David Heinmeier Hansson

The new American vice president JD Vance just gave a remarkable talk at the Munich Security Conference on free speech and mass immigration. It did not go over well with many European politicians, some of which immediately proved Vance’s point, and labeled the speech “not acceptable”. All because Vance dared poke at two of the holiest taboos in European politics.

Let’s start with his points on free speech, because they’re the foundation for understanding how Europe got into such a mess on mass immigration. See, Europeans by and large simply do not understand “free speech” as a concept the way Americans do. There is no first amendment-style guarantee in Europe, yet the European mind desperately wants to believe it has the same kind of free speech as the US, despite endless evidence to the contrary.

more.

Frederick M. Hess and Jay P Greene:

The Trump administration has directed the NIH to slash the amount it pays to universities for “overhead” expenses. Previously, for every dollar universities received for research, the NIH gave them an additional 39 cents for overhead — now, it can’t be more than 15 cents. This means that out of the $35 billion NIH provides in grants, the amount devoted to overhead for things such as administration and facilities would be cut from $9 billion to $4.6 billion. If the injunction currently halting the NIH plan is lifted, the total amount of research funding will remain unchanged, but $4.4 billion will shift from administrators to researchers.

Josh Blackman:

In recent years, the Department of Justice has prosecuted public officials in high profile cases. In several of those cases, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the convictions.

In McDonnell v. United States (2016), the Court held that an “official act” must involve a formal exercise of governmental power on something specific pending before a public official. DOJ though it knew what was a proper exercise of government power. The Supreme Court disagreed. Could it be said that the scores of DOJ employees who brought this ill-fated prosecution were “fools”? Do you know who was the Chief of the DOJ Public Integrity Section at the time? Jack Smith. Was it foolish for a prosecutor to indict a former Governor in a case that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

Jack Smith also led the prosecution of John Edwards, the former Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate. Smith relied on a dubious theory of campaign finance law, and the case yielded a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. (When Smith reported that he had enough evidence to convict Trump, I thought back to the Edwards case.) DOJ did not try that theory again. Was it foolish to bring this prosecution of a former public official when the jury wouldn’t even convict?

Fast forward to Kelly v. United States (2020). This prosecution arose from the so-called Bridgegate scandal. The United States indicted members of Governor Chis Christie’s administration. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. Justice Kagan ruled that the scheme, which did not aim to obtain money or property, could not violate the federal fraud law. Was it foolish to indict a public official in a case that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

In 2023, the Supreme Court decided Ciminelli v. United States and Percoco v. United States. These cases arose over scandal involving funding for a Buffalo Bills stadium project. In both cases, the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the convictions. Was it foolish to bring these cases that garnered zero votes at the Supreme Court?

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Dan O’Donnell:

So did Kaul accept a bribe of two “free” attorneys to help lighten his workload and generate positive headlines by filing and joining climate change lawsuits Michael Bloomberg demanded? Again, it sure looks like it.

Fischer King:

So the election was cancelled based on a false premise.

Diana Kwon:

High living costs and stagnant stipends are being cited as the primary reasons for the decline in PhD enrollments in various countries.

Numbers of people enrolling in PhD programmes have dropped in a handful of countries in the past few years, which policy specialists are calling a worrying trend. From Australia and Japan to Brazil and the United Kingdom, there are concerns that high living costs, low stipends and limited job options after graduation are deterring people from pursuing doctoral degrees.

These declining numbers should “act as a wake-up call” for those countries, says Cláudia Sarrico, a project lead at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. “This is a signal you need to reform working conditions and think about diversifying career options — otherwise, you risk a talent drain that will ultimately slow down scientific progress.”

The most recent figures on this trend, released by Universities Australia and the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) in January, revealed an 8% reduction in the number of domestic PhD enrolments in Australia from 2018 to 2023, although the population of the country grew by more than 7% over the same period.

Balaji:

You can just do things – high agency
We can just do things – high cooperation
They can also just do things – enemy also gets a move
You can’t do just anything – constraints do exist

US Dept of Education Civil Rights Office

Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible. Accordingly, I write to clarify and reaffirm the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education (Department).1 This letter explains and reiterates existing legal requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,2 the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution, and other relevant authorities.3

In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families. These institutions’ embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia. For example, colleges, universities, and K-12 schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming. In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities.

Bill Conway:

Since then, it was revealed that the preliminary plan is for this debt to be issued with zero payments until 2027, followed by interest-only payments through 2045.

Imagine taking out a mortgage on your house, but not making a single payment for the first two years. Then, for the next 18 years, you pay only the interest — never touching the actual loan balance. By the time you start paying off the principal, you’ve racked up so much extra interest that you’re now paying more than double what you borrowed.

That’s exactly what the mayor’s office has proposed. It’ll borrow $830 million today, but between delayed and interest-only payments, taxpayers will ultimately owe more than $2 billion. And conveniently, the real payments don’t start until after the mayor and City Council face reelection.

CBS58:

‘Afraid even to tell the truth’: Lawyer for MPS whistleblowers, lawmakers react to MPS audit

Kaylah Huynh:

“We learned that specific system updates may have inadvertently excluded too much income from taxation.” 

Abbey Machtig:

School district spokesperson Edell Fiedler said the district is assuming the error affected all 6,000 employees, although actual tax liabilities depend on a variety of factors, including withholdings. 

“We have taken immediate steps to prevent this error from happening again,” Fiedler said in an email to the State Journal. “This includes ensuring accurate system updates and a mandatory double-checking process for these updates. We are committed to continuously monitoring and improving these systems to safeguard against similar issues in the future.”

The Deficit:

•What’s a Deficit? A budget deficit occurs when the government spends more money than it earns in revenue. For FY 2024, the deficit was about $1.8 trillion. Imagine if you only made $4.9 trillion (the revenue) but spent $6.5 trillion; you’d be $1.6 trillion in the hole, which is essentially what happened with the federal government.
•Why Does the Deficit Matter? A large deficit means the government needs to borrow money to cover its costs, which increases the national debt.

——

Interest on the Debt:

•Interest Payments: In FY 2024, the U.S. spent approximately $950 billion just on interest for the national debt. This is like paying $30,000 every second in interest alone. It’s the second or third largest line item in the budget, only behind or close to Social Security and defense spending.
•How It Works: Just like how you might pay interest on a loan or credit card, the U.S. government pays interest on the money it has borrowed. With a debt level of roughly $35 trillion at the end of 2024, even small interest rates can lead to enormous payments.

The Debt Spiral:

•Borrowing to Pay Interest: Here’s where it gets trickier. When the government can’t cover its costs, including interest on the existing debt, with current revenue, it borrows more money. This borrowing increases the national debt. Now, with more debt, there’s more interest to pay the next year, which might require even more borrowing if revenues don’t increase or spending doesn’t decrease, leading to what’s called a “debt spiral.”

US debt clock

Meanwhile

Ann Althouse:

There was a budget surplus when Bill Clinton left office, and we now have a deficit counted in trillions, and the national debt is in the tens of trillions. Those who don’t like the service Elon Musk is giving to his country — what is their alternative? 

via Quinton Klabon

This Senator Jagler address connects setting high standards for kids with recent Milwaukee Public Schools troubles.

——

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?

Amy Kyllo:

“We have a lot of sad days dealing with this disease,” Tracy said. “These good days, these fun days give us strength to get through the bad days. You remember the joy felt during these incredible acts of kindness and generosity.”

Jeff Hamilton:

A new commissioner tasked with disciplining Manitoba educators for misconduct since the start of the year was doing so while still maintaining her job as head of the Saskatchewan teachers’ union, the Free Press has learned.

Critics call it a major conflict of interest that brings into question the independence and impartiality of Manitoba’s new teacher oversight commission.

“The fact that she’s doing two jobs at once, and one is the head of a teacher union, when you’re supposed to be adjudicating cases involving teacher misconduct, that’s a massive conflict of interest,” said Cameron Hauseman, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba.

Andrew Bahl:

A challenge to one of Wisconsin’s most high-profile laws of the last 15 years — restricting the collective bargaining rights of public sector unions — has taken another turn on its way through the court system.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a case involving Act 10 must first proceed through a conservative-leaning appellate court before it may come back to the state’s top justices.

The decision involves a Dane County judge’s ruling last year that large portions of Act 10 are unconstitutional. If ultimately upheld by higher courts, the decision would have a major effect on the working conditions of public employees, such as teachers, state workers and some law enforcement officers. A ruling that ends Act 10 also could affect the finances of state and local governments across Wisconsin.

The decision Wednesday — which was accompanied by Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s decision not to recuse herself from a future ruling on Act 10 — means the case likely won’t be heard by the high court until after an April election that will determine whether left-leaning or right-leaning justices have a majority.

Here’s what to know about the latest court challenge to Act 10.

——

Notes and links on Act 10

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Tyler Cowen Summary:

Ilya Somin covers this question over at Volokh Conspiracy.  I receive many queries about this, some of them panicky and anguished.  I haven’t covered it, mostly because I don’t feel I have enough insights into the relevant matters of constitutional law, or for that matter what is going on inside the administration (for instance, how should one interpret those Vance tweets?)

I can tell you what I would find useful.  If you are especially pessimistic on this front, which are the securities prices that would indicate an actual constitutional problem?  Particular equities?  Interest rates?  The value of the dollar?  Measures of volatility?  Something else?  Don’t restrict yourself to the absolute level of share prices, surely there are favored and disfavored companies and sectors, right?

Why it is hard for the Executive to disobey the judiciary

Sean Stevens & Greg Lukianoff:

The event never happened.

Just as it was about to begin, some student protesters became disruptive. One of them pulled the fire alarm. Windows were broken and objects, including noisemakers, were thrown into the room. Krolczyk and members of the Turning Point USA chapter barricaded themselves inside until they were escorted out by university police and security.

This week, Krolcyzk filed a Title IX complaint against the University of Washington with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights as a result of the disruption and cancellation of the event.

Despite the chaos, University of Washington spokesperson and Assistant Vice President for Communications Victor Balta contends that “the TPUSA organizers made the choice to suspend the event.” In a statement sent to The Center Square, “The Jason Rantz Show,” and other outlets who reached out for comment, Balta said that “[i]nformed discussion and debate are encouraged on our campus, however, it is clear that presenters and disruptors are, in some cases, seeking to antagonize one another in ways that provide dramatic content for their social media feeds,” and that Krolcyzk was “excited” that the event got shut down.

Mark Holmberg:

For three decades, this mechanical engineer has been dragging, hoisting, cribbing and prying these metal monsters out of old industrial shops in New York, Philadelphia, Erie, Pa. — anywhere and everywhere, as old vocational education programs shut down across the nation.

Eugene Ludwig:

What they rarely considered was whether something else might be responsible for the disconnect — whether, for instance, government statistics were fundamentally flawed. What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations? What if, in fact, darker assessments of the economy were more authentically tethered to reality?

On some level, I relate to the underlying frustrations. Having served as comptroller of the currency during the 1990s, I‘ve spent substantial chunks of my career exploring the gaps between public perception and economic reality, particularly in the realm of finance. Many of the officials I’ve befriended and advised over the last quarter-century — members of the Federal Reserve, those running regulatory agencies, many leaders in Congress — have told me they consider it their responsibility to set public opinion aside and deal with the economy as it exists by the hard numbers. For them, government statistics are thought to be as reliable as solid facts.

In recent years, however, as my focus has broadened beyond finance to the economy as a whole, the disconnect between “hard” government numbers and popular perception has spurred me to question that faith. I’ve had the benefit of living in two realms that seem rarely to intersect — one as a Washington insider, the other as an adviser to lenders and investors across the country. Toggling between the two has led me to be increasingly skeptical that the government’s measurements properly capture the realities defining unemployment, wage growth and the strength of the economy as a whole.

Corrinne Hess:

The damning 41-page report outlines a number of internal and external factors at the district that have caused multiple failures, including  an “absence of clear vision” and “leadership routinely disempowered to lead.”

“The motivation for this review is clear: MPS must make systemic changes to ensure that students — particularly the most vulnerable — are at the center of every decision,” states the audit by MGT of America Consulting LLC. “Ultimately, this work is in service of students, whose future success hinges on a district capable of delivering equitable, high-quality education.”

—-

Meanwhile, the taxpayer funded DPI, lead by Jill Underly continues its rigor reduction campaign.

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

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

DOGE.gov

This is the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024

Code of Federal Regulations

98.68M
Total Words

215.23K
Total Sections of regulation

more.

and:

Meet the U.S. Government
Trace your tax dollars through the bureaucracy.
U.S. Government

Elon Musk:

When not wasting money on bureaucracy, the Department of Education has been funding anti-Americanism, gender nonsense and anti-meritocratic racism

Frannie Block:

William, whose last name is listed only as A. in the suit, first enrolled in the Clarksville-Montgomery County school district in 2016 when he was in the fifth grade. For the next seven years, he scored mostly in the bottom first, second, or third percentiles of his reading fluency assessment tests compared to national standards. In 2019 and 2020, he scored in the bottom ninth and sixth percentiles, respectively. But, a year before he graduated, his reading had regressed so much he was scoring below the first percentile.

That same year, William took a simple writing test asking him to spell 31 words in three minutes. According to his suit, he couldn’t spell half of them, including the word school, which he wrote as shcool.

——-

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?

Zhang Tong:

Computer researchers in China using domestically made graphics processors have achieved a near-tenfold boost in performance over powerful US supercomputers that rely on Nvidia’s cutting-edge hardware, according to a peer-reviewed study.

The accomplishment points to possible unintended consequences of Washington’s escalating tech sanctions while challenging the dominance of American-made chips, long considered vital for advanced scientific research.

The researchers said that innovative software optimisation techniques enabled them to improve efficiency gains in computers powered by Chinese-designed graphics processing units(GPUs) to outperform US supercomputers in certain scientific computations.

Dan Hendrycks:

AIs also exhibit significant biases in their value systems. For example, their political values are strongly clustered to the left. Unlike random incoherent statistical biases, these values are consistent and likely affect their conversations with users.

LLM Visualization

Dairyland Sentinel:

Underly, DPI Shrug Off Complaints Over State Benchmarks; Superintendent and Her Department Have Yet to Comply With Open Records Request

Delia Watkins, Madison Metropolitan School District

Nicole Shanahan:

Exclusive: @DataRepublican joins me for her first-ever interview to discuss DOGE vs USAID, shady NGOs, media manipulation, and more.

More.

According to its latest annual report, RMI gets funding from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of State, Department of Transportation, General Services Administration, and the US Trade and Development Agency. It is also getting funding from the International Finance Corporation and World Bank.

Matt Taibbi:

“Take USAID. Many Americans are now in an uproar because they they learned about over $400,000,000 going to an organization called Inner News, whose chief Jeanne Bourgeault boasted to Congress about training hundreds of thousands of people in journalism. But her views are almost identical to Carrie’s. She gave a talk once about building trust and combating misinformation in India during the pandemic. She said that after months of a really beautifully unified COVID nineteen message, vaccine enthusiasm rose to 87%.”

“But when, quote, mixed information on vaccine efficacy got out, hesitancy ensued. We’re paying this person to train journalists, and she doesn’t know that the press does not exist to promote unity or political goals like vaccine enthusiasm. That’s propaganda, not journalism. Bourdieu also once said that to fight bad content, we need to work really hard on exclusionless or inclusionless and, quote, really need to focus our ad ad dollars toward what she called the good news.”

“Again, if you don’t know the fastest way to erode trust in media is by having government sponsor exclusion lists, you shouldn’t be getting a dollar in taxpayer money, let alone 476,000,000 of it. And USAID is just a tiny piece of the censorship machine Michael and I saw across that long list of agencies.”

“Collectively, they bought up every part of the news production line, sources, think tanks, research, fact checking, anti disinformation, commercial media scoring, and when all else fails, straight up censorship. It is a giant closed messaging loop whose purpose is to transform the free press into exactly that consensus machine. There is no way to remove this rod surgically. The whole mechanism has to go.”

Dave Cieslewicz

But the scores are even worse in Madison where students are 84% behind on math and 72% behind on reading.

We did, in fact, keep schools closed for too long, but that doesn’t explain the Madison results because hundreds of school districts kept their schools closed as long as Madison did and they’ve recovered faste

——

Madison per student spending ranges from $22,633 to $29,827 depending on the number used (!)

——

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?

Kaylah Huynh:

In a Marquette Law School Poll last year, about half of Wisconsin respondents said the state’s school choice program was a “complete success” or “mostly a success.” A quarter said the program was “mostly a failure” or a “total failure.”

—-

Jill Underly and ongoing rigor reduction.

Much more on the taxpayer funded dpi.

Notes on property tax growth.

Abbey Machtig

Madison students are 72% behind comparable 2019 numbers in reading and 84% behind in math, according to the report.

“education recovery scorecard”

——

Madison per student spending ranges from $22,633 to $29,827 depending on the number used (!)

——

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 Nielsen

I scraped US Dept of Education’s website for the word “equity.” There were 333 results on 60 pages.

52 occurrences on one page is the record for the website. Here are the top 10 pages

Christopher Rufo:

There is a tingle of fear in any corporation whenever the words “restructuring,” “merger,” “acquisition,” or “hostile takeover” spread through the office. Employees work on their resumes, whisper about projected layoffs, and assess their options.

We’re seeing the same phenomenon unfold right now in our nation’s capital. Since taking over last month, President Trump has promised to blitz through federal departments to roll back waste, cut ideological programs, and return fiscal sanity to American governance. While Republican presidents have long promised to “reduce the size of government,” they have usually failed to do so—the bureaucracy always wins. This time might be different.

The second Trump administration has been surprisingly aggressive in its efforts to reform federal agencies, including a controlled demolition of USAID and an audacious buyout plan for government employees. And Elon Musk, leader of the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, has a long track record of successful, and sometimes extreme, cost-cutting. When Musk took over Twitter, for example, he fired 80 percent of the employees, and at the same time managed to improve the product and increase its profitability.

The next stage of the conflict between Trump and the bureaucracy looks to be the Department of Education, which the president has correctly identified as a hotbed of left-wing ideologies. Almost every Republican presidential candidate since 1980 has promised either to shrink or abolish the department, but its budget has only grown. When Trump made the same promise on the campaign trail last year, I was skeptical. But Musk changes the calculation: the tech entrepreneur has already routed USAID and, as I can confirm from my own reporting, dispatched his DOGE engineers to investigate the DOE. While the department, as a public entity, does not have the same kind of balance sheet as a corporation, it must nevertheless be broken apart and ultimately shut down.

Andrew Rotherham:

• It’s hard to miss that the Dems are letting the Rs do some of their dirty work for them. The silence around some of the Eos on DEI, sports, etc…is deafening. There is an old saw in politics that you don’t get in the way when the other guy is shooting himself in the foot. You also stay out of the way when the other party is solving a political headache for you. 
• That brings us to Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahon. Her hearing is later this week. It’s political malpractice she’s not already confirmed. Her paperwork is complicated but she was confirmed in 2017 by the Senate with 81 votes for Small Business Administrator – where her tenure earned bipartisan praise. Her nomination was an absolute layup where the Dems risked overreaching. Now the problem facing the Dems will be just what to focus on in this target saturated environment (though they’ll still probably overreach with the MSNBC cameras there and all that). Having her confirmed might also help with all this chaos. Agree with her or not she’s not a chaos monkey and was well-regarded in Connecticut education circles. 
• So many lawsuits. And it’s only been a few weeks. It’s exciting to see a whole new generation of attorneys get beach houses in Delaware. The plight of the second homeless in D.C. is real. But if team Article I isn’t going to do it’s job then put in Team Article III coach!

Ann Althouse summary:

“If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?… It does not match the will of the people.”

and:

Federal employee retirements are processed using paper, by hand, in an old limestone mine in Pennsylvania. 700+ mine workers operate 230 feet underground to process ~10,000 applications per month, which are stored in manila envelopes and cardboard boxes. The retirement process takes multiple months.

Karen Vaites:

Here’s a topic that doesn’t get enough attention: a number of states are handling pandemic-era student achievement declines by lowering the bar for academic success. 

Most notably, some states have adjusted their ‘cut scores’ for determining proficiency on state tests. It’s a sleight of hand: the share of students considered “proficient” increases, even as student performance doesn’t improve. This makes schools look better, yet it’s controversial even among educators.

Quinton Klabon:

Wisconsin tried to lower state test benchmarks from “college-ready” to “grade level,” but ended up between, making them useless.

What sucks is teachers actually got close to NAEP: 61% P, 26% A versus 66% B, 31% P. Then, they got scared once they saw what their results would be.

Wall Street Journal:

The first category includes the Administration’s decision to pause discretionary spending to ensure it complies with the President’s priorities. Democratic state Attorneys General say this is illegal, and Judge John McConnell on Monday agreed. The Administration is appealing, and judges can’t force a President to spend money that Congress has left to his discretion.

Most of these spending programs don’t include concrete disbursement deadlines. If Mr. Trump is violating the law, so was the Biden Administration, which delayed disbursing grants under the 2021 infrastructure bill and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to review applications and attach conditions. What Mr. Trump is doing is no different.

Government unions are challenging Mr. Trump’s buyout offers for federal workers on grounds that Congress hasn’t funded them, but this doesn’t make them illegal per se. If Mr. Trump later doesn’t pay these workers, they could sue in federal claims court.

Unions are also challenging Mr. Trump’s Schedule F reform, which removes civil-service protections for some high-ranking career employees. Here, too, Mr. Trump is on strong legal ground. The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 exempts positions “determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.”

Mr. Trump has expanded these exempt positions to employees who supervise investigations, develop regulations and exercise power under an agency’s discretion. Congress has expanded the discretion of agencies such that federal workers now boast far more power than they did 50 years ago. A President should be able to hold them accountable for performance to ensure laws are faithfully executed.

…..

Harvard law professor Hal Scott recently argued in these pages that the CFPB is operating illegally because Congress funded the agency with earnings from the Federal Reserve. Because the Fed has incurred losses since September 2022, Mr. Scott says the bureau should close unless Congress appropriates money for it. This argument is plausible.

Incredible to see a political leader translate how a new technology can promote human flourishing with such clarity. Exceptional speech.

pic.twitter.com/IOUIv54FDO

— Katherine Boyle (@KTmBoyle) February 11, 2025

Anthropic economic index:

The main findings from the Economic Index’s first paper are:

• Today, usage is concentrated in software development and technical writing tasks. Over one-third of occupations (roughly 36%) see AI use in at least a quarter of their associated tasks, while approximately 4% of occupations use it across three-quarters of their associated tasks.
• AI use leans more toward augmentation (57%), where AI collaborates with and enhances human capabilities, compared to automation (43%), where AI directly performs tasks.
• AI use is more prevalent for tasks associated with mid-to-high wage occupations like computer programmers and data scientists, but is lower for both the lowest- and highest-paid roles. This likely reflects both the limits of current AI capabilities, as well as practical barriers to using the technology.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“The Biden Administration should ignore the court” – AOC, 2023

"The Biden Administration should ignore the court" – AOC, 2023 pic.twitter.com/fHF4PAykQT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 11, 2025

Wispolitics:

The state Dem Party gave Susan Crawford $2 million last month after collecting a $1 million donation from megadonor George Soros and $500,000 from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Meanwhile, the state GOP gave Brad Schimel $1.675 million in January after it received $975,000 from Beloit businesswoman Diane Hendricks and $850,000 from Illinois businesswoman Liz Uihlein.

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

The speed at which DOGE is pursuing efficiency at the federal government level is both mind-blowing and chaotic. It’s causing elation for some, anxiety for others.

But if you reflect soberly on Illinois and Chicago’s problems – corruption, ever-higher taxes, declining services and a shrinking population – you’ll quickly reach the conclusion Illinois needs a DOGE of its own. 

If you’re not convinced, take a look at the mess at Chicago Public Schools. It’s the perfect example of a bureaucratic machine in Illinois that’s able to drive up costs dramatically year after year despite its obvious and ongoing failure to deliver results. 

Start with CPS’ failed results. Today, just 1 in 5 students are proficient in reading and math on the SAT. For black students, it’s only 1 in 10. Student proficiencies have fallen about 22% since 2017, the first year Illinois administered the SAT. 

That failure has chased away many families from CPS. District enrollment has shrunk by nearly 60,000 students, or about 15%, since 2017. Overall, CPS has lost nearly 25% of its enrollment since 2000. 

Yet costs have been booming. In just seven years spending has jumped 84% – from $15,800 per student to more than $29,000. Hiring is way up, too, with total staff growing by 8,000, or 22%. 

Amy Erkenswick for Cusd200 Board of Education via Awake Illinois

My intention was to keep this campaign page a landing spot for positivity and to champion efforts toward our community’s shared goals. I had hoped that the ill-intended efforts of last election season would escape me.

Unfortunately, today during my Meet & Greet I was stalked, accosted, verbally assaulted, physically threatened and harassed by a former CUSD200 employee. Additionally, at least two current district employees have made social media posts that refer to me in a disparaging manner-posts which have been “liked” by current Board of Education members.

Caring about children and their education and committing your time and efforts to civic service should never result in this level of harassment.

Additionally, it should be noted that making disparaging comments about community members and parents of district students is a direct violation of not only CUSD200 Board of Education Policy 5:120 but also the Code of Ethics for Illinois Educators. Do we really need policies to treat eachother like humans? If so, they require enforcement.

The failure of CUSD200 leadership (Board of Education as well as administration) to hold their people accountable to their own policies has resulted in a horribly distorted narrative that has emboldened unwell individuals to pose a direct

Caring about children and their education and committing your time and efforts to civic service should never result in this level of harassment.

Additionally, it should be noted that making disparaging comments about community members and parents of district students is a direct violation of not only CUSD200 Board of Education Policy 5:120 but also the Code of Ethics for Illinois Educators. Do we really need policies to treat eachother like humans? If so, they require enforcement.

The failure of CUSD200 leadership (Board of Education as well as administration) to hold their people accountable to their own policies has resulted in a horribly distorted narrative that has emboldened unwell individuals to pose a direct and immediate danger to me and my family.

Now is the time to end this plotting. I urge you, please discontinue adding fuel to the fire of those who wish to do me harm. Please-stop endangering my family.

**SnoopDogg and Tom Brady say STAND UP TO HATE.**

Nash Weerasekera:

Together, Krapivin (now a graduate student at the University of Cambridge), Farach-Colton (now at New York University) and Kuszmaul demonstrated in a January 2025 paper(opens a new tab) that this new hash table can indeed find elements faster than was considered possible. ln so doing, they had disproved a conjecture long held to be true.

“It’s an important paper,” said Alex Conway(opens a new tab) of Cornell Tech in New York City. “Hash tables are among the oldest data structures we have. And they’re still one of the most efficient ways to store data.” Yet open questions remain about how they work, he said. “This paper answers a couple of them in surprising ways.”

Institute for Reforming Government

• While the REINS Act has not reduced the overall number of regulations on the books in Wisconsin, i.e. the overall regulatory burden, the data suggests it has likely reduced the rate of increase that would have almost certainly occurred in an administration.
• Outside of a decrease between 2021 and 2022, the overall number ofregulatory restrictions in place in Wisconsin have increased since 2017.
• The average number of permanent rules approved during the Walker Administration were significantly lowerthan the previous Doyle Administration. In the first year of the Walker Administration the number of permanent rules was reduced by almost 100.
• While the average number of permanent rules passed during the Evers Administration could have been closer to the 2019 high of 166 (which would have far surpassed the Doyle Administration average), the average has instead remained below the Doyle Administration average and is actually closer to the less-than 100 average of the Walker Administration.

more.

The Licensing Racket

Much more on licensing, here.

Wikileaks:

The author, David Golumbia, who also wrote “The politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism”, has previously received at least $80k in direct US government grants. UMN made no apparent attempt to fact check the book, which is now on the reading lists of two courses at the University of Southern California and Duke.

Hollis Robbins:

“ai” summary:

Universities must reevaluate their faculty and curriculum in light of AGI’s capabilities. Faculty will be retained for their unique expertise, hands-on training, and original research, while lecture courses and general education will be replaced by advanced research seminars and hands-on training.

——-

More.

Eko:

That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.

By 6 AM, Treasury’s career officials began arriving for work. They found systems they thought impenetrable already mapped. Networks they believed hidden already exposed. Power structures built over decades revealed in hours.

Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.

Oyin Adedoyin>:

At NYU, the published cost including housing and living expenses topped $82,000 in the 2022-23 school year. That is roughly a 20% increase from 2006-07, accounting for inflation. But a separate calculation for those who received aid from the school showed the price they paid dropped by 34% over the same period to roughly $30,700.

Bille, now 24, had wanted to go to NYU since middle school. The Las Vegas native is the daughter of immigrants who never navigated the American college system.

When she got into NYU in February 2019, the lack of aid didn’t deter her. The total cost for freshman year that fall, including room and board, was $75,502, according to NYU.

She had gotten a jump-start bringing the cost down with dozens of scholarship applications before she got accepted. But she kept applying. She color-coded her spreadsheet to track their status. A yellow row meant she was waiting to hear back. Red meant she had been rejected. Green meant she got the schola

Carl Hendrick:

Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable; that we are not prisoners of immutable characteristics and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our own cognitive capabilities.

Nineteenth-century scientists including Francis Galton and Alfred Binet devoted their own considerable intelligence to a quest to classify and understand human cognitive ability. If we could codify the anatomy of intelligence, they believed, we could place individuals into their correct niche in society. Binet would go on to develop the first IQ tests, laying the foundations for a method of ranking the intelligence of job applicants, army recruits or schoolchildren that continues today.

In the early 20th century, progressive thinkers revolted against this idea that inherent ability is destiny. Instead, educators such as John Dewey argued that every child’s intelligence could be developed, given the right environment. The self, according to Dewey, is not something ‘ready made’ but rather ‘in continuous formation through choice of action’. In the 1960s and ’70s, psychologists such as Albert Bandura bridged some of the gap between the innate and the learned models of intelligence with his idea of social cognitive theory, self-efficacy and motivation. One can recognise that there are individual differences in ability, Bandura argued, but still emphasise the potential for growth for each individual, wherever one’s starting point.

Alex Tabarrok Summary:

Governments enact occupational-licensing laws but rarely handle regulation directly—there’s no Bureau of Hair Braiding. Instead, interpretation and enforcement are delegated to licensing boards, typically dominated by members of the profession. Occupational licensing is self-regulation. The outcome is predictable: Driven by self-interest, professional identity and culture, these boards consistently favor their own members over consumers.

Ms. Allensworth conducted exhaustive research for “The Licensing Racket,” spending hundreds of hours attending board meetings—often as the only nonboard member present. At the Tennessee board of alarm-system contractors, most of the complaints come from consumers who report the sort of issues that licensing is meant to prevent: poor installation, code violations, high-pressure sales tactics and exploitation of the elderly. But the board dismisses most of these complaints against its own members, and is far more aggressive in disciplining unlicensed handymen who occasionally install alarm systems. As Ms. Allensworth notes, “the board was ten times more likely to take action in a case alleging unlicensed practice than one complaining about service quality or safety.”

Frannie Block:

What’s more, American students in the bottom 10th and 25th percentiles “are performing lower than they did in the early 1990s,” said Martin West, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. This disparity between the highest- and lowest-achieving students is known as the “achievement gap”—and the U.S. now appears to have one of the largest in the world, compared to other wealthy nations.

There are a number of theories as to why proficiency rates are declining. The pandemic lockdowns that started in 2020 and the omnipresence of cell phones in schools haven’t helped.

But instead of trying to solve the problem, a number of educators are actually covering it up—by lowering the educational standards in their states.

calfac.org

Whereas, there is a long history of workers and unions challenging the introduction of new technologies in order to maintain power in the workplace; and

Whereas, other unions have begun to address AI in their CBAs (e.g., SAG, AFTA, and WGA) and have had significant victories in this arena; and

Whereas, there are concerns that AI will replace roles at the University that will make it difficult or impossible to solve classroom, human resources, or other issues since it is not intelligent;

and

Whereas, the CSU has already begun to push AI as a tool through workshops, trainings, and institutional development; and

Whereas, AI, especially LLMs, and other algorithmic technologies are often referred to as “smart,” “AI powered,” “data driven” or other euphemistic terminology to conceal their implementation from users and enhance the perception of their value; and

Whereas, the CSU and individual campuses regularly sign contracts with tech companies, implement new learning technologies, and impose new technological “solutions,” including “smart,” “AI powered,” or “data driven” technologies, without consulting CFA; and

Whereas, AI will have a wide range of impacts that can’t be addressed by simply amending existing one CBA article including: AI’s propensity to exacerbate forms of institutional racism, sexism, and gender discrimination raises concerns around hiring and evaluation; AI’s threat to intellectual property including use of music, writing, and the creative arts as well as faculty generated course content without acknowledgement or permission; the potential for online instruction without direct faculty oversight or the massive expansion of classes through mandated AI use as a “speed-up”; and AI’s impact on development of new ideas, creativity, and academic freedom; and.

Sarah Mueller:

Delaware has a resource-based school funding system that was created in 1940. That means there’s a yearly count of students where the number of children in each building are converted into units. Meyer has voiced support for moving to a weighted student funding formula, where the money follows the student based on need.

Delaware’s education leaders and advocates have historically been divided between keeping the current system or moving to one where the money follows the child. Critics of the system say it fails to provide enough resources for low-income students, students with disabilities and English Language Learners. Supporters say the unit formula is easy to understand and predictable.

What’s clear is the state’s current education system is failing its students. Delaware is ranked 45th in the nation for educational outcomes,according to research from the University of Delaware. Three-fourths of fourth graders are unable to read proficiently and 82% of eighth graders are below proficiency in math. Earlier this month, Gov. Meyer declared a “literacy emergency” after national test scores revealed eighth grade reading scores in the First State hit a 27-year low in 2024.

Michael Petrilli:

Eli Hager and his colleagues at ProPublica have published some eyebrow-raising articles lately about Arizona’s universal education savings account (ESA) program. Most recently, Hager dug into its testing and accountability requirements—or lack thereof. When it comes to the public’s ability—and that of policymakers—to know whether Arizona’s program, or the schools and other vendors that it’s funding, are effective, there’s zilch, nada, nothing.

Yet Arizona turns out to be something of an outlier. Most school choice programs—including education savings accounts programs, especially those enacted in recent years—come with sometesting mandates. Granted, there isn’t as much transparency or accountability as I’d like. As I told Hager, “If you’re a private school that gets most of its money now from the public…there should be accountability for you, as there is for public schools. If the public is paying your bills, I don’t see what the argument is for there not to be.”

Yet in many other states, there’s more of it than conventional wisdom assumes. Table 1 provides a detailed look at testing, transparency, and accountability requirements, pulled from a recent Rand analysis, as well as Education Week, FutureEd, and (especially) EdChoice.

Table 1: Testing, transparency, and accountability requirements in America’s largest private school choice programs[1]

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

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

 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?

Jonathan Butcher

The University of Michigan’s recent about-face on DEI is both encouraging and instructive. Yes, even high-profile institutions with long records of supporting racial favoritism and radical ideological movements can show common sense—but sometimes it takes public humiliation in the media and losses in courtrooms to get them to budge.

After last month’s first set of executive orders from President Donald Trump, other schools would do well to drop DEI before experiencing the embarrassment that rattled Ann Arbor.

In December, UMichigan officials announced that they would no longer ask job applicants to submit “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) statements as part of their applications.

Unlockaid:

Meanwhile, many communities cannot access the very resources that were created for them. In August, The Guardian reportedthat the U.S. government’s Inflation Reduction Act created $60 billion for environmental justice investments, but “many of the small, community-based organizations that would benefit from funding the most … simply don’t have the time or resources to navigate the complicated bureaucratic process of applying for funding.”

These issues are taking a toll on Americans’ faith in their government to deliver results. The Healthcare.gov debacle is perhaps one of the most well known examples of massive failure brought to you by the Beltway Bandits. But stories like this are increasingly the norm.

It’s not enough for lawmakers to reduce discussions about the management of our public resources every year to tired and familiar debates about how much the U.S. should be spending on what priorities. The U.S. needs to be just as focused on who is making those decisions and to whom and to what ends those resources flow.

Dissident Teacher:

The teaching profession has been eviscerated by counterproductive policies like equitable grading and our laughably unserious teacher training colleges. Teachers are now something between daycare provider and HR manager with little technical expertise. They oversee a factory full of workers who don’t know what they’re building or why. Nobody pushes back because everyone gets paid regardless of what the factory turns out.

As I’ve detailed in multiple articles available on X (and on my substack; link in bio), the system incentivizes teachers to do the least possible work. Principals do not look for experts in their respective fields, they look for young, inexpensive, debt-laden college graduates with the right paperwork. The system then conditions them to follow orders using three carrots: summers off, minimal accountability (we can always blame the parents!) and tenure. In other words, it teaches them it’s okay to not work very hard.

A teacher who knows her subject, transmits that knowledge coherently, designs practice that helps students move it into long-term memory and expects students to later demonstrate mastery of all of the course material makes admin’s job much harder because it puts the lie to their grading systems (they’re all gamed) and behavioral controls (there aren’t any).

Once admin recognizes this aberration, she will be taught to change in one of two ways.

——-

More.

Carmen Nesbitt:

Utah lawmakers in a bill draft Wednesday restored a proposed ban on collective bargaining rights for public employees, backtracking after days of negotiations with public sector unions who were hoping to reach a compromise with legislators.

Lawmakers in an earlier revision had removed an outright ban on collective bargaining, though the updated bill draft at that time still would have required public sector unions to undergo a “recertification election” every five years.

But after failing to reach a “consensus” on the “neutrality” of the revised bill draft with union representatives, lawmakers in their latest proposal this week reverted to the original intent of HB267— prohibiting collective bargaining altogether across all government-owned organizations, including public schools, law enforcement and fire departments.

Specifically, it would bar public employers from “recognizing a labor organization as a bargaining agent” and from entering into collective bargaining contracts.

Related: Wisconsin Act 10

Mike Solana:

With FDR long gone, and the Cold War long over, the machinery built to defend us from foreign power rusted, degraded, and slowly rotted. With no external threat demanding competence, weak men flourished in the system. These men hired even weaker men, who in turn hired… whatever it is we’re looking at today. Much as a beached whale carcass puffs up with gas, the size of our government bloated as it atrophied. Now, the state is mostly a jobs program for mediocre people, and at its very worst it’s a staging ground for radicals hell bent on paralyzing the nation. I do believe we need a federal government staffed with competent men and women. I do believe there are competent men and women who still work in Washington. But the federal government is presently too big, and too full of waste, and that waste looks far too much like fraud. I do not think (most) critics are fans of the waste and fraud. But, despite their many flaws, the bureaucrats are still basically center left. And for a center leftist, I imagine this feels more comfortable than a center right president elected to power.

The New York Times noted Trump’s approach to reducing the size of the government is a near mirror image of Elon’s strategy at Twitter. This is true, and it’s worth noting panic over DOGE in Washington is also near identical to the panic we saw from the tech press when Elon took Twitter private. Back then, journalists insisted the company would die. Imminently, they said. This of course never happened, and everyone who said it would happen of course never believed what they were saying. Critics at the time weren’t afraid Twitter would shut down, they were afraid Twitter would survive — but without censorship and propaganda. Likewise, center left DOGE critics aren’t worried the government will break. They’re worried it won’t, and the center left Deep State will lose power.

To my eye, concern for the Deep State seems reasonable. Elon is absolutely wrecking these people. But even still, the tech right should be more clear-eyed. Similarities between the Twitter Deep State and the actual real ass American Deep State end at the media freaking out over their destruction. This is a real war for power, and the stakes are far higher than a failed company.

Over the weekend, former candidate for Congress and darling left-wing thinkboi Will Stancil suggested Elon Musk should be executed. The sentiment is fairly common on Bluesky, where violent implications are banned but calls for actual violence are generally encouraged, a philosophy well summarized by professional crazy person Akilah Hughes, last seen defending the assassin Luigi Mangione. “Can we skip to them facing the firing squads?” she seemed to ask of DOGE employees.

Concurrently, I’ve seen this dumb Matt Y tweet making the rounds again:

Riya Misra:

Rice University’s famed horn professor William VerMeulen abruptly retired last spring amid a swirl of sexual misconduct allegations. But dozens of students and industry insiders say “the administration has known for 30 years” — and failed to act.

Paul Caron summary:

The University of Minnesota Law School is halting the hiring of a new assistant dean of diversity, equity and inclusion as President Donald Trump continues to crack down on DEI in federal programs.

Dean William McGeveran said he “had no choice but to pause the search” for an assistant dean of DEI. McGeveran made the comments in an email on Friday. The school has spent at least the last three months searching for a new assistant DEI dean and is canceling scheduled visits for the finalists.

Anna Hansen 

Several Madison East High School students allegedly battered and robbed another student Tuesday afternoon, Madison police say.

Officers were dispatched to the school at 12:49 p.m. on reports of an altercation in which six students had beaten and stolen money from another student, police spokesperson Stephanie Fryer said in a statement. The victim was hospitalized for his injuries.

The alleged assailants, a 14-year-old boy, two 15-year-old boys and two 16-year-old boys, are facing pending charges of substantial battery – party to a crime; strong armed robbery – party to a crime; disorderly conduct, physical abuse to a child and bail jumping, Fryer said. An additional teen, a 17-year-old boy, is facing the same charges.

Kayla Huynh on Jill Underly:

Underly’s top priorities include securing more state funding for schools and increasing the amount of money schools are reimbursed for special education services. She wants the state to reimburse 90% of schools’ special education costs. 

on Jeff Wright:

Wright’s top priorities are to restore confidence in the Department of Public Instruction, rebuild the relationship between the agency and schools, and “stop the hemorrhaging of talent from the department.” 

His other priority is to close the state’s academic achievement gap. Wisconsin’s racial disparity in math and reading continues to be the largest among the nation’s states, according to last year’s results from a federal test. 

Brittany Kinser:

David Blaska:

Will voters send Jill Underly home with a teacher’s note? Let’s cut to the chase: Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction is guilty of cheating on her tests. Cooking the books. Skewing the numbers to hide the fact that more students under her watch are failing the basics.

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

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

 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?

Laura McKenna:

Parent backlash against the national education test results is happening in NJ. Steve snapped pictures of these signs at the train station.

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004

——

Parents overestimate student achievement, underestimate spending

Related: Act 10

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

 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?

Will Flanders:

Tom McCarthy from DPI: “we haven’t lowered standards one iota.”

This is a lie.

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?

Francis Menton:

It is possible that the entire industry of academia will be revolutionized and transformed over the course of the next couple of years. It should be. And, if Trump follows through, as I think he will, he completely has the tools at his disposal to do the job.

With academia, multiple issues come together to put the industry in a position of high vulnerability. First, of course, is that academia is almost universally associated with the farthest of the far political left, the wokest of the woke. Academics, almost to a person, have opposed Trump in everything he has proposed and stood for and have viciously attacked him at every opportunity.

The second is that nearly all academic institutions get vast sums of money every year from the federal government. Much of that is for bona fide research, like the search for new medical cures, but large amounts of the aid (nobody knows exactly how much) go to fund every sort of left-wing course and program.

And the third issue that makes academic institutions particularly vulnerable is that almost without exception they have been systematically and pervasively engaging in illegal racial and sex discrimination for decades. Some of that discrimination has been in the area of admissions, as was exposed in the famous case of SFFA v. Harvard decided by the Supreme Court in 2023. But that was only one piece of the illegal conduct. There has been vast other illegal conduct, going under the general heading of “diversity, equity and inclusion” or DEI, at nearly every academic institution and in virtually every aspect of their operations: in addition to admissions, also in faculty and administrative hiring; in creating DEI bureaucracies and enforcement procedures; in setting up various academic programs, majors, and departments (for example, the so-called “studies” departments and majors); in funding “cultural centers”; and on and on.

Vince Bielski:

In many ways, this is a story about the hazards of running a district deeply into debt. With a projected $500 million annual deficit and holding a whopping $9.3 billion in long-term debt, the district depends on the city of Chicago, which also runs in the red, to provide most of its $9.9 billion in funding. Making matters more precarious, the district has to rely on short-term loans at high interest rates to make payroll. It is also the largest issuer of junk bonds in the U.S. 

FDIC:

“Previously, the FDIC released 25 so-called ‘pause’ letters sent to 24 institutions interested in pursuing crypto- or blockchain-related activities. The documents released today include (1) additional correspondence with those 24 institutions and (2) correspondence with additional institutions beyond those 24. The documents that we are releasing today show that requests from these banks were almost universally met with resistance, ranging from repeated requests for further information, to multi-month periods of silence as institutions waited for responses, to directives from supervisors to pause, suspend, or refrain from expanding all crypto- or blockchain-related activity. Both individually and collectively, these and other actions sent the message to banks that it would be extraordinarily difficult—if not impossible—to move forward. As a result, the vast majority of banks simply stopped trying.

John Konrad:

The NYTimes’ primary function isn’t journalism. It’s narrative coordination—setting the frame so the entire political-media machine knows how to think about an issue before it takes off.

Ever notice how, overnight, everyone starts saying “Biden is sharp as a tack” or “JD Vance is weird”?

It’s not random. It’s a system.

OODA

Lylena Estabine:

“ai” summary:

Illinois’ pension crisis is severe, with funding and performance lagging behind other states. Without action, the budget will be strained, residents will leave, and future benefits will be at risk.

Daniel Greenfield:

The David Horowitz Freedom Center knows that’s not true because Bank of America, through its Merrill Lynch subsidiary, was one of the many financial institutions that ‘debanked’ us.

We led the battle against debanking, taking on financial titans worth over half a trillion dollars,  bringing attention to the crisis across media outlets and emerging from it with a rare victory.

As a new White House and Congress prepare to tackle debanking, here are some of our experiences and the lessons we learned from taking on corporate political discrimination.

In the summer of 2018, MasterCard warned that it would no longer process payments to us because we had appeared on a list of hate groups published by Color of Change: a Southern Poverty Law Center front group with ties to former Obama administration officials.

Quanta:

The world of mathematics is full of unreachable corners, where unsolvable problems live. Now, yet another has been exposed.

In 1900, the eminent mathematician David Hilbert announced a list of 23 key problems to guide the next century of mathematical research. His problems not only provided a road map for the field but reflected a more ambitious vision — to build a firm foundation from which all mathematical truths could be derived.

A key part of this vision was that mathematics should be “complete.” That is, all its statements should be provably true or false.

In the 1930s, Kurt Gödel demonstrated that this is impossible: In any mathematical system, there are statements that can be neither proved nor disproved. A few years later, Alan Turing and others built on his work, showing that mathematics is riddled with “undecidable” statements — problems that cannot be solved by any computer algorithm.

These results demonstrated that there are fundamental limits to what proof and computation are capable of. Some mathematics can simply never be known.

Bruce Elder:

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, this chartbook should save you from reading 25,000 of them.

That counts for something in a week when so many millions of words have been written about the surprise arrival of China’s DeepSeek AI model.

AI has come of age in the era of the meme – and it turns out memes are one of the best ways of explaining where it is going.

Deutsche Bank is Europe’s second-largest bank by assets. Measured by 2024 fees it’s the number-nine investment bank globally. 

Here are its first two memes in the slide deck it has sent to clients about DeepSeek:

Tom Renz:

I inherently do not trust the media so I decided to look into DOGE myself and see what is under the hood. Initially I was quite concerned about the legality of a “new agency” created by executive order but that – just like everything else – is a lie put out by the mainstream. The order is here and the thread is below:

@VigilantFox

and:

Would you like @DOGE to audit the IRS?

Quinton Klabon:

This lines up with what DPI has said previously. It is primarily Milwaukee’s responsibility, and DPI was shocked when they discovered MPS was not making good progress and being secretive about it.

Mario Nawfal:

George Soros and his son Alex aren’t running for office – they don’t have to.

With billions in political spending, they have a long history of handpicking candidates, rewriting laws, and reshaping America from behind the curtain.

By flooding low-turnout elections with cash, they’ve installed progressive prosecutors, influenced criminal justice policies, and steered political agendas – all without ever facing voters themselves.

As Democrats like Chuck Schumer freak out over DOGE, calling it ‘un-elected secret group running rampant through the executive branch’ it’s worth remembering the influence the Soros family has exerted on U.S politics.

Scott Manley:

Soros, Reid Hoffman and JB Pritzker are by far the largest donors to the WI Dem Party under Wikler – donating more $$$ than all Wisconsinites combined. So it makes sense they also bankrolled his DNC candidacy. The WI Dem Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of out-of-state billionaires.

Chuck Ross:

NEW:

DNC chair candidate @benwikler reveals $500k in donations from REID HOFFMAN and GEORGE SOROS in campaign filings released just hours before Dems vote on the next DNC chair.

That’s 70% of his campaign revenues.

Wikler had refused to disclose donors

Patrick Svitek:

In DNC chair race, Ben Wikler disclosed his donors last night (yesterday was an FEC deadline), showing his top contributors through December were Reid Hoffman and the George Soros-funded Democracy PAC ($250K each): docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/…

O’Malley has been pressuring opponents to voluntarily disclose donors, amid ongoing scrutiny of Wikler’s relationship with Hoffman:

more

Sara Spafford Freeman:

USA Spending.gov

$8.2 Million

from 237 transactions

Mario Nawfal:

At least $19.5 MILLION in government contracts, mostly from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

In just the past few years, AP has pocketed over $619,000 from the feds—87% of it straight from the State Department.

Steve Bannon had a front-row seat to Trump’s first presidency in 2017, so I wanted his take on how Trump’s return to the White House is unfolding. We discussed his assessment of the first two weeks, the weaponization of Biden’s DOJ, and what’s next for the MAHA-MAGA movement. pic.twitter.com/ed8NCYtF21

— Nicole Shanahan (@NicoleShanahan) February 4, 2025

Ian Nills Cheong:

The US Government gave the New York Times tens of millions of dollars over just the past 5 years despite paying relatively little money to the NYT in the years preceding 2021. For instance, in August 2024, the US government awarded $4.1 million to the NYT.

The bulk of the funds came from the US Department of Health and Human Services at $26.90m, followed by the National Science Foundation at $19.15m

US Congressman Marc Pocan’s website:

Today, U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) announced plans to introduce the Eliminate Looting of Our Nation by Mitigating Unethical State Kleptocracy (ELON MUSK) Act. The legislation would direct Federal Agencies to terminate any contracts held by a Special Government Employee, similar to bans for Members of Congress and other federal employees.

Riley Gaines:

A new bombshell lawsuit has just been filed by three UPenn swimmers against the Ivy League, Harvard, and the NCAA, citing Title IX violations.🔥

More of THIS. Serendipitous timing.

It’s due time to hold accountable those who declared womanhood was nothing more than a feeling.

Samuel Hammond:

Consider that F.D.R. first seized the reigns of the federal bureaucracy by moving the Bureau of the Budget — the precursor to today’s Office of Management and Budget or OMB — into the executive office. Under the stewardship of Harold D. Smith, the Budget Bureau centralized agencies’ legislative requests to Congress while embedding beachheads in each agency tasked with aligning the federal bureaucracy to F.D.R.’s New Deal agenda. This included moving disfavored agencies out of D.C., developing accounting and auditing system to automate clerical work, overhauling duplicative statistical systems, and forcing through agency-wide reorganizations. As one Congressman said at the time, “We grant the powers and Harold Smith writes the laws.”

Matt Taibbi:

Courts will be busy for years weighing which of his acts are legal, with virtually all under challenge. In the interim, carnage continues, with opposition in total message paralysis. Whether it’s planned or just Trump’s luck is unclear, but harrumphing bureaucrats are now daily rushing to defend the indefensible, from Jaffer’s slanderous networks to Schiffer’s waste and budget scammery. Monday scenes of legislators like Ilhan Omar and Jamie Raskin chaining themselves to the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID were just the beginning of what looks like a rash of optics suicides. We’ve never seen anything like it:

Glenn Reynolds:

Smashing the ‘rice bowls’ — how elites are lashing out at Trump and Musk’s reforms

The Kobeissi Letter:

This is insane:

In 2025, $9.2 TRILLION of US debt will either mature or need to be refinanced.

The US now holds $36.2 trillion worth of government debt, meaning 25.4% of the total is set to mature.

This is the REAL reason rates are rising. Let us explain.

Carey Goldberg:

“At first we were just trying to understand the drastic changes that took place while no one was in school during COVID,” says one of the mothers, Vanessa Calagna. “It was like we were trying to put a puzzle together. And then we were trying to ring the alarm.”

Those changes involved a heightened emphasis on racial equity and antiracism, including a district commitment to “dismantle structures rooted in racism” and seek “more equitable outcomes for all students.”

Get The Gavel

A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.

Among the moves made in the interest of equity was an initiative by Newton’s two celebrated high schools to combine more students into “multilevel” classes. Rather than students being divided into separate classes by level, students at varying levels would learn together — even in math, science, and languages. The goal: to break the persistent pattern that white and Asian students predominated in “honors” classes while Black and Hispanic students tended to be clustered in less-challenging “college-prep” classes.

The three mothers compared notes and found that many of their concerns dovetailed.

They wanted to know whether the multilevel classes and other new policies — such as denying advanced math students the chance to skip ahead a year — hurt students academically. They also worried that the schools’ newer approaches to race and other identities emphasized differences rather than commonalities. And that equity was being defined as “equal outcomes” rather than fairness.

Parents Defending Education:

In 2020, the FCPS school board decimated the admissions requirements for the number one high school in America, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology (TJ). FCPS put equity at the heart of consideration, obliterating merit. In just three years, TJ went from the leading school in the country to number 14. The drop will continue now that the last class of merit-based admission students graduated in 2024. 

Recent national reporting has revealed that FCPS participated in the selling every aspect of TJ, America’s top STEM high school, to the Chinese Communist Party for $3.6 millionover a 7-year period. Intellectual property sold to China included curriculum, student research projects, floor plans and detailed photographs of laboratories – all intended to assist China in “cloning” TJ. China now has several Thomas Schools throughout their country, intended to compete with the American school. 

Public Interest Legal Foundation:

JANUARY 2025 – Automatic voter registration programs are adding foreigners to voter rolls new data show. Records obtained by the Public Interest Legal Foundation have revealed failures in Oregon and South Dakota to keep foreigners off voter rolls in the 2024 Election in these two states.

For years, PILF has warned that automatic voter registration (AVR) invites error. It is promoted as a streamlining concept to cut down on paperwork at the DMV. It is supposed to increase voter registration rates. Each of these promises sound admirable, but there is a catch: those tasked with executing AVR aren’t experienced in election administration and inevitable significant errors occur.

At its essence, AVR forces department of motor vehicle clerks into the role of making determinations of voting eligibility. Non-English speakers are routinely confused by the paperwork at DMV, and then their names and addresses are automatically sent to the voter roll. If DMV clerks make errors logging noncitizen customer information, the same. can happen. Both scenarios were disclosed shortly before 

EMIL O. W. KIRKEGAARD

could it fix the journal cost disease? The USA publishes the most high quality science of all countries, though this is mainly due to the large population size, and not because American scientists are particularly productive. So given its dominant role, USA could try to do something about the issue, just as Elon Musk did for internet free speech by purchasing Twitter.

Perhaps the first idea you have is that open access for federally funded research should be mandatory. It sounds good. The public is sponsoring the research, so it is absurd they can’t read it. The journals found a nice way to game this system too. Open access fees. If you want to publish in a high ranked journal (e.g. Nature), and you want the paper to be readable by anyone, you can choose to pay a fee for this. How much is the fee? Well, whatever Nature says it is (right now it’s $12,290!). How could you decline, after having just gotten lucky enough to get accepted in one of the ‘best’ journals in the world? Who pays the fee? The tax payer of course (taken out of the research funding). So this solves only half the issue as the oligopoly still has a way to milk endless money but at least everybody can read the science.

Kristina Armitage:

Ironically, LLMs have only themselves to blame for this discovery of one of their limits. “The reason why we all got curious about whether they do real reasoning is because of their amazing capabilities,” Dziri said. They dazzled on tasks involving natural language, despite the seeming simplicity of their training. During the training phase, an LLM is shown a fragment of a sentence with the last word obscured (though technically it isn’t always a single word). The model predicts the missing information and then “learns” from its mistakes.

Joanne Jacobs Summary:

Louisiana, never known for education excellence was the big winner on the 2024 NAEP when it comes to progress in the last few years, writes Chad Aldeman. “It was the closest state to recovering from COVID-related declines in 8th grade reading and math, and it was the only state in which fourth-grade reading scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019.”

“Over the last 10 years, Mississippi is the only state to make gains across all performance levels in fourth-grade reading,” he writes. “While the bottom was falling out in most states, with the scores of low-performing students falling 10 or 20 or even 30 points, the scores of the lowest-performing students in Mississippi rose 9 points.” As a result, Mississippi ranks 7th in fourth-grade reading overall, and is “#1 for low-income students, #3 for Black students, and tied for #1 for Hispanic students.”

William C. Mao and Veronica H. Paulus

A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics and frequently prioritize extracurricular commitments over their academics.

The committee recommended strengthening course attendance requirements, discouraging phone use in class, standardizing grading, and amending student and faculty handbooks to include a classroom confidentiality policy.

The group — dubbed the Classroom Social Compact Committee — was convened by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra in February during a moment of both hand-wringing and soul-searching over the state of free speech on Harvard’s campus.

And its report comes amid a wider push from faculty to bring students back into the classroom amid complaints that students underemphasize academics and seek out easier courses.

“Many Harvard College students do not prioritize their courses and some view extensive extracurricular commitments as a more fulfilling, meaningful, and useful allocation of their time,” the report’s authors wrote. “Most faculty view student curricular disengagement with alarm.”

The committee, led by History professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 and Economics professor David I. Laibson ’88, was tasked with developing guidelines for student engagement and classroom dialogue. Its seven members conducted more than 30 listening sessions and reviewed 11 surveys of students, faculty, and alumni, including undergraduate course evaluations.

FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra endorsed the committee’s recommendations in a letter to Jasanoff and Laibson, writing that they “promise to bring us closer to a learning environment that is worthy of Harvard and aligned with what are emerging as our shared aspirations as a faculty.”

Scott Schrage:

In late 2023, Nebraska’s Luke Farritor became the first to free a Greek word from its prison: papyrus charred into a lump of carbon by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago.

That feat would earn Farritor worldwide acclaim and $40,000 from the organizers of the Vesuvius Challenge, a global effort to decode the writings of burnt scrolls recovered from a library in the Roman town of Herculaneum. For most, it would rank as the achievement of a lifetime.

But the Husker undergrad and Lincoln native was far from finished. On Feb. 5, the Vesuvius Challenge named Farritor, Youssef Nader and Julian Schilliger the co-winners of its $700,000 Grand Prize for deciphering at least four passages of text, each 140-plus characters long, from digital scans of a seared scroll.

Joanna Stern:

Choosing the best AI assistant for your work isn’t only about these ever smarter models, but also the tools and features that help you get things done. You will judge an AI not about how well it can do your job, but how many tasks you can offload to it.

“Every job is a bundle of tasks,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford University economist and the founder of the AI-at-work consulting company Workhelix. “When you analyze jobs at that level, you can really make headway as to whether technology can help.”

What tasks you can outsource to these assistants depend on your job, your workflow and, most importantly, the AI’s capabilities. Yep, it’s a lot like hiring—you want the candidate with the right skills.

Deep thinker

I asked Claude to organize a list of contacts into a spreadsheet—then it immediately followed up with, “I can also help create email templates for reaching out to these contacts.” The perfect Lumon employee: fully focused, efficient and cheerful. (I see you “Severance” fans.)

Wall Street Journal:

It’s hard to tease out all the factors driving this trend, but one is probably migration to, and employment growth in, the Sunbelt and right-to-work states. The Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus held that public workers who refuse to join the union can’t be forced to pay “fair share fees,” providing an added economic incentive to opt out, though there is no huge jolt in the trend line.

It’s still worth keeping the hard figures in mind, since union membership drives inevitably make splashy headlines when they target brands such as Starbucks. For all of that organizing activity, not to mention President Biden’s four years of being “the most pro-union President in history,” the shrinking of Big Labor hasn’t stopped.

meritfirst.us

American companies are in a crisis of broken talent filters. We reflexively screen for the same stale credentials: Ivy League degrees, FAANG experience, “prestigious” employers. It’s a modern version of the credentialist bureaucracy that has crept into every American institution. And just like in government, this risk-averse checkbox mentality is making our companies dumber and less competitive.

The problem is twofold. First, outdated proxies poorly predict real capability. A self-taught programmer who has shipped multiple products often has more relevant skills than someone with years of Java maintenance at a big tech company. An electrician turned entrepreneur who has built and scaled a successful local business typically has sharper business instincts than an MBA who has only analyzed case studies.

Second, and more damaging long term, we have no good systematic way to discover & assess exceptional people who don’t fit the “typical” mold. We know our country is filled with these people – we’ve backed many of them. But finding them is too dependent on chance encounters and personal networks – most haven’t had a fair shot to demonstrate their ability. For too long most corporations have spent their time checking outdated credentialization boxes and virtue signaling instead of building the Meritocratic Infrastructure to discover and empower America’s best talent.

Kaleem Caire:

Mississippi is now #1 in reading among Black children while Wisconsin is #41 among all 41 states reporting scores for Black children. We have a lot more money in our state than they do in Mississippi. In Madison, we have even more. What is up with this? Our public school advocates need to stop blaming Scott Walker for ACT 10 and start looking “within” at our strategies and where we make our investments, and not.

Scott Walker, we were dealing with a horrendous achievement gap and four decades of advocacy to overcome it.

Twenty years ago, Mississippi was either dead last or battling for the bottom in reading with Georgia, Louisiana and Washington, DC.

Wisconsin – we have always been at or near the bottom among reading and math among Black children. ARE YOU NOT TIRED OF THIS?

——-

Notes and links: Kaleem Caire and One City Schools.

Readers may find the Aborted Madison Preparatory Academy tale worth a look as well.

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?

Lucas Robinson:

The director of the Dane County Regional Airport was routinely unavailable to make key decisions about the airport, neglecting messages from her staff as well as representatives of Southwest Airlines who had reached out about starting service at the airport, according to documents obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal.

Kim Jones’ leadership of the airport grew so poor in recent years that three top airport officials complained to county leadership, leading to a 3-month investigation in 2023 that corroborated 12 complaints against Jones.

At a time when the airport was working to rebound from the pandemic, airport staff often waited weeks to get responses from Jones on airport business and never got a response while she was purportedly working from home, according to the investigation.

“There is a high level of frustration due to lack of communication, lack of time management, lack of vision, lack of organization, a status quo attitude and because no one feels heard,” the airport officials wrote in their complaint. “When staff have tried to move the airport forward, it is always met with resistance.”

Kayla Huynh:

Kennedy was one of two schools in the school district that failed to meet expectations on last year’s state report card. Results from the latest state tests show nearly three-quarters of third through fifth graders at Kennedy are not meeting grade-level standards in reading and math. 

—-

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?

Todd Milewski:

Wisconsin is leasing the 77,000-square-foot building through April 1, 2026, for $25,000 per month used, an athletic department spokesperson said. That includes four months this season — December through March. A public records request for the lease submitted Jan. 13 hasn’t been answered.

Clack Bell said proceeds from Wisconsin’s lease payments are going to be donated back to the track program.

Indoor track installation
Workers prepare the running surface at the Badgers’ temporary indoor track and field training facility in the town of Arlington.

Beynon Sports raced to install a track surface in the facility in December and January. It includes a 200-meter oval track and a 91-meter straightaway for runners, according to a Wisconsin spokesperson. A runway for pole vault, long jump and triple jump and equipment for high jump are part of the setup.

Putting the track and equipment in the temporary facility cost $400,000, according to a Wisconsin spokesperson, and only some of it can be used again once the Badgers’ temporary use is over.

Hilary Burns and Diti Kohli:

University administrators could barely keep up with the latest; on Tuesday they rushed to reassure students receiving federal financial aid that they could continue registering for spring semester classes despite an order freezing all federal grants —a directive the White House summarily revoked Wednesday afternoon. A few hours later, the White House announced foreign students who’d participated in pro-Palestinian rallies last year could have their visas revoked.

Steve Hsu and David Goldman:

America has financed a current account deficit that bloated to US$1.2 trillion in 2024 by selling tech stocks to foreigners. Tech stocks, meanwhile, are trading at valuations not seen since 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite began a descent that wiped out 75% of its market capitalization by 2002.

Could a tech crash turn into a funding crisis for the United States if expectations sour on the revenue prospects of artificial intelligence? The January 27 crash in AI-related stocks in response to cheaper and better Chinese competition raises troubling questions. These questions have the undivided attention of every equity investor in the world.

William Bornhoft:

Five teenagers are accused of attacking a Fridley High School varsity basketball player with a tire iron during a game at Robbinsdale Cooper High School on Tuesday night

The charges are as follows:

• Yahya Abdul Khanyare, 18
  • Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
  • Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon.
• Dursa Muktar Mohamed, 18
  • Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
  • Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
  • Fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle
• Ayub Mohamed Ali, 19
  • Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
  • Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
• Salman Abdurashid Mohamed, 16
  • Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
  • Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon
• Mubashir Nasir Ali, 18
  • Second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon
  • Second-degree riot, armed with a dangerous weapon

In Minnesota, a second-degree assault charge carries a maximum of seven years in prison and a $14,000 fine.

According to the criminal complaint, New Hope police responded to Robbinsdale Cooper High School on Jan. 28 following reports of an assault during a boys’ basketball game.

Authorities said a juvenile male was seriously injured after being attacked on the visiting team’s bench. The victim was struck on the head with a metal tire iron, punched, and almost stabbed with a knife.

——-

More.

Dave Cieslewicz:

Today’s blog is in the category of You Just Can’t Make This Stuff Up. 

The Madison Metropolitan School District has some of the worst test scores in the state. It has a horrible truancy problem. Its racial achievement gap is comparable to the Grand Canyon. For the most recent year when statistics were available there were around 800 police calls to Madison schools. Despite all that, voters still approved two referenda in November, which will increase taxes on the average home by over $1,600.

And what did the School Board just vote to spend $100,000 on? New logos for the high schools. Here’s the quote from the State Journal story: 

On Monday, the School Board also approved a nearly $100,000 contract with a Kentucky-based firm for districtwide branding and design changes. The firm’s goal is to help position Madison schools as a “destination” school district, according to a memo from Senior Executive Director for Communications Edell Fiedler.

“The rebrand will have a districtwide impact as it will be used to build the district’s brand through various ways including signage, print, digital, clothing and textiles,” Fiedler wrote in a memo to the board.

——-

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?

SWC:

SWC seeks to unite with constituents on campus to fight against unwarranted austerity that harms university’s core missions.

February 1, 2025 – Columbia University proposes cutting incoming PhD cohorts in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences by up to 65%, according to faculty sources. Columbia University’s austerity measure furthers its ongoing divestment from its educational mission to maximize revenue from fossil fuels, military weapons, and Columbia’s real estate empire.

Student workers are critical to teaching and research at the University. They serve as preceptors of Core Curriculum classes, which the university advertises as the “defining element of a Columbia College education”; as teaching assistants, offering students much needed individual attention given Columbia’s large class sizes; and as members of research teams making cutting edge discoveries. With up to 65% fewer graduate student workers, undergraduates will be stuck in larger classes and receive less feedback. The University will suffer a marked decrease in research output. 

There is no financial need for funding cuts. The endowment has grown from $13.6 billion in 2023 to $14.9 billion at the close of 2024. In terms of operating activities, it reported nearly $305 million in net cash flow in the past fiscal year alone. Executive salaries at Columbia have likewise skyrocketed. According to the latest available data, former President Lee Bollinger earned $3,865,304 in total compensation in 2021, gaining a 61% pay bump during the first year of the COVID pandemic. 

PhD workers of Columbia, on the other hand, gained 3% yearly increases in salary between 2021 and 2024. A fourth of the aforementioned 2024 surplus of $350 million would be enough to support an additional 1,000 PhD workers at living-wage level. The University has the ability to truly commit to its avowed values by paying its workers a living wage and expanding, not retrenching, the educational and research workforce.

“The university’s entire investment strategy is itself a choice—

www

In a letter sent from the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, families of the Latin School of Chicago are calling on the Board of Trustees to address serious misconduct that has gone unaddressed at the school for too long. 

The letter details our concerns that certain current and past officers and trustees of the school have persistently failed to discharge their fiduciary duties, resulting in serious physical and mental harm to students and causing possibly irreversible harm to the reputation and financial sustainability of this once highly respected institution. We are also calling for a fully transparent and independent investigation, which is necessary to fully address misconduct at the Latin School and to restore both its reputation and its ability to deliver on its charitable mission.

If you are a former or current student, a parent, or a former employee or trustee, we need your help. We ask that you read the letter, included below, and use the contact button on this website to provide any helpful information in this effort. 

Toronto Sun

The plan by this country’s largest school board to rebrand schools named for Egerton Ryerson, Henry Dundas and Sir John A. Macdonald shows how remarkably out of touch its staff and politicians are.

At a time when our national identity is under threat, where tax dollars are stretched to the limit, the Toronto District School Board says it will spend precious education dollars removing the names of three historic figures.

Schools are supposed to teach facts about history to young, impressionable minds. This shows a shocking lack of knowledge of Canada’s past and history professors have questioned the validity of this move.

Without Macdonald, there would be no Canada. He forged this country into one unit with his vision for a cross-country railroad. He steered the nascent country through chaotic times and supported Indigenous people with immunization programs and food relief plans. Macdonald’s laudable goal was to educate all children in every part of the country.

Alex Durante, Alex Muresianu

When the Trump administration imposed tariffson various imports in 2018, the stated purpose was to boost US industries and punish foreign exporters. But rather than hurting foreign exporters, the economic evidence shows it is American firms and consumers hardest hit by the Trump tariffs. The tariffs resulted in higher prices for a wide variety of goods that US consumers and businesses purchase. The Biden administration has continued and even increased many of the Trump tariffs—drawing some attention as inflation rises. And while tariffs do raise prices for American consumers, their impact on economy-wide inflation is relatively small.