Richard Rubin and Kara Dapena

No matter how you measure it, the U.S. government is spending significantly more than it did a decade ago. As President Trump prepares his joint address to Congress on Tuesday, the debate over federal spending is front and center. Over the past decade, government spending has surged, driven by pandemic relief, rising costs for entitlement programs and increased defense budgets. Now, some Republicans are pushing to roll back spending to 2019 levels, arguing that cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit and offset tax cuts.

Let’s take a look under the hood at where the money is going and where spending has grown the most since 2015:

Te-Ping Chen:

In America’s most surprising cutting-edge classes, students pursue hands-on work with wood, metals and machinery, getting a jump on lucrative old-school careers.

School districts around the U.S. are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. They are betting on the future of manual skills overlooked in the digital age, offering vocational-education classes that school officials say give students a broader view of career prospects with or without college.

With higher-education costs soaring and white-collar workers under threat by generative AI, the timing couldn’t be better.

In a suburb of Madison, Wis., Middleton High School completed a $90 million campus overhaul in 2022 that included new technical-education facilities. The school’s shop classes, for years tucked away in a back corridor, are now on display. Fishbowl-style glass walls show off the new manufacturing lab, equipped with computer-controlled machine tools and robotic arms.

Interest in the classes is high. About a quarter of the school’s 2,300 students signed up for at least one of the courses in construction, manufacturing and woodworking at Middleton High, one of Wisconsin’s highest-rated campuses for academics.

“We want kids going to college to feel these courses fit on their transcripts along with AP and honors,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school. He shows his students local union pay scales for ironworkers, steamfitters and boilermakers, careers that can pay anywhere from $41 to $52 an hour.

Wall Street Journal:

Three men, including two sitting local officials, are facing federal charges that they tried to steal a 2021 mayoral election in Pennsylvania. It didn’t work, but an indictment unveiled last week alleges that they falsely registered nearly three dozen people living elsewhere to addresses in Millbourne, population 1,200, before requesting and filling out fraudulent mail ballots.

Pennsylvanians can update their voter registrations on a website that verifies identity by asking for a driver’s license number. Prosecutors say the men “persuaded many of their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances to show them their driver’s licenses or other documents,” promising that out-of-towners “would not get in trouble as long as they did not vote in another election in November.” Other ID details were allegedly taken nonconsensually, including from Mr. Hasan’s business.

Once the outsiders were registered to Millbourne, the feds say the defendants then used the website to request mail ballots, which they cast for Mr. Hasan. In some cases they allegedly “forged the voters’ signatures.” In others, the vote was presented “to the non-Millbourne resident to whom the ballot had been addressed, and the non-resident signed the envelope.”

The effort failed, and the Democratic mayoral candidate won the 2021 race, 165 to 138. All three men pleaded not guilty to the charges this week, according to court records.

On the one hand, this was caught despite the small number of ballots involved. That’s a reason for confidence in much larger margins, such as when President Trump won Pennsylvania in 2024 by 120,266 votes, and also when he lost it in 2020 by 80,555.

On the other hand, it’s alarming how easy such a scheme appears to be. What if a foreign adversary got its hands on hacked or leaked driver’s license data? The indictment—and the long time after the 2021 to bring charges—is another argument for states to pull back from the Covid-19 voting laxity of absentee-for-everybody. The price of democracy is vigilance, and voting fraud isn’t a myth.

David Pilling interviews Bjorn Lomborg:

“I hope to provide a tailwind to good ideas and a headwind to bad ideas,” he says, advocating, for example, more spending on heart disease prevention, which is cheap, and less on curing cancer, which is expensive.

Not surprisingly, Lomborg stirs fierce emotions. He has been accused of cherry-picking data, flouting scientific methodology and of wearing T-shirts in inappropriate settings. He has been cast as a heartless rationer and a peddler of false dichotomies. At a book event in Oxford, someone shoved a baked Alaska pie in his “smug face”. A former head of the UN climate panel compared him to Hitler. Both incidentally ended up as his friends.

A blond pin-up for the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing think-tank, and admired by people like Joe Rogan, the Donald Trump-endorsing podcaster on whose show he recently appeared, Lomborg is hard to pigeonhole. Bill Gates consults him and Lomborg spends his time worrying about how to spend aid in poor countries. He is pro-trade and pro-immigration, not exactly typical rightwing positions.

So who is he, I wonder as I walk through the crisp blue light of London’s Docklands. He has chosen the Bonnane Restaurant & Pizzeria, a large glass and chrome affair with a view across the Thames of the spiky, hedgehog-reminiscent O2 Arena dome.

“I love pizza and we could incorporate this into the conversation,” he had written somewhat unpromisingly, though at least he’s entering into the spirit of Lunch with the FT.

Tyler Durden:

The point here is that the Administrative State – aloof from executive control – has taken to itself prerogatives such as immunity to dismissal and the self-awarded authority to shape policy – creating a dual state system, run by unelected technocrats, which, when implanted in departments such as Justice and the Pentagon, have evolved into the American Deep State.

Article Two of the Constitution however, says very bluntly: Executive power shall be vested in the U.S. President (with no ifs or buts at all.) Trump intends for his Administration to recover that lost Executive power. It was, in fact, lost long ago. Trump is re-claiming too, the Executive’s right to dismiss ‘servants of the State’, and to ‘switch off’ wasteful expenditure at his discretion, as part of a unitary executive prerequisite.

Of course, the Administrative State is fighting back. Turley’s article is headlined: They Are Taking Away Everything We Have: Democrats and Unions Launch Existential Fight. Their aim has been to cripple the Trump initiative through using politicised judges to issue restraint orders. Many mainstream lawyers believe Trump’s Unitary Executive claim to be illegal. The question is whether Congress can stand up Agencies designed to act independently of the President; and how does that square with the separation of powers and Article Two that vests unqualified executive power with one sole elected official – the U.S. President.

How did the Democrats not see this coming? Lawyer Robert Barnes essentially says that the ‘blitzkrieg’ was “exceptionally well-planned” and had been discussed in Trump circles since late 2020. The latter team had emerged from within a generational and cultural shift in the U.S.. This latter had given rise to a Libertarian/Populist wing with working class roots who often had served in the military, yet had come to despise the Neo-con lies (especially those of 9/11) that brought endless wars. They were animated more by the old John Adams adage that ‘America should not go abroad in search of monsters to slay’.

In short, they were not part of the WASP ‘Anglo’ world; they came from a different Culture that harked back to the theme of America as Republic, not as Empire. This is what you see with Vance and Hegseth – a reversion to the Republican precept that the U.S. should not become involved in European wars. Ukraine is not America’s war.

The Deep State, it seems, were not paying attention to what a posse of ‘populist’ outliers, tucked away from the rarefied Beltway talking shop, were up to: They (the outliers) were planning a concerted attack on the Federal expenditure spigot – identified as the weak spot about which a Constitutional challenge could be mounted that would derail – in its entirety – the expenditures of the Deep State.

more.

NY Post

“ai” summary:

A Manhattan Institute report highlights the challenges in combating “wokeness” in academia, emphasizing the need for a long-term strategy beyond federal intervention or new leadership.

www

Calculus Made Easy is a book on calculus originally published in 1910 by Silvanus P. Thompson, considered a classic and elegant introduction to the subject.

I read “Calculus Made Easy” by Silvanus P. Thompson and it’s still to this day my inspiration for explaining complex technical topics to lay people. It’s a fantastic book, and even if you know math you must read it if you want to understand how to teach complexity to others. (source)

The Economist

Few things agitate Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s new health secretary, more than the rate of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among American children. And for good reason: one in nine children aged 3-17 years has been diagnosed with ADHD, two to three times the rate in other Western countries. On February 13th, Mr Kennedy’s first day in office, President Donald Trump put him in charge of a special commission tasked with working out, in the next 100 days, why so many American children have ADHD and other chronic conditions.

By Aaron Zitner , Siobhan Hughes and Gavin Bade:

The spending fight is one aspect of a broader discussion about whether Congress has ceded too much power to the president, either by passing laws that expand his authority or empowering him through their own inaction.

The Constitution assigns to Congress the power to levy tariffs, and some lawmakers within both parties say they have gone too far in delegating that authority to the president. Separately, a handful of lawmakers within each party want to scale back laws that give the president enhanced powers during emergencies, which Trump has cited in some of his actions regarding energy production, tariffs and immigration.

Other separation-of-powers battles could be on the horizon, including one over the authority of federal courts as they consider the legality of Trump’s executive actions.

Ben Unglesbee:

• Penn State University plans to close some of its 19 smaller commonwealth campusesin the coming years as it faces financial and demographic pressures, university President Neeli Bendapudi said Tuesday. 
• Bendapudi tasked three Penn State officials with leading a group that will make a final recommendation in the coming weeks on which of 12 campuses under review should close.
• Excluded from the review are Penn State’s seven largest commonwealth campuses — in Abington, Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine, Harrisburg and Lehigh Valley.Those locations account for 75% of Penn State’s commonwealth enrollment and 67% of faculty and staff, Bendapudi said.

Dive Insight:

Bendapudi attributed the decision to cut the university’s commonwealth footprint to changing demographics, noting that populations of many of the commonwealth campuses’ home counties are expected to decline over the next three decades. 

Kevin Eyer:

Here’s the problem: By the time that the Navy, writ large, understands all the errors and failures that contributed to this particular chain of events, a standard strategy may well have been enacted, i.e., “Nothing to see here, folks.  Move along.”  You see, the Navy doesn’t like to discuss “family business” with taxpayers, who may ask awkward, and potentially embarrassing, questions. It is much easier to pin the tail on one specific, commanding officer donkey.

During the first decade of this century, the commanding officer a ship was referred to, by the staff of Commander Naval Surface Forces, as “the sacrificial captain,” and for good reason.  Holding one person up to the public, as the single point of failure in any specific disaster, forestalls further, probing questions that often don’t have easy answers.

In the end, this may mean that larger systemic issues remain unresolved. Rather, blame is often placed at the door of the ship in question, and everyone else who might have been, in one way or another, complicit, simply moves out of the blast pattern until it’s safe to go back to exactly what they were doing before. 

Kimberly Wethal:

The NIH’s order attempted to drop the reimbursement rate for all colleges to 15%, a move that would cost UW-Madison about $65 million a year for costs such as maintaining facilities and paying support staff.

UW-Madison has also received some stop-work orders from the federal government but has not elaborated on what work was affected.

Background summary via grok 3:

Summarizing the past 20 years of graduate school admissions history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW–Madison) involves piecing together available data and trends, though comprehensive year-by-year historical admissions data for the full period is not entirely detailed in a single accessible source. Based on the information available from the UW–Madison Graduate School’s official resources and related data points, here’s an overview:

Over the past two decades (roughly 2005–2025), UW–Madison’s Graduate School has maintained a reputation as a top-tier research institution, influencing its admissions landscape. The Graduate School oversees admissions for over 148 master’s and 120 doctoral programs across 13 schools and colleges, with specific requirements varying by program but adhering to a minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0 (on a 4.0 scale) for the last 60 semester hours or equivalent. Admissions are a shared process between individual academic programs and the Graduate School, ensuring a selective yet decentralized approach.

Data from the Graduate School’s official site indicates that in recent years, such as Fall 2023, the admission rate was approximately 32%, with a yield rate (enrollment rate of accepted students) of 42%. While this is a snapshot, it suggests a competitive yet accessible process, likely consistent with trends over the past 20 years given UW–Madison’s stable reputation as an R1 research university and Public Ivy. Enrollment figures show growth in graduate student numbers, with around 14,300 graduate and professional students enrolled in 2024, up from 9,430 in 2012–2013, reflecting an increasing demand for advanced degrees.

Historical trends over the 20-year span likely include increased selectivity due to rising application numbers, driven by UW–Madison’s growing research prominence—ranking sixth in U.S. research expenditures by 2023—and its appeal to both domestic and international students. The introduction of data transparency initiatives, such as the Graduate School Data dashboards launched around 2018, provides insight into admissions selectivity, yield rates, and demographics for the past five academic years, suggesting a focus on accessibility and diversity in recent times. For instance, international applicants must demonstrate English proficiency, a consistent requirement likely tightened over time with standardized tests like TOEFL or IELTS, though exceptions exist for those educated in English-speaking institutions.

Funding has been a significant factor, with 91% of PhD students receiving full funding (e.g., assistantships, fellowships) in Fall 2023, a trend likely sustained or improved over the decades to attract top talent. The median time to degree (5.8 years for PhDs, 1.8 years for master’s in 2023–2024) suggests a focus on rigorous, research-intensive programs, a hallmark of UW–Madison’s graduate education historically.

While specific annual admission statistics for the full 20-year period are not publicly aggregated in one place, platforms like TheGradCafe.com (covering 2006–2025) indicate that applicants have consistently shared outcomes, pointing to a competitive process with variability by program. Broader contextual shifts, such as technological advancements in application processes (e.g., online applications becoming standard) and global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, likely influenced application volumes and admissions policies around 2020–2021, though exact impacts are not detailed here.

In summary, over the past 20 years, UW–Madison’s graduate admissions have likely evolved from a selective, research-driven process to an even more competitive yet inclusive system, reflecting growth in applicant pools, program offerings, and institutional prestige, underpinned by strong funding support and a commitment to diversity and transparency.

Sources:

• Graduate School | UW–Madison – Graduate School Data (grad.wisc.edu): Provides recent admissions rates (e.g., 32% for Fall 2023), enrollment stats, funding details, and transparency initiatives.
• Graduate Admissions & Enrollment Data – Graduate School | UW–Madison (grad.wisc.edu): Offers insights into selectivity and yield for recent years.
• University of Wisconsin–Madison – Wikipedia: Enrollment trends (e.g., 14,300 graduate students in 2024) and historical context.
• TheGradCafe.com: Community-reported admission results from 2006–2025, indicating competitiveness over time.

Note: Exact year-by-year data for the full 20 years isn’t fully available in these sources, so some inferences are based on trends and recent statistics. For a complete historical dataset, direct access to UW–Madison’s internal records would be required.

Ann Althouse summary:

And isn’t it rich — isn’t it ironic — to hear Trump antagonists rail about concealment and lack of clear lines of responsibility when they did not seem to care much about the radical opacity of the “Biden” administration? We’re supposed to worry now about the “multiplication of the executive” when you didn’t worry about the absence of any true executive and nothing but a multiplicity of executive substitutes?

Junjie Guo and Ananth Seshadri

• We use population migration data from IRS to describe the age and income compositions of taxpayers and their dependents moving in and out of Wisconsin in each year between 2012 and 2022.
• Wisconsin lost about 8000 individuals (taxpayers and their dependents) and over $400 million of income to other states in each year between 2012 and 2016.
• The net inflows of individuals were around zero in each year between 2017 and 2022, while the net inflows of income remained negative, because average income was higher among outflows than inflows.
• Different from 2012, when Wisconsin lost taxpayers of all ages and all income levels to other states, Wisconsin gained some middle-aged and older taxpayers as well as taxpayers with relatively high income (e.g., $100,000-$200,000) in 2022.

Read Full Report

Ji-Ha:

A beginner-friendly introduction to stochastic calculus, focusing on intuition and calculus-based derivations instead of heavy probability theory formalism.

Sempé – Le bus 66 pic.twitter.com/MadsQErpao

— Hervé Labatut (@GeorgesBerger) February 28, 2025

Andrew Wolf

Gone are the days when reading a book was the preferred means to knowledge, replaced by the rapid consumption of digital media and the allure of screen-based entertainment. This phenomenon is growing in America, and it is pronounced among our youth.

One consequence is that we appear to be reading less these days, and while our attention span does not (yet) rival that of the much-maligned goldfish (eight seconds), it is getting discernibly shorter.

First, is this thinking true? And, second, do our technological gadgets predispose us to this phenomenon? Are we sacrificing something important, turning from books to bots? The truth is in the numbers.

Heritage

From 1950 to today, there’s been a 100% increase in the number of students in public schools, a 243% increase in the number of teachers, and a 709% increase in the number of non-teaching staff, which are largely administrative positions. Only 47.5% of people in the public school system are actually teachers.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Stephen Gandel and Joshua Franklin:

Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send only $280, an error that could hinder the bank’s attempt to persuade regulators that it has fixed long-standing operational issues.

The erroneous internal transfer, which occurred last April and has not been previously reported, was missed by both a payments employee and a second official assigned to check the transaction before it was approved to be processed at the start of business the following day.

A third employee detected a problem with the bank’s account balances, catching the payment 90 minutes after it was posted. The payment was reversed several hours later, according to an internal account of the event seen by the Financial Times and two people familiar with the event.

Benni Edwards:

On Thursday, Inception Labs released Mercury Coder, a new AI language model that uses diffusion techniques to generate text faster than conventional models. Unlike traditional models that create text word by word—such as the kind that powers ChatGPT—diffusion-based models like Mercury produce entire responses simultaneously, refining them from an initially masked state into coherent text.

Traditional large language models build text from left to right, one token at a time. They use a technique called “autoregression.” Each word must wait for all previous words before appearing. Inspired by techniques from image-generation models like Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and Midjourney, text diffusion language models like LLaDA (developed by researchers from Renmin University and Ant Group) and Mercury use a masking-based approach. These models begin with fully obscured content and gradually “denoise” the output, revealing all parts of the response at once.

While image diffusion models add continuous noise to pixel values, text diffusion models can’t apply continuous noise to discrete tokens (chunks of text data). Instead, they replace tokens with special mask tokens as the text equivalent of noise. In LLaDA, the masking probability controls the noise level, with high masking representing high noise and low masking representing low noise. The diffusion process moves from high noise to low noise. Though LLaDA describes this using masking terminology and Mercury uses noise terminology, both apply a similar concept to text generation rooted in diffusion.

Andrea Guzmán:

The building’s location is listed as 48804 TX 4 in Brownsville—not far from SpaceX’s Starship launch facilities—and has an estimated construction cost of $20 million for phase 1 of the project. The building, which is listed as 34,365 square feet, has a proposed mid-April date to start construction. The expected completion is January 2026. 

Ad Astra bills itself as a “project-based learning” environment that emphasizes science, technology, engineering and mathematics in its curriculum. An existing location in Bastrop has a permit to teach 21 students and welcomes children ages 3 to 9. Tuition there is subsidized for the 2024–25 school year, but the website notes that tuition will be in line with local private schools that include an extended day program in future years. 

In South Texas, meanwhile, SpaceX previously ran an Ad Astra school, KUT reported. The school’s nonprofit paperwork says it opened in Brownsville in 2021 then ceased operations in June 2023. Before then, Musk and his Ad Astra co-founder Josh Dahn operated the school at SpaceX’s facilities in Hawthorne, California. Dahn runs an online school called Astra Nova. 

more.

AJ Bayatpour

Just in: The Milwaukee Health Department is shutting down Trowbridge Elementary, starting March 3, citing “unsafe lead dust levels.”

John Sailer:

David Turner is a fellow and Assistant Professor of Black Life and Racial Justice at UCLA’s school of public affairs. In his spare time, Turner does community activism, having co-founded the “Police-Free LAUSD Coalition,” a group that calls for wholesale police abolition. Activism also shows up in his scholarship. In an article for Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics, for example, Turner praises Black Lives Matter student activists for the way they reject capitalism and adopt a “Black queer feminist lens.”

Turner’s career trajectory is typical of professors who get their jobs via a fellow-to-faculty program—his came from the University of California’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP). As I’ve written, the program serves as a side-door into faculty positions. Rather than recruiting professors through competitive searches, fellow-to-faculty programs select postdoctoral fellows who demonstrate a commitment to diversity. They then advance them into tenure-track positions, allowing administrators to push their hiring priorities unburdened by a normal competitive process.

The PPFP’s criteria raise serious questions about academic freedom, and the vast constellation of similarly oriented programs on other campuses implies extensive ideological capture. Some in academia are now ringing the alarm.

Austin Berg:

BREAKING: Chicago City Council votes 26-23 to pass Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $830M borrowing plan. The plan makes no payments on the debt in the first two years and no payments on the principal for 18 years after that. This backloaded payment schedule means the total cost of Johnson’s deal is $2B. Paid mostly by future generations of Chicagoans.

Ann Althouse summary:

Who’s in the worst position to write a book about the coverup of Biden’s cognitive decline?

Tapper then: It’s a conspiracy theory to say Biden has cognitive decline. It’s a stutter.

Tapper now: A book on the cover up pic.twitter.com/UjnQXgkzFF

Kevin Sliman:

A Penn State engineering student refined a century-old math problem into a simpler, more elegant form, making it easier to use and explore. Divya Tyagi’s work expands research in aerodynamics, unlocking new possibilities in wind turbine design that Hermann Glauert, a British aerodynamicist and the original author, did not consider.   

Tyagi, a graduate student pursuing her master’s degree in aerospace engineering, completed this work as a Penn State undergraduate for her Schreyer Honors College thesis. Her research was published in Wind Energy Science.

“I created an addendum to Glauert’s problem which determines the optimal aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine by solving for the ideal flow conditions for a turbine in order to maximize its power output,” said Tyagi, who earned her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. 

Her adviser, Sven Schmitz, the Boeing/A.D. Welliver Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and co-author on the paper, said Glauert’s original work focused exclusively on the maximum attainable power coefficient, which measures how efficiently a turbine converts wind energy into electricity. However, Glauert did not account for the total force and moment coefficients acting on the rotor — the spinning unit with attached blades — or how turbine blades bend under wind pressure.   

WTMJ4

The city will be fined $1,000 every day until it complies with the order.

A judge on Thursday held the City of Milwaukee in contempt of court for its failure to provide student resource officers (SROs) in Milwaukee Public Schools.

Judge David Borowski said the city will be fined $1,000 each day the City does not provide SROs beginning Feb. 27.

The Judge placed a stay on the sanction until March 15. That means, if the city does not show adequate proof of progress regarding the matter by March 15, they will be forced to pay nearly $17,000 dollars in fines.

By Becky Jacobs

More than 20 years ago, Blue Cross and Blue Shield United of Wisconsin gifted more than $300 million to each of Wisconsin’s medical schools to improve public health. In the years since, however, Wisconsin has fallen in national health rankings, and the state continues to struggle with racial disparities in low birth weights, excessive drinking, obesity and other issues. 

Wisconsin ranks among the bottom half of states for health outcomes for women and children, according to the latest analysis by the United Health Foundation. Last month, the Urban Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reported Wisconsin was one of two places where the gap in life expectancies among Black and white people had widened in recent decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also found Wisconsin children lag behind kids in other states for getting vaccines. 

Jesse Ehrenfeld, who oversees the public health endowment created at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, said the dream outlined 20 years ago remains his team’s aspirational goal. 

“We have a lot of work to do to get there, and it’s not entirely clear what metric you would use to define being the healthiest state in the nation. But I think we would all agree that we’re probably not there today,” Ehrenfeld said. 

Robert Golden, the outgoing dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, offered a similar assessment for the state. 

“We are not doing well in terms of public health,” he said. 

Glenn Greenwald:

Gross! The ordinary people and the unlicensed peasants are able to speak with and even influence elites in DC who are running the government. The NYT is horrified.

Wall Street Journal:

The progressive campaign to turn Colorado into the California of the Mountain West took a leap forward last week as Democrats in the Rocky Mountain State advanced a bill to repeal their right-to-work-lite law.

During the early 20th century, Colorado was fraught with labor militancy. To cool tensions, lawmakers in 1943 enacted the Labor Peace Act, which requires 75% of workers at a work site to approve so-called “security agreements” that compel them to pay union dues to support collective bargaining.

Congress soon afterwards passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which blessed state right-to-work laws that bar workers from being required to join unions or pay dues. Colorado’s Labor Peace Act shares the same goal as right-to-work laws—that is, preventing workers from being forced to finance unions they don’t support.

The law is one reason Colorado’s labor environment more resembles that of the 26 right-to-work states and is more attractive to employers than leftwing union bastions. About 7.7% of Colorado workers belong to a union, which is about half as much as in California (14.5%) and only slightly more than in Iowa (6.4%), Alabama (6.6%) and Nebraska (6.8%).

Unions have long sought to repeal Colorado’s law, and they nearly succeeded in 2007 until a courageous veto by then Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter. In his veto message, Mr. Ritter noted that the law threatened to damage the state’s “ability to attract new business to Colorado” and “to create new economic opportunity for all.”

Ann Althouse Summary:

“I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom…”
“… in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical; it drives creativity, invention and prosperity.”

Jeff Bezos:

I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

WILL:

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) secured another significant victory for true equality in a new ruling from the Wisconsin Court of Appeals against the Evers Administration, which runs a racially discriminatory scholarship program called the “Minority Undergraduate Retention Program.” Most Wisconsin students are excluded from the program because of their race.

In 2021, WILL sued over the program, which violates federal law and the Wisconsin Constitution. WILL represents five Wisconsin taxpayers who object to the state administering this race-based scholarship program, including Kiki Rabiebna and Richard Freihoefer, whose son is ineligible for a scholarship because of his race. The program discriminates against whites, many Asians, many Latinos, and every student whose ancestors are from North Africa or the Middle East.

Jacob Shell:

Several months before the 2024 election, an infographic made the rounds on social media, showing donations to Biden vs. Trump in 2020, broken down by profession. The most pro-Trump profession: homemakers. The most pro-Biden profession: professors. Another studyfound that at elite colleges, the ratio of Democratic- to Republican-voting faculty was 8.5 to 1, with the ratio only getting larger as the institution becomes more elite. The ratios in certain disciplines are staggering: for instance, 42 to 1 in anthropology. (My discipline, geography, wasn’t included in the study.) 

Given this situation, it is hardly surprising that the Trump White House has universities in its crosshairs. Academe is a uniquely vulnerable target: an ideological enemy camp dependent on state largesse (especially in the form of grant funding, for both public and private institutions) and accordingly subject to federal oversight. This means that academics need to contend with the fact that campuses have become ideological monocultures out of sync with the surrounding political landscape. Self-preservation demands significant reform. By and large, these are reforms we academics should have done anyway, and years ago.

Now, apologists for the monolithic partisan status quo in academia often attribute it to self-selection. Republicans, these apologists say, tend to value commerce more than Democrats do, and are thus a lot likelier to wind up in the commercial sector than in a doctoral program. Democrats, this reasoning also says, are likelier to have non-commercializable values (concerning matters such as art, culture, justice, and the environment). Since academia is a setting where ideas are ostensibly not under constant pressure to be commercially profitable, it would make sense for commerce-averse Democrats to wind up in the academic profession.

Eugene Volokh:

From Business Insider (Effie Webb) yesterday:

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok 3 briefly blocked sources mentioning him or Donald Trump from its reasoning when asked who is the biggest spreader of disinformation on X.

Igor Babuschkin, a cofounder of xAI and its head of engineering, said Sunday on X that an unnamed employee who previously worked at OpenAI “pushed the change without asking” and that it had since been “reverted.”

Babuschkin called it “obviously not in line with our values.” …

Link

For new followers, here is a diagram illustrating how core NGOs collaborate to create a global soft power structure that shapes elections, public policy, economic policy, and media influence.

Again, many current members of Congress hold positions within these taxpayer-funded NGOs. Please read the whole thread.

www

Lori Mann Carey served on several district committees, created a nonprofit afterschool enrichment program and co-founded the Mann Educational Opportunity Fund. She died in 2020.

In recommending that the school be named for Mann Carey, her family noted that it would be a “full circle moment” because she attended elementary school at the same location where the school is now built. It’s also, they noted, where she said a prayer before meeting with her doctor about the progression of her cancer.

Jensen, A. C., & Jorgensen-Wells, M. A.

Decades of research highlight that differential treatment can have negative developmental consequences, particularly for less favored siblings. Despite this robust body of research, less is known about which children in the family tend to be favored or less favored by parents. The present study examined favored treatment as predicted by birth order, gender, temperament, and personality. We also examined whether links were moderated by multiple factors (i.e., parent gender, age, reporter, domain of parenting/favoritism). Multilevel meta-analysis data were collected from 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and dissertations/theses and 14 other databases. In all, the data reflected 19,469 unique participants (M_age = 19.57, SD = 13.92). Results showed that when favoritism was based on autonomy and control, parents tended to favor older siblings. Further, parents reported favoring daughters. Conscientious and agreeable children also received more favored treatment. For conscientious children, favoritism was strongest when based on differences in conflict (i.e., more conscientious children had relatively less conflict with their parents). Parents and clinicians should be aware of which children in a family tend to be favored as a way of recognizing potentially damaging family patterns. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

ABA

At its quarterly meeting in San Antonio on Friday, the council voted to pause its work on the latest round of revisions to the contentious rule—known as Standard 206—while developing a new draft that could be presented to the ABA House of Delegates at the ABA Annual Meeting in August.

“The committee’s view is that with the executive orders and the law being in flux, it would be an extreme hardship for law schools if our standards were to require them to do certain things that may cause them to take more litigation risks and potentially violate the law,” said Daniel Thies, chair-elect of the council and co-chair of its Strategic Review Committee.

In the interim, members of the council’s managing director’s office will consult law schools with scheduled accreditation site visits this spring, “and the staff will be putting together written guidance,” said Jennifer L. Rosato Perea, the managing director for accreditation and legal education at the ABA. All law schools at any stage in accreditation can receive support, she added.

Kayla Huynh:

The McKenzie Foundation and the Boys & Girls Club will instead develop workforce programs for the school district “that combine academic rigor and workforce development,” McKenzie said in the statement. 

“By leveraging each organization’s unique strengths and resources, we can better serve students and provide them with the skills they need to succeed,” McKenzie said. “It is my desire to have a plan worked out within a year with MMSD, the Boys & Girls Clubs, and our partners so that our workforce plan is the primary option our foundation can be proud to support.”

Johnson said in an interview Monday he hopes organizers can create a workforce training program as successful as the AVID/TOPS college preparation programs, which the Boys & Girls Clubs launched in the district over a decade ago. The program brings in over $1 million dollars a year for the district, Johnson said.

“If we can come up with something that’s suitable for all parties, then there might not be a need for a workforce high school,” Johnson said. “But if we’re not seeing any movement, we’re not saying (the charter school) is dead.”

——-

Aborting another independent Madison Charter School

The Predatory Dynamic in Madison Schools

2011: “You meet every need of the unions, but keep minority student achievement a low priority,” said one parent. Others suggested the same.

more on the aborted madison preparatory academy IB charter school 

Meanwhile:

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Maya Sen:

. A recent report showed that Stanford has roughly one administrator for every student—an unflattering statistic that calls into question higher ed’s priorities. But administrators have proliferated in part because of government requirements that won’t disappear with a funding cap. Universities receiving grants, for instance, must comply with important but costly regulations to protect the safety of human subjects as well as data privacy.

On the other side of the balance sheet, cutting university funding affects more than academics. Research institutions can be local economic engines, creating jobs and driving innovation. The University of Alabama, the state’s largest employer, received $334 million in NIH funds in 2024 alone. Capping indirect costs at 15% would cost it around $70 million a year, shrinking its economic footprint.

There’s a better solution than a blanket cap. Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity—both reasonable points that academics themselves have flagged. Given the choice, many researchers would rather see more money flow to actual research than administration. And adopting replication policies for research findings, already standard in many top academic journals, would bolster integrity.

Indirect cost rates of 70% are likely a thing of the past, but smart maneuvering could give universities a win, hand Republicans a victory, and keep vital research on solid footing.

James Baker and John Diamond:

Budget hawks have been rare in Washington since 2010, when the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission put forth a comprehensive plan to reduce spending and increase revenue, only to see it sink. Today, the problem is dire. Our ratio of federal debt held by the public to gross domestic product has grown from 61% in 2010 to 100% this fiscal year. Left uncorrected for another four years, we will surpass the historic high of 106% that America hit at the end of World War II.

It’s little wonder that more Republicans and Democrats are voicing concerns that American global power—backed by economic strength—is threatened by growing budget deficits. It’s time lawmakers seek solutions rather than argue about who’s to blame.

Several factors drive deficit spending, including an aging population and rapidly rising medical costs. But the major reason is reckless spending.

President Trump deserves credit for trying to make the federal bureaucracy more efficient to reduce deficits. His decision to create the Department of Government Efficiency put a much-needed brake on wasteful government spending.

We caution the president, however, against relying on tariffs to raise revenues. Tariffs engender ill will among allies and other trading partners and allow China to seize a greater global role. Further, tariffs risk domestic inflation by raising the costs of goods. As the president will remember, high prices caused political problems for Democrats last fall.

www

Over the past century the Congress has created a whole series of quasi-independent boards and commission to carry out a variety of hybrid functions on the basis that the areas in which they operate are specialized, and appointed board members/commissioners with expertise in these areas are best able to carry forward the intentions of Congress. This has spawned the attack of the three and four letter agencies on the Executive Branch — FTC, SEC, ICC, NLRB, FCC, MSPB, etc. Some have a limited connection to a traditional Executive Branch Department, but Congress designed them to operate largely independent from the Department. Others, by design, are independent of any other Department. 

But who do the heads of these agencies work for? The Trump Administration is flexing its own lawfare muscles to argue that the heads of these boards/commissions/agencies/offices, where they wield executive power to enforce the law, work for the President. Because they wield power that is derived from the President, they cannot do so without being accountable for their conduct to the President. The Trump Administration is arguing it is a separation of powers violation for Congress to limit a President’s ability to remove them from office, i.e., stop them from asserting the executive power they derive only from him.

Karol Markowicz:

Loneliness is a silent killer. A US surgeon general’s report from 2023 found it as dangerous as smoking, “associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death” — while upward of 60% of Americans feel lonely on a regular basis, surveys have found.

Along with the impact on personal well-being, the trend is dangerous for America itself. A nation that lacks interpersonal relationships is a lower-trust society, more prone to crime and unrest.

Duncan Campbell:

An unprecedented letter from the US Congress, released today, accuses the UK of “a foreign cyber attack waged through political means”. The claim refers to a Home Office secret demand last month (reported by Computer Weekly here, hereand here) that Apple break the security protecting its Advanced Data Protection cloud security system to let British spies into anyone’s secure files.

In a letter to the recently appointed US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, senator Ron Wyden of Colorada and representative Andy Biggs of Arizona bluntly ask the administration to kick the UK out of the 65-year-old UK-USA signals intelligence sharing agreement, commonly known as Five Eyes, if they do not now withdraw the demand to Apple.

”If the UK does not immediately reverse this dangerous effort, we urge you to reevaluate US-UK cyber security arrangements and programmes as well as US intelligence sharing with the UK,” the new DNI was advised. 

Politically, on other issues, the signatories are on opposite sides of US politics. Wyden is a liberal democrat who has campaigned for healthcare and the environment; Biggs is a loud Trump supporter and a noted organiser of the “MAGA squad”.  Wyden, from Oregon, serves on the Senate Intelligence and Finance Committee; Biggs, from Arizona, chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance.  

Giles

My post about blogging as writing the tutorial that you wished you’d found really took off on Hacker News. There were a lot of excellent comments, but one thing kept coming up: what’s the point in blogging if people are using ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek to spoon-feed them answers? Who, apart from the AIs, will read what you write?

I was asking myself the same question when I started blogging semi-regularly again last year, and this post is an attempt to summarise why I decided that it was worthwhile. The TL;DR: blogging isn’t just about being read — it’s about learning and thinking, and having a durable proof that you can do both.

Let’s start off by summarising the two big reasons to blog about what you’ve learned, as you learn:

• It helps you make your newly-gained knowledge concrete.
• It will help other people in the future — they might be looking for the information you blogged about, and find it on your blog.

Hanna Schmid:

Democratic state lawmakers are making another attack on parents’ rights and educational choice in Illinois. A bill would require homeschooling parents to file annual reports to avoid truancy charges, be credentialed and have their curriculum reviewed.

A bill filed by Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly would attack parental rights and educational choice in Illinois, seeking to undermine 75 years of homeschooling freedoms granted by the Illinois Supreme Court in People v. Levison.

It would make Illinois the first state in the nation to increase restrictions on parents’ freedom to educate their own children. It would also make it easier to create additional restrictions on homeschooling.

Illinois already made history in 2023 when it became the first state to remove a private school choice program for 15,000 low-income students and limit parents’ educational options. It did so after intense pressure from teachers unions, which have put $20 million into campaigns since 2010, including funding 4 in 5 lawmakers as of 2023.

House Bill 2827 was filed by state Rep. Terra Costa Howard, D-Lombard, and has been co-sponsored by eight other Democratic members of the House as of Feb. 18. Teachers unions have invested over $2 millionin the nine sponsors’ campaigns.

Vinay Prasad:

During the covid-19 pandemic, universities made one big mistake. above all else. They refused, consistently to host any debates on the most important policy issues of the day. For instance, no university debated school closures in 2020 or 2021 to my knowledge. There are only a handful of debates about lockdown, largely outside of universities. No University had a debate on mask mandates or masking in 2020 or 2021. No University had a debate on whether or not vaccines should be mandated, including to people who have already had covid, and that those who don’t comply should be terminated. 

These are some of the most consequential public policy decisions of the 21st century and universities did not host debates. They did so at their peril, and now popular opinion of universities is in the toilet. 

Against this backdrop comes reforms to the NIH funding system. Universities are making the exact same error as before. They refuse to host debates on what the right indirect cost rate should be. They refuse to debate whether or not the current system of study sections is optimized.

Kelly Meyerhofer:

Sarah’s death prompted the athletic department to pour more money into mental health resources. Her family channeled their pain into purpose, forming the Sarah Shulze Foundationin her honor. Her friends, too, became mental health advocates.

Despite the NCAA’s recent increased focus on mental health, collegiate athlete suicide rates are on the rise, according to a 2024 study. Although the rate remains lower than the general population, researchers said more prevention efforts are warranted. Suicide is now the second most common cause of death among collegiate athletes, second only to accidents. 

The pressures on this population only continue to mount. The expansion of the Big Ten this year to include West Coast teams increases travel demands. Social media has opened up athletes to online abuse, especially as more states legalize sports betting. A new era where athletes can monetize their brand creates expectations from companies and collectives for athletes to live up to their endorsement deals.

Quinton Klabon:

This is 1 of the coolest things I have done. We did an unbiased, deep poll of Black and Latin Milwaukee parents to see how and why they pick the schools they do. 🧵

In short, parents lack the information they need to make the best match for their children.

We were shocked by some of our findings. Here are 5 key points based on how the parents responded:

1. They must travel far for what they want. Parents most wanted schools with great academics (35%) and extracurriculars (15%), but also preferred a school that was close (22%). But too few good options are near their homes; 25% of parents had switched their child’s school within the last 3 years. Seeking quality, 85% sent their children to a school outside their neighborhood. In fact, 29% enrolled in a school more than 15 minutes’ drive away. Without good schools in every neighborhood, blight will dissolve the fabric of communities.
2. Families with the least resources struggle to choose schools. Parents who were unmarried or cohabitating, lower-earning, who seldom or never attend religious services, and are younger were less likely to know of great schools, prioritized distance over academics, and switched schools more often. For example, only 27% earning under $40,000 made academics their top reason for choosing their kids’ schools, while 43% earning over $40,000 did. That leads to lots of student disruption and too many low-performing schools, particularly on the North Side.
3. Parents cannot choose the highest-performing schools if they do not know what they are. Thirty-eight percent of north siders had never heard of Saint Marcus; 34% of south siders had never heard of Reagan. Nearly 50% had no name recognition of terrific options like UCC, LUMIN, and ALBA. If even top schools with waiting lists have less name recognition than your average TikTok star, why are we surprised when parents move away?
4. Milwaukee Public Schools are their default choice. Ninety percent who picked a traditional MPS school for their oldest child also enrolled their other children in traditional MPS schools. However, only 75% of private-school parents and 55% of charter-school parents had all of their children in choice. Many parents only use choice-school alternatives after trying MPS.
5. Parents do not want their children to stay in Milwaukee. Only 32% wanted their children to settle down in Milwaukee someday, and only 20% more hoped for Milwaukee County. Black and low-earning parents were especially skeptical. It does no good for our region if we produce talent that buys a plane ticket out the first chance they get. Better schools will keep our families here.

The Report:

Massive student turnover, low academic performance, and distaste for Milwaukee are the consequences of a school system that overwhelms parents,” said Quinton Klabon, IRG Senior Research Director. “Families will continue to leave the city without higher-quality schools and an easy way to discover them.” 

Mark Glennon

February 28. It’s probably coincidence, but remarkably so.

That date eight years ago marked the beginning of the backlash against school practices and policies that, today, go widely under the label of “DEI” – diversity, equity and inclusion. That was Seminar Day at New Trier High School in north suburban Chicago.

This February 28 marks the culmination of that backlash. It’s the Department of Education’s announced deadline for schools of any kind to put a firm end to DEI.

It’s not, however, the legal aspect of the federal government’s mandate that should matter, important as that is. Instead, willing compliance with the spirit of the new policy is simply the right thing to do, and there are reasons why New Trier should lead the way. Seminar Day pioneered the misguided and divisive approach to “social justice” issues now ridiculed as “woke.” Its critics were right then and their warnings came to pass. America ultimately agreed and rejected wokeness in schools and elsewhere, contributing in no small part to November’s election results.

Seminar Day was a mandatory, all-day event with the stated goal of “understanding today’s struggle for racial civil rights.” But the problem, from its critics’ perspectives, was that the agenda was brazenly one-sided, divisive, and radically that of the political left. Understanding civil rights, according to Seminar Day’s teachings, meant force-fed dogma of propositions that are now mostly rejected, such as all whites are oppressors and all blacks victims, micro-aggressions exist everywhere, America is systemically racist and white supremacists are lurking around every corner.

datarepublican (small r)

The true cycle of money and power is this:

Soros (among others) used his wealth to install key politicians.

Once in office, they funneled public funds into propaganda and NGOs designed to manipulate us—conditioning voters to elect even more of their kind.

In turn, these politicians ensured Soros and his allies grew richer. But Soros is now just a fragment of the monstrous machine he helped unleash.

What began as his influence has morphed into a self-sustaining Leviathan—one that thrives on our ignorance.

It is up to us, the people, to wake up and destro

Jacob Buckman:

This week, I was thrilled to read about the first well-documented case of explicit academic fraud in the artificial intelligence community. I hope that this is the beginning of a trend, and that other researchers will be inspired by their example and follow up by engaging in even more blatant forms of fraud in the future.

Explicit academic fraud is, of course, the natural extension of the sort of mundane, day-to-day fraud that most academics in our community commit on a regular basis. Trying that shiny new algorithm out on a couple dozen seeds, and then only reporting the best few. Running a big hyperparameter sweep on your proposed approach but using the defaults for the baseline. Cherry-picking examples where your model looks good, or cherry-picking whole datasets to test on, where you’ve confirmed your model’s advantage. Making up new problem settings, new datasets, new objectives in order to claim victory on an empty playing field. Proclaiming that your work is a “promising first step” in your introduction, despite being fully aware that nobody will ever build on it. Submitting a paper to a conference because it’s got a decent shot at acceptance and you don’t want the time you spent on it go to waste, even though you’ve since realized that the core ideas aren’t quite correct.

Wyatt Eicholz

Statewide, the number of students enrolled in a traditional district-run public school fell to about 791,956 in the 2024-25 school year. The number has been in steady decline since a slight bump in 2013-14 to over 873,500 students, as figure 1 shows. The rate of decline increased after the 2019-20 school year, with a drop of more than 25,000 students

Over nearly the same period, the number of teachers employed in the state has hovered between about 60,000 and 63,000. As figure 2 shows, district-run schools employed 61,652 teachers statewide in 2009-10. That fell by more than 1,600 teachers to 60,003 in 2011-12, but the number then steadily ticked upward to a second peak of 62,398 in 2021-22. For the 2023-24 school year, the latest for which teacher all staff reports are available, there were 61,514 teachers in Wisconsin’s district-run public schools.

Grey:

Math competitions used to be uncommon or an excuse to skip class, but are now increasingly high-stakes. This has given rise to tutoring services and coaching in an effort to increase one’s score to advance to higher levels of competition. If anything, the problem is not dumbing-down, but that the existing curriculum–even AP courses and taking calculus in high school–is not good enough anymore. To have any hope of distinguishing oneself requires good placings on difficult competitions. This directly contradicts the common narrative on Twitter that prospective college students are unprepared. In reality, all evidence suggests that today’s incoming freshmen, especially at top colleges, are the most academically prepared and qualified of any generation.

A frequently cited statistic of grade inflation is the rise in average GPAs, suggesting that coursework or grading standards have become easier. However, an alternative explanation is that students are earning higher GPAs because they are smarter and better prepared, thanks to the increasingly competitive and selective admissions process at these institutions:

ABC7

The father of a Palo Alto teen who garnered national attention for getting rejected by 16 colleges and hired by Google as a software engineer has filed a new lawsuit on Feb. 11 against the University of California and five UC campuses — UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB and UC Davis — as well as the U.S. Department of Education, for racial discrimination.

“What we’re trying to get out of this is a fair treatment for future Asian applicants going forward, including my other kids and my future grandkids,” says Nan Zhong.

His now 19-year-old son, Stanley Zhong, is a co-plaintiff, along with their group called SWORD, Students Who Oppose Racial Discrimination, comprised of other students and families who feel Asian Americans are often discriminated against in the college admissions process.

Stanley Zhong had a 4.42 GPA from Gunn High School and 1590 out of 1600 on the SATs. He also founded his own document-signing startup and tutored underserved kids in coding. His college rejections and his employment offer from Google became a lightning rod in the national debate over the college admissions process.

John Ronnie Short:

Cities also spend a lot of money on employees, and many large cities are struggling to fund pensions and health benefits for their workforces. As municipal retirees live longer and require more health care, the costs are mounting.

For example, Chicago currently faces a budget deficit of nearly $1 billion, which stems partly from underfunded retirement benefits for nearly 30,000 public employees. The city has $35 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and almost $2 billion in unfunded retiree health benefits. Chicago’s teachers are owed $14 billion in unfunded benefits. 

Policy studies have shown for years that politicians tend to underfund retirement and pension benefits for public employees. This approach offloads the real costof providing police, fire protection and education onto future taxpayers.

Richard Van Noorden

Two days before the end of 2021, administrators at Jining First People’s Hospital in Shandong, China, issued a highly unusual report. The hospital announced that it had disciplined some 35 researchers who had been linked to fraud in publications, such as fabricating data. These sanctions were part of a countrywide crackdown motivated by concerns about a flood of sham medical papers emanating from hospitals.

The problem was that some young physicians at hospitals had purchased fake manuscripts from paper mills: companies that churn out fraudulent scientific reports to order. These doctors were under pressure because they were required to publish papers to get jobs or earn promotions, says integrity sleuth Elisabeth Bik in California. Sleuths such as Bik soon began spotting signs of this problem, identifying duplicated images in large numbers of papers. They publicized the issue and a wave of retractions followed.

This surge can now be seen in a first-of-its-kind analysis of institutional retraction rates around the globe over the past decade, for which Nature’s news team used figures supplied by three private research-integrity and analytics firms. Jining First People’s Hospital tops the charts, with more than 5% of its total output from 2014 to 2024 retracted — more than 100 papers (see ‘Highest retraction rates’). That proportion is an order of magnitude higher than China’s retraction rate, and 50 times the global average. Depending on how one counts, the hospital could be the institution with the world’s highest retraction rate.

Katie Rophie:

At a curriculum night, my son’s English teacher told the gathered parents that tutors should not be writing papers for students. Maybe I am naive, but I was a little shocked. This was a Brooklyn school, not a place with billionaires taking private jets to St. Barts for the weekend. I knew ChatGPT was an issue, which also came up, but this seemed somehow more corrupt and orchestrated. In the midst of the collegial evening, the teacher’s comment suddenly illuminated, for a moment, the ugly fact that rich people weren’t just buying opportunities for their children but were brazenly cheating.

The practice is hardly uncommon. David Blobaum from the National Test Prep Association told me that he was approached by a parent to write a kid’s college essay and he refused. “Honestly, these parents should think of themselves as hiring a criminal, not a tutor,” he said. I heard about another tutor who did write a college essay for a kid, after a certain amount of moral struggle, figuring that if she didn’t do it someone else would.

By now the caricature of rich parents trying to buy a way into the Ivy League for their children is familiar, but some of what I heard was still startling. A tutor at an otherwise legitimate tutoring business told me that the company sends her “a ninth-grade math homework, and I finish it and send it back without ever even meeting the kid.” Or they send a U.S. history paper to be written in the next three hours.

Quinton Klabon:

Here is a fun weekend project. The federal government puts up FAFSA completion for district, charter, AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

We do not have data on how many private high schoolers attend college. This is not that (and college is not the only good goal), but there is some relation.

Cathy Kozlowicz:

The bill recognizes same-sex marriage by making references in the statutes to spouses gender-neutral. The terms “wife,” “mother,” “father” and “husband” were replaced with gender-neutral terms, such as spouse and person.

In one section covering artificial insemination, “the husband of the mother” was changed to “the spouse of the inseminated person.”

RGA Executive Director Sara Craig issued a statement Friday: “Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ latest left-wing push isn’t just out of touch, it’s offensive to mothers. Being a mother is the greatest privilege I will have in my lifetime, and every mother I know feels the same. If Tony Evers can reduce motherhood to an ‘inseminated person’ then our society is lost.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this month to bar transgender student athletes from participating in NCAA women’s sports. On Feb. 21, the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association, which oversees most of the state’s high-school athletics programs, changed its policies so only athletes “designated as females at birth” will be allowed to compete in girls’ competitions.

——-

Governor Evers “year of the kid” starts by erasing “mothers” and “fathers”

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Teo summary

China deploys R1 to comprehensively automate their governance. This is probably a bit of a bigger deal than DOGE fights in salt mines.

@layer07_yuxi explains that a lot of compute capacity was locked in 1K A100s-level datacenters, useless for training. All that comes online now.

——

Where did the DeepSeek team attend university? Not in the United States.

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Patrick J. Bayer (Duke University – Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)) Peter Q.. Blair (Harvard University – Harvard Graduate School of Education), Kenneth Whaley (University of South Florida):

Tyler Cowen:

I remain happy to provoke my readers:

The United States ranks low among peer countries on the ratio of teacher spending to per capita GDP. Is this (in)efficient? Using a spatial equilibrium model we show that spending on schools is efficient if an increase in school spending funded through local taxes would leave house prices unchanged. By exploiting plausibly exogenous shocks to both school spending and taxes, paired with 25 years of national data on local house prices, we find that an exogenous tax-funded increase in school spending would significantly raise house prices. These findings provide causal evidence that teacher spending in the U.S. is inefficiently low.

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Becky Jacobs

The University of Wisconsin-Madison ranks among the nation’s top graduate schools for a doctoral degree the university doesn’t even offer — yet.

The conundrum in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings is likely explained by UW-Madison’s already strong reputation in the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, said William Karpus, dean of the university’s graduate school.

Over 100 faculty members conduct research related to ecology and evolution across campus, said Sean Schoville, a professor of entomology. However, the university doesn’t provide a formal graduate degree focused on the topics.

Schoville said he and others at UW-Madison have tried to create a doctoral program focused on these areas for almost five years. They recently received approval from multiple university groups. Next, the proposal is expected to go before the UW system Board of Regents in April.

Scott Bauer and Ali Swenson:

Crawford is benefiting from hefty donations from Democratic philanthropist (billionaire) George Soros; Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker; Gloria Page, the mother of Google co-founder Larry Page; and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Schimel pointed to those donations to say big spending by outside forces is “happening on both sides.”

The only outside group spending large amounts of money on Crawford’s behalf is the liberal A Better Wisconsin Together, which says it has spent $1 million on digital and television ads. In the 2023 state supreme court race, the group spent more than $6 million on behalf of the liberal candidate who won and flipped control of the court after 15 years with conservatives in the majority.

Jeff Wagner:

How do you write a story about Musk spending money to support Schimel without mentioning the $1 million and $500K donations respectively from George Soros and JB Pritzker to the Wisconsin Democratic Party which then made a $2 million donation to Crawford?

——-

More.

Kristina Armitage:

Sylow normalizers, like the subgroups they’re built out of, can tell mathematicians a lot about the original group. But McKay hypothesized that this connection was far stronger than anyone had imagined. It wasn’t just that a Sylow normalizer could give insights into a finite group’s overall structure. He asserted that if mathematicians wanted to compute a crucial quantity that would help them characterize their group, they’d just have to look at one of a particular set of Sylow normalizers: The Sylow normalizer would be characterized by the exact same number.

This quantity counts the number of “representations” of a certain type — ways you can rewrite elements of the group using arrays of numbers called matrices. Such a tally might seem arbitrary, but it gives mathematicians a sense of how the group’s elements relate to each other, and it is involved in calculations of other important properties.

www

🎯 Struggling to spell your name or email over the phone? Say it using our official NATO phonetic alphabet!

Dave Cieslewicz:

If you ever wonder what people mean when they use the phrase “word salad”, here’s what they mean:

“There is a predatory dynamic of coming into a district like ours and saying that you are going to resolve something as deep-rooted as racialized inequity through a school that pairs young people with professional opportunities,” Madison School Board member Ali Muldrow said in recent Wisconsin State Journal story.

I know. Gives you a headache just reading it. Let me try to translate.

Muldrow is referring to a proposal for a new charter school in Madison that would focus on preparing students for a career in the trades — plumbing, electrical, carpentry, stuff like that. Careers that pay very well. Careers that give people a sense of pride and accomplishment. Careers that are badly needed as folks in those occupations are aging out.

But Muldrow and most of her fellow board members don’t like this idea because they don’t like charter schools. Any of them. Why? Because when a student attends a charter school in the Madison School District the state money follows the student. In other words, she and her colleagues don’t get to use or control that money. I suppose that’s what she means by a “predatory dynamic,”

Or maybe she means that the school proponents are trying to capitalize on and paper over the community’s concern over “deep-seated racialized inequity” by preparing Black kids for a good job. It just puts off the inevitable fight to the finish in the class struggle.

Or, I don’t know, here’s another theory. Maybe she means that by taking kids out of the Madison schools it prevents them from taking advantage of all the resources that address that deep-seated racialized inequity. Never mind that all that obsession with issues of race has resulted in a yawning — and growing — racial achievement gap. Never mind that Black kids aren’t showing up in those welcoming Madison schools at a rate far higher than their white classmates.

Facebook comments.

“The faulty promises of the McKenzie Foundation’s proposed charter school

Leland Pan:

Forward Career and College Academy would likely leave Madison’s neediest students behind, while evading public accountability.”

Meanwhile:

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Nat Malkus:

Last Monday, DOGE came for the US Department of Education (ED). Specifically, it came for ED’s research arm, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), terminating 89 contracts, purportedly valued at $881 million. But how much savings can taxpayers expect from these cuts? 

DOGE’s list of the 89 terminated contracts (unsurprisingly) leaked the day after the cuts were announced. DOGE promised their own receipts by Valentine’s Day, but—in true government fashion—posted them on February 17 (more on that later). Impatient, I started chasing down the receipts myself. 

DOGE’s list included each contract’s vendor and contract number and contract values—which did sum to $881,228,611. This let me match most of DOGE’s list with ED’s most recent complete contract list; however, the “Contract Values” on DOGE list seldom matched the “Current Contract Value” on ED’s list (which was the only value on ED’s list). Whenever the two values did not match, DOGE’s values were always higher, by anywhere from $100 to $31,053,151. 

Unsatisfied, I next matched the full leaked DOGE list to detailed data from USASpending.gov, but I noticed something odd: while the DOGE list’s values often—but not always—matched a USASpending.gov contract value, they did not consistently match the same type of contract value.

Ryan Allen:

The news that DeepSeek released an AI large language model (LLM) that rivaled OpenAI shocked the world. The small Chinese firm reportedly achieved this feat at a fraction of the price done by the American counterpart, undercutting the business model with a comparable model that is cheaper and open source.

While there have been quibbles about how exactly the DeepSeek team achieved this breakthrough, I was interested in the people behind the model, particularly where they were educated. One claim that I kept hearing was that they were all educated in China, without returnees from American universities. 

It is no secret that Liang Wenfeng, the founder and CEO of DeepSeek, was a graduate of Zhejiang University, receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Engineering from the elite Chinese institution. In building his company, ChinaTalkquoted Liang in an interview: 

The team behind the V2 model doesn’t include anyone returning to China from overseas — they are all local. The top 50 experts might not be in China, but perhaps we can train such talents ourselves.

This lack of returnees, or so-called “Sea Turtles” (hǎiguī, 海龟), is fascinating because the trend for years was Chinese students studying in the US and bringing back home innovations. There has been a conception that Chinese universities could not match the US (or other world leaders) in advanced research. The so-called glass ceiling meant that they could achieve a good ranking but could not be among the very elite.

Timur Kuran:

All 5 are true: 1) DOGE has scrapped many stupid projects. 2) DOGE has axed many useful academic projects. 3) Universities lost their way, inviting the ongoing massive backlash. 4) The backlash is generally popular. 5) Universities have done little to regain the public’s trust

Rory Linnane:

While a referendum approved by voters last year helped the district close budget gaps and extend cost-of-living raises to staff, MPS still made cuts, citing inflation and the end of federal pandemic relief funds.

Staff have said these cuts, including the loss of over 100 teacher coaches, left a harder workload for those remaining. Teachers have struggled with large case loads and class sizes. About one in five first-grade classrooms at MPS has more than 28 students, the maximum allowed under a school board resolution, a Journal Sentinel analysis of MPS data found.

more

Thomas Catenacci

The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant despite the fact that it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant’s dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings.

Power Forward Communities’ grant was one of just eight Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants that the EPA doled out in April 2024 and that, altogether, totaled $20 billion. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced on Feb. 13 that his staff and Department of Government Efficiency officials discovered that the Biden administration parked that same $20 billion at an outside financial institution before leaving office, limiting the federal government’s oversight of the program.

The revelation that Power Forward Communities is among the beneficiaries of the funds Zeldin’s team located raises ethics questions about how the Biden administration selected recipients of such massive grants and whether it played favorites when doling those grants out. Abrams was a vocal proponent of the Biden administration’s green energy agenda and campaigned for former vice president Kamala Harr

Abbey Machtig:

“I do think that there is a fundamental misalignment in terms of how the school would fit into our more broad district plans and misunderstanding of services that we already provide,” board member Savion Castro said Wednesday.

It’s a familiar approach, given the district has fought other proposed charter schools in the past. 

Documents show district officials in 2019 attempted to derail the proposed Arbor Community School, which hoped to get a charter agreement with the UW system, which ultimately rejected the application.

In 2011, the Madison School Board rejected the proposal for what is now One City Schools. The board rejected a charter proposal in 2017 for what became the Isthmus Montessori Academy.

The Forward Career and College Academy application failed to meet expectations in 11 of the 14 areas evaluated by the district, such as facility and safety planning, budgeting, transportation, staffing and student enrollment plans, according to a feedback memo from McCray, which McKenzie shared with the Wisconsin State Journal. 

McKenzie’s window to make changes based on the district’s feedback is limited: McCray sent the detailed memo on Feb. 5 — nearly two months after the school’s final application was submitted to the district.

——-

2011: “You meet every need of the unions, but keep minority student achievement a low priority,” said one parent. Others suggested the same.

more on the aborted madison preparatory academy IB charter school

Meanwhile:

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Thomas Farnan

When the peace was finally won in 1991, the minor functionaries started hatching new villains, disputes, and even viruses just so they could fight them. Washington turned into a Cold War LARP.

The result: 

Ukraine is destroyed. The Taliban is governing Afghanistan and ISIS has taken Syria. The pipeline that supplies Germany’s energy supply has been blown up, tanking its economy. And you know what happened last time the West’s guardian of democracy project tanked the German economy. Just sayin’.

Ancient Christianity has been expelled from every place in the Middle East where American soft power has meddled. They have set their sights on destroying Catholic-Lebanon (by law, the president of Lebanon must be Catholic – did you know that?) in a proxy war with Iran.

Most wildly, perhaps, American bureaucrats are responsible for the greatest pandemic since the Spanish Flu. They will deny it, and say it came from a rando bat. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that the virus emanated from gain of function research on Coronaviruses the American bureaucracy was funding at that very moment in the very lab in the very town where COVID originated.

——

Solzhenitsyn would eventually encounter reactions to his Harvard speech from ordinary Americans along the lines of “we know in our hearts he is right.” This led him to distinguish between what he called “the arrogant stance of the America of New York and Washington” and what he observed elsewhere:

Gradually another America began unfolding before my eyes, one that was small-town and robust, the heartland, the America I had envisioned as I was writing my speech, and to which my speech was addressed.

Chad Aldeman:

Public schools added 121,000 employees last year, even as they served 110,000 fewer students.

This is a continuation of recent trends. In per-student terms, public schools have hit new all-time staffing highs in each of the last three years.

The 74’s art and technology director, Eamonn Fitzmaurice, and I have been following these trends and mapping out how they’re changing across the country. We’ve now updated our charts through the 2023-24 school year. Click on the map below to see what’s happening in your community. 

WILL:

As Wisconsin’s courts consider the future of Act 10, WILL has conducted extensive analysis to assess how getting rid of the law could impactschool districts and property taxpayers like you. 

Notes and links on Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Michelle:

😳If Act 10 were to go away our family would see an $1,100 increase in property taxes on top of the 400 year increase Evers has placed on us.

Kate Martin,  Carmela Guaglianone and Emily Hanford

Education journalist Karin Chenoweth visited one of Steubenville’s elementary schools back in 2008 and marveled at the results, which she wrote about in her book “How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools.”

“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” Chenoweth said in an interview. “They had a kid they were so proud of who had been measured with a very low IQ, and he was reading.”

What stood out to Chenoweth was not just the school’s success, but that it was happening in a place like Steubenville.

Once a bustling steel town, economic forces have left the city in decline.

Thousands of steelworkers in the Steubenville area had lost their jobs by the 1990s, and thousands more have since then. Weirton Steel, located across the Ohio River in West Virginia, which once employed 8,000 workers, closed just last year. These days, the median household income in the city is less than $42,000 per year. Nearly 80% of Steubenville students receive free or reduced lunches, and the state of Ohio considers almost every one of Steubenville’s students to be “economically disadvantaged.”

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Wispolitics:

AB 1 would reverse changes to state testing standards made under Superintendent Jill Underly. Opponents have argued Underly lowered the standards, making it harder to gauge how students are doing. Up for reelection, she has rejected those claims. She says the changes actually provide a better picture of student achievement and were made through a transparent process with input from educators. 

Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, said Underly’s primary victory yesterday “wasn’t a huge surprise,” charging her with “making false claims on the backs of students.”

The 2025 ab1 vote on lying to parents:

——-

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Matthew Yglesias

The basic story is that during the aughts, we had a bipartisan education reform consensus that was focused on improving school quality as an attainable and important driver of social and economic progress. This consensus wasn’t perfect — its problems included overpromising on addressing achievement gaps and overreliance on fiddling with teacher pay as One Weird Trick for fixing schools. The consensus also annoyed a lot of people, often for reasons that were not related to these flaws. But test scores were largely going up. The campaign to close achievement gaps failed not because low-income kids and racial minorities didn’t do better, but because everyonewas doing better, so gaps persisted. 

But with ESSA, Congress stopped trying to set federal requirements that schools get better1, because the political energy around improving schools was evaporating. The left retreated into coalition solidarity with teachers unions, and the right refocused on vouchers and privatization. And it turns out that giving up and not trying doesn’t work very well.

Joe Dodson:

In many states, lawyers are not guaranteed for every child during police interrogation, and most states allow children to waive their right to legal counsel. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, in a study of 268 cases, 34% of minors reported giving a false confession. In a study of nine cases concerning minors under the age of 14, seven reported giving a false confession. In contrast, of the 2,886 adult cases analyzed, only 8% reported giving a false confession. 

Abbey Machtig:

“If we have our own standards aligned to nobody else’s, guess what: We can fool ourselves into thinking that we are great, because we have no ability to compare ourselves to anybody else,” he said.

The bill would require DPI to align scoring methods for the language arts and math sections of the Forward Exam to the systems used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test administered to representative samples of students in districts across the country. DPI would also have to use the same scoring ranges in the ACT and PreACT sections it used in the 2021-22 school year.

For ACT tests, DPI would also be required to use the terms “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” and “advanced” to describe student performance. DPI has recently started to describe student performance levels as “advanced,” “meeting,” “approaching” and “developing.”

The bill would also require DPI get legislative approval any time it wants to change reporting standards.

——-

Will Flanders:

Voting against AB1 is essentially telling parents “we’re okay with DPI lying to parents about how kids are doing.” This ought to be a bipartisan effort to put standards back where Evers had them as State Supt. Why wasn’t it? 🤔

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Adam Steinbaugh:

Wow: The City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, got a court order yesterday directing a newspaper to delete an editorial criticizing city officials — without a hearing. Here’s the TRO issuing the prior restraint:

WisPolitics:

Village of Pewaukee held in contempt of court, ordered to return money to taxpayers

“ai” summary:

The Waukesha County Circuit Court found the Village of Pewaukee in contempt for continuing to impose an illegal “transportation user fee” after the Wisconsin Court of Appeals struck it down. The court ordered the village to reimburse taxpayers for the illegally collected revenue.

Christopher Rufo:

The Department of Education’s “comprehensive center” in Wisconsin/Minnesota instructed local districts to “decenter whiteness in education” and to “dismantle practices that reinforce whiteness”—in the name of George Floyd.

This is all propaganda funded by the federal government.

more.

and

The Economist:

France has not allowed smartphone use in primary or secondary schools since 2018, claiming that it would help children focus, reduce their social media use and mitigate online bullying. The Netherlands initiated a similar ban in January 2024. Hungary followed suit later that year. Legislators in Britain are considering similar measures. The key question facing them is whether banning smartphones in schools offers any benefits to mental health.
That there is a problem seems clear. In 2021 America’s surgeon general compiled a report revealing that persistent feelings of hopelessness climbed by 40% among American high-school students between 2009 and 2019. The number who seriously considered killing themselves went up by 36%. What makes these findings all the worse is that 48% of mental-health problems (like depression and anxiety) that emerge during adolescence will plague people for the rest of their lives.

Andy Pierotti:

– A pending lawsuit claims a publishing giant sold defective instructional material to school districts for decades, allegedly hurting children’s ability to read.

An Atlanta News First investigation uncovered the same publisher sold its curriculum in metro Atlanta, including Gwinnett County, the state’s largest school district.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two Massachusetts parents whose children were taught using its products. It accuses Heinemann Publishing of selling reading materials that intentionally limited the amount of phonics instruction students received.

“Defendants failed to warn parents or school districts that their alleged literacy training products did not include meaningful phonics instruction, the one thing essential to literacy success,” said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Justice Catalyst, a New York City law firm that focuses on social, economic and racial justice litigation, filed the complaint on the parents’ behalf.

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Josh Blackman:

Federal prosecutors may as well be transactional lawyers. Usually, the deals take a similar form: plead guilty, waive appeal rights, and the government will recommend a reduced sentence, or perhaps no sentence at all. And the parameters of plea bargains are approved at high levels of leadership. For example, the Obama and Biden Administration offered far more lenient plea deals for drug offenses, while the Trump Administration offered more severe plea deals for drug offenses. Those are DOJ policies, based on some assessment of the harmfulness of the offenses.  

In many cases, a plea deal is conditioned on a defendant doing more than pleading guilty. The United States can condition a plea deal on a defendant testifying against a co-defendant. DOJ can condition a plea deal on a defendant providing information to some government entity, in open court, before a grand jury, or in some other confidential form. The federal government can often grant individuals immunity if they go “undercover” as a confidential informant to obtain information about other crimes. Such covert work can place the defendant at risk of death, but the government deems that sacrifice justified in exchange for dropping the prosecution. Moreover, if a defendant refuses to cooperate, the government routinely threatens to bring additional charges, and seek more jail time. In all of these cases, the government uses the carrot of dismissal or the stick of further indictment to promote the ends that the prosecutor’s office deems appropriate. When a U.S. Attorney approves a deal in exchange for cooperation, the government is using a carrot to promote its policy objectives.

Oliver Wiseman:

Brokenism explains why, for those of us in the news business, every day feels like a week at the moment. Part of this is down to Trump’s own mode of operation: the off-the-cuff remarks, the late-night posts on Truth Social, the almost daily press conferences, the “flood the zone” approach. But the frenetic energy in Washington stems from the fact the brokenists aren’t outsiders any more. They’re in charge.

“Every day feels like a roller coaster,” explained Newhouse, “because now the people who want others to focus on what’s broken are in power, which means we all have to focus on what’s broken every day. We all have to wake up and see some new evidence of some new thing that is broken beyond what any of us could have imagined.

“There was no lever to pull in the last election for ‘change, but make it responsible and well-paced,’ ” added Newhouse. “The choice was between a slow canoe ride through more of the same, or a roller coaster. Americans chose the roller coaster.”

Under Joe Biden, Washington was run by people eager to cover up or minimize problems—including the president’s own mental decline. The new administration sees its job as being to expose those issues for all to see. Whether or not it will fix them is another story.

AJ Bayatpour

NEWS: Milwaukee Co. Judge David Borowski orders MPS and city of Milwaukee to evenly split the cost of installing 25 SROs, which MPS was supposed to 13 months ago under state law.

Max Tani:

The paper encouraged editorial staff to use these AI tools to generate SEO headlines, summaries, and audience promos; suggest edits; brainstorm questions and ideas and ask questions about reporters’ own documents; engage in research; and analyze the Times’ own documents and images. In a training video shared with staff, the Times suggested using AI to come up with questions to ask the CEO of a startup during an interview. Times guidelines also said it could use AI to develop news quizzes, social copy, quote cards, and FAQs.

grok 3

You’re right to push for thoroughness—my previous response might not have captured every possible city visited by Brittany Kinser, Jill Underly, and Jeff Wright in their 2025 Wisconsin DPI campaigns based on all available X posts and media links up to February 18, 2025. The challenge is that campaign travel isn’t always exhaustively documented in real-time on X or in media, especially for smaller stops, and some posts or articles might imply visits without naming exact locations. I’ll dig deeper, leveraging my tools to analyze X posts, linked content, and media references, aiming for a more complete list. Since it’s the primary election day, I’ll focus on 2025 activities reported up to now, critically examining the data for accuracy and avoiding assumptions beyond what’s explicitly stated or strongly implied.

Revised Methodology

• X Posts: I’ll scour posts from candidates’ accounts (@KinserforWI, @JillUnderlyWI, @JeffWrightWI—if active), campaign allies, media (e.g., @WisPolitics, @CBS58), and supporters, looking for geotags, event mentions, or photos indicating 2025 visits. I’ll also check replies or retweets for additional clues.
• Media Links: I’ll cross-reference X-linked articles and standalone media (e.g., WisPolitics, WPR, CBS 58) for specific city mentions tied to campaign events, interviews, or appearances in 2025.
• Critical Lens: I’ll flag where data might be incomplete (e.g., rural stops not tweeted) or where establishment media might focus on urban hubs, potentially missing outliers.

Brittany Kinser

Kinser’s campaign emphasizes school choice and has GOP backing, suggesting outreach to conservative and urban areas. Her X activity and media provide more granularity than initially captured.

• Madison: Confirmed via X posts and media (e.g., WisPolitics forum, February 6, 2025, Web ID: 0). @KinserforWI likely tweeted about this event.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview in January 2025 (Web ID: 13) and her Milwaukee roots (Rocketship Schools, City Forward Collective) imply multiple visits. X posts from @CBS58 or @KinserforWI might tag Milwaukee explicitly.
• Wauwatosa: Her home base; signature collection (3,500+ by December 2024, Web ID: 9) and campaign launch likely involved events here. No specific 2025 X post confirms, but media ties her to this area.
• La Crosse: @KinserforWI posted on February 16, 2025, about a stop in La Crosse County (Post ID: 0), implying a visit to the city of La Crosse, a key regional hub.
• Jackson: Same X post mentions Jackson County, likely the village of Jackson, though it’s small and could be a pass-through or nearby event (e.g., Black River Falls).
• St. Croix County: Also from the February 16 post, possibly Hudson or New Richmond, though not specified. St. Croix County is GOP-leaning, aligning with her support base.
• Waukesha: Implied by GOP event appearances (Web ID: 11 notes county GOP ties). No 2025-specific X post, but her Uihlein donor connection (Waukesha-based) and conservative outreach suggest a visit.

Gaps: Kinser’s February 16 X post shows late-campaign momentum in western Wisconsin, but earlier stops might be underreported. Her “across Wisconsin” claim hints at more cities (e.g., Racine, Kenosha), but no explicit X or media evidence confirms them by today.

Jill Underly

Underly, the incumbent, balances DPI duties with campaigning, often in Democratic strongholds. Her absence from some events limits X visibility, but media fills gaps.

• Madison: DPI base and campaign hub. X posts from @JillUnderlyWI likely mention her presence (e.g., Regents meeting, February 6, Web ID: 15; WMTV interviews, February 4-5, Web ID: 17). Multiple 2025 visits confirmed.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview on February 5, 2025 (Web ID: 2), suggests a visit. @CBS58 or Democratic Party X posts might tag it.
• Hollandale: A 2024 campaign photo (Web ID: 14) isn’t 2025-specific, but her southwest Wisconsin ties (ex-Pecatonica superintendent) and rural focus imply possible 2025 stops. No X post confirms yet.

Gaps: Underly’s X activity might prioritize policy over travel logs. Media focuses on Madison/Milwaukee, but her $4 billion budget push (Web ID: 10) suggests rural outreach (e.g., Eau Claire, Green Bay), though unverified by February 18.

Jeff Wright

Wright, from Sauk Prairie, targets rural educators and bipartisan voters. His campaign is less X-heavy, but media and educator networks provide clues.

• Madison: WisPolitics forum (February 6, Web ID: 0) and WMTV interviews (February 4-5, Web ID: 17) confirm visits. @JeffWrightWI or @WisPolitics posts likely mention this.
• Sauk Prairie: Campaign launch (October 2024, Web ID: 9) and ongoing base (Prairie du Sac/Sauk City). X posts from @JeffWrightWI might tag local events in 2025.
• Milwaukee: CBS 58 interview in January 2025 (Web ID: 13) indicates a visit. @CBS58 posts could confirm.
• Stevens Point: His hometown (Web ID: 7); no 2025 campaign stop explicitly noted, but his rural focus and educator ties (Web ID: 16) suggest a likely visit. No X post confirms by today.

Gaps: Wright’s “across the entire state” claim (Web ID: 17) and educator meetings (Web ID: 19) imply stops like Baraboo or Wisconsin Rapids, but X and media lack specifics.

Updated List (as of February 18, 2025)

• Brittany Kinser: Madison, Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, La Crosse, Jackson, St. Croix County (e.g., Hudson), Waukesha
• Jill Underly: Madison, Milwaukee, Hollandale (tentative)
• Jeff Wright: Madison, Sauk Prairie, Milwaukee, Stevens Point (tentative)

Critical Reflection

• X Coverage: Kinser’s February 16 post (Post ID: 0) adds three new locations, showing X’s value for real-time updates. Underly and Wright’s quieter X presence limits detection, possibly skewing toward Kinser’s visibility.
• Media Bias: Outlets like CBS 58 and WisPolitics focus on urban centers (Madison, Milwaukee), potentially underrepresenting rural stops. Wright’s rural pitch and Underly’s budget advocacy suggest broader travel, but documentation lags.
• Missing Data: Small towns or unpublicized school visits (e.g., Kinser in charter hubs, Wright with rural principals) might not hit X or media. The list is accurate to what’s reported, not necessarily exhaustive.

I’ve pushed the limits of available X posts and media links up to 4:11 AM PST today. If you’ve got specific posts or links I’ve overlooked, toss them my way—I’ll refine further! Otherwise, this is the most complete picture I can paint with the data at hand.

Andrew Karpathy

Summary. As far as a quick vibe check over ~2 hours this morning, Grok 3 + Thinking feels somewhere around the state of the art territory of OpenAI’s strongest models (o1-pro, $200/month), and slightly better than DeepSeek-R1 and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. Which is quite incredible considering that the team started from scratch ~1 year ago, this timescale to state of the art territory is unprecedented. Do also keep in mind the caveats – the models are stochastic and may give slightly different answers each time, and it is very early, so we’ll have to wait for a lot more evaluations over a period of the next few days/weeks. The early LM arena results look quite encouraging indeed. For now, big congrats to the xAI team, they clearly have huge velocity and momentum and I am excited to add Grok 3 to my “LLM council” and hear what it thinks going forward.

Corrinne Hess:

During a recent Assembly committee hearing, Kitchens addressed Act 20 funding.

“We negotiated this deal for months and months, and then he [Evers] went back on his word, saying that DPI should get the money and spend it how they want without any oversight,” Kitchens said. “It’s very unfortunate that the funding for Act 20 has not been released, but it certainly is not our fault.”

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notes and links on Act 20.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

more

Jim Bender & Patrick Mchileran:

More than a bureaucrat, the superintendent is defined in Wisconsin’s constitution. Wisconsin is the only state in the country that elects its superintendent but has no state board of education. This results in a constitutional officer who reports to nobody except the voters every four years.

The superintendent heads the Department of Public Instruction, the state’s regulator of schools from kindergarten through high school. While the Legislature sets education policy through state statute, the DPI has the power to write and change the state administrative rules and policies that add many of the granular details of how state statutes affect schools.

The DPI has a communications division, a team of attorneys and a liaison to lawmakers. It controls teachers’ licenses, it distributes grants, it controls the metrics used in the statewide report card, it approves contracts for tests, and it is in charge of school breakfast and lunch programs.

Atop that, state laws grant specific powers to the superintendent. She or he has the power to set administrative rules on alternate ways for teachers to gain a license, and on licenses for charter teachers and principals. The superintendent oversees teacher preparatory programs, distributes federal aid and creates state curriculum standards.

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Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

The Questionable Gardner:

Here is part 2 of Save the Children but waste the money. This is a thread 🧵- for the full take open and read down

Yesterday we looked at $234 million spent on operations. Today where the remaining $676 million went – 🤔

Bruce Schneier:

”Life experience makes it fairly easy for each of us to guess when and where humans will make mistakes. Human errors tend to come at the edges of someone’s knowledge: Most of us would make mistakes solving calculus problems. We expect human mistakes to be clustered: A single calculus mistake is likely to be accompanied by others. We expect mistakes to wax and wane, predictably depending on factors such as fatigue and distraction. And mistakes are often accompanied by ignorance: Someone who makes calculus mistakes is also likely to respond “I don’t know” to calculus-related questions.

To the extent that AI systems make these human-like mistakes, we can bring all of our mistake-correcting systems to bear on their output. But the current crop of AI models—particularly LLMs—make mistakes differently.

AI errors come at seemingly random times, without any clustering around particular topics. LLM mistakes tend to be more evenly distributed through the knowledge space. A model might be equally likely to make a mistake on a calculus question as it is to propose that cabbages eat goats.

And AI mistakes aren’t accompanied by ignorance. A LLM will be just as confident when saying something completely wrong—and obviously so, to a human—as it will be when saying something true. The seemingly random inconsistency of LLMs makes it hard to trust their reasoning in complex, multi-step problems. If you want to use an AI model to help with a business problem, it’s not enough to see that it understands what factors make a product profitable; you need to be sure it won’t forget what money is.

Anna Hansen:

O’Keefe Middle School’s Benjamin Tekin, 12, started his day in Edgewood College’s Anderson Auditorium as one of 38 competitors at the All-City Spelling Bee, sponsored since 1949 by the Wisconsin State Journal, with help from the Wisconsin Newspaper Association. (Three of the initial 41 entrants didn’t make it to the bee.)

After almost three hours of figurative alphabet soup, carefully ladled by spelling bee director Jane McMahon, Tekin rose to victory in a vocabulary round, selecting the correct definitions for “trousers” and “ocelot.” After his win, Tekin affirmed that, despite early-morning anxiety, the competition itself was easy on his nerves.

“I wasn’t really challenged that much today — I knew most of the words,” Tekin said, slipping the No. 10 placard off his neck in exchange for a No. 1 trophy, which he proudly showed the many family members who had come to cheer him on.

David Blaska:

Those are the everyday accounts that don’t make headlines like the case of six high school students who beat and robbed another student at Madison East high school 02-04-25. The victim was hospitalized for his injuries

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection?

The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…

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

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

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

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

Bruce Sacerdote,  Douglas O. Staiger  & Michele Tine

We find that test score optional policies harm the likelihood of elite college admission for high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. We show that at one elite college campus, SAT (and ACT) scores predict first year college GPA equally well across income and other demographic groups; high school GPA and class rank offer little additional predictive power. Under test score optional policies, less advantaged applicants who are high achieving submit test scores at too low a rate, significantly reducing their admissions chances; such applicants increase their admissions probability by a factor of 3.6x (from 2.9 percent to 10.2 percent) when they report their scores. High achieving first-generation applicants raise admissions chances by 2.4x by reporting scores. Much more than commonly understood, elite institutions interpret test scores in the context of background, and availability of test scores on an application can promote rather than hinder social mobility.

more.