Dear Commons Community,

The United States Department of Education is getting ready to exert greater oversight of online program managers (OPMs) and other education technology companies.  In a letter dated February 16^th, the USDOE indicated that it is updating its requirements and responsibilities for third-party servicers and institutions. Specifically the letter states that it is updating guidance to institutions that contract with a third-party servicer (TPS) to administer any aspect of the institution’s participation in the student assistance programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA).

The Chronicle of Higher Education commented on the details of the USDOE statement:

“Third-party servicers” is a label historically reserved for entities that assist institutions in administering federal financial aid to students. But now, sources say, many ed-tech vendors — including those providing online-program management, learning-management systems, and mandatory tutoring — all could fall under that same umbrella. That would make them subject to various requirements: Having to be based in the U.S. Being held responsible with their client institution for any violation of Title IV requirements, and any resulting damages.  Submitting an annual, independent compliance audit. Allowing government access to its college contracts

“It’s pretty unprecedented what they’re doing,“ said Katherine Brodie, a lawyer at Duane Morris LLP specializing in education issues. “It’s a sweeping expansion of jurisdiction that we haven’t seen before.”

This appears to be a focused attempt on the part of the USDOE to provide more oversight if not rein in the practices of these vendors.

The Chronicle article with more extensive analysis of the new USDOE requirements is below.

Tony

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

Education Dept. Shocks Ed-Tech Experts and Colleges With Expansion of Oversight

By  Taylor Swaak

February 22, 2023

The U.S. Department of Education has announced a stunning expansion of its interpretation of federal regulations that appears to put a large swath of colleges’ ed-tech vendors on the hook for following more rules, and place the vendors under closer scrutiny.

Updated guidance shared last week stated that, “effective immediately,” the department considers entities that help colleges serve students in their Title IV-eligible programs by providing recruitment and retention services, certain software products, and “any percentage” of educational content and instruction to be “third-party servicers,” with some exceptions. And colleges need to report those arrangements by May 1.

“Third-party servicers” is a label historically reserved for entities that assist institutions in administering federal financial aid to students. But now, sources say, many ed-tech vendors — including those providing online-program management, learning-management systems, and mandatory tutoring — all could fall under that same umbrella. That would make them subject to various requirements: Having to be based in the U.S. Being held responsible with their client institution for any violation of Title IV requirements, and any resulting damages. Submitting an annual, independent compliance audit. Allowing government access to its college contracts

“It’s pretty unprecedented what they’re doing,“ said Katherine Brodie, a lawyer at Duane Morris LLP specializing in education issues. “It’s a sweeping expansion of jurisdiction that we haven’t seen before.”

Higher-ed lawyers and ed-tech experts said they were anticipating that the Education Department would move to expand oversight of online-program managers; there’s been mounting pressure to keep a closer eye on these companies, which often help institutions scale up their online programs for a hefty cut of their tuition revenue. But sources said the release of guidance that reads like a unilateral redefinition of what a third-party servicer is — without first collecting public comments — was shocking, especially given the potential implications for colleges.

It’s not so much about extra paperwork, they said, but about the risk of accidental noncompliance. New legal requirements may also necessitate changes to colleges’ existing contracts with ed-tech companies, and prompt re-evaluations of the services an institution receives.

Some observers seeking greater accountability for institutions and the companies they contract with were pleased by the news. And to be sure, experts who spoke with The Chronicle underscored that they support consumer protection and transparency, along with the department’s having access to more data about colleges’ arrangements with vendors. Sources said the problem is the broadness of the definition, and the confusion it’s already causing across college campuses.

“We know that there are bad actors, and we appreciate the development of regulations to protect students from bad actors,” said Cheryl Dowd, senior director of the State Authorization Network and policy innovations at WCET, an organization that advises colleges on effective technology use. “But we also need to be clear.”

In the hours and days after the letter’s release, sources said they’d received a barrage of messages from college administrators: Is our partner now a third-party servicer? Should we move forward with pending contracts? Revisit or cancel existing contracts? What now? Phil Hill, a partner at the ed-tech consultancy MindWires, said that at least one institution he’d spoken with had, within 48 hours of reading the news, paused operations with a vendor that assists with recruitment.

“People are freaked out right now,” Hill said.

A Department of Education spokesperson wrote in an email that the department’s “greatest concern” in issuing this guidance is “the area of recruitment and activities tied to the administration of federal student-aid funds.” The department will “work with colleges to ensure the requirements are clear and that they have ample time to meet reporting deadlines,” the spokesperson added.

A crackdown of sorts on online-program managers, at least, had been imminent.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report last year called out the Department of Education for its deficient oversight of online-program managers; it noted, for example, that the department doesn’t know the number of colleges contracting with OPMs (the report estimated at least 550 colleges). The industry’s dominant payment model, revenue-share agreements, has also evoked concerns of predatory and deceptive recruiting practices. An oft-cited case is that of the University of Southern California, where The Wall Street Journal reported that half the graduates who’d shelled out $115,000 for an online master’s program in social work were earning just $52,000 per year, or less, two years after graduating, and that the median amount of graduates’ federal student loans was $112,000.

It initially appeared that the department would set a conversation in motion a bit later this year. It had cited the definition of third-party servicers as an agenda item for its next round of negotiated rulemaking, and many ed-tech pundits surmised OPMs were a driving force behind the agency’s revisiting that part of its regulations. (Negotiated rulemaking is how government agencies create — or revise — their regulations, which are essentially robust instructions for how an agency will employ and enforce laws that are passed by Congress. It’s a monthslong process involving public meetings and the creation of a committee whose members represent the constituencies most likely to be affected by changes.)

But then, last week, came a “Dear Colleague” letter instead, in which the department clarified what it considers to be “third-party servicers” under existing regulations. The guidance singled out by name the “large and growing” OPM industry, which rakes in more than $4 billion annually. Yet the language itself suggested a far wider range of targets.

“Reviews have confirmed that most activities and functions performed by outside entities on behalf of an institution are intrinsically intertwined with the institution’s administration of the Title IV programs, and thus the entities performing such activities are appropriately subject to TPS requirements,” the guidance stated.

That includes entities that provide prospective students with information on a college’s educational programs. It includes companies that sell computer services or software to a college and have access to the systems used to administer Title IV programs, such as financial-aid management, recruitment and enrollment, admissions, and learning management. It includes vendors that monitor academic engagement, or respond to student inquiries for the purpose of retention. It includes entities that provide “any percentage” of a Title IV-eligible program, including delivering instruction and assessing student learning. (The majority of colleges’ programs, across institution type, are Title IV-eligible, as that allows students in these programs who demonstrate financial need to gain access to loans and grants).

Wait a minute, experts and lawyers reading the letter thought. This sounds like learning-management systems. And AI communication tools like chatbots. And proctoring. And adaptive courseware. And mandatory tutoring. And even institutions themselves, if they provide these kinds of services to other institutions.

“We’re going to be hard-pressed to find educational-technology companies in general that are not going to be potentially falling under this definition,” said Van Davis, chief strategy officer at WCET. An Education Department spokesperson did not discuss individual vendor categories, but noted in an email that “broadly used software solutions” are not a key focus.

Erika Swain, assistant director for compliance and authorization at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said she went on high alert after coming across the news over her morning coffee last Wednesday. She racked her brain — Does our partner who helps us organize and vet information for our course catalog count? — and by end of week had requested and sifted through the related contract. In that case, she decided the vendor doesn’t apply. But the guidance now has her wanting to double-check everything.

“We’re reading through this again and again,” she said, and various units plan to conduct a discovery process of vendor services in their purview. They’ll be asking: “What is it that we’re doing? How do we do it? Who does it? Where does it live? And what does the contract say?”

The department in its guidance said that if the institution is unsure of whether a partner is subject to third-party servicer requirements, it should contact its School Participation Division at CaseTeams@ed.gov. Institutions have until May 1 to report any arrangements with third-party servicers that have not been previously reported to the department.

The guidance does outline some exceptions; for example, a vendor who publishes or mails general student financial-aid information that the institution provides doesn’t count as a third-party servicer. Nor does a company that delivers optional and “supplementary” academic assistance like tutoring. Still, experts are worried about college compliance because of the immediacy and apparent breadth of the change.

“It’s not that they’re malicious actors, or they’re hiding information, or they’re trying not to be in compliance,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations for the American Council on Education. It’s that, “When it’s not as clear anymore what’s covered and what isn’t, it’s really hard to report back, and to understand what your obligations are.”

The exact consequences of noncompliance are unclear, though experts noted that, in general, if the Education Department finds a college in violation of its regulations, the institution and its students risk losing federal funding.

Implications for Business

What this means for colleges’ arrangements with ed-tech companies also remains hazy.

There are well-known ed-tech vendors that work with institutions in the U.S. but are not based there. The behemoth publishing company Pearson, headquartered in London, offers numerous services that experts suspect may fall under this latest guidance, including curriculum development and online-program management. D2L, which created the learning-management system Brightspace, is based in Kitchener, Ontario. Its college partners in North America enroll nearly five million students, according to ListEdTech data.

Even if a company meets other conditions, some experts say the requirement to be held responsible alongside its client for damages — known as “jointly and severally liable” — could be off-putting. “If you reach out to your vendor and say, ‘We’re about to report you as a third-party servicer,’” it’s possible the company could say, “‘Look, we don’t want to become a third-party servicer, so let’s just cancel the contract,’” said Tony Guida, also an education lawyer at Duane Morris.

Brodie knows of contracts that have specific language clarifying that the vendor is not a third-party servicer. One that she cited is a nonpublic contract between two institutions, where one institution is helping the other recruit for its online programs.

The Department of Education did not answer specific questions about its stance on existing partnerships with non-domestic companies, or how soon a college would need to update its contracts that don’t meet all of the outlined requirements for compliance.

There’s a chance, too, some Chronicle sources added, that companies newly identified as third-party servicers may ask for more money to account for the added liabilities and cost of compliance. That’s been the case for FAME, a longtime third-party servicer that provides financial-aid management assistance to colleges. In the last decade, when third-party servicers became liable for the accuracy of the data that institutions submitted to them, the company had to invest in more data-verification procedures — a cost that got passed in part to FAME’s clients, wrote Sally Samuels, director of compliance, in an email.

To her knowledge, FAME has not lost any college clients because of those additional fees, which she said were not substantial. It’s “a cost of business,” she wrote.

For Trace Urdan, managing director at the consulting firm Tyton Partners, the biggest fear is that this will have a “dampening” effect on innovation, such as low-cost online degree programs. “If you overregulate or if you scare people off … you’re not going to get that innovation,” Urdan said. “And to me, that’s the shame.”

Not everyone is as skeptical. Some Twitter users celebrated the news as a win for greater transparency; one user called it a “significant upgrade to a major blind spot in federal guidance.”

Swain, at Colorado, said she doesn’t see the guidance stifling innovation, per se. But she imagines it’ll push many institutions — hers included — to be more thoughtful and deliberate when deciding whether, and which, vendor services are needed.

The Chronicle hasn’t gotten word of corporate pushback, at least not yet. It asked for reactions from four dominant OPMs that serve U.S. colleges— Pearson, 2U, Academic Partnerships, and Wiley University Services. All wrote in email statements that they look forward to working with the Education Department on navigating this latest guidance.

Some experts The Chronicle interviewed wonder if the Education Department will now scrap plans for negotiated rulemaking. The department did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for a status update, though at the time of publication, the agenda item was still on its site.

Russ Poulin, executive director for WCET, and others noted that negotiated rulemaking is going to be necessary to spell out how the department will determine compliance, and the consequences for noncompliance. There’s also the reality, Poulin added, that changes to regulations made through the negotiated-rulemaking process are less vulnerable to the whims of the political party in power, which can fairly easily repeal and replace guidance like Dear Colleague letters.

As for the guidance itself, the department noted a 30-day comment period through March 17; those interested in leaving a comment can do so via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at Regulations.gov, under Docket ID ED-2022-OPE-0103. The department “will carefully review all comments received and may amend or clarify the guidance,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.

Before that deadline, the public will also have the opportunity to weigh in on a tangential matter: a 2011 Dear Colleague letter that allows vendors (most notably online-program managers) to offer recruitment services so long as they’re part of a bundled package. Virtual public listening sessions will take place on March 8 and March 9; more details can be found here.

Sources who spoke to The Chronicle agreed about what this all means: more regulating to come in the months ahead.

Dear Commons Community,

Officials at Vanderbilt University are apologizing to students outraged that the university used ChatGPT to craft a consoling email after the mass shooting at Michigan State University.

Administrators at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development sent an email to students and staff on February 15th that noted, in small print at the bottom, that the message was a “paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication.”

The email stressed the importance of “a safe and inclusive environment for all” and encouraged members of the college to “come together as a community,” and was written in clear, understandable prose.

However, unlike a statement the day prior by the university’s vice provost, which seemed to use more personal language than the Peabody message, the Peabody email lacked a list of campus resources students could access to help them process their emotions.

Laith Kayat, a senior whose sister attends Michigan State, called the use of ChatGPT “disgusting.”

“There is a sick and twisted irony to making a computer write your message about community and togetherness because you can’t be bothered to reflect on it yourself,” Kayat told the Vanderbilt Hustler, the school’s student paper, who first reported the Peabody College’s use of AI.

According to the newspaper, Nicole Joseph, Peabody’s associate dean for equity, diversity and inclusion, sent a follow-up email apologizing.

“While we believe in the message and inclusivity expressed in the email, using ChatGPT to generate communications on behalf of our community in a time of sorrow and in response to a tragedy contradicts the values that characterize Peabody College,” Joseph wrote, according to the Hustler.

Joseph did not respond to ABC News about how much of the email was “paraphrased” by a human and how much reflected ChatGPT’s first draft.

Camilla Benbow, Dean of the Peabody College, said in a statement that she was unaware of the email before it was sent and said she is investigating what led up to its release.

“I offer my heartfelt apologies to all those who deserved better from us and did not receive it,” she said.

Joseph and Assistant Dean Hasina Mohyuddin will step back from their responsibilities with the EDI office as the university investigates, Benbow said in the statement.

A Vanderbilt spokeswoman directed ABC News to Benbow’s statement and did not answer questions about how often university representatives use ChatGPT in official communication.

Not appropriate but this is the AI age we are entering!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Astronomers have discovered what appear to be massive galaxies dating back to within 600 million years of the Big Bang, suggesting the early universe may have had a stellar fast-track that produced these “monsters.”

While the new James Webb Space Telescope has spotted even older galaxies, dating to within a mere 300 million years of the beginning of the universe, it’s the size and maturity of these six apparent mega-galaxies that stun scientists. They reported their findings Wednesday.

Lead researcher Ivo Labbe of Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology and his team expected to find little baby galaxies this close to the dawn of the universe — not these whoppers.

“While most galaxies in this era are still small and only gradually growing larger over time,” he said in an email, “there are a few monsters that fast-track to maturity. Why this is the case or how this would work is unknown.”

Each of the six objects looks to weigh billions of times more than our sun. In one of them, the total weight of all its stars may be as much as 100 billion times greater than our sun, according to the scientists, who published their findings in the journal Nature.

Labbe said he and his team didn’t think the results were real at first — that there couldn’t be galaxies as mature as our own Milky Way so early in time — and they still need to be confirmed. The objects appeared so big and bright that some members of the team thought they had made a mistake.

“We were mind-blown, kind of incredulous,” Labbe said.

The Pennsylvania State University’s Joel Leja, who took part in the study, calls them “universe breakers.”

“The revelation that massive galaxy formation began extremely early in the history of the universe upends what many of us had thought was settled science,” Leja said in a statement. “It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science. It calls the whole picture of early galaxy formation into question.”

These galaxy observations were among the first data set that came from the $10 billion Webb telescope, launched just over a year ago. NASA and the European Space Agency’s Webb is considered the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, coming up on the 33rd anniversary of its launch.

Unlike Hubble, the bigger and more powerful Webb can peer through clouds of dust with its infrared vision and discover galaxies previously unseen. Scientists hope to eventually observe the first stars and galaxies formed following the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago.

The researchers still are awaiting official confirmation through sensitive spectroscopy, careful to call these candidate massive galaxies for now. Leja said it’s possible that a few of the objects might not be galaxies, but obscured supermassive black holes.

While some may prove to be smaller, “odds are good at least some of them will turn out to be” galactic giants, Labbe said. “The next year will tell us.”

One early lesson from Webb is “to let go of your expectations and be ready to be surprised,” he said.

Indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on my blog a column by Maureen Dowd on artificial intelligence.  In it, she referred to a book, Mind Children:  The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, by Hans Moravec and published in 1988 through Harvard University Press.   Moravec is a  faculty member at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He is known for his work on robotics, artificial intelligence, and writings on the impact of technology. Moravec also is a futurist with many of his publications and predictions focusing on transhumanism.

Dowd specifically commented:

“So far, our mind children, as the roboticist Hans Moravec called our artificially intelligent offspring, are in the toddler phase, as we ooh and aah at the novelty of our creation. They’re headed for the rebellious teenage phase. When A.I. hurtles into adulthood and isn’t so artificial anymore, we’ll be relegated to being the family pets, as a resigned Steve Wozniak put it.”

Dowd is right in her assessment that even with the widespread emergence of ChatGPT, we are in the toddler phase of AI.  I was not familiar with Moravec and decided to read his book.  He provides a lot of history on the development of computer technology and provides glimpses of what it will mean in the future in an AI-driven world.  His is a very techno-centric vision with machines evolving into entities as complex as humankind. At under 200 pages, it is a quick read.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times in 1989.

Tony

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THE SOULS OF THE NEW MACHINES

January 1, 1989, Sunday
Section 7; Page 10, Column 1; Book Review Desk
By M. MITCHELL WALDROP
M. Mitchell Waldrop is a reporter for Science magazine specializing in physics, astronomy, space, computers and cognitive science. He is the author of ”Man-Made Minds,” a study of artificial intelligence.

MIND CHILDREN The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence.
By Hans Moravec.
Illustrated. 214 pp. Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard University Press. $18.95.

About four billion years ago, according to one theory, certain clay minerals in the stream beds and oceans of the primordial earth served as a kind of scaffolding for the creation of life. The billions of microscopic crystals in clay provided billions of surfaces where simple carbon-based molecules, such as amino acids, were able to gather and link up into more complex molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids. In time, these larger molecules began to interact with each other, becoming more and more sophisticated until they were able to float free and reproduce themselves without the help of the clay. And when that happened the mineral scaffolding of clay was no longer needed; carbon-based life as we know it was well under way.

Now, no one can say whether or not this theory is true. But it does lead to an intriguing question: is something similar happening now? Does the ever-increasing power and autonomy of our computers and robots mean that we are headed toward a new transition, one that this time will see biological life itself superseded?

For Hans Moravec, director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the answer is a resounding yes. If robotics and computer technology continue to develop at current rates – a prospect Mr. Moravec finds no reason to question – he predicts that robots will pass the threshold of humanlike abilities within 50 years or so, at which point they will no longer need us. While many readers will doubtless find this prospect terrifying, Mr. Moravec glories in it. The robots he envisions in ”Mind Children” will be nothing at all like the rigid, emotionless automatons we’ve come to expect from bad science fiction movies. They will be our companions, our helpmates and our heirs.

”Today,” Mr. Moravec writes, ”our machines are still simple creations, requiring the parental care and hovering attention of any newborn, hardly worthy of the word ‘intelligent.’ But within the next century they will mature into entities as complex as ourselves, and eventually into something transcending everything we know – in whom we can take pride when they refer to themselves as our descendants.”

No longer dependent on the slow, random process of Darwinian evolution, Mr. Moravec’s robots will be free to adapt themselves to environments ranging from the ocean floors of Earth to the cloud tops of Jupiter: ”Away from earth, protein is not an ideal material,” he writes. ”It is stable only in a narrow temperature and pressure range, [ and ] is very sensitive to radiation. . . . [ But ] before long, conventional technologies, miniaturized down to the atomic scale, and biotechnology, its molecular interactions understood in detailed mechanical terms, will have merged into a seamless array of techniques encompassing all materials, sizes, and complexities. Robots will then be made of a mix of fabulous substances, including, where appropriate, living biological materials.”

Such beings need bear little resemblance to humans, he says – or, for that matter, to C3PO and R2D2 of ”Star Wars” fame. To give a sense of the possibilities, Mr. Moravec imagines a treelike device that he calls the robot bush. It has a rodlike body about one yard long, where many of its sensors and much of its brain power are concentrated. It also has two arms, each containing a fair amount of brain power in its own right; four reasonably smart fingers; eight fingerlets – and so on until its ever-branching limbs finally terminate in roughly one trillion microscopic appendages. ”The bush robot could reach into a complicated piece of delicate mechanical equipment – or even a living organism,” he writes. It could ”simultaneously sense the relative position of millions of parts, some possibly as small as molecules, and rearrange them for a near-instantaneous repair. In most cases the superior touch sense would totally substitute for vision, and the extreme dexterity would eliminate the need for special tools.”

Well, all this is fun, not to mention mind-expanding. But then, so is science fiction. What makes Mr. Moravec’s book different is that he wants us to take it seriously, as a realistic sketch of our not-very-distant future. And that means that a reader has a right to expect some answers to two very basic questions – answers that ”Mind Children,” unfortunately, does not always provide.

First, is any of this (super)human robotics technology even possible? Here, Mr. Moravec is at his best. As someone who has been at the forefront of robotics research for nearly two decades, he has clearly done a lot of thinking about how to get from here to there. Some of the steps he proposes are admittedly sketchy. Nonetheless, in the early chapters of ”Mind Children” he has given us a comprehensive and highly readable survey of the state of the art in robotics. He includes detailed discussions of sensors, grippers and mechanical legs – and why such ”simple” things as walking and seeing are so much more difficult than ”hard” mental tasks such as playing chess or proving mathematical theorems. The book is worth reading for these sections alone.

However, I was left feeling curiously unsatisfied on one count. Mr. Moravec’s whole thesis presumes that sufficiently advanced computers and robots will possess consciousness in the same sense we do; otherwise, how could they become our heirs? And yet, except to say that consciousness will be ”emergent” in complex systems, he does little to justify this presumption. In fact, it has been the subject of many a debate among philosophers, psychologists and artificial intelligence researchers: is thought just a form of (very complex) information processing? I happen to believe it is. But there are a lot of deep issues here, and I think ”Mind Children” would have been stronger with a much better discussion of them.

Leaving that issue aside, however, we still have the second basic question: is Mr. Moravec’s vision of the future desirable? And here, I think, he falters. Nowhere in ”Mind Children” does he express the slightest doubt that what can be done will be done. (Indeed, he argues that nations will be forced to develop robots as fast as possible in the name of economic competitiveness.) He says very little about the impact of humanlike robots on human employment – or, more importantly, on humankind’s sense of purpose and dignity. Apparently we are simply to fade away, leaving the universe to our heirs and betters. And he gives only passing mention to that ancient human institution, warfare. The fact is that military needs have always been among the major drivers of computer and robotics research, both here and abroad; Mr. Moravec’s near-human machines might very well find their first uses as robot soldiers and robot fighter planes.

Perhaps it is true, as Mr. Moravec argues, that none of those doubts will make any difference in the long run. Nonetheless, without a better and more sensitive discussion of these issues, ”Mind Children” comes perilously close to the kind of uncritical gee-whiz that gives technological optimism a bad name. I happen to think that Mr. Moravec’s vision of our long-term future is an important one, worth thinking about as seriously as he does. But for that very reason, it deserves a better setting.

Dear Commons Community,

The Don Lemon saga continued today when he returned to CNN’s “This Morning.”   As reported by various media, Lemon is to undergo formal training regarding his comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. 

“I sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation,” the network’s chief executive, Chris Licht, said in an email to employees Monday night. “He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously.”

“It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with … fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes,” Licht said in the email, per CNN. “To that end, Don will return to CNN This Morning [Wednesday].

As mentioned on this blog yesterday, Lemon had been missing from the CNN morning show since Thursday, after he declared 51-year-old Haley was not “in her prime.” A woman, he added, was considered in her prime “in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.” His remarks came during a broader discussion about age triggered by Haley’s suggestion that politicians over 75 be required to take a competency test

Lemon was met with immediate pushback from co-anchors Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, but he doubled down.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are,” he said.

Haley similarly pushed back against the CNN anchor during an appearance on Fox News.

“I have always made the liberals’ heads explode,” said Haley. “They can’t stand the fact that a minority conservative female would not be on the Democratic side, because they know I pull independents, they know I pull suburban women, they know I pull minorities over to what we are trying to do.”

She added: “I wasn’t sitting there saying sexist middle-aged CNN anchors need to have mental competency tests, although he may have just proven that point.”

Lemon previously apologized to employees for his comments, which prompted internal and external backlash, during Friday’s daily editorial meeting.

“When I make a mistake, I own it,” Lemon said. “And I own this one as well.”

Lemon also thanked Licht for the opportunity to address his coworkers and fellow staff members, emphasizing that he wanted to be “really clear” about his regret for making the comments.

“I believe that women of any age… can do whatever they set their minds to.”

I agree!

Tony

Click on to enlarge.

Dear Commons Community,

CNN is reporting this morning that according to a new study, any amount of physical activity starting at any age is helpful for long-term cognitive health.

Researchers already knew that people who participate in physical activity in their leisure time have a lower risk for dementia and higher cognitive function later in life than those who are inactive, said study author Dr. Sarah-Naomi James, a research fellow at MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London.

What researchers didn’t know was whether there was a specific time in life by which a person needed to get active or if there was an activity threshold they needed to meet to see those benefits, James said.

The study, published Tuesday in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, tracked the physical activity patterns of nearly 1,500 people over the course of 30 years in adulthood. At age 69, the participants were tested on their cognitive state, verbal memory and processing speed, according to the study.   An abstract of the study is below.

While lifelong physical activity was associated with the best cognitive results later in life, being active at any time to any extent was associated with higher cognition, the study found.

Even people who became active in their 50s or 60s achieved better cognitive scores when they reached 70 years old, James said. A surprisingly small amount of activity — as little as once a month — at any time across adulthood was helpful, she added.

“It seems clear from this study and others that small doses of exercise across the lifespan and starting young is very beneficial to long term health,” said Dr. William Roberts, professor of family medicine and community health at the University of Minnesota Medical School, via email.

On a societal level, the findings show a need for more access to education that encourage skills and motivation for physical activity at any age, according to the study.

How to get active?

For people who have been active regularly, the results should be encouraging and suggest that their investment can pay off, Roberts said.

“For people who have never been physically active, or have gone through a period of inactivity, start!” James said via email.

If you are not exactly an athlete who loves to break a sweat, there are still ways to work some activity into your life.

To build a habit that sticks, it is important to set a goal, make a specific plan, find a way to make it fun, stay flexible and get social support, said behavioral scientist Katy Milkman, author of “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” in a 2021 interview with CNN. Milkman is the James G. Dinan Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

You can start slow, said Dana Santas, CNN fitness contributor and mind-body coach for professional athletes.

“Fitting in 10 minutes of exercise every day is so much easier than people think. Consider how fast 10 minutes goes by when you’re mindlessly scrolling social media or watching your favorite TV show,” Santas told CNN in a 2022 interview. “It’s not a big-time investment, but it can deliver big health benefits.”

Yoga is a great way to be active while relieving stress — and is easily accessible for all levels online, she said.

And walking outside or on a treadmill is one of the simplest ways to bring exercise in consistently, Santas said.

“Walking is the most underrated, corrective, mind-body, fat-burning exercise available to humans,” she added. “I walk every single day.”

Regular walks can be a great opportunity to multitask, if you use them to bond with family, friends and neighbors, Santas added.

If you want to boost the intensity of you walk, Santas recommended adding in harder intervals, weights or a heavy backpack.

“Walking for five minutes every hour goes a long way,” Evan Matthews, associate professor of exercise science and physical education at New Jersey’s Montclair State University, told CNN in 2021. “It doesn’t need to even be moderate intensity. Just move.”

As a septuagenarian who has tried to stay physically active, this study is welcome news.

Tony

————————————————————

Abstract

Background To assess how timing, frequency and maintenance of being physically active, spanning over 30 years in adulthood, is associated with later-life cognitive function.

Methods Participants (n=1417, 53% female) were from the prospective longitudinal cohort study, 1946 British birth cohort. Participation in leisure time physical activity was reported five times between ages 36 and 69, categorised into: not active (no participation in physical activity/month); moderately active (participated 1–4 times/month); most active (participated 5 or more times/month). Cognition at age 69 was assessed by tests of cognitive state (Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III), verbal memory (word learning test) and processing speed (visual search speed).

Results Being physically active, at all assessments in adulthood, was associated with higher cognition at age 69. For cognitive state and verbal memory, the effect sizes were similar across all adult ages, and between those who were moderately and most physically active. The strongest association was between sustained cumulative physical activity and later-life cognitive state, in a dose-response manner. Adjusting for childhood cognition, childhood socioeconomic position and education largely attenuated these associations but results mainly remained significant at the 5% level.

Conclusions Being physically active at any time in adulthood, and to any extent, is linked with higher later-life cognitive state, but lifelong maintenance of physical activity was most optimal. These relationships were partly explained by childhood cognition and education, but independent of cardiovascular and mental health and APOE-E4, suggestive of the importance of education on the lifelong impacts of physical activity.

Jen Psaki

Dear Commons Community,

MSNBC announced yesterday that former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki will debut a weekly political program on Sundays at noon next month.

It’s part of an effort to give Joe Biden’s first presidential spokesperson a more extensive role on the political network.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Jen’s Sunday show is just a piece of a much bigger puzzle,” said Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC’s senior vice president for content strategy. “We want to bring Jen’s voice to MSNBC’s audience everywhere.”

The Sunday show, “Inside with Jen Psaki,” puts her at a time of week popular for many television public affairs show. Her show will contain one-on-one interviews with newsmakers, essays and explainers of complicated political issues like the war in Ukraine and debt ceiling talks.

It will also be available the next day on the Peacock streaming service. Psaki is developing other content for Peacock that will fit into the “Inside” brand the network is developing for her,  Kutler said.

One recurring segment on her new show, “Weekend Routine,” will profile a lawmaker or newsmaker as Psaki follows them as they go about some everyday activities.

The Sunday show debuts on March 19.

It’s also important that MSNBC viewers get to know Psaki, Kutler said.

“This is the first time she really gets to speak for herself,” she said, “for the first time in her career. That’s liberating and exciting.”

Psaki has quickly become a presence across MSNBC’s schedule, during big news coverage and as a guest commentator on other programs, like “Morning Joe”.

Psaki was press secretary during the first 16 months of President Joe Biden’s administration, before landing at MSNBC last May.

She was one of the best White House press secretaries in recent history.

Congratulations to Ms. Psaki! 

Tony

Don Lemon

Dear Commons Community,

Don Lemon is taking time-off from his hosting duties on CNN after saying former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley isn’t “in her prime.”  How long he will be off the show is not clear.

During Thursday’s episode of  “CNN This Morning,” Lemon and his co-hosts discussed Haley’s comments during her presidential campaign announcement that called for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.” The 51-year-old politician launched her bid in the Republican race at a rally Wednesday in Charleston, S.C.

Speaking to co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, Lemon, 56, said Haley’s “talk about age” makes him uncomfortable and said her comments were the “wrong road” to go down, adding that Haley “is not in her prime.”

Lemon’s comments have sparked intense discussion on social media.  As reported by USA Today.

Haley’s speech Wednesday called for “mental competency tests” for politicians more than 75 years old. President Joe Biden is 80 while another GOP presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump, is 76.

Lemon responded on the show Thursday. “She says people, politicians are not in their prime,” he said. “Nikki Haley is not in her prime, sorry. A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”

His co-host Harlow asked him to clarify what he meant by “prime” and if he was referring to “prime for childbearing” or “prime for being president.”

Lemon responded: “If you Google, ‘when is a woman in her prime,’ it’ll say 20s, 30s, and 40s. … I’m not saying I agree with that so I think she has to be careful about saying that (politicians aren’t in their prime).”

Lemon brought up the subject again an hour later, when commentator Audie Cornish joined the discussion. Like Harlow inferred earlier, Cornish said the idea of “prime” that Lemon was referring to was about reproductive years, and didn’t concern mental health and aging.

“She’s in her prime for running for office,” Cornish said of Haley. “Political prime is what we’re talking about.”

Thursday afternoon, Lemon apologized for his on-air comments.

“The reference I made to a woman’s ‘prime’ this morning was inartful and irrelevant, as colleagues and loved ones have pointed out, and I regret it,” Lemon wrote. “A woman’s age doesn’t define her either personally or professionally. I have countless women in my life who prove that every day.”

Lemon was not on air Friday for a previously planned “day off,” Collins noted. Cornish sat in his place. Harlow appeared live from Salt Lake City, Utah, ahead of the NBA All-Star game.

Lemon was absent from yesterday’s episode of “This Morning” for another day off, a person familiar with the situation, but not authorized to comment publicly, confirmed to USA TODAY Sunday. Sara Sidner, a senior national correspondent on CNN, will fill in for Lemon.

Details about when the anchor will return to the talk show were not shared.

Tony

Presidents Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in Kyiv (Dimitar Dilkoff / AFP via Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

President Biden made a surprise and historic visit to war-torn Ukraine yesterday, a show of support and solidarity with a democratic nation battling for its survival after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded nearly a year ago.

The visit, including a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was kept under secrecy until Biden’s arrival.  As reported by NBC News.

“I am in Kyiv today to meet with President Zelenskyy and reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,” Biden said in a statement. “When Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong.”

The clandestine nature of the trip points to the dangers of America’s commander-in-chief visiting Ukraine amid continuing bombardment, with Russia firing missiles into the country hoping to break an impasse as the war enters its second year. Air raid sirens sounded while Biden was on the ground.

It is the first time in modern history that a U.S. president has entered a war zone where there is not an active American military presence.

Biden’s appearance in Ukraine is a strong statement that the U.S. stands with Zelenskyy despite growing pressure at home to downsize American aid.

“Joseph Biden, welcome to Kyiv!” Zelenskyy posted on the social media site Telegram along with a picture of the two leaders. “Your visit is an extremely important sign of support for all Ukrainians.”

Biden visited the Mariinsky Palace, where he signed a guest book and made brief remarks alongside Zelenskyy.

“Thank you for coming,” Zelensky said, according to a press pool report.

“More importantly, how are the children?” Biden said. He added, “It’s amazing to see you.”

The two leaders visited St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery and then walked to the nearby Wall of Remembrance, which honors those who have died in the war.

The trip came with risks. Other presidents have visited war zones. Barack Obama traveled to Afghanistan in 2014 and George W. Bush visited American troops in Iraq in 2003. As was the case with Biden, both traveled under strict secrecy.

White House officials had been adamant that Warsaw, Poland, would be Biden’s only stop. On Friday, a White House spokesman answered with a single word when asked if Biden intended to cross the border into neighboring Ukraine: “No.”

Now, the adversary is Russia. If Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military were to intentionally target Biden, or even inadvertently harm the president by way of an errant missile, the U.S. would be obligated to retaliate. That could potentially escalate a regional war into a direct conflict between two nuclear-armed countries.

Still, ahead of the trip, some analysts were hopeful that Poland would not be Biden’s only stop. A trip to Ukraine “would be a powerful demonstration of support and signal a robust change in policy — a more forward-leaning and fulsome approach to Ukrainian support,” said Alexander Vindman, former director of European affairs in the Donald Trump White House’s National Security Council.

Biden has invested considerable political, military and financial capital in the war, keeping overmatched Ukraine viable against larger Russian forces. In addition to American assistance, he has also pressed the rest of the NATO alliance to shore up Ukraine, arguing it is imperative for the democratic world to counter Russian aggression for two reasons. One is to deter Putin from widening the war into NATO countries; another to discourage China’s authoritarian government from launching its own attacks on smaller nations such as Taiwan.

The amount of American military assistance to Ukraine is nearing $30 billion. Polling shows that American support for Ukraine remains strong, though less so as time passes. In May 2022 — three months into the war — 60% of Americans favored supplying weapons to Ukraine. As of January, that number had slipped to 48%, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released last week. The percentage of adults who favored sending taxpayer money directly to Ukraine dropped seven percentage points in that time frame — from 44% to 37%.

The war has stretched on longer than most in the West expected, with initial estimates that Ukraine would be able to hang on only for a few weeks before the Russians seized Kyiv, ousted Zelenskyy and absorbed the country into its orbit. Instead, Ukraine proved to be a more resilient opponent than anticipated.

A war that was expected to end quickly with Ukraine’s surrender and Zelenskyy’s exile will reach its one-year anniversary on Friday.

A great show of solidarity on the part of President Biden!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

An unprecedented 352,000 public school students in New York City repeatedly missed school last year, a harrowing sign of learning loss that is hitting the city’s most vulnerable children especially hard.

The lost classroom time, revealed in new data obtained by The Daily News, disproportionately affected children without a stable place to call home, who are not native English speakers or who have a disability. Children living in poverty were also hit hard, with a 45% rate of chronic absenteeism —tens of thousands more kids since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the pandemic, the figure of chronically absent students hovered around 25% and was generally on the decline. But that was until 40.2%, or 352,919, of the system’s 880,000 or so students were marked as such last year, by far the highest rate in more than two decades, according to the top-line figure in the Mayor’s Management Report. Children are identified as “chronically absent” when they missed at least 10% of the school year.

“A year and a half of school was online, and I got used to online,” said a former Queens student with autism, dyslexia and anxiety, whose name is being withheld to protect his privacy. “Going back was stressful, and it was just a matter of time until I collapsed on myself and decided I didn’t want to do this anymore.”

His mom, Jennifer Choi, a special education advocate, said he missed 42 days of school last year. And he’s not alone — 52% of students with disabilities were chronically absent at the time, some of whom struggled with a condition called “school refusal.”

“He was complaining of this illness and that illness, and it was very hard for us to figure out what to do,” she said. “There were days he wanted to come home early, there were days we’d try to keep him there. Then there were days in the morning, we’d have to argue with him for an hour to go to school.”

The disparities among those chronically absent also touched on geography and race.

Roughly half of students in the Bronx were classified in the category, followed by Manhattan and Brooklyn. Almost three in five students were chronically absent in Harlem last year, the figures show. And close to half of Black and Hispanic students were chronically absent, compared with 23% of Asian and 30% of white students.

The reasons why students struggled to attend school after buildings reopened during the pandemic are complex, so much so that city Schools Chancellor David Banks told The News this fall that there is no one “silver bullet” to reverse the trend.

Students falling behind in their classes, disrupted relationships with friends and teachers, and anxiety and illness have all had devastating effect on attendance.

Other young people may have taken on jobs or child-care responsibilities. And thousands of children lost a parent or caregiver to the virus, nearly double the national rate.

The new data, while pointing to clear disparities, also showed that few students were spared the ramifications. Nearly 25,000 more kids from middle- or high-income families were classified as chronically absent last year than before the pandemic.

“This is a sign that conditions last year got really eroded,” said Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works. “Everyone was affected, even if you’re not facing barriers like transportation or housing.”

Many of the high rates of chronic absenteeism were concentrated in lower and upper grades. Nearly 56% of seniors missed a chunk of the school year. Kids in preschool through the first grade, who never developed the habit of attending school before the pandemic, also had rates above the citywide average. “There’s always separation anxiety for kids — the key is a real routine of showing up to school,” said Chang. That the absenteeism rate has “grown so much is just incredibly challenging.”

The chronic absenteeism rate for students learning English ballooned during the pandemic, leading experts to question the ways schools connected with parents about the shifting impact of COVID. Roughly 41% of English learners were repeatedly missing school, compared with 28% before the pandemic.

“There are a lot of reasons why a child doesn’t want to go to school, and one of those is the feeling of hopelessness and anxiety of falling behind academically,” said Rita Rodriguez-Engberg, the director of the Immigrant Students’ Rights Project at Advocates for Children.

“English learners during the pandemic didn’t get the services they were supposed to get, so it was hard for them to return to school and be engaged,” she added. Education officials expect the chronic absenteeism rate to be more under control this school year, approximately three compared with four in 10 students as of December.

“We are laser focused on addressing heightened rates of chronic absenteeism that were exacerbated locally and nationally by the pandemic,” said spokeswoman Jenna Lyle in a statement.

This is the first school year that the attendance policy encourages schools to proactively prevent absences by contacting students and offering academic recovery programs, mentorship and personalized communications, officials said. The department offers tutoring, professional development on attendance data and strategies to reduce absenteeism, and partnerships with local nonprofits and other agencies for programs and services during and after school.  Older students without enough credits to graduate also have access to a virtual program to help overcome barriers to attendance.  But for some families, the change has come too late, pushing them out of the public school system.

A sad situation for these children and their parents.

Tony