Top Story: Report: Eighth-Grade Students Need Whole School Year to Reach Pre-Pandemic Performance
Month: July 2024
Top Commentary: With Chevron Dead, It’s Time to Challenge the Feres Doctrine
Report: Eighth-Grade Students Need Whole School Year to Reach Pre-Pandemic Performance
An education organization that administers a nationwide assessment has found that students are still not performing as well as they were immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic and that students’ achievement gap worsened in the 2023-24 school year as compared to before COVID.
NWEA, which issues the Measures of Academic Progress, said in a report this week that some middle school students are still an entire school year behind where they were before the pandemic in almost every grade as schools are slated to run out of federal relief this fall.
Read MoreTSNN Featured: Four Members of Militant Group ‘Jane’s Revenge’ Plead Guilty to Felony Charges for Attacking Pregnancy Centers
Kamala Harris Would Not Seek Fracking Ban If Elected to White House in November: Campaign
A spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign said on Friday that the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee would not seek a federal ban on fracking if she’s elected to the White House in November.
Harris previously claimed that she would support a ban on the technique during her initial run for the Oval Office in 2020, but the Biden administration has not sought such a ban.
Read MorePercentage of Americans Who Believe U.S. Is Ready for a Female President Drops
The amount of Americans that believe the U.S. is ready for a female president has dipped according to a poll published Friday, with just over half claiming they believe the country is ready this year.
The poll, conducted by YouGov for The Times, found that just 54% of respondents believe the country is ready to elect a female president in 2024, compared to 63% in a 2015 YouGov poll. The question comes as Vice President Kamala Harris emerges as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president now that President Joe Biden has withdrawn his bid for reelection.
Read MoreJustice Department Says TikTok Has Collected User Data on Issues Such as Gun Control and Abortion
The Justice Department on Friday evening accused the social media app TikTok of gathering information on users’ opinions on social issues such as abortion and gun control.
Attorneys for the DOJ said in documents filed at an appeals court in Washington that TikTok and its parent company ByteDance used an internal web-suite system called Lark to get TikTok employees to communicate with ByteDance engineers in China.
Read MoreCommentary: With Chevron Dead, It’s Time to Challenge the Feres Doctrine
Last month the Supreme Court ended the 40-year precedent known as the Chevron Doctrine. When the Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council ruling was handed down in 1984 there was nil understanding that it would enable the burgeoning 20th Century administrative state to dig its foundation down to societal bedrock. This legal precedent tied the hands of lower courts over the next 40 years, forcing them to defer to administrative agencies on how to interpret the law in areas that congress did not offer crystal clarity.
Chevron opened the door for succeeding precedents like the 2005 ruling in the National Cable & Telecommunications Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Services case, which enabled governmental agencies to “override judicial constructions of ambiguous federal laws by promulgating their own conflicting, yet authoritative, interpretations.” In 2020, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the Brand X opinion, lamented the ruling, rightly noting that it further ensconced judicial doctrine to the point of “administrative absolutism.” In essence, Chevron, and subsequent precedent under its umbrella, allowed presidential administrations to legislate around congress through cabinet agency directors.
Read MoreCommentary: Electrification Without the Infrastructure
As state and federal policies mandate the electrification of virtually all end uses to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels. For example, 18 states have adopted California’s Advanced Clear Car II rules requiring increasing percentages of new vehicle sales to be EVs, reaching 100% for the 2035 model year. In 2019, New York City enacted Local Law 97, which requires all residential buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to convert to electricity by 2035. Other states, such as New Jersey seek to convert all residential heating to electricity.
Together, mandates for electric vehicles (EVs) and electrification of space and water heat will likely double electricity consumption and peak demand. Coupled with policies that mandate supplying the nation’s electricity with zero-emissions resources, notably intermittent wind and solar power, not only will electricity prices continue to increase but the ability to meet consumers’ increased demand will become more problematic.
Read MoreCollege Board is Making It Easier for High School Students to Pass Prestigious Exams: Report
The College Board recently made changes to the Advanced Placement (AP) tests that have resulted in more student test-takers receiving higher scores, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The AP tests’ scoring changes involve replacing a panel of experts with a large-scale data analysis to determine skills students learned throughout the courses, the WSJ reported. Educators and test-prep companies are skeptical of the changes, alleging it is another form of grade inflation and a way to increase College Board’s business.
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