Knocking At The Gate

The U.S. Department of Education has long used a series of “Dear Colleague” letters sent to state and local education officials to outline the Department’s broad policy goals and to explain the Department’s interpretation of federal law and court decisions. Along with the law itself, with non-regulatory guidance issued by the Secretary, with the Code of Federal Regulations, and with findings of the Inspector General, these Dear Colleague letters are a fundamental component of federal, state, and local education governance in the United States. Unfortunately, this most recent letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of CivilRights is horrifyingly anti-American. Along with the purges of public employees, this letter is a function of ongoing hostile takeover of federal agencies with the intent of destroying them from within and preventing them from implementing the laws enacted by the Congress. Here are my notes based on my first reading. LETTER (p. 1): “Discriminatio...

  This article by Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards in Pro Publica reveals that t he raids on federal agencies have come to the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences, unlawfully "canceling" millions of dollars of in research contracts. The AI-slinging team of course has no idea what they're doing — not only do they not understand the policies they are undermining, but they don't even seem to understand the data they are feigning to analyze. Snatching a gigantic database with elements coded for machine tabulation and then running it willy-nilly through language-based LLMs will inevitably produce nonsensical results, but the team doing it are hooting and hollering because they think they've accomplished something. It would have been efficient to simply ask the data scientists in charge of those databases what they wanted to see, but the new administration has committed itself to ignoring experts. What the team of invaders almo...

McCullers, J.F. (2023). "Come Now Witness Your Judgment."   Imagine a science fiction novel where all of the people there live in a symbiotic relationship with computers. Their children dig for precious metals that other children in gigantic factories then make into the dazzling computers. These mighty computers are everywhere and in all things, and contain all of the knowledge of the entire history of the planet. Despite the omnipresence of this knowledge, the people don't like knowing true things and instead walk around saying ignorant things to each other. Some of the people even try to make it illegal to learn things, and most of the rest of them go along with it because they're busy looking at the computers. Many of the people are uncomfortable making decisions and so they instead look to the computers to tell them what they should buy next. The computers also write simulated poems and make simulated art for the people that focus on the things the people are supp...

Here's an analysis of the fields of study of all the earned doctorates awarded by U.S. colleges and universities from 1990 to 2020. Doctoral study increases The three fields of study with the greatest increase in doctorates were: * Biological and biomedical sciences * Heatlh sciences * Computer and information sciences The growth in these majors is remarkable. The number of doctorates in biological and biomedical sciences rose from 4,328 in 1990 to 8,418 in 2020. (This includes topics such as anatomy, bacteriology, botany, endocrinology, genetics, genomics, neuroscience, and pharmacology often studied by professors of biology and academic and industrial research scientists.) D octoral study decreases The three fields of study with the greatest decrease in doctorates were: * Education administration * Teacher education * Education research The decline in these majors is striking. The number of doctorates in education administration fell from 1,664 in 1990 to 927 in 2020. (This inclu...

Jill Lepore writes in The New Yorker: A century ago, parents who objected to evolution were rejecting the entire Progressive package. Today’s parents’-rights groups, like Moms for Liberty, are objecting to a twenty-first-century Progressive package. They’re balking at compulsory vaccination and masking, and some of them do seem to want to destroy public education. They’re also annoyed at the vein of high-handedness, moral crusading, and snobbery that stretches from old-fashioned Progressivism to the modern kind, laced with the same contempt for the rural poor and the devoutly religious. Full article here.

Commencement tonight for three combined charter schools: Coronado High School, Island Park High School, and North Nicholas High School. I was at the first commencement exercises each of these schools ever had, since I was the School District’s charter school liaison when each of them came into being. Then they were novel, but now they’ve been around long enough to have traditions. I’ll be wearing my academic regalia for the last time: I have a basic doctoral gown that’s pretty worn out and held together mostly with safety pins and good intentions. I’ve got a hood, tam, and tassel that have survived dozens and dozens of ceremonies. I still wear an honor cord from Cypress Lake High School, where decades ago I was both an honors graduate. Later, I was a senior class co-sponsor there with graduation experts like Connie Maher and Jean Campbell. They taught me how to wear all these symbols of the ancient art of teaching. The first time I wore my high school regalia, I was thrilled and excite...

Note: This post is part of a year-long project in which I make notes of my final year working for the School District of Lee County, Florida. I think of this final of 35 years as my "senior year" as an educator. * * * This afternoon, I was making the long walk from Student Assignment (located at the outer end of one of the four main color-coded spurs of this building) to the Office of the Board Attorney (located at the outer end of another spur). The school district administration building used to be a regional shopping mall, and these hallways were once lined with shops. Thanks to the volunteer efforts of art teachers every summer, these long hallways are now instead lined with hundreds and hundreds of pieces of recent student artwork, which so far as anyone can tell makes this the largest collection of student artwork around these parts, maybe even across the state. These colorful collages, drawings, photographs, and paintings are a daily amazement to first-time visitors to...