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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
What determines whether your child school is open this fall? Apparently, the strength of the teachers local union. That was what analysts found using data on school openings and the relative strength of those school districts’ unions. Corey A. DeAngelis, director of school choice at free market Reason Foundation, and Christos A. Makridis, assistant research professor at Arizona State University, based their findings on reporting from the trade publication Education Week. They found that every percentage point of teacher union membership at the state level corresponded with a 1.5 percent point lower chance that a school district would offer in-person instruction this fall. States that had right-to-work laws, which are associated with weaker unions, were 14 percent more likely to offer in-person classes than states that didn’t have the laws.
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from The Hill
LEAST BIASED, MOSTLY FACTUAL, News & Media Website in Washington, D.C.Ending counterproductive, counterintuitive regulation
Early in the COVID-19 crisis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) chided the Trump administration’s response and demanded “testing, testing, testing.” Yet, when the administration recently rescinded a Food and Drug Administration policy that caused many of the early testing delays, Pelosi’s colleague Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, declared the action “deeply concerning” and demanded an investigation. The administration’s early handling of the pandemic was far from flawless, but its curb on FDA regulation of laboratory-developed diagnostic tests should be applauded, not criticized. When the first COVID-19 cases were detected in the United States in January, several academic and hospital laboratories offered to create tests for the novel coronavirus but were thwarted by the FDA and Centers for Disease Control. A research lab at the University of Washington that had already collected nasal swabs for an ongoing study of influenza started to test the samples for coronavirus but was ordered to stop. The FDA insisted no COVID-19 tests could be used without its say-so, which usually means lengthy premarket approval or clearance. The declaration of a public health emergency gave the agency authority to issue expedited emergency use authorizations. But the only authorization FDA granted during February was for a CDC-developed test that proved defective. It wasn’t until Feb. 29 that the agency relented and allowed hospital and academic laboratories to use their own tests in advance of seeking emergency authorization, a move that kick-started the wide-scale testing necessary to combat the pandemic.
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from Hoover Institution
Nonprofit Organization in Stanford, California
The Army Marches Into The Future
During a public speech last week, Army Chief of Staff General James C. McConville called for rapid transformation of the U.S. Army to deal with new domains of warfare, particularly the electronic, cyberspace, and space domains. The Army has been seeking to adapt to “multi-domain operations” for several years, but McConville and others are dissatisfied with the rate of progress. With the outbreak of war possible at any time, they argue, the transformation has to take place at breakneck pace. Central to the Army’s transformation is the “Multi Domain Task Force”—a combat-ready unit equipped to fight in all domains simultaneously. The concept was initially fielded at the Rim of the Pacific exercise in 2018, and is being expanded to Europe. The task force possesses an array of assets that includes aviation, unmanned surveillance, air defense, electronic warfare, cyber, and space, as well as the traditional assets of land warfare.
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from Orthodox Christianity – orthochristian.com
Religious Organization in Moscow, Russia
The infamous terrorist group ISIS was planning for the last month and a half to attack Agia Sophia and other sites and to kidnap senior Turkish statemen and politicians to Syria, though Turkish police managed to foil the group’s plans. ISIS was attempting to form hit-teams of 10-12 people to carry out the attacks, Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu announced after Mahmut Özden, codenamed Abu Hamzi, the so-called “Emir of Turkey,” was arrested, reports the Hurriyet Daily News.
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from RenewableEnergyWorld.com
The U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation is seeking proposals to develop pumped-storage hydroelectric power using Lake Roosevelt in Grand Coulee, Wash. Lake Roosevelt, impounded by Grand Coulee Dam, is the main storage reservoir on the Columbia River for the U.S. The reservoir is lowered in the spring, to make room for the spring runoff and prevent flooding on the lower Columbia River. Operation of Grand Coulee Dam requires the release of water from Lake Roosevelt through the dam for power generation. The project has a capacity of 6,809 MW.
from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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For drivers stymied by the many one-way streets in downtown Spokane today, the story began in the mid-1960s. A new east-west freeway, soon to be named Interstate 90, was under construction, and it prompted the city to make Lincoln and Monroe streets into a couplet to handle increased traffic. They were also working on a Washington-Stevens couplet, not for a freeway interchange, but to better move north-south traffic through the downtown area. Main and Trent avenues also became a couplet. Eastbound traffic would take Main Avenue, where stores including The Bon Marché, The Crescent and JC Penney were the focus of downtown shopping.
Unless you are a teacher, were a teacher or live with a teacher, you don’t really know what teachers do all day. Nor do you really understand how much teachers do outside of the classroom. Traditional home-schooling parents already know. This year, every parent gets to find out. And every teacher has to let them. The best predictor of academic success has always been parental involvement, regardless of parental education level. It’s why students graduating from structured home-school or charter school programs perform at a higher level than the broad population of public school students, regardless of household income.
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