Shayna Cook (cook_shayna) is a policy analyst with the Education Policy program at New America. She is a member of the Learning Technologies project.
Shayna researches and reports on innovation, new technologies, and digital equity issues concerning children from birth through third grade. She is a former teacher who graduated from American University with a master’s degree in education, focusing on policy and leadership. She holds a bachelor’s degree in classics from Howard University.
In this episode, we discussed:
how states can use federal funding to promote family engagement. how schools can more effectively incorporate technology to promote family engagement. how to evaluate engagement programs to determine how they improve learning outcomes.Resources:
New America's Education Policy Program
New Guidance on Using the Every Student Succeeds Act to Support Early Learning by Shayna Cook (New America, 2016)
Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy by Tressie McMillan Cottom
NEWS ROUNDUP
Sinclair is acquiring Tribune broadcasting, the companies announced on Monday, for a cool $3.9 billion. Tribune owns 42 tv stations in 33 markets, WGN, digital multicast network Antenna TV, minority stakes in the TV Food Network and CareerBuilder, and a variety of real estate assets, according to the companies' press release. Even after the Republican controlled FCC threw it a bone at its last open meeting by reinstating the UHF discount, which lets broadcasters half the size of the audience their UHF stations reach, thereby enabling broadcast companies to own more stations, Sinclair may still need to divest some its stations to fall under the 39 percent cap on the national audience. Sinclair is Chaired by David Smith--a key supporter of Donald Trump.
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President Trump signed an executive order establishing a new American Technology Council which will be tasked with coming up with ways to transform and modernize the federal government. It's not clear yet which companies will participate, but Tony Romm at Recode notes that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft have huddled with the administration in the past. Mike Allen at Axios reported the creation of the Council was spearheaded by Trump advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner and that the council will hold a summit in June to map out a plan for the duration of the Trump administration.
Two lawmakers also created a bi-partisan Digital Trade Caucus last week which is aimed at protecting cross-border digital trade from protectionism. Minnesota Republican Erik Paulsen and Washington Democrat Suzan DelBene made the announcement last week.
The Department of Justice has announced a criminal investigation into Uber. The New York Times reported in March that the company was using a software called Greyball to circumvent local authorities in areas where Uber hasn't been approved yet. Now a grand jury in Northern California has subpoenaed documents from Uber related to the matter. Dan Levine has the story in Reuters.
The State Department wants to intensify its scrutiny of visa applicants. The agency published a document last week, in line with the Trump administration's efforts to subject visa applicants to "extreme vetting", which outlines plans to require visa applicants to provide five years worth of their social media handles, phone numbers and email addresses. The public will have a chance to comment on the new proposed rules until May 18th. Yaganeh Torbati and Mica Rosenberg report in Reuters.
The reined-in National Security Agency still collected 151 million phone records in 2016. Charlie Savage reports in the New York Times that the NSA previously collected billions of phone records per day, according to a transparency report released last week.
The Department of Homeland Security warned of an emerging espionage campaign led by Chinese hackers. The hacker group APT10 or MenuPass group has targeted construction, aerospace, engineering and telecom companies in the past, but security analysts are now saying they found evidence that the group could now be working in tandem with the Chinese government to collect military secrets from the United States. Chris Bing has the story in CyberScoop.
Elon Musk's SpaceX boosted a classified U.S. Spy Satellite into orbit on Monday May 1st at 7:14AM. The payload is a National Reconnaissance Office satellite. SpaceX is trying to ramp up its commercial space flight program following an explosion last September that halted it. However, last week's launch was SpaceX's 4th successful launch since January, and it was flawless. Andy Pasztor reports in the Wall Street Journal.
Finally, a report by an engineer at Facebook found the company rejects code submitted by female engineers at a rate that is 35% higher than their male counterparts. Facebook's most recent diversity report shows women comprise just 17% of Facebook's technical workforce. Deepa Seetharaman reports in the Wall Street Journal.
