In part 3 of my 4-part series on AI Literacy and Informed Skepticism I channel Adrej Karpathy to answer the question “How Does AI Work?” A walk through pre-training, fine-tuning and reinforcement learning and Claude attempts a super funny joke about pelicans. derekcbriggs.github.io/posts/2026-0...

Denver did not disappoint

#Handsoff2025 #Denver #thisiswhatdemocracylookslike

Colorado could lose 222 million due to federal health research cuts. Visit scienceimpacts.org to learn more. scienceimpacts.org

Congratulations to the 22 new members elected to the National Academy of Education! They include many NCME members and two recent past presidents, @derekbriggs.bsky.social and Steve Sireci.

They join many other measurement experts and NCME members in the Academy. www.google.com/search?q=sit...

Austin Reaves!! Lakers win, Celtics lose, a merry Christmas.

Interested in measurement? Do you like geeking out? Do you like geeking out with a good beer in beautiful Boulder? Then come to www.iomw.net

When Trump left office, students were struggling because of the pandemic. They still are When President-elect Trump left office in early 2021, the pandemic was at its height. Now he returns as American children and schools are struggling to overcome its lingering impact. Learning loss …

"Do they have any interest at all in using the power of the U.S. Department of Education to actually improve schools? Or are they only interested in pursuing, you know, an expansion of school choice, a weaponization of Title IX and the expansion of culture war nonsense?”

Assistant Professor in Quantitative Methods in Educational Research University of California Santa Barbara is hiring. Apply now!

Come work with me and my fantastic colleagues in the Dept of Education @ UCSB. Quant methods position w/application details below. Reach out with q’s
recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02883

Growth across Grades and Common Item Grade Alignment in Vertical Scaling Using the Rasch Model Vertical scales are frequently developed using common item nonequivalent group linking. In this design, one can use upper-grade, lower-grade, or mixed-grade common items to estimate the linking const...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Out now! @derekbriggs.bsky.social, Laurie Davis and I investigate differences in how much students appear to grow on a vertical scale based solely on the grade alignment of (a large number of) common items. Turns out, the differences are pretty big!

Dalton Knecht. That’s it, that’s all there is to say.

Why play Gabe at all? He’s not stopping anyone on D and can’t hit wide open looks. At least Max has some size and might grab a board or two

Gabe and D-Lo have been 🗑️🚮

The runs in this game have been incredible. Steph is just a bad MFer! Legendary stuff

What a fun game.

I’m trying to get serious about my migration. But basketball related posts here still seem pretty few and far between. My feed is basically Kevin Kruse posts and reposts 😂

Watching Warriors-Mavs its hard not to be mad at what a crappy job Lakers FO has done putting a good supporting cast around AD and Bron. They lucked into AR. But almost no dependable players in roster slots 4-15. In contrast, look at the way Warriors and Mavs have creatively rebuilt their rosters.