Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 16h

I'm going to be on NPR here in Pasadena in about 5 minutes to talk about California's and LA's Smarter Balanced scores! laist.com/news/politic...

Civics & Democracy

LAist’s coverage of civic life and citizen issues in Southern California. We cover elections, examine who gets listened to and why, and provide a guide for anyone who wants to more fully participate i...

laist.com

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 1d

Picture how big the Hoover Dam is. An absolute unit. The Hoover Dam has a power capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW).

The solar farm that the Admin just cancelled could have produces 6.2 GW of power. That's more than 3 Hoover Dams.

jael holzman @jael.bsky.social · 1d

SCOOP: The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada — the Esmeralda 7 mega-farm — has been canceled

The news was quietly dropped via a sudden website update with no public word from any of the companies involved or a statement from the agency

@heatmap.news

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

heatmap.news

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

practically a requirement for this administration to be a sex pest

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

"30-year-old conservative lawyer and activist who is Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which deals with federal employee whistleblower complaints and discrimination" cancelled his colleague's hotel room so she would be forced to stay with him.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

In late July, Paul Ingrassia, the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, arrived at a Ritz-Carlton in Orlando with a lower-ranking female colleague and others from their department. When the group reached the front desk, the woman learned she didn’t have a hotel room.

Ingrassia then informed her that she would be staying with him, according to five administration officials familiar with the episode. Eventually the woman discovered that Ingrassia had arranged ahead of time to have her hotel room canceled so she would have to stay with him, three of those officials said.

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 1d

Excited for California's kids now that Governor Newsom has signed AB 1454, bringing science of reading reforms to the Golden State. edsource.org/2025/governo...

New law changes how California kids learn to read

California Governor Gavin Newsom has approved Assembly Bill 1454, which provides elementary school teachers with training in evidence-based reading instruction, and includes $480 million in the 2025-2...

edsource.org

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 1d

Oh you better believe that's in there :)

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 1d

I can't believe I'm writing a second book!

(The contract just arrived in my inbox.)

Time to hunker down and get this thing done.

More to come!

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Scott Imberman @imbernomics.bsky.social · 2d

While Newsome is our id, Pritzker is our ego and he is explaining the stakes better than anyone in a calm, collective, and firm manner.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 2d

Pritzker: "He wants to militarize major cities because he wants us to get used to the idea of troops on the streets. I believe he's gonna post people outside of polling places and if he needs to in order to control those elections, he'll assume control of the ballot boxes & count the votes himself"

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 2d

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

apnews.com

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Rachel M. Perera @rachelmarisa.bsky.social · 2d

For context, 87% of school-aged kids are enrolled in public schools in the US.*

(* a statistic we only know because of work the US Dept of ED used to do to collect vital data on our nation's schools)

Chris Morran @themorrancave.bsky.social · 2d

Those influencing Trump education policy aren't shy about wanting to eradicate public schools.

Asked what % of kids she imagines should be in public schools, Tiffany Justice -- Moms for Liberty cofounder, now with Heritage Foundation -- told @propublica.org

“I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of publ...

www.propublica.org

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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 3d

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 3d

"We find that both liberal and conservative students prefer institutions with more like-minded peers and, especially, with fewer students from the opposite side of the political spectrum." edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1280

Political Views and College Choices in a Polarized America

We examine the role of students’ political views in shaping college enrollment decisions in the United States. We hypothesize that students derive utility from attending institutions aligned with thei...

edworkingpapers.com

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David Brady @davebrady72.bsky.social · 3d

My colleague & friend Richard Green raises good reason to NOT sign Trump’s compact: “the president “is a person who has not kept agreements for a very long time. If we are going to sell our soul, let’s not sell it to someone who is going to pull the football away.”

www.latimes.com/california/s...

USC faculty members denounce Trump compact that would shift university to the right

The USC Academic Senate held a special meeting to discuss the Trump administration's education compact, which was presented to the school last week.

www.latimes.com

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Andrew Ho @andrewdeanho.bsky.social · 3d

I finally wrote up my advice to PhD applicants in FAQ format. It's only my unofficial, personal perspective for folks interested in working with me at Harvard @harvardeducation.bsky.social. I also plug other measurement programs at @ncme38.bsky.social! andrewho.scholars.harvard.edu/sites/g/file...

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 3d

Dreamt there was a Broadway Bares: Equity Saves NAEP fundraiser and I wasn’t invited. 😭😭😭

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Brendan Cantwell @cantb.bsky.social · 5d

Trump is invading Illinois and Oregon but probably he’d negotiate with the President of Dartmouth in good faith.

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Jen Jennings @jenjennings.bsky.social · 5d

We invented graduated drivers licenses for teens. They worked. But we leave 80-year-olds to “see how it goes.” Every family suffers on their own. But this is a shared social problem, not a personal one. We need conditional licenses for older drivers. Daylight. Local. Annual medical check-ins.

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Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 5d

THE RADICAL LEFTISTS HAVE KILLED OUR BUSINESS
[also we got bought out by private equity who shuttered the store and fired everyone]
BUT IT WAS MOSTLY THE RADICAL LEFTISTS
also can we have a federal bailout 🥹

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Cara Jackson @carajackson.bsky.social · 5d

I am once again begging the @nytimes.com to consider using active voice.

New York Times headline: Partisan Language Inserted Into Education Dept. Workers’ Automated Emails

Subhead: The out-of-office responses from the accounts of employees on furlough cast blame for the shutdown on Democrats.

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 6d

As with USC’s response, this feels intentionally ambiguous! My strong sense is they’ve all decided they’re not playing ball but want to give the administration the impression they’re considering it.

Daniel P. Moriarity @dpmoriarity.bsky.social · 6d

Dartmouth response to the Trump Administration Compact

president.dartmouth.edu/news/2025/10...

Response to the ‘Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education’ | Office of the President

president.dartmouth.edu

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Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 6d

This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.

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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 6d

Rowan's own college admission story is: he was pre-law at Cornell but didn't like the coursework so he called Penn and they said sure and put him into the Wharton undergrad program.

Maybe that explains why he thinks university admissions are a joke: his was.

web.archive.org/web/20240314...

MR. ROWAN: Everyone in my family, other than my father, was a public interest lawyer. And
I thought I was also going to be a public interest lawyer. I applied to Cornell ILR, which is a
good prelaw program. I was accepted. The coursework arrived. And I finally realized I didn’t
want to be a lawyer. And I ended up calling Penn, sight unseen, and showed up at the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania. And hair down to my shoulders, had no idea what
business was. But it all just made sense.

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Julian Sanchez @normative.bsky.social · 7d

One thing that comes through awfully clearly in these ICE videos is how many of these goons gravitated toward the job because being able to assault people with impunity is a big thrill for them.

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 7d

As a survey methodologist who is decidedly meh on Taylor Swift, I agree with both parts of this!!

Ariel Edwards-Levy @aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 7d

this is just to say I have listened to the new Taylor Swift album, and, as with most of her music, I thought it was perfectly fine

to keep this On Brand, a great example of why it's important to measure neutral opinions and nonopinion as components of sentiment

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Morgan Polikoff @mpolikoff.bsky.social · 7d

There is absolutely no way USC is going to sign that ridiculous/illegal compact. But I’m sure the (interim) president (who is a lawyer) is extremely annoyed to have been on the list - when he met with faculty earlier this year he said staying out of their crosshairs was one of his top priorities.

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Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham @paulgp.com · 7d

Relative to pre-pandemic trends, fall 2024 enrollment is down 2% in local public schools, up 14% in private schools, and up 45% in home schools. The highest income 20% of districts have lost more public school students than the other 80% combined, with these lower income districts having recovered

Riley Acton @riacton.bsky.social · 7d

See also @joshua-goodman.com & @abbyfrancis.bsky.social’s work using MA admin data: edworkingpapers.com/ai25-1233

(my sense is that there are no perfect data on this, but as @andrewavit.bsky.social says, researchers can sometimes combine sources to get at important questions!)

School Enrollment Shifts Five Years After the Pandemic

The pandemic induced a substantial enrollment shift away from public schools in fall 2020 and a partial return of students in fall 2021, leaving longer-term impacts unclear. We use Massachusetts state...

edworkingpapers.com

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