Larry Ferlazzo
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larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Larry Ferlazzo
@larryferlazzo.bsky.social
8.2K followers 2K following 4.8K posts
A high school teacher for 23 years to ELL & English-proficient students, community organizer for previous 19 years, author or editor of 13 books on education, Ed Week teacher advice columnist, committed - though mediocre - basketball and Pickleball player.
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larryferlazzo.bsky.social
There’s gotta be more than this - could the Dems have private guarantees that The GOP and Trump would approve an extension? Even if they do, why would they trust them?
As part of Democrats’ agreement to end the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is promising Senate Democrats a vote in December to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year short of Congressional action. Democrats will also get to determine what extension bill gets a vote. The government-opening agreement also guarantees that federal employees laid off during the shutdown are re-hired and gives federal employees backpay.
November 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Families in Limbo After Supreme Court Order Interrupts Food Stamp Payments www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/u...
By its own admission, the Trump administration can access tens of billions in leftover funds to finance full SNAP benefits in November. But Mr. Trump has declined to use the money, and his aides have claimed they cannot help, despite the fact that they have reworked other parts of the federal budget to sustain their priorities during the shutdown — including to pay officers conducting mass deportations.
November 8, 2025 at 4:41 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
From The New Yorker
November 8, 2025 at 1:11 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Judge sharply condemns federal use of force in Chicago immigration operation www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday delivered a damning condemnation of the use of force in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign in this city, saying officers have unnecessarily terrorized local residents who have sought to peacefully protest or document their actions.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis cited several examples of what she said was evidence of excessive force that contradicted statements from federal authorities who defended the actions of immigration officers who used tear gas, pepper spray or other nonlethal crowd control devices.
The incidents came after the judge last month issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting officers from using chemical munitions on nonviolent demonstrators and journalists.
“I find the defendants’ evidence simply not credible,” Ellis said. “Overall, this calls into question everything the defendants are doing.”
She added the government is using force “untethered” to any specific threat. “I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Ellis said. “I would find the use of force shocks the conscience.
November 6, 2025 at 6:13 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Armed ICE officers chase teacher into preschool in Chicago www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
Immigration officers arrested a teacher early Wednesday in Chicago after chasing her into the grounds of a private preschool and grabbing her as parents and students looked on, according to a local official, witnesses and video footage of the incident.
Several parents said they were waiting to drop off their children around 7 a.m. at Rayito de Sol, a Spanish immersion day care and school, when they saw armed officers in black vests with the words “POLICE ICE” run behind the woman and into the lobby of the building. Witnesses and school employees told The Washington Post they thought the school was under attack and scrambled into rooms and vehicles outside in search of safety.
The arrest appears to be one of the first instances during Trump’s second administration in which immigration officers entered school grounds to make an arrest. During the Biden and Obama administrations, schools were considered “sensitive locations,” and agents were barred from entering with few exceptions. But the Trump administration eliminated those policies in January, allowing agents to make arrests at schools, hospitals and churches. There have been few such arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security has said it did not plan to raid or target schools.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin disputed that the woman was arrested inside the school, saying she was detained in “a vestibule.” The outer doors to the school are open to the public but to enter through a second set of double doors, staff must buzz in parents and faculty through a lobby after verifying their identity. Bystander video of the arrest shows agents in both the lobby area and deeper inside the school.

November 5, 2025 at 8:54 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Company that helped create the SAT to lay off 757 California worker www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...
A familiar name in the world of standardized testing is preparing for another major shake-up. Educational Testing Service, the company best known for developing the GRE and formerly administering the SAT, plans to lay off 757 employees in California by the end of the year, according to a state filing. In a regulatory filing to state officials last week, ETS said it will end constructed-response scoring services for several state education programs — including the ELPAC, CAST, and CSA exams — effective December 31.
November 5, 2025 at 7:38 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Similar to the old community organizing adage: in public life, there are no permanent enemies or allies, only changing self interests.
The results, then, are a marked contrast to the accommodation, capitulation and outright surrender of prominent individuals and institutions in the face of Trump’s demands. They also serve to remind us of what ought to be a fundamental maxim of democracy: that there is no singular “people” and there are no permanent majorities.
November 5, 2025 at 3:11 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Obama tried to do this after his election but it failed because he didn’t connect it to existing organizations like congregations, union locals, comm groups. This strategy requires it to be institutional based organizing if u want it 2 work.
“An ideal,” DRUM’s Ahmed said, “would be if we could develop neighborhood-based organizing committees” out of the campaign’s neighborhood canvassing operations. “They could play this role of staying well-connected to the community, connected to the administration, and sort of being able to go in both directions.” But Ahmed emphasized that this was still an ideal, while pointing out the wide discrepancy between electoral campaigns and ongoing organizing efforts. “It’s one thing to knock on doors to mobilize people,” he said. “It’s another thing to actually know people behind those doors and know who they listen to or who they influence.”
November 2, 2025 at 7:03 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
If elected, Mamdani says he would share authority with parents, teachers and local councils in a “co-governance” model that reimagines how the city’s nearly 1 million students — in what remains the most segregated school system in the nation — are educated.
November 2, 2025 at 5:44 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Next Era of the American University www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
oing forward, universities need to find alternative financial sources anyway, given the larger drawdown in federal spending, and they also need to better wield their existing legal entitlements. If important foundational research is going to thrive, for example, universities must look to partnerships with their home state’s governor and legislature and with industry—not with a federal government that discards years of investment in a bout of dyspeptic partisan spite. States might also band together, as they have done in providing vaccine guidance recently, to go a step further by creating joint funding mechanisms. Some universities may also explore the possibility of new partnerships to teach students at non-U.S. institutions—building new transnational infrastructures that circumvent the federal government. Just this m
November 1, 2025 at 1:26 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Slow Death of Special Education www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
As the federal government cancels funding streams and fires the employees in charge of overseeing special-education programs nationwide, the result will be an uneven, state-by-state patchwork of special education. Kids with disabilities in some states will get the support they need to learn alongside their peers and earn a high-school diploma. Kids in other states will be kept in segregated classrooms without any preparation for a prosperous future when they age out of the public-school system. That future is already playing out across the country to some extent, but it’s about to get even worse.
November 1, 2025 at 1:21 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
This is a sad commentary on 53% of the teaching profession ——-Would Educators Advocate for a Student Who Was Detained by ICE? See New Data www.edweek.org/leadership/w...
The largest share of respondents (47%) said their district should advocate for the student’s release, while 25% said their district should do nothing. Fourteen percent said their district should provide information or assistance to the immigration agents who detained the student.
October 31, 2025 at 9:13 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Ballad of a Mexican American Schoolboy Who Helped Pave the Way for Brown v. Board of Ed www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/b...
These questions are at the heart of “A Sea of Lemon Trees,” a stunning new historical novel-in-verse by María Dolores Águila. The book sheds light on an unheralded moment in American history when a Mexican community came together to fight educational injustice. In 1931, more than 20 years before the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, a desegregation battle referred to as the Lemon Grove Incident unfolded in a suburb of San Diego. Motivated by anti-immigrant rhetoric that was sweeping the nation, school administrators pulled Mexican students out of their local public school, Lemon Grove Grammar School, and sent them to a separate, inferior location, a shack everyone called la caballeriza (the stable). Amid threats of deportation and racist taunts, the close-knit Mexican community stood their ground, choosing 12-year-old Roberto Alvarez to serve as lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against the school board.
October 31, 2025 at 2:30 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Here’s How the AI Crash Happens www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
Much is in flux. Chatbots and AI chips are getting more efficient almost by the day, while the business case for deploying generative-AI tools remains shaky. A recent report from McKinsey found that nearly 80 percent of companies using AI discovered that the technology had no significant impact on their bottom line. Meanwhile, nobody can say, beyond a few years, just how many more data centers Silicon Valley will need. There are researchers who believe there may already be enough electricity and computing power to meet generative AI’s requirements for years to come.
October 30, 2025 at 11:37 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
From The New Yorker, for others who are also pickleball enthusiasts
October 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Pentagon readying thousands of Guard ‘reaction forces’ as U.S. mission widens www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
The Pentagon has ordered thousands of specialized National Guard personnel to complete civil unrest mission training over the next several months, an indication that the Trump administration’s effort to send uniformed military forces into urban centers — once reserved for extraordinary emergencies — could become the norm.
The Defense Department’s newly established “quick reaction force” within the National Guard must be trained, equipped with riot-control gear and ready for deployment by Jan. 1, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The 200 troops will be drawn from National Guard personnel whose primary focus is responding to disasters like nuclear accidents and terrorist attacks, the documents said.
October 30, 2025 at 1:57 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
I’m visiting Alaska this week and enjoying seeing family, but detesting the cold - & it’s not even bad yet by local standards. Scenery can’t be beat, though
Snowy mountains Red and orange sunset
October 29, 2025 at 10:34 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
When the Government Stops Defending Civil Rights www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
Blunt’s son is not the only person in her family who has suffered. “It’s really taken a toll on my mental health,” she acknowledged, when we spoke. But, as was clear from the quotation on the T-shirt she was wearing—“You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right,” it read, a statement attributed to Rosa Parks—she was not about to give up. Nor does she believe that the only people who ought to be disturbed by her son’s story are Democrats. “Why are we shutting down something that protects children?” she asked. “This is something every American should care about, because civil rights protect us all.”
October 29, 2025 at 10:30 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
International student arrivals take a dive under Trump www.latimes.com/world-nation...
The number of international student arrivals in the U.S. dropped by nearly a fifth at the onset of this academic year, according to federal data, the latest sign of a hit to colleges’ foreign student enrollment as the Trump administration has ratcheted up scrutiny of their visas.
October 28, 2025 at 2:49 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Houston Trumpets ‘Historic’ Gains from Schools Takeover, But Doubters Remain www.the74million.org/article/hous...
We don’t trust the validity of the scoring,” said Jackie Andersen, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. “We’re comparing apples to oranges in terms of the tests that were administered and are being compared to one another. It’s data manipulation, plain and simple. He’s saying, ‘Everything is good, the scores are up!’ But we’re not looking at the same students, we’re not looking at the same tests, we’re not even looking at the same criteria for passing year to year.” Her criticism was echoed by the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle. “The whole thing is bogus,” she added. “In any other administration, if a school had gone from an F rating to an A rating, they would have been investigated. And probably the principal and everybody in the school would have been terminated because that’s impossible. Come on now. Something is not right.”
October 28, 2025 at 2:19 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
We’ll help save your life if there’s something in it for us ——1Monster hurricane to hit Jamaica: ‘I have been on my knees in prayer’ www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025...
October 28, 2025 at 3:18 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Elon Musk launches Grokipedia, an AI-powered Wikipedia rival www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...
Every major AI system trains on Wikipedia’s freely licensed knowledge,” said Stephen Harrison, a journalist and author who has covered Wikipedia extensively, on Friday. “The irony is that Grokipedia will be built on the unpaid labor of the volunteer Wikipedia editors Musk has gone out of his way to vilify.”
In an interview with The Post last week, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales said he would be curious to see Grokipedia when it launched but didn’t have high expectations.
AI language models “aren’t good enough to write encyclopedia articles,” Wales said. “There will be a lot of errors.”
October 27, 2025 at 9:48 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Why America’s Debate Over Which Children Are ‘Gifted’ Won’t Go Away www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/n...
Imagine two students: one from an especially affluent household and another whose family lives well below the poverty line. Both perform at the same level in their core classes. Yet the child from the affluent family will be twice as likely to receive gifted services, research shows.
October 27, 2025 at 1:51 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Thread Tying Together Everything Trump Does www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/o...
For Mr. Trump, the common thread weaving together so much of what he does — at home and abroad — is power. Whether he is seeking a cease-fire in Gaza or Ukraine, bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela or deploying troops to American cities, the desired result is his personal aggrandizement and the empowerment of his presidency. When he pursues peace, it is personalized — a deal made with other strongmen rarely addresses underlying causes of conflict. When he makes war, it is also personalized — there is no expectation, for instance, that Congress must authorize his actions.
October 26, 2025 at 10:31 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/t...
Faculty senates on several Cal State campuses passed resolutions this year criticizing the A.I. initiative, saying the university had failed to adequately address students using chatbots to cheat. Professors also said administrators’ plans glossed over the risks of A.I. to students’ critical thinking and ignored troubling industry labor practices and environmental costs. Martha Kenney, a professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University, described the A.I. program as a Cal State marketing vehicle helping tech companies promote unproven chatbots as legitimate educational tools.
October 26, 2025 at 2:06 PM