McMahon is familiar with organizations built around an increasingly unstable man who is a genius at spinning story lines that inflame the crowd and damage enemies and institutions but, if you think too hard about them, don't necessarily add up to a coherent narrative.
"This year's increase in undergraduate credential attainment isn't just about more completions-it's also about timing. More students are earning certificates and degrees earlier and that shift reflects how postsecondary pathways are changing and starting sooner than they once did."
Donald Trump's ICE, a Gestapo-like agency, has run rampant for weeks in Minneapolis, snatching thousands of people and even children off the streets, citizens and immigrants alike, breaking into peoples' homes, shooting and murdering people, and trying to suppress lawful protests. In response, the people of Minneapolis have organized a massive fightback, flooding the streets to confront ICE agents and protecting the people from the transgressions of the state-sponsored neo-Nazis who are trying to occupy the city.
For many, one particular breakdown is a final, damning cause for despair: Minnesota's apparent inability to investigate and potentially prosecute the federal agents responsible. The Department of Homeland Security on Saturday reportedly blocked Minnesota officials from examining the scene of Alex Pretti's shooting. Access was refused even after state officials got a judicial search warrant. As a result, key forensic evidence was almost certainly lost. This comes after state officials were excluded from the investigation into Renee Good's death.
On Wednesday morning, well before the school run started, Mary Granlund was attempting to coax her dog outside for a brief walk in negative-two-degree weather, and her phone was already pinging with texts. "It's, like, 'Can someone help bring my kids to school today?' 'Can anybody pick my kids up from school today?' 'Has anyone called the police about the abandoned car?' " she told me.
These numbers look stark, but in context they reveal far more about the conditions California children are growing up in than the quality of classroom instruction. California educates a disproportionate share of children experiencing housing insecurity. A 2024 analysis found that 4% of California students were homeless, with some counties reaching 16%. The California Department of Education reports 230,443 homeless students statewide, a 26% increase over five years that mirrors broader trends in affordability, overcrowding and displacement.
Teachers have almost no authority over student behaviors or academic grading, and are given little, if any, respect from administrators, parents or even students. Instead, students have all the authority but no responsibility for their success. Students do (or don't do) whatever they wish, while empty-handed teachers are left to take the blame. Teachers no longer have the ultimate tool of flunking students.
On a chilly day before Christmas, Teresa Rivas helped a tween boy pick out a new winter coat. "Get the bigger one, the one with the waterproof layer, mijo," she said, before helping him pull it onto his string-bean frame. Rivas provides guidance counseling at Owen Goodnight Middle School in San Marcos, Texas. She talks with students about their goals and helps if they're struggling in class. She's also a trained navigator placed there by a nonprofit called Communities in Schools.
It's long overdue that we modernize the management of our educational system, Newsom said, and so in the budget I'll be submitting tomorrow, I'm proposing that we unify the policymaking by the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, allowing the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to align our education policies from early childhood through college. The budget's passage on this was longer, but still failed to explicitly say what Newsom had in mind.
This idea was based on the parallel between the pluck and elan that are characteristic of both the early-college students I worked with and that of America's hardest-working founding father. Five years after I wrote the book, I had the opportunity to revisit the field for a revised edition, making it appropriate to ask, after Thomas Jefferson's song in the second act of Hamilton, "What'd I Miss": How has early college/dual enrollment changed over the past half decade?
"Here's the reality: When you come to the table prepared with smart and dedicated people that are focused on a clear goal, you can move quickly and intentionally without sacrificing the thoroughness and the careful deliberation that this process deserves,"
While community college advocates argued the lower-cost degrees would benefit students in a state with vast rural expanses and education deserts, private universities countered that community colleges are stepping out of bounds and infringing on their territory. Greg Steinke, the president of the Iowa Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, even went so far as to say the move could put some institutions out of business, telling lawmakers a few weeks ago that "without any question and without any doubt," if the bill passed, "some of our private colleges will close."
