Author: Lone Candle

We talk about heat waves in a weird way

Posted on by Lone Candle

“heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in a typical year in the United States, killing an average of 148 people annually in the 30 years from 1992 to 2021, and climate change is only going to make heat waves more common. We already categorize tornadoes, and we name wildfires. Hurricanes get both. Would extending those ideas to heat waves help?”

Why does the WeWork guy get to fail up?

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The housing shortage is certainly a big deal. The US was short nearly 4 million housing units as of late 2020, and the problem is spreading across the country. The inability to buy a home has huge repercussions on everything from Americans’ quality of life to their ability to create wealth. The problem is big enough that venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is writing its biggest check to date — $350 million, valuing the company at $1 billion — to invest in Flow with the hope that the company can disrupt residential real estate through technology.”

Rising Grocery Prices Pushed Annual Inflation to 8.3 Percent in August

Posted on by Lone Candle

“So-called “core CPI,” which filters out the more volatile categories like food and fuel prices, rose by 0.6 percent in August. In short, falling gasoline prices helped to offset broader and more pernicious inflation across the rest of the economy.”

Are teachers leaving the classroom en masse?

Posted on by Lone Candle

““I think what is clear among all the noise is that there hasn’t been a mass exodus. In some districts there have been elevated rates of teachers leaving,” said Heather Schwartz, senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. “‘Mass exodus’ is an undefined term. But we may all think of it as doubling or tripling the normal attrition rate and we have not seen that.”
Some data sources suggest that the number of teachers really has declined, even if it hasn’t yet hit mass exodus levels. There were about 270,000 fewer school staffers in July 2022 — including teachers, bus drivers, counselors, and librarians — than there were in January 2020, according to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bleiberg and Kraft, using both national and state-level data, found that overall employment in the K-12 labor market declined by 9.3 percent at the onset of the pandemic and was still 4 percent below pre-pandemic levels in March 2022.

A survey from RAND of 291 school district leaders, released in July, found that 58 percent of district leaders foresee a small shortage this year and 17 percent anticipate a large shortage. The survey also found that more than three-quarters of district leaders said that they have expanded their teaching staff, in some cases including substitute teachers, above pre-pandemic levels as of spring 2022.”

…

“The usual culprits for teacher dissatisfaction are ever-present. About 75 percent of pre-K to grade 12 teachers who participated in the AFT survey reported that conditions have changed for the worse over the past five years.

The reasons included their workload, greater responsibilities, unrealistic expectations, student behavioral issues, pay that doesn’t keep up with inflation, a lack of support from school leadership, and a lack of support from parents. About 74 percent of respondents said they would not recommend the teaching profession to a prospective new teacher. (Other large surveys of teachers from the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the country, and RAND tell a similar story.)”

The Never Trump wing of the GOP never had a chance

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The bad news for Never Trump Republicans this week wasn’t just that Liz Cheney lost the primary for her Wyoming congressional seat on Tuesday. It wasn’t even that she lost by such an overwhelming margin. It was that her loss fit a pattern in which the GOP’s voters have roundly rejected Republican after Republican who voted to impeach Trump. Only two of the 10 House Republicans who did so will even be on the ballot in November — one of whom is running in a district that Joe Biden won by more than 10 percentage points in 2020.
It’s clear at this point that the Republican Party is a pro-Trump party, and that its voters recoil from candidates who are ardently opposed to the former president. The results of this primary season — and Cheney’s loss in particular — show a Never Trump wing on the verge of extinction.”