K-12 IMPROVEMENT UPDATE: These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling.

Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

How is this possible when southern states are governed by racist Republicans, and Massachusetts is run by enlightened progressives?

MAKE CONQUISTADORS GREAT AGAIN:

Who am I kidding? Conquistadors were always great.

JAPAN VS BRITAIN: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain.

The contrast between America’s great island allies on opposite ends of the world couldn’t be more drastic.

Japan has just given its commonsense conservative prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a two-thirds supermajority in the national legislature’s Lower House; her Liberal Democratic Party took the highest proportion of seats of any party since World War II.

It’s an enormous vote of confidence not only in Takaichi’s economic agenda but also for her willingness to get tough with China.

Beijing’s mouthpieces have called Takaichi an “evil witch,” with China’s consul general in Osaka threatening, “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off” in response to Takaichi’s indication Japan would aid Taiwan against an invasion.

Such incendiary language didn’t intimidate Takaichi — nor, it turns out, Japan’s voters.

Yet even as Japan was rallying to its courageous prime minister, China was inflicting humiliation on America’s closest European ally.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Find Someone Who Looks at You the Way Dems Look at Violent Criminals. “As we head towards the all-important midterm elections, the Democrats are putting all of their efforts into being the champions of murderers, rapists, and thieves who are in this country illegally. OK, that’s not fair — they are also doing what they can to help out violent criminals who are U.S. citizens.”

DON’T FAIRFAX THE REST OF VIRGINIA: A Virginia Commonwealth University professor warns the state’s Democrats that they are headed down a seriously wrong path on the redistricting issue. The X post is from the Fairfax GOP, but Professor Alex Keena is not a Republican activist.

When I lived in Northern Virginia during the Reagan/Bush 1 era, you often saw bumper stickers in surrounding counties warning “Don’t Fairfax _____ County.” Now the whole state is being Fairfaxed.

DID ANCIENT CHINESE ASTRONOMERS KNOW OF JESUS? Yes, that’s an unexpected question, but the answer is yes, they did indeed, though not by the same name known in the West, according to a Catholic research and advocacy group.

The evidence comes from close readings in the archives of the pre-polytheistic era dynasties of Chinese history when the Far Eastern giant followed a monotheistic religion very much analogous to what we today call Christianity. I’m cautiously fascinated. What do you think?

IT ISN’T JUST THE KIDS GETTING PARTICIPATION TROPHIES: I won ‘Teacher of the Year’ for enthusiasm, but kids weren’t learning.

Luke Morin won “teacher of the year” when he was a young, energetic, engaging — and ineffective — teacher, he writes on Holly Korbey’s BellRinger. He got flowers from the superintendent and his picture in the paper. But his sixth-grade English students weren’t learning very much.

Years later, after visiting effective schools and studying what make them work, he was “the highest-performing teacher in Colorado.” Nobody noticed.

In her “Learning from Greatness newsletter, Korbey asked why school leaders don’t investigate and emulate what’s working elsewhere. Why is there so little curiosity about success?

Maybe because there’s little interest in promoting it.

ACADEMIC ‘FREEDOM’ ON LEFT CAMPUS: Powerline’s John Hinderaker points to a special ed teacher in a California school who lost her job after expressing support for the deportation of illegal aliens. And asks the next logical questions:

“How did we get to this pass? And what is the path forward? Honestly, I think it is hard to see how those of us who support the rule of law can continue to share a country with those who do not–a group that now numbers close to half of our population. What possible basis for a common citizenship is there, between us and them? I don’t think there is one.”

DATA SAYS GOING TO CHURCH KEY TO MARITAL BLISS: In fact, according to the joint analysis of the Institute for Family Studies and UVA and the Wheatley Institute at BYU, men are 3x as likely to be happily married if they regularly attend worship services with their wives and kids. So, if healthy families are the key building block for civilization …

SADLY, THIS IS PROBABLY CORRECT:

They’ve had their fill of Islamic rule in Iran, but London is just really getting going.