Greg Harris

Congrats to @IamCPS for making sizable gains in this year’s state report card. youtu.be/vs_flirPhfM?feature…

This gene therapy breakthrough has the potential to treat ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig’s disease") by mitigating and even reversing paralysis. The "real shift in how we think about preventing paralysis in ALS .... [is that] protecting communication between muscles and nerves might be just as important as targeting neurons directly.” timesofisrael.com/in-world-f… via @timesofisrael

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another .... " Robert Kennedy youtu.be/wfTNFaZqUvQ?si=wf_h…

Whereas high income low-achievers will somehow continue to get into elite colleges.

Under today’s regime of curriculum review organization, the “most book-rich curricula in America have the lowest market share,” while “‘passage popcorn’ programs [have] the largest share”: open.substack.com/pub/curric… via @karenvaites

“Analysts warn the funding delay will disproportionately affect districts serving low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities”: Trump administration halts $185 million in education funding to Ohio cleveland.com/open/2025/07/t…

"Our most conservative estimates indicate that if attendance still mattered as much as it once did, 100,000 fewer students would have graduated in 2022 alone. That’s more students than the total number of 12th-graders in New Jersey."

Love the chess analogy illustrating why "Kids need to do vast amounts of decoding to become fluent readers":

Starting with literacy instruction in subsidized preschool program, Steubenville, Ohio--a Rust Belt city in top 5% of poverty rates in the country--gets "really high third grade reading scores. Almost 100% of kids are reading proficiently by the end of third grade." On how the district is achieving those scores

We don't need to "cut" entitlements to make social security & Medicare solvent. e.g. Abolishing earnings cap (currently $176,000) would close funding gap by 75%. Yes, subjecting all wages to payroll tax would impact higher wage earners; but they would start getting $ back on retirement. You could close remaining gap via other options such as incremental FICA increases (currently 6.2%) and/or inflation adjustment based on chained price index instead of CPI. Aging demographics + alarming debt should impel action. But this requires solving deficit in political courage.

We also need to reassess the "building blocks." Teachers impelled to cover way too much content in keeping up with district pacing guidelines. If we don't slow down & instill fundamentals, we will continue to undermine life skills. e.g. 1/3 adults lack basic numeracy skills. nces.ed.gov/pubs2020/2020025…(70,nativity%20status:%202012%20and%202014

Performance measures would be more accurate if they differentiated based on attendance. Chronic absenteeism rates approach 70% in some districts. Currently we hold districts, schools, teachers accountable for educating kids whose attendance is sporadic. We also could more accurately measure the impact of programs and interventions with data sets based on kids who show up.

"[B]olstering educational equity via digital technologies requires more than simply providing a computer and Internet connection to students .... Leaders must develop strategies that counter technology’s potential negative influences, especially on low-achieving students and other vulnerable subgroups."

Hey Elon: you don't prevent "forever war" by enabling dictators--incl dictators who are your friends--who invade democratic nations. You are behaving as a modern-day Neville Chamberlin, throwing democracies under the bus while bastardizing the Reagan-Bush "peace through strength" doctrine. The US made security assurances to Ukraine to get it to agree to surrender its nuclear weapons as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. We must be a nation that honors its commitments and that fortifies Western democracy.