Report Critiques State Takeover School Districts in LA, TN, and MI; Michigan’s Will Be Dissolved

Posted on February 12, 2016 by janresseger

The Center for Popular Democracy released a fine new report earlier this week about three “‘takeover districts’ in which schools that are deemed ‘chronically failing’ are removed from the local school district and placed in a statewide district with a separate governance structure that is far less transparent and accountable to the public.”  The new report covers the Louisiana Recovery District, the Tennessee Achievement School District, and the Michigan Education Achievement Authority.

Such “recovery” or “achievement” school districts are a little different than direct state takeovers of school districts like those in Newark, New Jersey, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Highland Park, Michigan.  The states operating the “recovery” or “achievement” districts have created a separate statewide school district with the plan of removing particular low-scoring schools from their local district and inserting them into a new statewide governance body.

One of the first things you notice about these so-called statewide districts, however, is that they haven’t really succeeded well enough to operate statewide.

Go to the source: Report Critiques State Takeover School Districts in LA, TN, and MI; Michigan’s Will Be Dissolved

Mad Scientists Take on Education

 

by Emily Talmage

Each year, computer scientists from around the world take part in the International Conference on Machine Learning

.Sponsored by groups like Facebook, Microsoft, the National Science Foundation, and Alibaba (the organization responsible for China’s controversial “Sesame Credit” program), ICML showcases the latest research on artificial intelligence and its uses in fields like education.“Education remains an outdated process that requires extensive human effort from course instructors and students,” the hosts of last summer’s “Machine Learning for Education” workshop wrote in a call for paper submissions.In a series of sessions with titles like “Grand challenges in Educational Data Mining,” “Machine Learning for Spaced Repetition and Variable Rewards,” and “Deep Knowledge Tracing,” scientists and mathematicians presented their latest algorithms to get computers to learn from people and people to learn from computers.BF Skinner, original developer of the teaching machine, would no doubt be highly impressed.Parents, on the other hand, should be on high alert.

Why? Well, follow the link : Mad Scientists Take on Education

How legislation about shelter animals led to confusion over Michigan’s sodomy laws | Michigan Radio

A story circulated recently that took the Republican-led state Senate to task ostensibly for voting to uphold the Michigan statute that outlaws sodomy. 

I think it’s fair to say that term limits for state-wide office holders prevents them from taking their time, doing research and effectively consulting experts on a wide-variety of otherwise legitimate concerns of importance to their constituents. And all that because apparently voters did not trust themselves to vote out those who are otherwise ineffective thereby absolving all of us from doing our own due diligence by taking our time, doing our research and consulting others about the job our elected officials are doing. – JLS

 

It’s Just Politics with Zoe Clark and Rick Pluta
A story circulated recently that took the Republican-led state Senate to task ostensibly for voting to uphold the Michigan statute that outlaws sodomy. The story was widely circulated and re-posted, but there was no actual basis in fact to what started as a blog post.

Proof that, like tequila, the internet can make you feel smart, but act dumb.

What really happened? Follow the link below to find out.

Source: How legislation about shelter animals led to confusion over Michigan’s sodomy laws | Michigan Radio