher education policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said that when programs reach their hiring goals, it’s largely because they are “overtly discriminatory.” “These kinds of programs have certainly discriminated against White candidates,” he said. “They’ve certainly discriminated against men. They’ve certainly […]
Maggie Switek, PhD, Brock Smith and Abigail Humphreys, PhD: Our report and interactive online tool break down the components of the BPC index, delivering actionable insights into the factors driving short- and medium-term economic performance in US metropolitan areas. Policymakers, government officials, and business leaders can leverage this analysis to craft targeted strategies for fostering […]
Joshua Hochschild ——- “What happens when a cabal of secular progressive technocrats takes over an historic, traditional liberal arts college?”
Barton Swaim: The unfolding debacle in Minneapolis captures an underappreciated fact about the Democratic Party: It is configured to react in unreasoning rage to everything President Trump does. The challenge of “messaging”—how to condemn roundups of illegal migrants without defending protesters’ lawlessness—is only a symptom of the problem. The problem itself arises from the Byzantine […]
Patrick Michleran From history to poverty to treating kids like wildlife, errors compound Bungling facts is bad enough. The harm’s far greater when you’re paid by taxpayers to profess them at Wisconsin’s flagship state university. A case in point: A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of education policy revealed a grave misunderstanding of school choice as […]
Brian Freed University of Austin (UATX) is a hot topic after the hit piece by Politico. My son is in his second term there; his brother(s) will start in the fall. Every single person I’ve met at UATX is more articulate than myself, and certainly more qualified to speak. But if the goal of the […]
By Rob Schneider So, while executives pat themselves on the back for their “virtue,” their studios are plunged into debt. According to public filings, as of late 2025, Disney’s debt is roughly $35.3 billion and Warner Bros. Discovery’s debt stands at approximately $33.5 billion. Cinema attendance continues to decline, with annual box office receipts in North […]
Unexpectedly, I was recently prompted to consider 2026 Wisconsin Gubernatorial candidates and education. Herewith are my 2 big goals. Focus: 1. All hands on deck to improve Wisconsin literacy. a. 97,414 4k-3rd grade students scored lower than 75% of the students in the national comparison group. Data via the 2024-2025 Early Literacy Screener (Act 20) […]
Supreme Court Decision PDF An Arizona statute known as S. B. 1070 was enacted in 2010 to address pressing issues related to the large number of unlawful aliens in the State. The United States sought to enjoin the law as pre-empted. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction preventing four of its provisions from taking […]
Zach Goldberg & Eric Kaufmann Results of a representative survey of more than 1,500 Americans aged 18 to 20 suggest that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and radical gender ideology, together known as Critical Social Justice (CSJ), is widespread in American schools. Ninety-three percent of American 18- to 20-year-olds said that they had heard about at […]
Link: I’m going to be fair to parents. Most parents aren’t dumb. They can tell the system has problems. They know test scores aren’t great. They know teachers are stressed. They know kids are anxious. But what most parents don’t realize is this: It’s worse than you think. And it’s worse than you can imagine. […]
Retraction Watch: The retraction notice published today states first author Kevin Ng was responsible for the manipulation in the paper, including manipulated data in several figures. At the time of the experiments, Ng was a Ph.D. student at the Francis Crick Institute in London under the supervision of co-corresponding author George Kassiotis. According to Ng’s OrcID profile, he is now a […]
Abdoulaye Ndiaye: This article is for undergraduate, master’s, and early-career professionals who regularly contact me for career advice about: Most of these students are first-generation students seeking answers to the above questions, career advice, or mentoring. However, I am unable to respond personally to all of their individual inquiries, so I decided to address many […]
Rahm Emanuel: Mississippi went from 49th to 9th in their reading scores – known as the “Mississippi Miracle.” Tennessee, Louisiana, and Alabama adopted the same (phonics) model and are seeing similar gains for their kids. It works. What are we waiting for? We need the courage to stand by our kids. China is not holding […]
Arthur Brooks: “DEI programs actually reduced gender and racial diversity in companies…policies also generally lowered the performance of the targeted groups and increased the perception of workplace unfairness. Many companies are now rapidly unwinding DEI programs.” Two decades on, DEI programs have come under attack. Some of this criticism has involved a political backlash, but […]
Gary Rushkin: Today, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled against our efforts to compel the University of North Carolina to disclose roughly 50,000 pages of documents, mostly of Prof. Ralph Baric, mostly about his work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, possibly containing clues about the origins of COVID-19. Even though the NC Court […]
Enjoyiana Nururdin, Erin Gretzinger and Olivia Herken: Two of the board’s seven seats are up for election, and both races are poised to be contested. Board members serve three-year terms. Seat 6 incumbent Blair Mosner Feltham faces Daniella Molle, a qualitative researcher at the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Seat 7 […]
Hugo C. Chiasson and Elise A. Spenner: Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus. In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared […]
Kimberly Wethal UW-Madison should centralize much of its budgeting and human resources to avoid future abuses of its policies, according to a third-party report requested after the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion chief was demoted for excess spending. The recommendations, created by outside financial services firm Deloitte, said HR should be realigned to give more oversight in […]
OECD: The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the world’s largest survey of teachers and principals. In 2024, 280 000 educators from 55 education systems shared insights into their working conditions, professional development and the realities of the modern classroom. In this edition, Results from TALIS 2024, teachers reveal if and how they use […]
Dan Wang: One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless. If the Bay Area once had an impish side, it has gone the way of most hardware tinkerers and hippie communes. Which of the tech titans are funny? In public, they […]
Justin Weinberg: The Hoya reports: The department announced the decision in a Dec. 22 email to applicants, one week after the Dec. 15 application deadline. The announcement came after university officials announced Dec. 12 that Georgetown has reduced doctoral enrollment amid ongoing budget cuts and a decline in graduate tuition revenue… Interim University President Robert M. Groves announced Dec. 9 that the university recorded a 23% decline in the number […]
Will Flanders: “Affordability” has become the dominant theme in politics across the nation, including here in Wisconsin. Rising costs for housing, food, healthcare, utility bills and taxes are on the top of voters’ minds, while politicians of every stripe echo the language of affordability. However, our political leaders are failing to target the policies that actually drive-up […]
Keegan Kyle: Madison’s first elections of 2026 are shaping up to be rather quiet, but that landscape could shift in the next two weeks if more candidates jump in. Nine of 10 Madison City Council seats, one of two Madison School Board seats and most Dane County Board seats up for election in April are […]
Erin Gretzinger: Five Van Hise parents spoke with the Cap Times about their concerns, which are informed by their first-hand experiences, complaints shared with them by teachers and incidents they’ve heard from other parents over the past two years. “When the people that you’re asking to take care of your kids no longer feel safe […]
Dave Cieslewicz: Now, students are taught to “trust their feelings” and to value “lived experience.” Classic literature and thought is denigrated as being about “dead, white men.” For more on this, I suggest “The Coddling of the American Mind,” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. And so now there’s been a reckoning. This is good. […]
George Wiebe Most of the jump is the result of two Madison School District referendums passed last year, which increased school taxes by nearly $780, or about 18%, on the average Madison home, according to the city’s breakdown of the tax bill. Voters also approved a $22 million city referendum last year, although that increase was reflected […]
Calli McMurray: Scientific publisher Springer Nature has begun to retract dozens of papers that relied on a dataset fraught with ethical and reliability concerns, The Transmitter has learned. Five papers have been retracted since 16 November, and 33 more retractions are planned, says Tim Kersjes, Springer Nature’s head of research integrity, resolutions. The papers attempted […]
Quinton Klabon: Districts paid for hundreds of millions of permanent salaries with temporary funds in the pandemic aftermath. Wisconsin had 49,078 FEWER students from 2020 to 2025 but 561 FEWER teachers and 2,702 MORE other staff. How do I know? I tracked every dollar districts budgeted for DPI approval from the last round of federal […]
Budget Document with curious “security” applied: Madison’s budget website. Erin Gretzinger: This year’s budget is 10% higher in both revenue and expenses compared with last year’s, with additional spending focused on priorities like expanding 4K options and boosting staffing, which went up by nearly 60 full-time equivalent positions. About 81% of the district’s budget goes […]
Developed by Barb Novak, PhD Director, Office of Literacy: School and District level data (.xlsx). Act 20 annual reporting. —— Chris Rickert: Nearly 44% of Madison School District 4K through third graders scored below the 25th percentile on an early literacy screener required under a 2023 state law, the state Department of Public Instruction reported Monday, […]
Alexandra Wexler: Quick Summary Gunmen abducted 303 students and 12 teachers and staff from St. Mary’s Catholic School in Niger State; 50 students have since escaped. Since 2014, at least 17 mass abductions have occurred, with at least 1,700 children seized from schools in Nigeria. More than 100,000 Nigerians have died in political and religious […]
Mark Lisheron: U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who was part of a state Senate majority that helped put across the last major tenure reform in Wisconsin in 2015, told the Badger Institute this week that tenure would be a big part of a review of UW System spending and operations if he is elected governor. The Badger Institute contacted all other Republican and […]