School districts across the Twin Cities area saw absenteeism spike during the ICE crackdown. In St. Paul, over 9,000 students were absent in mid-January; Minneapolis had over 8,000 students stay home in one day; Fridley saw attendance drop by nearly a third.
When you see Drs. Abbot, Shen or Ellis show up on the Pitt
A turtle with a purple shell munches on some food in the coral reefs around the Raja Ampat archipelago in Indonesia.
Do yourself a favor today and check out the STUNNING photos and videos in this AP story on Indonesia's coral reefs:
apnews.com/article/clim...
"The failures are the curriculum. The error messages are the syllabus. Every hour you spend confused is an hour you spend building the infrastructure inside your own head that will eventually let you do original work. There is no shortcut through that process that doesn't leave you diminished..."
This is so, so well-articulated.
Genuinely one of the best parts of my job is that I get to wander around the Terminal. For instance I was testing out the mapping function and in the process learned that the Waffle House location with the highest revenue in the country is the one near Arizona State's campus
I went looking for one Japanese chart book and ended up with 19 prewar volumes, a new collecting method, and a stronger conviction that graphic history is far from fully known. www.chartography.net/p/ascending-...
I wonder how you can separate the effect of screens in schools from the overwhelming ubiquity of screens outside of school? Has anyone done a RCT where one classroom in a school uses tech, the other doesn't?
New—
The backlash to ed-tech is growing, with some prominent voices making the case that it's at the root of recent learning declines.
I took a look at the evidence.
www.chalkbeat.org/2026/03/17/j...
🚨New working paper alert! 🚨
The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective?
Today we released a working paper suggesting it is.
"Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States"
Let me explain...
Henry VIII
I was using ChatGPT to help write some code, but when I pointed out an error, it bugged out and starting writing to me in Japanese. That’s what you call…the Ghost in the Shell.
NYT had a great article about the annual mango-buying frenzy in New Jersey's Indian community. Had a coworker who would buy, like, 50 pounds at a time once a year. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/d...
And yet, ironically, reformers constantly criticize the so-called "factory model" of education.
Now THAT's a headline.
"The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents"
fortune.com/2026/02/21/l...
US Government Deploys Elon Musk’s Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables
ok, that's enough 2026 for today
futurism.com/artificial-i...
VERSION 2.0 of the Segregation Tracking Project is here!
New data on racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and schools over the last 30+ years for every school district, metro area, state, county, congressional district (new!), and more!
edopportunity.org/segregation/
I got my first job at a daily paper without majoring in journalism or going to J-school. Writing did not suck up enormous amounts of time; I learned how to write quickly because I was on deadline every day. Once the hard work of reporting + THINKING is done, articles tend to write themselves.
I also have to applaud the college student who turned down a journalism job because it would be too AI-focused. Early career is when it's most important to get practice writing, so getting a AI-heavy role right out of school would have been terrible for this young person's professional development.
If you feed a mess of notes into a machine, and you don't know what you want to say, you will produce confused garbage. If you know what you want to say, craft your notes in an organized fashion so that the machine produces a coherent article...that's writing. You've only saved yourself some typing.
Wingspan, but make it data viz!
a Norwegian man crying on air while being interviewed, with his biathlon stats besides him
In the interview with NRK, he first started by thanking everyone who has helped him on the path to his first individual Olympic medal. And then – unprompted – he made an admission: – And then there's someone I wanted to share it with who might not be watching today. Six months ago I met the love of my life. The most beautiful and kindest person in the world. Three months ago I made my biggest mistake and cheated on her, and I told her about it a week ago. It's been the worst week of my life, he says tearfully in the interview.
new most bizarre moment of the Olympics just dropped
Norwegian biathlete wins bronze medal, then, totally unprompted, reveal he cheated on his GF, she left him, and he wants to apologize publicly hoping she takes him back
www.vg.no/sport/i/vr5g...
"More than half of all multilingual students in South Portland, and nearly half in Portland, were absent on some of the most affected days. Between Jan. 20 and 28, Black and Hispanic students in Portland missed school at a rate 30 percentage points higher than their white peers."
Screenshot from AP story: Giancarlo’s Minneapolis elementary school is the best thing going for him these days. There’s soccer to play at recess. The recorder to learn. Giancarlo has set his eyes on learning the flute next year when fifth graders choose an instrument. He has “demasiado” — “too many” — best friends to name. But his mother and brother’s home confinement weighs on him. He saves half the food he gets at school breakfast and lunch to share with them, and he’s lost four pounds this year. He takes extra care to bring pizza or hamburgers, treats the family used to eat in restaurants when his mom, an asylum-seeker from Latin America, was still working and they felt safe leaving the house. Giancarlo has also applied for asylum and his brother, Yair, has U.S. citizenship. Sometimes only seven of Giancarlo’s classmates show up when there should be close to 30. “The teachers cry,” he said. “It’s sad.”
Little boy says his food from school lunches to share with mother and brother who are too afraid to leave home:
It is really worth your time to stop what you're doing and read this INCREDIBLY reporting from Minneapolis by my talented colleague Bianca.
Look at this: @inquirer.com has digitally preserved the interpretative signage removed by NPS, and used annotations to explain what specifically was flagged before removal. This keeps the content publicly accessible (for now) while doing newsworthy reporting
www.inquirer.com/news/philade...
I talked to the principal at my kids' middle school yesterday, and he said about 30% of kids have not been showing up. Hard to fathom the academic and mental health impact this is having on kids, parents and teachers.
This is such a cool illustration of how the Mercator map distorts the size of Greenland, which looks as big as the whole continent of Africa on that map but is actually the size of Mexico.
A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas and stun grenades around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night. Shawn Jackson and his wife, Destiny, both 26, said they were driving home from a son’s basketball game when the family found themselves caught in a clash between protesters and federal agents in North Minneapolis. The couple sensed the encounter could quickly spiral out of control, they said, but when they tried to turn their car around to exit the blocked-off street, they were surrounded by federal agents. “From the side, the front and from behind me, it was nothing but ICE,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview on Thursday. One agent told the couple that they needed to get out of the area. Ms. Jackson said she and her husband responded that they were trying to do exactly that, but their path was blocked by agents coming up the street. Then, agents let loose on the crowd, the couple said. The crowd-control grenades went off around them and one tear gas canister rolled beneath the car, Ms. Jackson said. A concussive blast — from the tear gas canister or another device, she wasn’t sure — rocked the vehicle, she said, setting off the airbags and trapping the family as acrid smoke billowed around.
"A Minneapolis couple said that ICE agents deployed tear gas... around them and their six children — the youngest only 6 months old — as they tried to maneuver their car out of a tense protest on Wednesday night."
They were driving home from a son’s basketball game.
www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01...
