A simulation of a wave inside a stadium- a rectangle and two semicircles. Although it is a very simple shape, the wave function cannot be exactly solved and becomes chaotic. The simulation is actually computed on a rectangular grid of pixels as a cellular automaton- note the checkerboard patterns and pixelated edges.
That’s more money than what the Governor of Virginia, the White House Press Secretary, and many federal government attorneys are earning.
7News was the first to report how Loudoun County Public Schools hired Natalie Allen as Chief Communications Officer and that taxpayers are paying her a salary north of a quarter million dollars, plus a monthly vehicle allowance, a monthly data allowance and moving costs.
On Tuesday, 7News asked LCPS was Allen’s position publicly advertised and how many people applied for the position. 7News is waiting for answers from LCPS.
“The more the children know you and trust you, the more they’re willing to engage in what you’re trying to teach them,” said Susana Aguilar, one of The Oakland REACH’s “literacy liberators.”
The evaluation, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, calls community members “untapped pools of talent” in the effort to improve student achievement.
Oakland Unified’s model, said researcher and lead author Ashley Jochim, also has broader implications for how schools teach basic skills in reading and math. For too long, she said, one teacher has been responsible for modifying lessons to meet the needs of 25 or more students.
“This model is clearly failing students and puts extraordinary demands on educators, especially coming out of the pandemic,” she said. “Oakland’s tutoring model shows what’s possible when we create the conditions needed to individualize instruction based on students’ learning needs.”
The first rule of Portland Public Schools budget cuts: Don’t call them budget cuts.
“We refer to it as a ‘gap,’” says Will Howell, a PPS spokesman.
So, the school district faces a $130 million gap because of the labor contract it signed last week with the Portland Association of Teachers—an agreement that was largely a tremendous victory for educators. Now the district will need to find $10 million in savings this school year, $41 million next year, and $79 million the year after that.
That last number assumes that school funding remains flat; it could change depending on what, if anything, happens on the May 2024 ballot and at the spring 2025 session of the Oregon Legislature.
But at least one official is saying the C-word.
“The size of the cuts we need to make are going to require cuts to direct services,” Portland School Board member Andrew Scott says.
The district will likely find the $130 million in the following places, starting with your wallet:
Here is three and a half minutes of their testimony before Congress. Worth a watch, if you haven’t already. I have viewed some other segments as well, none of them impressive. I can’t bring myself to sit through the whole thing.
I don’t doubt that I would find their actual views on world affairs highly objectionable, but that is not why I am here today. Here are a few other points:
1. Their entire testimony is ruled by their lawyers, by their fear that their universities might be sued, and their need to placate internal interest groups. That is a major problem, in addition to their unwillingness to condemn various forms of rhetoric for violating their codes of conduct. As Katherine Boyle stated: “This is Rule by HR Department and it gets dark very fast.”
How do you think that affects the quality of their otherdecisions? The perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?
2. They are all in a defensive crouch. None of them are good on TV. None of them are good in front of Congress. They have ended up disgracing their universities, in front of massive audiences (the largest they ever will have?), simply for the end goal of maintaining a kind of (illusory?) maximum defensibility for their positions within their universities. At that they are too skilled.
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