Dear Commons Community,

Enrollment at New York City public schools has dipped slightly since last year, according to preliminary data released by the education department yesterday.  As reported by The Gothamist and The New York Times.

As of this fall, there are about 911,000 students in the public schools — from 3K through 12th grade — down from 912,064 last year. In a statement, Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos called the preliminary enrollment numbers “strong.”

Like many school districts across the country, New York City’s public schools have for years grappled with declining enrollment, which experts attribute to a combination of factors: lower birth rates, families leaving the city and concerns about the quality of education available at the public schools.

New York City’s enrollment numbers started declining around 2017, and the pandemic accelerated the trend. Education department data shows there were just over 1 million students in the system in the fall of 2019, a figure that fell to 955,000 the following year.

Last year, enrollment went up for the first time in eight years – driven largely by the arrival of tens of thousands of migrant students. In September, then-Chancellor David Banks told The New York Times the influx of new migrant students had been a “godsend because we’ve lost so many other kids.”

However, data also shows that after Mayor Eric Adams initiated a 60-day limit on shelter stays for migrant families last year, many children left their schools. Some switched to other schools within the five boroughs, while other families left the city altogether.

“We’ve lost about 100,000 kids and the trend may continue,” said David Bloomfield, education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He said lower enrollments don’t always translate into lower overall costs, which can put schools in a financial bind. He said the city may have to accelerate school consolidations, which can be unpopular.

In addition to the overall enrollment numbers, the city released new data on its progress meeting the requirements of a 2022 state law that requires schools to reduce class sizes. The law caps the number of students per class at 20 for kindergarten to third grade, 23 for fourth to eighth grade, and 25 for high school.

Officials say 46% of classes are meeting the class size caps, more than the 40% required by the law this year. Schools with low-income populations are meeting the class size targets more than schools that serve more affluent families do, they added.

But advocates have said the education department will need to invest heavily in new teachers and space to make all the city’s classrooms compliant with the law, which is required by 2028.

Last month, the education department announced plans developed with the United Federation of Teachers to dole out additional funds to schools that take proactive steps to meet the targets.

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters and longtime champion of smaller classes, said the city will have to do more to meet the mandate.

“Without allowing principals at overcrowded schools to cap enrollment next year and without engaging in an accelerated process of school construction, DOE will be unable to meet the legal caps of 60% next year and beyond,” she said. “This means half or more NYC students may never have the benefit of smaller classes which they so badly need and deserve.”

This article was sent to me by my colleague, David Bloomfield, who is quoted in the piece.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading The Elements of Marie Curie:  How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel.  I was drawn to this book because I knew little about Marie Curie other than she was a pioneer in developing radium.  In addition, I have read other works by the author, Dava Sobel, such as Galileo’s Daughter, which I thought was superb.   The Elements of Marie Curie… focuses on two important themes:  one, her contributions and discoveries in the field of radioactivity; and two, how she recruited and opened up the world of science to women in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. She provided dozens of opportunities in her own labs for women scientists including her daughter, Irene, to contribute and excel in physics and chemistry research.  Also, Sobel paints Marie as a down-to-earth woman only interested in her work in science research. When pressed in 1921 by an American publicist to write her autobiography, Curie said she could sum it up in a single paragraph: 

“I was born in Warsaw of a family of teachers.  I married Pierre Curie and had two children.  I have done my work in France.” 

In sum, The Elements of Marie Curie is a fine biography and well-worth a read.

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

Tony

The New York Times

Marie Curie: Mentor to Women or Martyr to Science?

In a new biography, Dava Sobel focuses not just on the legendary physicist and chemist, but on the 45 women who worked in her lab.

 Marie Curie (pictured here in 1925). Credit…Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Kate Zernike

Kate Zernike is a reporter at The Times. She is the author of “The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science.”

Oct. 10, 2024

THE ELEMENTS OF MARIE CURIE: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science, by Dava Sobel

In June 1921, in the flush of a triumphant six-week American tour by Marie Curie, a prominent male scientist urged the young women graduating from Bryn Mawr to follow her example and “enter into a career of science.”

An unsigned editorial in The New York Times scoffed.

Not to take anything from the “illustrious” Mme. Curie — then the only woman to have won a Nobel Prize and the only person to have won twice. But surely, the editorial opined, the young women must have understood “that such achievement was not for them.” While some might be “efficient” in the laboratory — for “drudgery” and perhaps “original investigation” — most had yet to develop “the scientific or mechanical mind.” Men had more “latent capacities” in those directions; women were too emotional to view the facts abstractly.

The Times was, to use the old newspaper cliché, not alone.

Back home in Paris, the French Academy of Sciences refused to elect her a member (it later repeatedly rebuffed her daughter, who also won a Nobel). In her new biography, “The Elements of Marie Curie,” Dava Sobel quotes a letter from a Yale professor recounting Curie’s American visit, saying he was “pleasantly surprised” to find she was “quite keen about scientific matters.”

“But I felt sorry for the poor old girl,” he added. “She was a distinctly pathetic figure.”

The belief that women lack the intrinsic aptitude to master math and science stubbornly persists. As Sobel begins her book: “Even now, nearly a century after her death, Marie Curie remains the only female scientist whom most people can name.”

Previous chroniclers of women in science — especially Margaret Rossiter in her three-volume book on the Americans among them — have argued that Curie’s exceptional achievement made it harder for women who aspired to follow her. They already suspected they’d have to be twice as good to get half as far; she made the standard more unattainable, and gave cover to male department heads looking for an excuse not to hire them: She’s likable enough, but she’s no Marie Curie.

Sobel, the author of several scientific biographies — “Longitude” was a best seller, and “Galileo’s Daughter” a Pulitzer finalist — looks for a more positive result. She sets out to show how Curie’s discovery of radium “lit a path for women in science,” namely, the 45 aspiring female scientists who “spent a formative period in the Curie lab at the Sorbonne.”

But her telling confirms, heartbreakingly at times, just how narrow and gloomy the path was.

Curie herself was able to have a lab of her own only because her husband, the physicist Pierre Curie, demanded that the school where he worked give her the space. Her father-in-law moved in with the couple to babysit for their two children. After Pierre and Marie Curie shared the Nobel, the Sorbonne gave Pierre a professorial chair; Marie was relegated to chief of operations in his new lab. The university made her its first female professor only in 1906, after Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon on a rainy night near the Pont Neuf.

As with so many early women in science, Curie’s is a story of self-sacrifice: Before she met Pierre, she nearly starved herself, living on tea and bread as she studied in a Parisian garret. After his death, she dressed in black and shunned attention. Urged to write a memoir, she wrote his biography instead. She poured what paltry prize money she won back into buying bits of radium for her research.

With rare exceptions, the 45 other women subjects appear in Sobel’s book only as emanations. Sobel names her chapters for them, but tells little of their stories beyond that. One, Irén Götz, is mentioned in only one sentence in the chapter named for her.

Two get fuller treatment. After Barnard College told Harriet Brooks she had to quit because she was getting married, she did — her job as a physics instructor and the engagement, too, only to sacrifice her career for another marriage down the road. Ellen Gleditsch became a university professor in Norway, but after 13 years the university still refused to grant her tenure or lab space.

Support came from several men, one of whom referred to his wife as B.G., for “Beautiful Genius.” When Curie, four years widowed, was attacked as immoral for an affair with a married man, Albert Einstein defended her. (The man in question went on to have a child out of wedlock with a former student working in his lab; predictably, no scandal ensued.)

By contrast, the women in Sobel’s book doubted themselves, and Curie. Some noted that she barely showed up in the lab as her health declined from years of exposure to the radioactivity she had discovered. And those who did try to improve conditions for women often worried that such efforts only distracted them from their scientific passions. As one suffragist scientist wrote, “I often think very sadly that I might have been more useful to the Cause if I had devoted myself to my own special work as Madame Curie has done.”

As in her earlier books, Sobel writes elegantly about science, unspooling Curie’s pursuits in the lab like a mystery. She leaves us less clear how Curie herself viewed the position of women in science. When a member of the Nobel Committee suggested that she not come to Stockholm to collect her second prize in 1911 because of the bad publicity around her affair, she insisted on going: “I believe there is no connection between my scientific work and the facts of private life.” But when Gleditsch and others formed an international society devoted to promoting women in science, Curie declined “to ally herself.”

Her ailments debilitated her so much that she begged off several events on her American tour. Her exposure to the very elements she had discovered ultimately killed her. The Times ran its obituary on the front page of July 5, 1934: “Mme. Curie Is Dead; Martyr to Science.”

Members of the November Project fitness group run up and down the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington . (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Dear Commons Community,

The sun had yet to come up in Edmonton, Alberta, and it was more than 20 degrees below zero. Tanis Smith layered up anyway, ready to run up and down hundreds of stairs among the trees in the Saskatchewan River Valley.

When she arrived at 6 a.m., 10 other people joined her. It wouldn’t be the last time they risked freezing their toes off to get in a workout before the rest of the world wakes up.  As reported by The QAssociated Press

“You’re pretty much just putting everything you own on,” said Smith, an accountant. “If you look at the pictures, you don’t know who you are unless you remember what you were wearing.”

Since that winter of 2013, Smith has rarely missed a workout with the group, called November Project, a network of free outdoor group exercise classes that started in Boston. No matter the month or weather, participants roll out of bed before dawn at least once a week and shield their faces from the blistering cold.

One part intense training and one part abject silliness, the project is a model for how to stay motivated to exercise outside throughout the winter.

It started when a pair of friends challenged each other to exercise every morning for the month of November. By the end of the month, they were recruiting others.

“A party is better when there’s more people around,” said Bojan Mandaric, who created the project with Brogan Graham in 2011. “We would talk to anybody who would listen.”

Soon, their meetings were attracting a few dozen people, who then brought the idea to other cities when they moved. Now there are 52 chapters in eight countries, including 44 in the United States and Canada.

What do the workouts look like?

Workouts, which attract all ages and fitness levels, begin with a “bounce,” a hopping, call-and-response chant to loosen people up physically and mentally. How the classes continue varies on the location and day of the week, but most include running and body weight exercises like squats or burpees.

To promote the idea that exercise can be fun, they also might weave in activities that would be at home during childhood recess in the schoolyard.

In Edmonton, they’ve played an intense version of duck duck goose, gone sledding in winter and done Slip ’n’ Slide in summer. One workout in Boston involved a kind of Easter egg hunt, where you search for plastic eggs at a sprint. Crack them open to find commands that could be, walk like a gorilla, do a cartwheel, or grab grass and dump it on Mandaric’s head.

The point is to lower inhibitions, which helps people make connections, said Jason Shaw, co-leader of the Indianapolis chapter.

“Nobody’s cool at November Project,” he said. “At different gyms, especially, you always have the people who just are so cool, or think they’re so cool. We try to nip that in the bud.”

Shaw said chapters mark different milestones, much like Scout merit badges, by spray painting a tag on your shirt for, say, showing up on your first single-digit day.

But they don’t spray when it’s too cold. The paint freezes.

If you don’t have a chapter nearby, many cities offer some kind of running or outdoor exercise group, though many are not free. Otherwise, November Project organizers offered a few suggestions on how to stay motived to keep working through the colder months.

Find a workout buddy

Accountability is a core tenet of the project. Members make a verbal promise to show up, and there is almost a sense of letting down your teammates if you don’t, said Mandaric, who moved to Boston from Serbia to row crew for Northeastern University.

Invest in some gear

There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing, Shaw said. At a minimum, buy a moisture-wicking base layer that will help keep you warm and dry. Avoid cotton, which keeps sweat in contact with your body and will make you colder. And add a top jacket with wind-breaking fabric.

Make it a habit

Commit to exercising on the same days and times for a month. Creating a predictable routine will help you get into a groove that is easier to maintain, Mandaric said.

Most of all, have fun

One of the things Smith appreciates most about the project is its social aspect. She called it “a chosen family” that was formed partly because they were having fun while exercising.

“Fitness doesn’t have to be this hard-nosed, drill-sergeant type thing,” she said. “You can have fun and get fit.”

The social aspect of the November Project sounds like a good idea.  It gets lonely and boring walking, jogging or running by yourself.

Tony

Laura Helmuth

Dear Commons Community,

Laura Helmuth is resigning as editor-in-chief of Scientific American magazine following an expletive-filled rant about Donald Trump voters.

Posting on Bluesky, an X rival, Helmuth said Thursday that she’s “decided to leave Scientific American after an exciting 4.5 years as editor in chief” without mentioning her previous comments.

In a series of now-deleted posts on the same platform, she called Trump voters the “meanest, dumbest, most bigoted” group and “fascists” following the former president’s reelection last week. Her comments went viral on X and were criticized on the increasingly right-wing platform.  As reported by CNN.

Helmuth had apologized in a separate post, calling them “offensive and inappropriate” and that they don’t “reflect the position” of Scientific American.

“I respect and value people across the political spectrum,” Helmuth wrote. “These posts, which I have deleted, do not reflect my beliefs; they were a mistaken expression of shock and confusion about the election results.”

Kimberly Lau, president of Scientific American, said in a statement to CNN that it was Helmuth’s decision to leave and a search for her replacement is underway.

“We thank Laura for her four years leading Scientific American during which time the magazine won major science communications awards and saw the establishment of a reimagined digital newsroom,” Lau said in the statement. “We wish her well for the future.”

At 179-years-old, Scientific American says it’s the “oldest continuously published magazine” in the United States and has published pieces from more than 200 Nobel winners.

This year, for only the second time in its history, the magazine published a presidential endorsement, voicing its support for Kamala Harris and saying Trump “endangers public health and safety and rejects evidence, preferring instead nonsensical conspiracy fantasies.”

Tony

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon

Dear Commons Community,

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has put forth a solution to unrestrained US debt: Tax the rich at the same rate as middle-class people, or at a higher rate.

The bank executive told “PBS News Hour” that the country could clamp down on runaway borrowing without eliminating spending. Dimon said he expects that reducing the debt while still investing in the right initiatives is “doable.”  As reported in Business Insider.

“I would spend the money that helps make it a better country, so some of this is infrastructure, earned-income tax credits, military,” he said. “I would have a competitive national tax system, and then I would maximize growth.”

Dimon added, “And then you’ll have a little bit of a deficit, and you would maybe just raise taxes a little bit — like the Warren Buffett type of rule, I would do that.”

This rule posits that no household making above $1 million a year should pay taxes on a lower share of their income than middle-class earners. It earned its name from the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who famously criticized the fact that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.

Calls for wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes have grown louder in the past year as economists have searched for answers to the federal government’s skyrocketing debt.

Anxiety has grown as the government’s debt pile has ballooned to a record $35 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that it could make up 6% of US GDP by the end of this year, which would far outpace the 50-year average of 3.7%.

If debt remains unchecked amid high interest rates, the government will face higher borrowing costs. Some say that this might compound debt levels and that the US could eventually spiral into a default.

Otherwise, higher borrowing costs mean Washington will have less to spend on social initiatives. A recent report from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2054, interest payments on the debt will triple Washington’s historical spending on research and development, infrastructure, and education.

Dimon has been among Wall Street’s most consistent voices to raise the alarm, frequently saying runaway borrowing will amplify inflation and interest-rate pressures through the coming decade.

Not everyone shares Dimon’s optimism that tax hikes alone can solve this problem. Though some commentators have pushed for tax-hike proposals that embrace all income levels, others have urged both Democrats and Republicans to consider spending cuts as well.

However, speaking with PBS, Dimon argued that the US should continue to spend money that helps maintain its economic strength and creates a more equitable income environment.

Good sound advice!

Tony

IStock

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning entitled, “Is It Time to Regulate AI Use on Campus?” Written by Lee Gardner, it reviews the issue of whether/how to regulate AI use on our campuses.  It also is a call for colleges and universities to establish policies especially regarding student use of generative AI for writing assignments.  I completely support the need for AI policies but I doubt very much whether we can “regulate” its use.  The genie is out of the bottle and it will be impossible to put it back in.

Below is an excerpt from the article. 

Tony

—————————————–

“Last fall, instructors at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst suddenly started receiving scores for every student’s writing assignment, estimating how likely it was that they had been completed using generative artificial intelligence. The percentile scores were generated by an AI tool built into the institution’s learning-management system. The scenario, administrators say, caused “massive confusion.” Faculty members might see a high percentile score for an assignment, but how high did a score have to be to justify some kind of action? What if the software’s analysis gave an assignment a 51 percent likelihood of AI use? How does a professor interpret that? And the leapfrogging rate of innovation in AI technology made the university’s own computer scientists skeptical that AI-detection tools were reliable predictors of anything at all.

The tool fueled a discussion already underway at UMass Amherst and many other institutions: the need to create a university-wide generative AI policy. As the technology spreads throughout all aspects of academe — and evolves at a pace measured in months, not years — experts and a burgeoning number of administrators believe that colleges need to establish guidelines about its use or face potential disaster.

What kind of disaster? So far, higher education has been devoid of major public AI scandals. But ungoverned use of the technology across a campus could lead to exposure of sensitive data and the proliferation of inconsistent uses that could potentially harm students and other stakeholders as well as the institution. Confusing or patchy AI policies might be worse than none at all.

The need for comprehensive AI policies is already apparent to colleges’ technology leaders. A survey conducted in the fall of 2023 by Educause, a membership organization for technology professionals in higher education, found that almost a quarter of respondents’ colleges had policies in place to regulate AI use. Nearly half of respondents, however, disagreed or strongly disagreed that their institutions had sufficient existing policies in place.

The biggest use of generative AI at most colleges is in the classroom, and at many colleges, administrators let instructors determine how, or if, the technology can be used in their courses and provide some guidelines.

Alyssa Schukar for Education Week

Dear Commons Community,

On Tuesday evening, one of my graduate students asked during class “Can the U.S. Department of Education be abolished?”  It was a good question and I gave a lengthy answer basically coming to a conclusion that it would not be easy to accomplish given the fact that such a move would have to be approved by Congress and there are many senators and representatives whose states benefit from its policies.  However, that does not mean that certain programs could not be abolished or having funding significantly reduced.  Education Week  had an article that speculated on the USDOE under Trump.  Its messaging coincides with much of my thinking.

Below is the entire article.

Tony

——————————————

Education Week

Can Trump Really Dismantle the Department of Education?

It’s not impossible, but many of its functions would need to move elsewhere

By Evie Blad — November 07, 2024

Plans to abolish the U.S. Department of Education—a key part of President-elect Donald Trump’s platform and a priority for his political allies—are a key concern for schools as he prepares to retake the White House in January.

But can he—and will he—actually carry through on the promise? And what would it mean if he did?

The short answer: Ending the agency would require approval from Congress and a great deal of political capital that Trump may want to target elsewhere, especially in the early days of his administration in which he will be under pressure to deliver promises around tax cuts and immigration. But it is possible.

Trump attempted to dismantle the Education Department in his first term, but his efforts got little traction. His supporters say he may have a clearer path to accomplishing his priorities with the momentum of reelection. And with the help of a Republican-controlled Senate and the possibility of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Trump is likely to pursue plans to scale back and consolidate some federal programs, even if he doesn’t fully end the agency.

Here are five critical things to know.

Republicans have a long history of unsuccessful efforts to kill the U.S. Department of Education

Republican presidents and presidential candidates have threatened to end the U.S. Department of Education since it was first established as a cabinet-level agency under former President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Before then, all enforcement of federal education laws fell under the purview of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which was renamed the Department of Health and Human Services when the law was enacted.

As Education Week reported in August, efforts to end the agency started before the ink on Carter’s signature on that bill was dry.

The best chance for getting it done may have come in 1981, when former President Ronald Reagan’s Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell drafted a 91-page memo about converting the nascent federal agency to a small foundation that would conduct research and provide support but “avoid direction and control.”

That plan faced resistance in Congress and, later, from Bell himself, who believed the federal government had a role in ensuring schools confronted “a rising tide of mediocrity” in American education.

In 1981, Reagan signed the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act, which reduced federal regulations for Title I, a grant program that provides extra money for schools that enroll large amounts of students from low-income households. But his plans to end the Education Department fizzled.

Before Trump, the last presidential candidate to call for abolishing the Education Department in the party platform was Sen. Bob Dole, who lost to former President Bill Clinton in 1996. Former President George W. Bush, who was elected in 2000, favored a stronger federal role, and that philosophy became the basis for No Child Left Behind, a bipartisan law that introduced new requirements for testing and accountability as a condition of federal funding.

The U.S. Department of Education’s role includes civil rights enforcement, student loans

The Education Department’s largest K-12 role is overseeing implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires states to monitor their schools’ progress and intervene in poorly performing schools in exchange for federal money, including funding from Title I, an $18.4 billion program.

The department also administers the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA‚—a $14.2 billion program that helps schools pay for special education services for students with disabilities—and a portfolio of grants related to school safety, teacher training, and workforce preparation.

In 2020-21, the most recent school year for which federal data are available, the federal government was responsible for 10.6 percent of the nation’s spending on public schools, and that share was elevated due to the infusion of COVID-relief funds.

The Education Department ensures compliance with federal laws that protect civil rights and disability rights in public schools. That includes investigating complaints that schools aren’t doing things like meeting the needs of students with disabilities, responding adequately to sexual harassment or bullying, or ensuring fair treatment for students of color.

The agency also collects data on a range of issues, including school safety, student discipline, the teacher workforce, and civil rights.

In higher education, the Education Department oversees the Free Application for Student Aid, or FAFSA, and the massive federal student loan and grant programs (the federal direct student loans program has a portfolio of outstanding loans totaling over $1 trillion).

There’s widespread misunderstanding among the general public about the Education Department’s role, policy advocates say. The agency does not dictate what educators teach, and the funding it administers makes up a relatively small portion of school funding compared to state and local revenue.

Some significant federal education programs in schools are administered by other agencies. Head Start, the early childhood education program, is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and the National School Lunch Program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Why Republicans want to shutter the Education Department

Conservatives who support closing the Education Department see the agency as a symbol of a bloated federal bureaucracy and an infringement on states’ rights under the 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says that powers that aren’t specifically enumerated to the federal government are the responsibility of states.

But supporters of the agency say it plays an important role in ensuring students are treated fairly and helping states raise the bar for school performance.

Even if Trump got congressional approval to shut down the agency, he would have to move its responsibilities—managing student loans and administering existing funding streams—to other agencies. Critics say that wouldn’t have a meaningful effect on the federal education footprint, because the department’s programs would still exist in federal law, though the administration could ask Congress to revoke them or to zero out funding for them.

Trump tried and failed to axe the Education Department in his first term

During his previous term, Trump proposed merging the department with the U.S. Department of Labor in a 2018 plan that never got off the ground. He also proposed converting 29 existing federal programs into a flexible block grant, a proposal Congress rejected.

Trump supporters have continued those calls during the 2024 campaign.

Trump has not detailed how he would close the Education Department, a proposal that’s mentioned only broadly in his campaign rhetoric and in the GOP platform.

Project 2025, the conservative policy document spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation and written by a number of former Trump aides and allies, proposes scrapping the department and making major changes to the two major K-12 funding streams it oversees: converting funding for the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act into “no strings attached” block grants to states and ending Title I.

Why Trump is likely to face resistance

As the saying goes, all politics is local. That’s especially true for school districts, the most local form of local government.

Schools are in a financially complicated position this year as they slim down their budgets to deal with declining enrollment and the end of federal COVID-19 aid.

Superintendents and school boards are likely to fight against the reduction or elimination of federal funding streams that help them stay out of the red. And every member of Congress will likely hear from those influential community leaders as they weigh any proposal to do so, Margaret Spellings, who served as U.S. Secretary of Education under Bush, told Education Week in August.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Senate Republicans have elected Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) as the next Senate majority leader after rejecting public overtures from allies of President-elect Donald Trump who backed a different candidate.

Thune won in a secret-ballot vote of 29-24, beating out opposing candidates Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Rick Scott, R-Fla.

The 63-year-old Thune will succeed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has led his chamber’s Republicans since 2007 and is the longest-serving Senate party leader in U.S. history.  As reported by USA Today

The Senate majority leader is one of the most powerful people in Washington – and soon will have an important say over Trump’s agenda. Thune will have the power to set the schedule for the Senate, which has sole control over confirmation of the Cabinet, about 1,200 other high-level government jobs and a president’s judicial nominees.

Thune’s win is even more significant because Republicans regained control of the upper chamber in the November election, putting the GOP on track to hold total control over Congress and the White House for the next two years.

Scott didn’t make it past the first round of voting despite having the support of prominent Trump allies including Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who the president-elect named on Tuesday to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” to slash federal government spending, waste and regulations.

U.S. Senator John Thune (R-SD) walks on Capitol Hill on the day U.S. Senate Republicans meet to vote on leadership positions, including Senate Majority (Republican) Leader, for the 119th Congress in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2024.

Trump’s Senate allies had also been advocating for Scott, who has a longstanding relationship with the president-elect and who is typically more ideologically conservative than Thune or Cornyn. However, Trump did not decide to endorse in the race himself.

Thune was long considered the favorite in the three-way race, given his No. 2 position in the Senate Republican leadership, though Cornyn was also considered a serious contender.

Thune has served as whip since 2019 and campaigned heavily for his GOP colleagues during this election cycle, a metric often used to size up candidates’ fundraising prowess and willingness to help out the party. Thune raised $33 million this cycle and attended more than 200 events for Republican candidates, according to his office.

Conservative media personalities and Trump allies honed in on Thune’s close ties to McConnell, arguing he would be a continuation of McConnell’s style of leadership. Trump and McConnell have had a famously frosty relationship.

But Thune argued his leadership experience would allow him to effectively lead the conference – and represent Trump’s interests in Congress.

“We have an ambitious agenda, and it will take all of us – each and every Republican – working together with President Trump’s leadership to achieve it,” Thune wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “If we don’t successfully execute on our mandate, we risk losing the coalition that swept Republicans into office up and down the ballot.”

Thune has served in the Senate since 2005. Before that, he was South Dakota’s at-large representative in the House for six years.

After Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building, Thune was among the many senators of both parties who condemned the rioters and opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Trump then called for someone to challenge Thune in his 2022 primary, but no one emerged, and Thune prevailed.

Thune initially endorsed Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., in the 2024 GOP primary, but later supported Trump after Scott dropped out of the race for the White House.

In the months since, Thune has worked to repair his relationship with the Trump, including visiting Mar-a-Lago and speaking with him several times on the phone, including as recently as last week. He also met with members of the Trump transition team in September, according to his office.

Still, Thune on CNBC over the weekend urged the president-elect not to “exert” influence over the Senate leadership election.

Most senators kept their preferences secret ahead of Wednesday’s vote. But three senators publicly endorsed Thune: National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.; Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.; and Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.

Good luck to Senator Thune!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times  has a featured article this morning entitled, “Running vs. Walking: Which Is Better for Lasting Health?”  It is a  balanced review of two of the most popular forms of exercise.  As someone who has had a knee replacement and reconstructive ankle surgery, I have become a regular walker averaging a little more than two miles per day. The article provides a number of useful suggestions for both forms.  I fully support the walking option. 

Below is an excerpt from the article.

Tony

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The New York Times

Running vs. Walking: Which Is Better for Lasting Health?

By Cindy Kuzma

Published Nov. 14, 2023

“Walking is among the world’s most popular forms of exercise, and far and away the most favored in the United States. And for good reason: It’s simple, accessible and effective. Taking regular walks lowers the risk of many health problems including anxiety, depression, diabetes and some cancers.

However, once your body becomes accustomed to walking, you might want to pick up the pace, said Alyssa Olenick, an exercise physiologist and postdoctoral research fellow in the energy metabolism lab at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

If you can nudge even part of your walk into a run, it offers many of the same physical and mental benefits in far less time. But just how much better is running? And how can you turn your walk into a run?

Why Walking Is Good for You

When considering the health benefits of an activity like walking or running, there are two connected factors to keep in mind. One is the workout’s effect on your fitness — that is, how it improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs. The second is the ultimate positive outcome: Does it help you live a longer life?

The gold standard for assessing fitness is VO2 max, a measure of how much oxygen your body uses when you’re exercising vigorously. It’s also a strong predictor of life span, said Dr. Allison Zielinski, a sports cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute.

Even doing a small amount of activity — like taking slow steps throughout the day — somewhat improves VO2 max compared with staying completely sedentary, according to a 2021 study of 2,000 middle-aged men and women. But bigger benefits come when you begin walking faster, which raises your heart and breathing rates.

If you’re working hard enough that you can still talk but not sing, you’ve crossed from light to moderate physical activity. Studies suggest that moderate activity strengthens your heart and creates new mitochondria, which produce fuel for your muscles, said Dr. Olenick.

What Makes Running Even Better

So how does running compare with walking? It’s more efficient, for one thing, said Duck-chul Lee, a professor of physical activity epidemiology at Iowa State University.

Why? It’s more than the increased speed. Rather than lifting one foot at a time, running involves a series of bounds. This requires more force, energy and power than walking, Dr. Olenick said. For many people first starting out, running at any pace — even a slow jog — will make your heart and lungs work harder. That can raise your level of effort to what’s known as vigorous activity, meaning you’re breathing hard enough that you can speak only a few words at a time.

Federal health guidelines recommend 150 minutes to 300 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, like brisk walking, or half as much for vigorous activity. That might suggest that running is twice as good as walking. But when it comes to the key outcome of longevity, some studies have found running to be even more effective than that.

In 2011, researchers in Taiwan asked more than 400,000 adults how much vigorous exercise (like jogging or running) and moderate exercise (like brisk walking) they did. They found that regular five-minute runs extended subjects’ life spans as much as going for 15-minute walks did. Regular 25-minute runs and 105-minute walks each resulted in about a 35 percent lower risk of dying during the following eight years.

Those numbers make sense, given running’s effect on fitness. In a 2014 study, Dr. Lee and his colleagues found that regular runners — including those jogging slower than 6 miles per hour — were 30 percent fitter than walkers and sedentary people. They also had a 30 percent lower risk of dying over the next 15 years.

Even though he’s an enthusiastic proponent of running, Dr. Lee suggested looking at walking and running as being on a continuum. “The biggest benefit occurs when moving from none to a little” exercise, he said.

Whether you’re walking or running, consistency matters most. But after that, adding at least some vigorous exercise to your routine will increase the benefits.”

Dear Commons Community,

A federal judge yesterday blocked a Louisiana law that was to require a display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in the state, ruling that it is likely unconstitutional and is similar to another state’s law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980.  As reported in Education Week.

The Louisiana law, H.B. 71, “is impermissible under Stone v. Graham,” said U.S. District Judge John W. deGravelles of Baton Rouge, referring to the high court decision that struck down a similar Kentucky law that required displays of the Ten Commandments.

The judge noted that both laws required such displays on the wall of every public school classroom, contained a “context statement” purporting to explain the historical tradition for such displays, dictated the size of the document, and allowed for private funds to pay the costs.

“Subsequent [Supreme Court] cases do not undermine the application of Stone to this case; they strengthen it, particularly in their emphasis of the heightened First Amendment concerns in the public-school setting given the impressionability of young students and the fact that they are captive audiences,” deGravelles said in his 177-page opinion on Nov. 12 in Roake v. Brumley.

The decision was a victory for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represent plaintiffs suing to overturn the measure signed into law June 19 by Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican. The law also requires that a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments from the King James Bible be used in the classroom displays.

“This ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity,” said Heather L. Weaver, a senior staff lawyer with the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

Rachel Laser, the president and CEO of Americans United, said, “This ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion.”

Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, said on the social media platform X that “we strongly disagree with court’s decision & will immediately appeal.”

While the state has numerous arguments about why the law should be upheld under existing precedents, there is a view that the ultimate goal is to get to the Supreme Court, where a conservative majority that has been more open to government accommodation of religion might be willing to overrule the Stone decision and uphold the Louisiana law.

The Louisiana law was set to require the displays by Jan. 1, 2025. State officials defended the requirement as being consistent with history and tradition in this country, and they offered numerous sample displays that showed the Commandments alongside founding U.S. documents or even playfully next to “classroom rules” or the “duel commandments” from the musical “Hamilton.”

DeGravelles, an appointee of President Barack Obama, included the samples in his opinion, but he rejected the state’s arguments that the many possible ways of displaying the Ten Commandments made it impossible for the plaintiffs to succeed on their broad challenge to the law on its face.

The defendants “would have aggrieved parents and children play an endless game of whack-a-mole, constantly having to bring new lawsuits to invalidate any conceivable poster that happens to have the Decalogue on it,” the judge said, noting that the statute still requires the Ten Commandments to be the “central focus” of any display.

DeGravelles rejected the state’s arguments that the 1980 Stone v. Graham decision was no longer good law because the Supreme Court had since rejected a key precedent used in the decision. In Stone, the court ruled 6-3 (in an unsigned opinion issued without oral argument) that the posting of the Ten Commandments on classroom walls served no educational function as they might if they were properly integrated into the curriculum.

Only the Supreme Court may overrule Stone, deGravelles said, which it has not done.

The judge cited a fundraising letter sent by Landry after the lawsuit was filed urging supporters to help him “ADVANCE the Judeo-Christian values that this nation was built upon.”

DeGravelles said such statements and the legislative history behind the statute support a conclusion that “any purported secular purpose was not sincere but rather a sham.”

The judge also rejected the state’s arguments that the historical record showed a longstanding, widespread tradition of displaying the Ten Commandments permanently in public elementary and secondary school classrooms. The state cited such early American schoolbooks as the New England Primer and McGuffey Readers.

DeGravelles credited a report and testimony from the plaintiffs’ expert, Steven Green, a professor of history and religious studies at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., who concluded that history does not support the Louisiana statute’s claim that “the Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”

The judge said the plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that the Louisiana law violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion “because it does not fit within and is not consistent with a broader tradition in place at the time of the Founding or incorporation [of the amendment to the states].”

“Moreover, even if there were a broader tradition in play, the practice mandated by the act would be inconsistent with that tradition because it is discriminatory and coercive,” deGravelles said.

I am sure this ruling will be appealed to a higher court.

Tony