kale Zelden:

I’ve taught at a New England prep school for nearly 20 years. Families have been laser focused on top tier colleges, most of which are up here.

Except for a very few exceptional candidates, this has changed.

Dramatically.

There is another “great migration” happening, as a steady flow of middle and upper middle-class children of the meritocratic class have decided to go to college in the spirit of normalcy.

10 years ago a kid or two went south. Maybe

Joanne Jacobs:

Cheating has become the norm on college campuses, professors tell Beth McMurtrie, who reports for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Students use AI to cheat on information discussion boards, says Amy Clukey, an associate English professor at the University of Louisville. They cheat on essays.

A few weeks ago, she emailed a student to say that she knew the student had cheated on a minor assignment with AI and if she did it again, she would fail the course. Clukey also noted there were several missed assignments. The student replied to “sincerely apologize,” said she was “committed to getting back on track,” and that she regretted “any disruption [her] absence or incomplete work may have caused in the course.” But her next paper was essentially written by artificial intelligence. Curious, Clukey asked ChatGPT to write an email apologizing to a professor for plagiarism and missed work. . . “It spit out an email almost exactly like the one I had gotten.”

“Professors in writing-intensive courses, particularly those teaching introductory or general-education classes” say “AI abuse has become pervasive,” writes McMurtrie. “Clukey said she feels less like a teacher and more like a human plagiarism detector, spending hours each week analyzing her students’ writing to determine its authenticity.”

Cailey Gleeson:

Whitefish Bay High School has been named Wisconsin’s best high school, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 rankings.

The publication analyzed about 25,000 public high schools — ultimately ranking nearly 17,660 — across the U.S. for this year’s edition of its annual rankings.

High schools were assessed on college readiness, state assessment proficiency, state assessment performance, underserved student performance, college curriculum breadth and graduation rate.

High schools are given a national rank, unlike the publication’s elementary and middle school rankings.

Josh Noble:

The annual boat race between Oxford and Cambridge universities is to be renamed after a designer watch as part of a multiyear tie-up with Chanel, in what is the French fashion house’s first foray into sport sponsorship. 

From next year, the annual rowing contest will be rebranded as “The Chanel J12 Boat Race”, taking on the name of a high-end timepiece produced by the privately owned luxury goods company.

Chanel will replace Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, as the event’s title partner and become its official timekeeper.  

Peter Thiel via Bari Weiss:

On the surface, Thiel is someone who seems full of contradictions. He is a libertarian who has found common cause with nationalists and populists. He likes investing in companies that have the ability to become monopolies, and yet Trump’s White House wants to break up Big Tech. He is a gay American immigrant, but he hates identity politics and the culture wars. He pays people to drop out of college, but, in this conversation at least, still seems to venerate the way that the Ivy Leagues are an indicator of intelligence.

But perhaps that’s the secret to his success: He’s beholden to no tribe but himself, no ideology but his own. And why wouldn’t you be when you make so many winning bets? From co-founding the e-payment behemoth PayPal and the data analytics firm Palantir (which was used to find Osama bin Laden) to being the first outside investor in Facebook, Thiel’s investments—in companies like LinkedIn, Palantir, and SpaceX, to name a few—have paid off big time.

His most recent bet—helping his mentee J.D. Vance get elected as senator and then on the Trump ticket as vice president—seems also to have paid off. The next four years will determine just how high Thiel’s profit margin will be.

Today: Thiel explains why so many of his peers have finally come around to Trump; why he thinks Kamala—and liberalism more broadly—lost the election; and why the Trump 2.0 team will be better than last time, with antiestablishment figures who are willing to rethink the system. We talk about the border, trade deals, student debt, Israel and foreign policy, the rise of historical revisionism, the blurry line between skepticism and conspiracy, and his contrarian ideas about what we might face in a dreaded World War III.

——

Civics & Free Speech: “The problem is America has the most useless aristocrats in history”

Mark Lisheron:

Through a formal records request, the Badger Institute also was able to determine the district spent at least $15,000 to send school officials on three fact-gathering trips in October, November and December 2023 to schools in Atlanta and Macon, Georgia, and in Washington, D.C.

Nine school officials, including former Superintendent Keith Posley and Instructional Leadership Director Miguel Sanchez, were joined on two of the trips by Steve Lubar, executive director of the Administrators and Supervisors Council, representing MPS principals, assistant principals, and supervisors.

Police Chief Jeffrey Norman and Assistant Chief Steven Johnson were part of the group that went to Atlanta and Macon on Nov. 30-Dec. 1, according to the documents. But expenses for Lubar, Norman and Johnson were not paid by the district, the documents said. 

Each of the trips included visits to various high schools and elementary schools and their public safety command centers, and the command and dispatch centers for each of those police districts, according to the documents.  

Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen

We believe now is a good time to work hard on this vision again. In this essay we sketch out a set of ideas we believe can be used to help develop transformative new tools for thought. In the first part of the essay we describe an experimental prototype system that we’ve built, a kind of mnemonic medium intended to augment human memory. This is a snapshot of an ongoing project, detailing both encouraging progress as well as many challenges and opportunities. In the second part of the essay, we broaden the focus. We sketch several other prototype systems. And we address the question: why is it that the technology industry has made comparatively little effort developing this vision of transformative tools for thought?

Jared Cooney Horvath:

When smartphones and social media platforms swept into teens’ lives in the early 2010s, schools experienced their own digital revolution, with 1-to-1 laptops, tablets, and iPads becoming staples in classrooms across the Western world. (1-to-1 means one device for every student.) A decade later, the revolutionary optimism is fading. OneOECD review found that most educational technology (EdTech) has not delivered the academic benefits once promised. Meanwhile, global test scores in math, science, and reading have been plummeting, as you can see in Figure 1 below. These trends were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they began in the early 2010s, just as digital devices were being placed on students’ desks. 

Wall Street Journal:

Portola Valley officials last week raised alarms about dwindling cash reserves owing to rising expenses tied to a new sheriff’s contract and the state’s affordable housing mandate. The town of about 4,500 has about $1.6 million in general reserves, nearly all of which is committed to paying retiree benefits.

Like many small towns, Portola Valley relies on its adjoining county sheriff’s office to provide public safety. The San Mateo County sheriff’s union negotiated a rich new labor agreement in 2022 whose costs are being passed on to localities. Portola Valley’s sheriff’s payments are set to increase to $2.1 million next year from about $1 million in 2021.

Other employment costs are also soaring as the town is paying millions for consultants to comply with California’s affordable housing mandate. Homes in the town are worth $3.8 million on average. The state has threatened to withhold federal and state grants if Portola doesn’t rezone land to accommodate multi-family housing. This, by the way, is the essence of Kamala Harris’s housing plan: Leverage taxpayers dollars to compel states and localities to build more low-income housing.

change.org:

Important note:  This is the online republication of a paper petition that is being circulated in Manitoba.  As per the general petition guidelines for presenting to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, the paper petition will be submitted to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.

If you have the opportunity, it is important that you please sign both the paper petition and the change.org petition.

1.  Ensuring that teachers have a robust background in the subjects they teach is essential for maintaining high-quality education and fostering well-rounded learning experiences for all Manitoba students.

2. The recent amendments by the Province of Manitoba to the Teaching Certificates and Qualifications Regulation under The Education Administration Act have significantly lowered the standards for subject-area expertise required for teacher certification.

wire points

Now look at the SAT results as reported by the state, and how much they are down since 2017.

Property taxes up, up, up. Outcomes tragic. Zero accountability. Via @Wirepoints

——

Bill Maher CALLS OUT Democrats: "You're the Teachers Union Education Party and you've turned schools and colleges into a joke." pic.twitter.com/5VGCHzDUVZ

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) November 16, 2024

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Colin Wright:

The president of the National Academy of Sciences, Marcia McNutt, has published welcome an essay promising to remain politically neutral and mitigate the political polarization of science.

Some notable quotes from the article:

“[S]cientists need to better explain the norms and values of science to reinforce the notion—with the public and their elected representatives—that science, at its most basic, is apolitical… Whether conservative or liberal, citizens ignore the nature of reality at their peril.”

“Scientists should better explain the scientific process and what makes it so trustworthy, while more candidly acknowledging that science can only provide the best available evidence and cannot dictate what people should value.”

Brendan Carr

Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have played central roles in the censorship cartel.

The Orwellian named NewsGuard along with “fact checking” groups & ad agencies helped enforce one-sided narratives.

David Sacks:

This is without a doubt, the most succinct and accurate explanation by @DavidSacks of why what Donald Trump is trying to do is actually going to restore democracy and not bring about a dictatorship.

more.

Face unrealized gains wealth tax bill of many x my annual net salary. ofc the company is loss making and all the investors have preference shares so I can’t take out any money.

Harvard Crimson

These schools span every American state, dozens of countries from around the globe, and every kind of institution imaginable. They are small, private high schools nestled in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and Midwestern public schools with thousand-person graduating classes; international schools set a thousand miles from Cambridge and high schools a short walk from Harvard Yard.

For many of these schools, to send a student to Harvard is a blip, a rare anomaly in an obscure and lofty admissions process.

more.

Rick Hess:

Now that we’ve had a few days to digest last week’s election results, let’s talk about what they mean for education. Rather than wade into policy wonkery, though, I want to discuss the implications for the zeitgeist that’s shaped K–12 schooling over the past half-decade or more—one that’s featured an embrace of progressive nostrums regarding racial identity, diversity, equity, social justice, gender, and inclusion. My bottom line is that Donald Trump is, in important ways, a vehicle for a cross-section of Americans to push back against the kinds of out-of-touch dogmas that I believe have fueled so many culture clashes over the past half-decade, especially around schools.

I want to be straight about where I’m coming from. Unlike most in the realms of education leadership, research, and advocacy, I’m firmly on the right. While I’m no great fan of President-elect Trump, I was heartened by Tuesday’s results, which included Republican victories in the Senate and, as I write, likely the House. I believe they hold big opportunities for educators across the board. Given that perspective, I’ll share a few thoughts that may (or may not) be useful to those in our field who feel very differently about what to make of those outcomes.

mark Judge

Like the rest of the mainstream media, Dowd’s a hypocrite. Six years ago she was happy to pronounce people guilty with no trial and no Miranda rights and no due process. Specifically, I’m wondering if Dowd has the courage to take back her hits on Brett Kavanaugh and me. Dowd declared Kavanaugh guilty in 2018. When Kavanaugh was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault at a 1982 party when they were teenagers, Dowd tossed aside due process. She was the worst of the woke.

Dowd’s strategy was to compare Blasey Ford to Anita Hill, and claim that the conservative media was unfairly smearing Ford. “We are still watching a bookish university professor from the West,” Dowd wrote, “who tried to anonymously report an alleged blight on the character of a man about to ascend to a lifetime of power, get smeared as a demanding, mixed-up, uptight, loony fantasist.” You’ve gotta love that “bookish university professor from the West” bit.

“Dr. Blasey is dealing with some demonic forces not in play with Professor Hill,” Dowd wrote. “A vicious partisan internet that drove her out of her house and being discredited not merely by the White House but personally by a president who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault, who has consistently defended predators such as Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and Roy Moore, and who is advised by the same man who enabled Ailes’s loathsome behavior at Fox News.”

Like the rest of her media colleagues, Dowd has shown no interest in the other side of the story. In 2018 I was dragged into the Kavanaugh battle when Christine Blasey Ford claimed I was in the room when Kavanaugh assaulted her. I have no memory of the alleged attack. Moreover, I have a lot of evidence that suggests that the Blasey claim was, as Kavanaugh said, a well-funded and orchestrated political hit.

hunter Baker:

In one of the weirder sci-fi novels of all time, Stranger in a Strange Land, author Robert Heinlein introduced a social innovation. One of the book’s characters holds a special designation as the “fair witness.” By way of demonstration, someone asks the fair witness what color a particular house is. She answers by naming the color on the side of the house she can see. Most people would say “The house is blue” or “The house is white,” but Heinlein’s fair witness only describes what she can count on, which is the visible side. It’s an interesting idea to ponder.

Donald Trump has been elected president for a second time. His first term met with media opposition greater than anyone has seen in recent memory. The Washington Post went so far as to adopt the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” In explaining his decision for the Post to withhold any presidential endorsement this year, owner Jeff Bezos pointed to a decline in public trust as a major problem for outlets such as his. Trump is back. Will the media double down or take the opportunity to regain lost trust and once again become indispensable to public discourse?

www:

It had all come down to this, she thought, signing her name in careful script.

The years of agony endured by her son, who, at 11, still couldn’t read or write. The antidepressants the boy had been prescribed in a desperate attempt to salve his battered self-esteem. The thousands of dollars they’d scraped together for expert testing, to prove what their son’s severe learning disability required. The tedious and maddening back-and-forth between their lawyer and the one employed by the boy’s suburban Boston school district — the bargaining that yielded the document she had just signed.

Wall Street Journal:

Republicans won 88 total House seats, and some who aren’t “hard core” may support Mr. Abbott’s plan. The GOP state Senate improved its school-choice majority, too, with the victory of Adam Hinojosa over incumbent Democrat Morgan LaMantia. Texas is now poised this spring to pass its first private school choice program, and the nation’s largest, serving some five million students.

It’s a hard-fought win for Mr. Abbott, who made Republican opponents of his plan pay a political price. Twenty-one of them joined Democrats last fall to vote down his bill for scholarships worth about $10,000, plus billions in public-school funding. The Governor vowed to go after those who ran for re-election.

During the GOP primaries, Mr. Abbott endorsed 11 pro-school choice challengers. Eight won, and last week all eight were officially elected, along with other school-choice candidates the Governor backed in open races. One Republican incumbent who was ousted in his primary, Steve Allison in district 121, later endorsed the Democrat running for his seat in the general election. But Marc LaHood, the Republican backed by Mr. Abbott, won handily, 52.6% to 47.4%.

Matt Taibbi:

The Times ended its screed against RCP’s “scarlet-dominated” electoral map projection by quoting John Anzalone, Joe Biden’s former chief pollster, who said: “There’s a ton of garbage polls out there.” But being called “garbage” in America’s paper of record was nothing compared to what happened to RCP at Wikipedia.

Six months ago, when former Wikipedia chief Katherine Maher became CEO of NPR, video emergedof her talking about strategies at Wikipedia. She said the company eventually abandoned its “free and open” mantra when she realized “this radical openness… did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.” Free and open“recapitulated” too many of the same “power structures,” resulting in too much emphasis on the “Western canon,” the “written tradition,” and “this white male, Westernized construct around who matters.”

Lucas Vebber:

Wauwatosa Stem, ranked the 5th best elementary school in Wisconsin, is being phased out and closed down by the Wauwatosa school board.

Insane.

Sam Drysdale:

After voters overwhelmingly cast their ballots to eliminate the requirement that Massachusetts high school students pass the MCAS exam in order to receive a diploma, the question of whether the state will pursue a new statewide standard in the exams’ place — and what, exactly, that would look like — looms over the upcoming legislative session.

Education insiders said this week that conversations about implementing new education standards in wake of Question 2’s passage are already happening, and those who had campaigned against the initiative are pushing for an urgent solution.

Gov. Maura Healey, who opposed the MCAS question, told reporters on Wednesday that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will further update regulations.

“It’s time for us to continue what, frankly, was started before the election, which was to figure out the new path forward, and what is the new model for a really uniform standard,” Healey said. “Because, again, my position is we shouldn’t have different expectations for students depending on which ZIP code they’re in. There should be a uniformity to our expectations.”

more.

via Anna Stokke:

Distressing changes

Re: Teachers need subject expertise (Think Tank, Nov. 12)

I’m writing, as a parent and as an educator, in support of my colleague Anna Stokke’s Monday op-ed. Having spent two decades teaching post-secondary students in Manitoba, I am distressed, to say the least, to hear about the revisions to Manitoba’s teacher certification requirements.

While most of the discussion has focused on math education, which I can only speak to as a recipient, l’d like to emphasize that math is only one of the requirements being eliminated. These new standards mean that eighth-grade teachers will not need to have taken English, French, geography, history or math at the university level.

With all due respect to my colleagues in the faculty of education, knowing how to communicate content is not, and cannot be, a replacement for an understanding of the topic itself. Good teachers need both the ability to teach and the knowledge that underpins the subjects that they teach. A middle-school math teacher may not need to teach division in base-4, but understanding how division works, rather than just the mechanics of doing long division, can’t help but make them a better teacher.

Manitoba has a teacher staffing crisis, we are told. Rather than working to make K-8 education a field that attracts the best possible candidates, the government has decided that it would be easier and, no doubt, cheaper, to lower the standards of who is teaching our children.

It’s a devil’s bargain, and our children will be the ones to pay the price.

Brandon christopher

Winnipeg

——-

My colleague, political science professor Felix Mathieu, discussing the MB govt removing all subject requirements for teacher certification on Le telejournal Manitoba ~15:00

———

2007 math forum audio video 

Connected Math

Discovery Math

Singapore Math

Remedial math

Madison’s most recent Math Task Force

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

jake Sheridan:

The Chicago City Council emphatically voted down Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to hike property taxes by $300 million Thursday, creating a yawning hole in the city’s 2025 budget that must now be closed.

Aldermen voted 50-0 in a rare unanimous roll-call vote to discard the tax hike in a special meeting that lasted just minutes and included no debate. The council’s decisive rejection gives aldermen leverage they have rarely enjoyed in ongoing budget negotiations: Whatever comes next, it won’t be Johnson’s original plan.

The property hike proved wildly unpopular with constituents, aldermen have said. But its demise forces the council and mayor to now come up with new answers. While many aldermen joined the mayor to argue Chicago must find new revenue and avoid layoffs, others said the body must make major budget cuts.

“The only way you are going to make real structural reform here is by making some deep cuts,” downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, said after the vote.

Planet Word:

Join Planet Word and our journalist-in-residence, Emily Hanford, for a candid conversation with Maryland State Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Carey Wright. Their discussion will explore Dr. Wright’s vision for Maryland schools and lessons she brings from her success in implementing evidence-based literacy practices in Mississippi.

Under her leadership, Mississippi fourth graders made enormous strides on both the reading and math sections of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card. With Maryland, one of the richest states in the U.S., having experienced a steady decline in achievement, change is certainly called for. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from one of education’s most dynamic leaders and participate in what’s sure to be a lively audience Q&A.

Justine Moore:

A PhD student used both Claude and Gemini as an AI therapist.

She vented her frustrations around getting a cancer diagnosis, and joked about how much it was costing the healthcare system.

The difference in responses is staggering.

Lakera:

What is a Visual Prompt Injection?

Prompt injections are vulnerabilities in Large Language Models where attackers use crafted prompts to make the model ignore its original instructions or perform unintended actions. 

Visual prompt injection refers to the technique where malicious instructions are embedded within an image. When a model with image processing capabilities, such as GPT-V4, is asked to interpret or describe that image, it might act on those embedded instructions in unintended ways. 

Timothy Lee:

During my first semester as a computer science graduate student at Princeton, I took COS 402: Artificial Intelligence. Toward the end of the semester, there was a lecture about neural networks. This was in the fall of 2008, and I got the distinct impression—both from that lecture and the textbook—that neural networks had become a backwater.

Neural networks had delivered some impressive results in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But then progress stalled. By 2008, many researchers had moved on to mathematically elegant approaches such as support vector machines.

I didn’t know it at the time, but a team at Princeton—in the same computer science building where I was attending lectures—was working on a project that would upend the conventional wisdom and demonstrate the power of neural networks. That team, led by Prof. Fei-Fei Li, wasn’t working on a better version of neural networks. They were hardly thinking about neural networks at all.

Rather, they were creating a new image dataset that would be far larger than any that had come before: 14 million images, each labeled with one of nearly 22,000 categories.

Li tells the story of ImageNet in her recent memoir, The Worlds I See. As she worked on the project, she faced plenty of skepticism from friends and colleagues.

Daniel Lemire:

Though I have many brilliant graduate students, I love working with undergraduate students. And I am not at all sure that you should favor people with graduate degrees, given a choice. Many graduate students tend to favor abstraction over practical skills. They often have an idealized view of the world. Moreover, these students are often consumed by research projects, theses, or dissertations, and the publication of scientific articles, which limits their time for concrete actions. On the other hand, undergraduate students, in my experience, show more enthusiasm for concrete and useful projects, even if they are not prestigious at first glance.

Ben Cohen:

When she decided to uproot her life and move halfway across the world to run a company in a place where she had never lived, Nadia Carlsten wasn’t really sure what to expect.

But the American engineer with a passion for technology management definitely wasn’t expecting to be treated like a celebrity.

“I feel like the most popular person wherever I go,” Carlsten says. “I can just start the conversation with: I have over 1,500 GPUs—and everyone wants to talk to me.”

Carlsten has precisely 1,528 of the most powerful graphics-processing units on the planet because she just started as the chief executive of the Danish Centre for AI Innovation. The new company was built to run Denmark’s national AI supercomputer, which opened last week with a glitzy launch party where Carlsten was once again the center of attention.

Quinton Klabon:

DID YOU KNOW
…schools had until September to obligate ~$1.49B in federal aid?
…DPI lists ~$13.1M outstanding and ~$300K over the limit, despite the deadline?
…details on evidence-based line items have been broken since May?
Schools (probably) did their jobs. Hurry up, DPI!

Paul Vallas:

Easy solution to avoid Mayor’s $300 million property tax increase without eliminating the  2,476 Police and 646 Firefighter and EMS positions he threatened: Reduce city subsidies to the schools by an amount equal to the annual TIF “WINDFALL” which would save the city $300 mil.

Schools don’t lose property tax revenues to TIF’s because their property tax rate rises to meet their levy request. City Council should also not pay the $170 million school district employee contribution to the school districts municipal pension fund employees.

The city has been providing almost $1 billion in subsidies annually to the schools in addition to the schools receiving 56% of all property taxes. That money is not finding its way into the classroom as only 54% of the $30,000 per student the district spends ends up in the schools.

Note that while Firefighters and Paramedics await their pay increase, the last teacher contract raised CTU member salaries 24-50%, hired 9,000 more employees and has ONE employee for every 7.6 students.

Anna Stokke

In answer to Martha Koch’s opinion piece, “absolutely,” and I say that as a scientist with 40 years of experience in the biology of behaviour, but the crackpot ideas of self-described “researchers” that have held sway for the last 30 years with respect to influencing educational policy are the least reliable basis for advice to policy makers.

There is nothing less adequate than a self-professed expert saying “research shows” without actually describing the methodology for data acquisition, analytical framework and actual results, which, in the contemporary education context (the last 30 years) are worse literacy and numeracy outcomes precisely because the wrong people with unsupportable ideas that fly in the face of 2,000 years of contemporary, empirical experience in how humans learn have got hold of policy makers’ ears.

The fact is that literacy and numeracy have declined precipitously and disastrously, as many parents will attest. That debacle, to which Koch and her ilk have contributed, will take a long time to correct, and it is children and their futures at stake.

Robert Anderson

RM of Brokenhead

———-

more.

In her recent article, education professor Martha Koch claims the education courses future teachers take in the faculty of education are more useful than the subject-specific courses they took in their undergraduate degrees.

As someone with 25 years of teaching experience in the public school system, I must respectfully disagree. The subject-specific courses that I took in my undergraduate degree were much more helpful in my teaching career than the useless education courses offered by the faculty of education.

Don’t just take my word for it. Ask any teacher how they felt about their bachelor of education program. Chances are they will praise their teaching practicum where they worked in real classrooms with real students, but they will dismiss most of their required courses as useless theory. It would be a huge mistake to rely on education faculties to fill in the gaps that will inevitably arise from the lower admission standards for future teachers introduced by the current government.

Michael Zwaagstra

Steinbach

——-

2007 math forum audio video 

Connected Math

Discovery Math

Singapore Math

Remedial math

Madison’s most recent Math Task Force

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

jonathan Martin:

First, they must recognize that they unwittingly seeded the ground for Trump’s revival. Their leftward acceleration under his presidency handed him the fodder he needed to portray the opposition as radical.

The shift was well-meaning and even understandable — Democrats wanted to redouble their commitment to those under duress at a time of threat — but it was political malpractice. Look no further than Harris’ now-famous support of trans surgery for prisoners. That was a commitment she made in 2019 because she and her advisers thought core Democrats wanted such purity. In truth, they simply wanted to beat Trump — which Joe Biden wisely recognized — but most others in the party misread the moment.

Alan Ball

Years have passed since our last comparison of midwestern supreme courts, so let’s return for a look at four indicators: (1) the number of decisions filed; (2) the length of these decisions; (3) the number of separate opinions; and (4) the distribution of vote margins.  As Minnesota and Iowa once served as the starting point for these posts, we’ll begin again with them.

Number of decisions
Previous posts found that the justices in Minnesota and Iowa issued much larger volumes of decisions than did their colleagues in Wisconsin, and this gap became enormous in 2023-24 due to the surprising plunge in the number of decisions filed last term in the Badger State.  As shown in Table 1, the totals for Minnesota and Iowa were more than six times the output in Wisconsin.^[1]

Andy Greenberg & Lily Hay Newman:

Your communications and the data on your devices are far from the only sensitive digital records you’re constantly creating. You’re also leaving behind a trail of breadcrumbs on the paths you take around the internet—paths that are all too visible to your internet service provider and the websites you visit, and which can be highly revealing to anyone building a profile of you and your behavior.

“For me, I always say it’s important to remember you’re not ‘going to’ a website,” says Matt Mitchell, founder of CryptoHarlem, a security and privacy training and advocacy nonprofit. “You’re opening a door, and just like if you open your door, people can see you, and they can see behind you.”

Amy Tyson:

So, what should the role of iPads, Chromebooks, or mobile education gaming be in the classroom? In an era when test scores are declining, how much have these technologies really contributed to student learning? Have the distraction effects of these devices overwhelmed the educational benefits? And at what age should these devices and programs be introduced? 

To find answers to these questions, we invited Amy Tyson to write for us. Amy is a co-founder of Everyschool, an organization dedicated to making schools smarter, happier, and healthier through digital wellness. Amy offers a comprehensive analysis of the current landscape of screens in schools, addressing five major myths that fuel some of the device misuse and overuse in classrooms today. She also provides a clear, actionable roadmap for schools to adopt smarter, more effective technology practices that empower students to thrive in the 21st century.

Stephen Foley:

EY has fired dozens of US staff for what the accounting and consulting firm called cheating on professional training courses, sparking an internal debate about business ethics and the limits of multitasking.

The dismissals took place last week after an investigation found that some employees had attended more than one online training class at a time during the “EY Ignite Learning Week” in May.

Several of the fired employees told the Financial Times they did not believe they were violating EY policy and were just trying to take advantage of interesting sessions that ranged from “How strong is your digital brand in the marketplace?” to “Conversing with AI, one prompt at a time”.

The sessions counted towards the 40 continuing professional education credits that EY required employees to complete in a year. The firm determined that watching two at a time amounted to an ethical breach.

“Our core values of integrity and ethics are at the forefront of everything we do,” EY said. “Appropriate disciplinary action was recently taken in a small number of cases where individuals were found to be in violation of our global code of conduct and US learning policy.”

James Poulos:

As an orange sun rises over a deeply reddened nation, the woke left isn’t out, but it most certainly is down.

And while millions of Americans played a part, responsibility for the death of the woke regime rests in a small set of hands.

Neither conservatism, libertarianism, nor any other -ism killed the woke vibe.

Tech did.

As the woke regime intended to permanently transform America and the American people by spiritually commanding and controlling tech, this fact bears close examination.

Steph Machado:

The Providence Public School District has acknowledged that personal student information was stolen in a cyberattack in September, including vaccination records, special education details, and driver’s license numbers.

The new disclosure on what type of student data was stolen was disclosed in a letter to families over the long Veterans Day weekend. The district had previously said “there is no evidence that any personal information for students has been impacted,” but later reversed course.

WILL

School board elections have a big impact on the day-to-day lives of Wisconsin families. Yet they are decided in the least democratic elections. Today, WILL is releasing a new policy report with a proposal to solve this problem.

Spring elections have an average turnout of 28% in the last decade, compared to Fall elections where turnout averages more than 66%. In 2024, turnout was 73%.  This means about 45% fewer Wisconsinites have their voices heard on school boards.

Report:

The News: In our new report, Enhancing Democracy: The Benefits of Holding School Board Elections in the Fall, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) highlights how moving school board races to November could bolster public interest in local school board governance. Currently held in April, these “off-cycle” elections suffer from low voter turnout and often lack representative engagement. Shifting these elections to November would align them with higher-turnout cycles, fostering broader public involvement and more balanced representation. 

The Quotes: WILL Research Director, Will Flanders, stated, “People across the political spectrum should support the goal of increasing participation in our local elections. Local school boards make decisions every day that often impact our lives more than who occupies the White House. By moving these elections to November, we can ensure more voters can have a voice in these decisions, ensuring greater accountability.” 

——-

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Sara Spafford Freeman:

Watching MPS sleepwalk into SOD is painful. Revenue estimates continue to be lowered – even since the original pro forma was presented 10-15. And expense forecasts keep getting higher – in no small part b/c of how (unrealistically) the dist fcsts cost increases. (1)

Patrick Gleason:

There is much for both political parties to learn from the results of the 2024 election. The take-aways being gleaned involve political lessons, as well as many that pertain to policy. Such post-election analysis, however, often misses the mark. Take the November 6 Governing Magazine article, which reported that school choice “fared poorly” in the 2024 elections. Many would beg to differ with that conclusion, starting with Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and millions of voters across the nation’s second most populous state.

Opponents of school choice are pointing to Kentucky voters’ decision to reject Amendment 2, a ballot measure that would’ve allowed tax dollars to go to non-government schools, as evidence of public skepticism about programs that expand school choice. There were many other results in the 2024 election, however, that contradict such claims. In fact, some outcomes from the 2024 election indicate that not only is demand for school choice high, the political salience of the issue is as potent as ever.

Rick Esenberg:

Nice mention of @WILawLiberty Here’s the ineluctable fact. Funding for public schools is on a long term and substantial upward trend in real terms. Choice does not “gut” public schools and, when controlling for the relevant variables, it generally delivers more. But no sector wars. We ought to focus on public and private schools that work and get more of that; rather than having adults engage in turf wars to increase their piece of the pie.

Helen Lewis:

But now, at the age of 72, Calkins faces the destruction of everything she has worked for. A 2020 report by a nonprofit described Units of Study as “beautifully crafted” but “unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.” The criticism became impossible to ignore two years later, when the American Public Media podcast Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrongaccused Calkins of being one of the reasons so many American children struggle to read. (The National Assessment of Educational Progress—a test administered by the Department of Education—found in 2022 that roughly one-third of fourth and eighth graders are unable to read at the “basic” level for their age.)

In Sold a Story, the reporter Emily Hanford argued that teachers had fallen for a single, unscientific idea—and that its persistence was holding back American literacy. The idea was that “beginning readers don’t have to sound out words.” That meant teachers were no longer encouraging early learners to use phonics to decode a new word—to say cuh–ah–tuh for “cat,” and so on. Instead, children were expected to figure out the word from the first letter, context clues, or nearby illustrations. But this “cueing” system was not working for large numbers of children, leaving them floundering and frustrated. The result was a reading crisis in America.

——

more.

Quinton Klabon:

Both the academic and personal components make this worth reading.

But 2 of my least favorite education things are high-income schools that underachieve via flawed instruction saying, “But we have high scores!” and adults who copy Dead Poets Society instead of Stand And Deliver.

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Bill Ackman

This is a great idea which will wake up our elite universities from their stupor.

Naomi Martin and Mandy McLaren:

At school, she panics if she has to read aloud. She’s a conscientious student and keeps her grades up, but it isn’t easy; at times she has such trouble synthesizing the novels she reads in English class, she Googles plot summaries to remind herself of what happened. Even in math, word problems are thickets.

Madison von Mering, a driven 16-year-old who loves field hockey and sailing, is not a strong reader. As a young child, she was never correctly taught how to sound out unfamiliar words.

——-

More.

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Sami West

As Seattle Public Schools faces continued public backlash over proposed school closures, a group of parents is attempting to recall board President Liza Rankin.

In court documents filed with King County, the group argues Rankin adopted a “rushed and improper” school closure process and repeatedly failed to “provide transparency and community engagement on decisions critical to the well-being of the district.”

The parents also contend Rankin failed to uphold her duties as a school board member to adequately oversee the district and “ensure the district delivers student educational outcomes.”

“As Board President, Liza Rankin must uphold the highest standards in public office, especially in a time of urgent crisis like that which Seattle Public Schools now faces,” Ben Gitenstein, one of the petitioners, said in a statement. “Instead, Rankin has committed violations that have worsened our district’s crisis.”

——

3 Baltimore schools, including 2 charters, recommended for closure

Madison citizens just passed a major bricks and mortar expansion amidst flat/declining enrollment, and buildings with substantial extra space.

Patrick Gleason

There is much for both political parties to learn from the results of the 2024 election. The take-aways being gleaned involve political lessons, as well as many that pertain to policy. Such post-election analysis, however, often misses the mark. Take the November 6 Governing Magazine article, which reported that school choice “fared poorly” in the 2024 elections. Many would beg to differ with that conclusion, starting with Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) and millions of voters across the nation’s second most populous state.

Opponents of school choice are pointing to Kentucky voters’ decision to reject Amendment 2, a ballot measure that would’ve allowed tax dollars to go to non-government schools, as evidence of public skepticism about programs that expand school choice. There were many other results in the 2024 election, however, that contradict such claims. In fact, some outcomes from the 2024 election indicate that not only is demand for school choice high, the political salience of the issue is as potent as ever.

By Mandy McLaren, Ryan Huddle and Neena Hagen

Question 2 supporters, including the influential Massachusetts Teachers Association, had argued the MCAS graduation requirement unfairly penalized students with disabilities and those still learning English. About 700 students, primarily from those two groups, fail annually to earn a diploma because of their MCAS scores, according to state data.

Opponents, meanwhile, said the requirement, which first applied to the class of 2003, raised the bar for education in the Commonwealth by setting a common standard for all students to meet. Business leaders largely opposed Question 2, pointing to research showing the correlation of strong MCAS scores and future earnings in the labor market.

Supporters of Question 2 trounced opponents particularly in western Massachusetts, with several towns west of the Quabbin Reservoir, including Shutesbury, Northampton, Wendell, Easthampton, and Montague, posting the night’s largest victory margins, with roughly 3 in 4 voters there casting ballots in support of the measure. Question 2 also saw strong support in Holyoke, a district whose students were disproportionately affected by the graduation requirement, with 73 percent voting in favor of ending the high-stakes mandate.

William N. Caballero, Phillip R. Jenkins

The overwhelming success of GPT-4 in early 2023 highlighted the transformative potential of large language models (LLMs) across various sectors, including national security. This article explores the implications of LLM integration within national security contexts, analyzing their potential to revolutionize information processing, decision-making, and operational efficiency. Whereas LLMs offer substantial benefits, such as automating tasks and enhancing data analysis, they also pose significant risks, including hallucinations, data privacy concerns, and vulnerability to adversarial attacks. Through their coupling with decision-theoretic principles and Bayesian reasoning, LLMs can significantly improve decision-making processes within national security organizations. Namely, LLMs can facilitate the transition from data to actionable decisions, enabling decision-makers to quickly receive and distill available information with less manpower. Current applications within the US Department of Defense and beyond are explored, e.g., the USAF’s use of LLMs for wargaming and automatic summarization, that illustrate their potential to streamline operations and support decision-making. However, these applications necessitate rigorous safeguards to ensure accuracy and reliability. The broader implications of LLM integration extend to strategic planning, international relations, and the broader geopolitical landscape, with adversarial nations leveraging LLMs for disinformation and cyber operations, emphasizing the need for robust countermeasures. Despite exhibiting “sparks” of artificial general intelligence, LLMs are best suited for supporting roles rather than leading strategic decisions. Their use in training and wargaming can provide valuable insights and personalized learning experiences for military personnel, thereby improving operational readiness.

Jason M. Scott, Stephen N. Goggin and David Faigman

How well does bar exam performance predict lawyering effectiveness? Is performance on some components of the bar exam more predictive? The current study, the first of its kind to measure the relationship between bar exam scores and a new lawyer’s effectiveness, evaluates these questions by combining three unique datasets—bar results from the State Bar of Nevada, a survey of recently admitted lawyers, and a survey of supervisors, peers, and judges who were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of recently-admitted lawyers. We find that performance on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and essay components of the Nevada Bar have little relationship with the assessed lawyering effectiveness of new lawyers, calling into question the usefulness of these tests.

More.

Andrew Jack and Anjali Dalal:

At the Academy of Management conference in Chicago last August — one of the world’s largest and most important annual gatherings of business school academics — one theme was prominent in numerous presentations: balancing rigour and relevance in research.

Among the hundreds of projects discussed in the space of a week, a number of impressive studies stood out. But many others appeared more than a little esoteric and theoretical. Research with practical applications — let alone a focus on addressing the most important issues facing society, such as climate change, poverty and inequality — was less evident.

That points to a broader debate about the role of business schools, their relationship to the world beyond universities, and the nature of academic governance and incentives around research.

David Butterfield

Last month, after 21 years studying and teaching Classics at the University of Cambridge, I resigned. I loved my job. And it’s precisely because I loved the job I was paid to do, and because I believe so firmly in preserving the excellence of higher education, in Britain and beyond, that I have left.

When I arrived in Cambridge two decades ago, giants were still walking the earth. Students could attend any lecture, at any level, in any department; graduate and research seminars were open to any interested party, and you could sit at the feet of the greats. Unforgettable gatherings of everyone from undergraduates to professors would discuss the big questions late into the night.

Cambridge’s historic strength came through respecting students’ abilities and giving them freedom to pursue their studies how they wished, but with some important restrictions.

Max Tani and David Weigel

The national news media is more limited in its reach and influence than ever in the modern era.

Already, Democratic media figures have begun discussing publicly and privately how the erosion of traditional media consumption among a large segment of Americans requires their politicians to engage with nontraditional media in a more serious and systematic way.

Both the Biden and Harris campaigns frequently touted a media strategy that was built around interviews with local television and radio stations, which the campaigns argued were more trusted with Americans in battleground states. That strategy may have worked for Biden in 2020, but it didn’t help the Harris campaign get over the line this time.

Some left-leaning media leaders feel that the next generation of national Democrats need to take a page out of the conservative media playbook and invest in overtly partisan outlets.

Crooked Media co-founder Tommy Vietor told Semafor in a text message that Trump effectively nurtured right-wing podcasters and influencers in a way that helped him shape the narrative with his supporters.

Grant Stringer:

But one thing is clear: With the defeat of Harris, Newsom is all but certain to run for president in 2028, political insiders say.

“It was a very good night for Gavin Newsom,” said Bill Whalen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former speechwriter for Republican Gov. Pete Wilson. “He’ll never tell you that, but look, now suddenly, the road to 2028 is open again.”

Devon Eriksen:

– It has the privilege of targeting individual citizens on its own initiative, which is forbidden to the three other branches. – It can interfere their lives in any way it wishes by making a “ruling”. – The only recourse against a “ruling” is to take the bureaucracy in question to court. – But the process is the punishment, because this takes months if not years and costs tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. – Until recently, courts have deferred to bureaucrats as a matter of legal precedent. Now they merely do so as a matter of practice. – But should the bureaucracy lose anyway, the only punishment the court inflicts is that they are told they have to stop doing that specific thing. – Any fines or legal costs imposed on them punish the taxpayer, not the agent or even the agency. – And the next, closely related, thing the bureaucracy thinks of to do is once again fair game, until the courts are once again brought in, at further cost, to tell it to stop. All of this creates a Red Queen Effect.

Wall Street Journal:

Republicans and Democrats from high-tax states have been trying unsuccessfully for seven years to dislodge the cap that congressional Republicans built. Their best chance for success is about to arrive.

“It’s a really hard issue to thread the needle on, and neither party’s been able to figure out how to do it,” said Anna Taylor of accounting firm Deloitte, who was a tax aide to current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).

The cap, along with much of the 2017 tax law, expires at the end of 2025. This time, no matter who wins Tuesday, it will be a key piece of the tax fight. Cap opponents could have a leg up if lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and California hold a congressional balance of power in a slim majority for either party, commanding a large-enough faction to block bills that don’t address their concerns.

“There’s a natural landing pad for a deal,” Reed said, suggesting a version of a cap that would hit very few households. “It’s just going to take a lot of theater and political gamesmanship to get there.”

Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education seats 3, 4, and 5 will be on the 2025 ballot.

—-

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Susan Yackee, Mike Wittenwyler and Rick Esenberg shared their impressions and experiences of the November 2024 election at the Madison Literary Club’s [madlit.org] most recent meeting.

Machine generated transcript.

mp3 audio

———–

Marc Eisen:

The Madison Literary Club is a small overlooked jewel in the city’s cultural cluster. Founded in 1877, the 147-year-old social group brings together town and campus to host, as its website promises, “presentations on subjects of current interest and engage in lively conversation about them.”

The club delivered on its promise a few days after the Nov. 5 election with an expert panel exhuming the election results that so shocked Madison. Only 20 or so people showed up, but one of them wasCharles Franklin, director of the celebrated Marquette Law School Poll. Just an observer, he demurred when asked to join the conversation. He was, as he explained later, on a “busman’s holiday.”

———–

The Presidential election was mentioned, of course. Naimisha Forest dove into this topic recently:

Except for this evidently premeditated and striking if cryptic assessment:

“I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its pretences. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.”

I make five points. Four are specific to Kissinger on Trump. The last is on the Hegelian model of historical change – the cunning of reason – that Kissinger rather casually deploys here while toying half-heartedly with his branzino (European bass) on a bed of green vegetables.

First, Kissinger thinks Trump may already be a substantial figure in world history, not, alas, some bizarre printer’s error that Trump-opponents hope to erase from its pages.

Second, he’s not just any historical figure but one who marks the end of an era. This much should be apparent even from Trump’s critics, who denounce him for upending the post-war “liberal international order,” among other epochal crimes.

Anna Stokke

Imagine hiring a piano teacher who can’t play the piano or a swimming instructor who’s terrified of water. While it’s clear that these examples are absurd, the Manitoba government seems to have missed the obvious: teachers can’t teach what they don’t know.

Last week, Manitoba quietly announced significant changes to teacher certification. Manitobans should be deeply concerned.

For example, previously K-8 teachers were required to complete two courses in each of math, science, English and history. These requirements — and others — have been removed entirely. There are now no mandated core subject requirements for teachers in training at any level.

Acting education minister Tracy Schmidt, made the remarkable claim that this will “help support students.” It’s unclear if the politicians endorsing these regulations fully understand the consequences. The changes, billed as “removing barriers,” instead strip away critical requirements for foundational knowledge that teachers need to be effective in their jobs.

The government claims this will “align Manitoba with other Canadian jurisdictions,” but this is misleading. Most provinces require K-8 teachers to take at least one, and often two, math courses at the university level. Quebec mandates five courses for middle school math teachers, and Ontario recently introduced a math proficiency test for all teachers.

University of Manitoba’s dean of education Jan Stewart supported the lowered standards, claiming there is little research to suggest someone with an extensive background in a teachable subject is more effective in the classroom. Common sense tells us that you can’t teach what you don’t understand, and it’s challenging to help students in a subject you struggle with.

——-

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Joseph Cox:

The Secret Service has used a technology called Locate X which uses location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on phones. Because users agreed to an opaque terms of service page, the Secret Service believes it doesn’t need a warrant.IMAGE: 404 MEDIA.

This article was primarily reported using public records requests. We are making it available to all readers as a public service. FOIA reporting can be expensive, please consider subscribing to 404 Media to support this work. Or send us a one time donation via our tip jar here.

Officials inside the Secret Service clashed over whether they needed a warrant to use location data harvested from ordinary apps installed on smartphones, with some arguing that citizens have agreed to be tracked with such data by accepting app terms of service, despite those apps often not saying their data may end up with the authorities, according to hundreds of pages of internal Secret Service emails obtained by 404 Media.

Bill Ackman:

A recent study at Harvard found that roughly 50% of the students and professors wouldn’t discuss “uncomfortable” topics. An essential life skill is the ability to change your mind. She won’t learn that at any Ivy league school. Their reputations are still so strong that their faculty, staff and graduates all possess the arrogant certainty of religious fanatics.

I am sorry to disappoint you. I wish her the best in her search for a school,

WILL:

The News: As K-12 education leaders across the country face an increasingly complex Title IX regulatory regime, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI), and the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) released today a crucial resource guide. Titled “Protecting Title IX: A Resource Guide for School Boards,” this guide aims to empower school boards with the legal insights needed to understand and respond to the complex Title IX requirements of the federal government. A national webinar will take place on November 20, 2024, at 1 p.m. ET.

The Quotes: WILL Education Counsel Cory Brewer stated, “School board members need complete and accurate information—not intimidation. Our Title IX Resource Guide provides an in-depth analysis with essential legal citations to help both new and experienced board members make informed decisions as they adopt policies for their local communities. It also explains how the recent changes to Title IX conflict with its original purpose of protecting women and girls from discrimination. We believe this will serve as an invaluable resource nationwide.”

Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner

The state’s recently projected $23 billion in deficits over the next five years should come as a big surprise for Illinoisans given how well the Pritzker administration says it has managed the state’s finances in recent years. Illinois has “balanced its budgets,” “paid down its unpaid bills,” and “created a rainy day fund,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker has repeated often.

Despite all that, Illinois is right back to the multi-billion dollar deficits it had right before covid. A look at the state’s budget forecasts, done by the governor’s OMB, reveals why. Pritzker wants to continue the pandemic-era spending he’s put together since coming into office in 2019. If the governor has his way, the state’s budget will have grown by a whopping $23 billion by 2030 – a near 60% increase in little more than a decade.

More..

The Virginia teachers union sent this email to members after Trump won

Eigen

incidentally six of seven major accreditation institutions as of last year had a DEI standard that they apparently impose on schools during accreditation

Steve Hsu:

Students can graduate from most US colleges, even “elite” colleges, without the ability to solve quadratic equations or graph simple functions.

There is no possible way that we can compete in technology vs PRC with our degraded higher education system.

I was a senior administrator at a Big Ten university – I know exactly what has gone on in our system for the past few decades.

“Data science” teams analyzed enrollments and found courses which were difficult (i.e., had high failure rates) for students admitted based on affirmative action. Algebra 2 was one of them. It was eliminated in favor of easier “math for real life” courses with higher pass rates.

This has been going on for decades.

——

Harvard Launches New Intro Math Course to Address Pandemic Learning Loss

Stephen L. Miller

In the final month of the 2024 election, the national media existed in another solar system from the country for whom is tasked at reporting accurate, unbiased and truthful information. The final month started with Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic attempting to regurgitate their anonymously sourced “suckers and losers” hit against Trump from 2020. With the help of CNN and others, they resurfaced General John Kelly. Then they went and got their full Reich on by comparing Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally to a 1939 Nazi rally there. At said rally a comedian known for celebrity roasts made a crass joke about Puerto Rico, which blanketed the whole of national media outlets for four days. 

When the October jobs report was released on the final Friday of October, showing an anemic growth of only 12,000 jobs, the national media focused all of their attention on comments Trump made about former representative Liz Cheney, who had become a Kamala Harris campaign surrogate, regarding sending her off to fight the wars her family and in particular her father had endorsed. 

The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC created an echo chamber of thought bubbles that only they were listening to. The country had completely tuned them out. None of these stories actually mattered to voting audiences and the election result, with almost every major voting demographic moving toward Donald Trump in an electoral blowout. 

Kyle Koenen:

Jill Underly’s proposed DPI budget would eat up 65% of the state’s budget surplus, all while allowing property taxes to continue to go up. We fund students at approximately $20k per student on average. When is it enough?

Abbey Machtig:

State Superintendent Jill Underly is proposing more than $4 billion in new spending for Wisconsin public schools to increase special education funding and to allow school districts’ spending limits to match the rate of inflation.

The Department of Public Instruction’s 2025-27 budget request also proposes free school meals for all Wisconsin students, and more mental health and early literacy programming, along with a $10,000 stipend for student teachers.

The new spending would decrease the number of school districts turning to local taxpayers for more money through referendums, Underly said. In 2024, nearly half of Wisconsin’s more than 400 school districts asked voters to approve increases in local funding.

Quinton Klabon:

But here is what NCES says: 2022 special education state revenue for districts divided by IDEA students.

We are middling, not top nor bottom.

——-

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

NCTQ:

NCTQ regularly convenes reading experts — researchers, teacher educators, and experienced elementary educators — to review both textbooks and educational resources, such as journal articles or instructional videos, used by teacher preparation programs in their required reading coursework. These experts examine how well each material aligns with scientifically based reading instruction, a science rooted in 60+ years of research on what makes for the most effective methods to teach young students to read.

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirementsfor teachers will make things worse.

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?

Nearly one year later, when I visited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office on behalf of an organization I was working for, I found a packet of crumpled-up American flag stickers in the trash can. I pulled them out quietly, not wanting her staff to see me, and put them in my backpack. I felt sad but thought I would take them to my brother’s kids when I saw them again. I knew they would appreciate them. 

I was never happier about a Democratic victory than when Obama won in 2008. Blacks, whites, young and old, women and men rejoiced together, dancing in the streets to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” everyone feeling joy, and more importantly, hope. The same was true of my family—I can still remember how excited my mom was to vote for him. After eight years of George W. Bush, of the Iraq War, of repeated job losses, and growing income inequality leading to the financial crisis of 2007, we all thought Obama would return the country’s priorities to jobs for the middle and working class.  

But it didn’t turn out that way. As much as anything, he was a Democratic technocrat. Still, in 2016, when Trump ran against Clinton, I was one of those people who laid in bed for three days when the Democrats lost. By then, however, I was an outlier in my family, who had already made the shift to Trump—as had millions of others in Missouri, a former bellwether state that grew redder with every election. For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why.

In 2019, I decided to move to San Francisco, a place where you’re unlikely to hear anything good said about Trump. After that, I got married to a man who worked in the Bay Area, and my circle of acquaintances was virtually all Democrats.

Angus Deaton:

Like many others, I have recently found myself changing my mind, a discomfiting process for someone who has been a practicing economist for more than half a century. I will come to some of the substantive topics, but I start with some general failings. I do not include the corruption allegations that have become common in some debates. Even so, economists, who have prospered mightily over the past half century, might fairly be accused of having a vested interest in capitalism as it currently operates. I should also say that I am writing about a (perhaps nebulous) mainstream, and that there are many nonmainstream economists.

Kevin Klein:

The Wab Kinew Manitoba NDP government has made a shocking decision that should concern every parent, grandparent, and guardian in this province: it has lowered the standards for teachers.

Without public notice or meaningful consultation, they’ve quietly removed the requirement for teachers to study basic subjects such as English, math, and science before teaching them to our children in K-8 classrooms. This decision is a clear signal that the quality of education in Manitoba is not the priority it should be. Instead, the NDP appears to be catering to special interests rather than focusing on what is best for our children’s future.

This is not about politics, it’s about the fundamental right of every child in Manitoba to receive a strong, well-rounded education. Lowering standards for teachers is not just a misguided policy decision — it’s an affront to the very principles of education.

It’s a betrayal of the trust parents place in our schools to provide a solid foundation in essential subjects. With one of the highest-paid teaching professions in the country, Manitoba should be striving for excellence in education, not lowering the bar to make it easier for underqualified individuals to enter the classroom.

Aaron Sibarium:

The day after Hillary Clinton was nominated by the Democratic National Committee in 2016,  Yale Law School congratulated Clinton, class of 1973, “on her historic nomination for President of the United States.” Eight years later, it is refusing to congratulate J.D. Vance on his actual election.

The school has made no statement about the vice president-elect, who graduated from Yale Law in 2013, since he and Donald Trump scored a landslide victory on Tuesday. And according to Debra Kroszner, the law school’s chief of staff, it doesn’t plan to.

Kroszner told the Washington Free Beacon that the school would include “this news” in the next issue of its alumni magazine—which is only published twice a year—but would not congratulate Vance publicly, citing a new policy against issuing institutional statements.

Timor Kuran:

US academics live in fear of the thought police. They can’t teach freely or ask questions that might generate unwoke conclusions. Meanwhile, the AAUP, rather than trying to protect academic freedoms, is working hard to politicize universities and make them even more illiberal.

Nate Tenhundfeld:

In a prior post for Free the Inquiry, I showed regional differences in requiring submission of DEI statements by applicants as part of the hiring process. The analysis showed a notable relationship between the politics of a state and whether job ads for full-time professorships in that state requested a DEI statement as part of their application process.

As a follow-up, I wanted to see what emerges if we expand the dataset to include all faculty positions, not just full-time professorships. Would including job ads for non-tenure-track positions (e.g., lecturers or adjunct professors) change the picture?

I gathered job ads from HigherEdJobs.com for relevant jobs in the U.S. posted during August 2024. In total, there were 5,005 jobs from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., covering 966 institutions. Of those, 1,907 were for full-time professorship positions (used in the original analysis) and 3,098 were for non-tenure track positions.

More.

Matthew Syed:

Apparently it’s all Donald Trump’s fault that Europe is feeling suddenly vulnerable, Ukraine may be sold down the swanny and the world might implode with the end of Nato. If only the orange fella had not gone into politics, had not ridden down the golden escalator, Europe could have continued marching towards utopia, untroubled by populists, fascists and the other troublemakers who keep interfering with our dreams of a compassionate, enlightened, welfare-provisioned nirvana.

Delusional, sadly, doesn’t do justice to much of the commentary in the days since the world view of what Dominic Cummings calls the “insider class” crumpled in the time it took for the first exit poll to detonate through the airwaves. Only Orwell, or perhaps Swift, could adequately satirise the cognitive dissonance

SNL 2016

Chris Murphy:

2/ The left has never fully grappled with the wreckage of fifty years of neoliberalism, which has left legions of Americans adrift as local places are hollowed out, rapacious profit seeking cannibalizes the common good, and unchecked new technology separates and isolates us.

James Lewis:

Heard a joke on NPR: The #Democrats started as the party of farmers, became the party of the factories, and are now the party of the faculty club. A better explanation of electoral outcomes than foreign interference.

And why do the same people who demanded vaccine IDs for you to do anything, are the same ones who say ‘No ID for voting!’

Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

Why is the MSM dangerous?
Explicit State Propaganda does not work (e.g. Soviet Pravda) because it is too visible. MSM gives us the illusion of free info: lobbies bully professionally fragile journalists who can be black/greylisted hence unemployable & create a monoculture.

Scott McNeally;

This needs to be eliminated immediately. The parents need the money, not the Feds. Cut Fed taxes, let the States educate their children. The DoEdu has not made a dent in test scores ever.

238,400,000,000 2024 US Department of Education Budget…

Vitalik:

One of the Ethereum applications that has always excited me the most are prediction markets. I wrote about futarchy, a model of prediction-based governance conceived by Robin Hanson, in 2014. I was an active user and supporter of Augur back in 2015 (look, mommy, my name is in the Wikipedia article!). I earned $58,000 betting on the election in 2020. And this year, I have been a close supporter and follower of Polymarket.

To many people, prediction markets are about betting on elections, and betting on elections is gambling – nice if it helps people enjoy themselves, but fundamentally not more interesting than buying random coins on pump.fun. From this perspective, my interest in prediction markets may seem confusing. And so in this post I aim to explain what it is about the concept that excites me. In short, I believe that (i) prediction markets even as they exist today are a very useful tool for the world, but furthermore (ii) prediction markets are only one example of a much larger incredibly powerful category, with potential to create better implementations of social media, science, news, governance, and other fields. I shall label this category “info finance“

Make debate great again.

More.

No other country in the world treats their citizens living abroad this way.

Olivia Reingold:

And yet, in the Democratic city of Chicago, asylum seekers—meaning those who have applied for asylum but are not even likely to get it—were eligible for up to $15,000 in rental support.

Many were left wondering how it is that a party that prides itself on taking care of the vulnerable doesn’t seem to care about them. Worse, party brass seemed to think they were “deplorables.”

Mark Halperin:

At its heart, the IOP works to encourage students to examine critically and think creatively about politics and public issues – all politics and all public issues. It cannot effectively do that when only one side is represented. We would be doing a disservice to our students — and to our country — with anything less.

Alan Blinder:

For more than a century, professors have regularly had vast influence over instruction, personnel and other hallmarks of campus life, sharing sway with presidents and trustees in decisions shaping many parts of campus life — an authority that is unfathomable in many workplaces.

But this year has shown how fraught and fragile that practice, known as shared governance, has become at public and private universities alike.

Arizona lawmakers sought to do away with legal guarantees of faculty power at public universities, their ambitions thwarted only by the governor’s veto. At the University of Kentucky, trustees dissolved the University Senate and made professorial influence only advisory. Amid protests at Columbia University, the school’s then-president provoked fury when she defied a University Senate committee and called in the police.

A coast-to-coast wipeout of faculty influence is not imminent, despite years of swelling suspicions of higher education and repeated attacks on tenure protections. But in recent months, professors have warned of an erosion of their power that they fear could undermine university culture. Some see efforts to diminish shared governance as part of a campaign to curb faculty participation in events, like campus protests over the war in Gaza, that have left universities vulnerable to criticism. …

Anna Stokke:

Part of an excellent comment left on LinkedIn. “Education is a great equalizer…our children, especially those who one day hope to lift themselves out of poverty, deserve nothing less than their teachers being held to a high standard.”

Tyler Cowen:

There are a lot of numbers, but here is the comparison I find most impressive: Adjusting for grants, rather than taking sticker prices at face value, the inflation-adjusted tuition cost for an in-state freshman at a four-year public university is $2,480 for this school year. That is a 40% decline from a decade ago…

As might be expected, the trajectory for student debt is down as well. About half of last year’s graduates had no student debt. In 2013, only 40% did. That famous saying from economics — if something cannot go on forever, it will stop — is basically true. Due to changes in the formula, aid for Pell Grants is up, which helps to limit both student debt and the expenses of college.

More.

Will Fitzhugh:

There has been no better eulogy for Churchill than that given by Leo Strauss, a German Jew who left Germany in time to escape the death camps. One of his teachers was Martin Heidegger, a philosopher of note and a Nazi, who provided some of the impulse for Strauss to return to the classics and begin the recovery of political philosophy as a quest for the truth. Churchill died on January 24, 1965. When Strauss came into class and was informed of Churchill’s death, he said:

“The death of Churchill is a healthy reminder to students of political science of their limitations, the limitations of their craft.

“The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant—this spectacle in its clear simplicity was one of the greatest lessons which men can learn, at any time.

“No less enlightening is the lesson conveyed by Churchill’s failure, which is too great to be called tragedy. I mean the fact that Churchill’s heroic action on behalf of human freedom against Hitler only contributed, through no fault of Churchill’s, to increase the threat to freedom which is posed by Stalin or his successors. Churchill did the utmost that a man could do to counter that threat—publicly and most visibly in Greece and in Fulton, Missouri.

Miles Kruppa:

Most companies are starting to figure out how artificial intelligence will change the way they do business. Chegg CHGG 0.00% is trying to avoid becoming its first major victim.

The online education company was for many years the go-to source for students who wanted help with their homework, or a potential tool for plagiarism. The shift to virtual learning during the pandemic sent subscriptions and its stock price to record highs.

Marc Andreessen:

Every participant in the orchestrated government-university-nonprofit-company censorship machine of the last decade can be charged criminally under one or both of these federal laws.

More.

Grace Hagerman:

What is the potential problem with focusing on the Science of Reading alone? Some educators say it places too much emphasis on a one-size-fits-all model of explicit, systematic, intensive phonics instruction for all students.  

Ground zero for the Science of Reading movement was an article by education reporter Emily Hanford for APM Reports.Published in 2018, Hanford’s article said the reason students are struggling with reading is because educators do not know the science of reading or choose to resist it. Students are not “wired to read” but need explicit phonics instruction, she wrote.   

After her article became popular, Hanford created a podcast series, Sold a Story, which went into greater detail about the Science of Reading movement. Hanford’s article and podcast inspired frustration in Thomas and he was moved to speak against her claims. “[The podcast] is very compelling for the public, but it’s just not based in real evidence,” Thomas said.   

Yet, because the Science of Reading movement seems to cover multiple universes, it is difficult to assign one absolute meaning. Elena Aydarova, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points to this ambiguity in a FreshEd podcast.  

——-

More.

Our govt’s decision to remove all subject area requirements for teachers will make things worse.

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?

Palantir:

“The Palantir degree is the best degree, bar none.” -CEO Alex Karp

We launched the Semester at Palantir program this year for students looking to accelerate their career and learn by doing — working on meaningful problems in the real world rather than the classroom, especially at universities where teaching has strayed.

Kieran Smith and Amy Borrett:

Forty-two per cent of students enrolled in independent schools received extra time in the 2023-24 academic year, compared with 26 per cent of pupils in non-selective state schools, according to data published by Ofqual on Thursday.

The gap of 16 percentage points is the largest since England’s exam regulator began collecting data in 2018-19, when 26 per cent of private school students and 17 per cent of state school students claimed extra time for GCSEs and A-levels. 

The system of access arrangements for exams, which is overseen by Ofqual, allows candidates to receive 25 per cent more time if they have a condition such as dyslexia or ADHD. 

In a 60-minute exam, a student claiming extra time would have 75 minutes, for example. Students can receive more than 25 per cent extra time in extenuating circumstances. 

Jon Andrews, head of analysis at the Education Policy Institute think-tank, said the data reflected how private schools had more resources than state counterparts to support students.

More.

Baldur Bjarnason

The “algorithm” seems to have become a black box even Google engineers can’t figure out

The fact that over a year ago ML experts at Google (El-Mahdi El-Mhamdi at least, if I recall correctly) who have since left warned that LLMs should be avoided because they made products chaotic and hard to control seems relevant.

As is the fact that around the same time others also warned that one common consequence of mass layoffs is they tend to turn internal systems into black boxes because everybody with a deep understanding of them has left.

Timothy Lee:

Fei-Fei Li wasn’t thinking about either neural networks or GPUs as she began a new job as a computer science professor at Princeton in January of 2007. While earning her PhD at Caltech, she had built a dataset called Caltech 101 that had 9,000 images across 101 categories.

That experience had taught her that computer vision algorithms tended to perform better with larger and more diverse training datasets. Not only had Li found her own algorithms performed better when trained on Caltech 101, other researchers started training their models using Li’s dataset and comparing their performance to one another. This turned Caltech 101 into a benchmark for the field of computer vision.

Austin Berg:

BREAKING: 29 of 50 Chicago aldermen have called a special meeting to vote down Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed property tax hike. The meeting will take place next Wednesday, Nov. 13.

More:

Government handouts at the national and state level enable illegals who come here to have a standard of living that is better than half of Earth.

This creates a forcing function for half of Earth to move here.

They will do so, unless the border is secure.

QED.

Charles Cooke:

“Illinois remains a place of stability and competent governance” is a sentence that has never before been uttered in the English language.

Paul Vallas:

Illinois is reeling. State ranks first in tax burden, near last in job growth, last in equity. After spending most of $54 billion in COVID money it received and despite raising taxes during COVID, state, city, schools and CTA face massive deficits. Expect more taxes to come.

•State facing $3 billion deficit next year.

•Chicago facing almost $1 billion deficit this year

•Chicago Public Schools facing almost $1 billion deficit next year

•CTA facing $567 million deficit

Don’t expect change. No one in Illinois has the right to lecture anyone about Democracy. Not with the most gerrymandered legislative maps in the country virtually guaranteeing Democrats Supermajorities despite Trump getting 47% of the vote.

Ashley Rindsberg:

The 1,300-word NYT article devotes just 11 words to the shattering of this “glass ceiling.”

Despite the “firsts” the media has celebrated over even the most minor political appointments by Democrats, there is 0 exploration of what Wiles’ appointment means for women.

Veracity.

The legacy media lied to you

Commentary:

Brilliant comment from @NYTimes reader.
“The very best thing that the Democrats can do for themselves is not ideological. It is to make the deep Blue cities and states where they have a supermajority into American paradises. Los Angeles, New York, California, Baltimore, Chicago, etc. Show us that you can got her an effectively. Low crime, great schools, moderate taxes, excellent mass transit, etc. Then the rest of the country will come to believe that your way is the right way. Because it is not what we have seen.”

www

The National Popular Vote bill will take effect when enacted into law by states possessing 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes). The bill will take effect when enacted by states possessing an additional 61 electoral votes. 

The National Popular Vote bill has also passed at least one legislative chamber in 7 states possessing 74 electoral votes (Arkansas, Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, Virginia).  The bill has passed both houses of the Nevada legislature at various times. The National Popular Vote bill has been introduced all 50 states at various times.  Overall, the National Popular Vote bill has now passed a total of 43 state legislative chambers in 24 states.

On the map below, each square represents one electoral vote (out of 538). 

The Economist:

Without iodine, the thyroid gland cannot produce hormones that enable the human body and the brain to develop properly. The visible consequences of iodine deficiency, such as goitres (swellings in the neck), are bad enough. The invisible ones are much worse: it can cause a 15-point drop in IQ.

Such afflictions were once common. A century ago, one in three schoolchildren in Michigan had a visible neck swelling; in Britain goitres were so endemic in some places that the condition was known as Derbyshire neck. Then manufacturers started fortifying certain foods with iodine, dramatically reducing the scourge. The number of countries where iodine levels are insufficient fell from 113 in 1990 to 21 in 2020.

Lacey Robinson:

How often have you heard someone say: “I’m just not a math person?”

People are reluctant to say they are illiterate but proud to share their low math identity.

We tend to think of math as a subject that’s accessible only to certain types of people. But that’s a false assumption, and it’s holding back achievement for far too many students. With the right instructional approach, everyone can learn and do math. There is no special “math gene” that naturally makes some people better at math than others.

Students come into school with differing levels of math preparation. Some have parents or guardians who have introduced them to foundational concepts and skills.

Some have had no exposure. The well-prepared students perform better at the outset of K-12 learning and the underprepared students struggle to keep up. Thus begins the fallacy that some students are “math people” and some are not.

Lucas Robinson:

Residents and property owners will have to pay a monthly “infrastructure special charge” by 2027 to help the city continue balancing its budget if more financial support from the state Legislature doesn’t materialize in budget talks next year.

Even with the referendum’s success, the city is counting on the untested charge to bring in millions in revenue every year by the end of the decade. But similar fees attempted by municipalities have been struck down by the Wisconsin court system.

Andrew Potter:

What is interesting about Phetasy’s piece, in many ways, is just how unremarkable it is — the I-was-abandoned-by-my-divorced-parents has been its own genre of Gen X lit for a while now. For example, in 2011, the journalist Susan Gregory Thomas wrote an essay for the WSJ called “The divorce generation”, where she describes the effects of her own parents’ split, with much of the same fence-sitting between exhilaration and reproach:

Our suburb was littered with sad-eyed, bruised nomads, who wandered back and forth between used-record shops to the sheds behind the train station where they got high and then trudged off, back and forth from their mothers’ houses during the week to their fathers’ apartments every other weekend.

Both Phetasy and Thomas make a direct link between two trends that marked the identities of their generation: skyrocketing divorce rates, and the rise of what became known as “latchkey kids” — children who return home after school and are left unsupervised until a parent comes home from work.  There was widespread concern about the situation at the time, and the received wisdom was that it was on the whole a bad thing. But as one might suspect, the truth is a bit more complicated.