Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

Cutting the entire education department serving deaf-blind students is beyond inhuman. The level of expertise it takes to train & serve these kids is extensive and with the already spread thin nature of this work, there are no replacements for those fired, those who dedicated their lives to helping.

1 1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

October 15th marks Dyslexia Awareness Day, Wear Red! Here is a short video from the great Dr. Martin Bloomfield of Dyslexia Bytes on The History of Dyslexia, feel free to share with your friends, families, colleagues and students:

youtu.be/4FrTCR5gN4E?...

The History of Dyslexia

YouTube video by Dyslexia Bytes

youtu.be

1 1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

www.leftbehindthefilm.com

The Reading League, WA is hosting a dinner & a movie with this transformational film. Check it out in Vancouver, WA:
October 15
4:30pm – 6:30pm
In person
www.pdenroller.org/esd112/catal...
Virtual:
www.pdenroller.org/esd112/catal...

LEFT BEHIND

www.leftbehindthefilm.com

2

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

In this case, we’re not spending money, obviously, effectively, and we’re not living up to our promises.”
—end of thread—

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

It indicates that what we’re doing is not working, and that just simply throwing more money at the problem is not working,” he said. “That’s my area of interest. Holding people, holding politicians, holding government accountable for how it spends money and the promises that it makes.

1 1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

Myers argues that significant increases in education spending have not improved student outcomes. “We’ve spent a lot of money. We compensate our teachers well, but during that same period of time, the NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores have gone down.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

not meeting improvement goals. “They clearly removed this because they wanted to make it more difficult for people to understand how we’re doing at meeting those targets,” he said. “Unfortunately, I see it all too often. When the data are inconvenient to the government, they simply hide the data.”

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

in OSPI’s latest release of student test score data, proficiency measures appeared to be adjusted, such that year-over-year comparisons were not a good gauge of improvement or decline. Myers contends OSPI took down the data to hide the fact that Washington students in public schools are

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

This would be well below the previously stated goal of ‘getting each student group to 90% proficiency in English language arts…’ as was stated on the now-removed State Targets web page. The same is true for math, where only 63.3% are achieving at Level 2, 3, or 4.” As reported by The Center Square,

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

he would get responses to his questions through that process, so she did not respond to other email inquiries. Myers says the data now available lacks context. “So, for 2024-25, the report card notes that 70.9% of students achieve ‘Levels 2,3 and 4’ in English Language Arts.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

“I do my best to respond to all requests/inquiries in a reasonable time, and unfortunately, some slip through the cracks. It wasn’t intentional,” she said, adding that given Myers later put in a public records request for more information, she knew

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

if anything had been done. And in fact, it had. They removed it. They completely scrubbed the webpage of that section that was supposed to show how we’re doing toward meeting those goals.” Payne said OSPI’s slow response to Myers’ request for information was not intentional.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

“I said, ‘Any news on this? Any news on this webpage which shows how we’re doing at meeting those targets?’ And about a week later, the superintendent had a press conference. And so, I was like, ‘Oh, this is interesting because he’s talking about these metrics.’ I went back to that page to see

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

said, ‘Have you just not updated this? What’s going on here?’ And what they said is, ‘No, we have our report card. You can see some current data. But I’ll get back to you on this.’” Myers said a week went by, and he emailed OSPI again.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

But we’re supposed to meet these targets by 2029. “So, they had a page on there that said, ‘How are we doing in terms of meeting these targets?’ And if you go there, what it used to say is the most recent data is from 2018-2019. So, I emailed the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s office and

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

officials hiding data when they are failing Washington’s children. “There were targets that were set in 2017 for the year 2027 to have 90% of students proficient in a number of different areas,” Myers explained. “Those were pushed back to 2029 for COVID, which I don’t have any problem with.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

Emailed The Center Square Todd Myers, vice president for research at the conservative Washington Policy Center think tank, says it was his insistence that OSPI update test score data over time for comparison that led to the agency “scrubbing” the data.
He suggests it is an example of

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

“The data were taken down from the website because they were multiple years out of date and had not been updated since the amendment to our state’s federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plan, which extended the timeframe for the targets,” OSPI Communications Director Katy Payne emailed.

1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

Concerns Arise Over Washington's Missing Student Test Data.
By The Center Square,
(The Center Square) – The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has explained why student test score data suddenly vanished from its website.

Concerns Arise Over Washington's Missing Student Test Data - NewsBreak

With the latest student performance data wiped off the map, some are raising eyebrows about transparency in our education system.

www.newsbreak.com

1 1

SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈 @spiralliteracy.bsky.social · 5d

Do we know what it is projected to be used for? How lovely a look!

Reposted by SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈

Maureen Ritchey @maureenritchey.bsky.social · 5d

PhD student Nina Curko and I wrote a short article about the superpowers of memory! Now published in Frontiers for Young Minds: kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10....

Traveling Through Space and Time With our Memories

A person wearing headphones and a red hoodie walks through an airport with a suitcase, gazing at a boarding gate sign marked C7 with a French flag. Thought bubbles depict the Eiffel Tower and a map of...

kids.frontiersin.org

3 10 27

Reposted by SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈

Allen Tien, MD, MHS mdlogix.com 94,698 田一彦 @allentien.bsky.social · 5d

#MiltonFriedman endorsed #UBI #UniversalBasicIncome

Now #MMT #ModernMonetaryTheory

Eliminate the stress, harms, administration cost of means testing, gaps, and overlapping inefficiencies from fragmented programs

#HelicalEconomics #CommunityProsperity

Scott Santens @scottsantens.com · Jan 19

We really need you making noise about universal basic income. The focus needs to be on basic needs. Every American needs basic income, healthcare, and lifelong educational access. The working class needs a foundation of economic security. Universality plus taxes is the way to best build the floor.

Negative Income Tax is Not Cheaper Than Universal Basic Income, Nor is Guaranteed Income 'More Progressive' by Excluding the Rich

Many people don't know this, but Milton Friedman was once asked in the Spring of 2000 what he thought about a universal basic income (UBI) in comparison to his proposed negative income tax (NIT) and t...

www.scottsantens.com

2 5 14

Reposted by SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 5d

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...

Connecting neural activity, perception in the visual system

Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked nine experts to weigh in.

www.thetransmitter.org

3 25 55

Reposted by SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈

Richard Kadrey @richardkadrey.bsky.social · 14d

While doing research on ancient languages for a novel I'm working on I discovered Dr. Martin Worthington at Cambridge University. After years of study, he's come up with an approximation of Akkadian. You can listen to The Epic of Gilgamesh here:
www.openculture.com/2010/10/the_...

Hear The Epic of Gilgamesh Read in the Original Akkadian and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

This clip gives you a taste of what Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literature, sounds like in its mother tongue, Akkadian.

www.openculture.com

5 88 280

Reposted by SpiralLiteracy 🇵🇷 🌈

Allen Tien, MD, MHS mdlogix.com 94,698 田一彦 @allentien.bsky.social · 15d

3 8