September 30 marks National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day: Every Child Matters Orange Shirt Day. Every Child Matters began in Williams Lake, British Columbia, on September 30, 2013. Established to honour Residential School Survivors, their families, and those who never returned home, it serves as a powerful reminder of the lasting impacts of the Residential School system. What began as a grassroots initiative has since evolved into a nationally recognized movement, with individuals, organizations, and communities across Canada participating in acts of remembrance, reflection, and reconciliation each year. read more
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law The Firearm Printing Prevention Act (AB 2047). This groundbreaking legislation will help stop the next generation of ghost guns before they are made by requiring consumer 3D printers sold in California to incorporate technology that identifies and blocks attempts to print firearms and illegal firearm parts. read more
DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) -- The city of Dearborn responded Saturday to a lawsuit accusing it of celebrating Muslim holidays and ignoring religious holidays of other faiths by blaming attacks against it on its diversity and "welcoming nature." A statement from the Detroit suburb issued by a spokesperson came in response to a lawsuit on Thursday that accused the city and its mayor of spending thousands of dollars to celebrate Muslim holidays while ignoring Christian and Jewish holidays. The lawsuit in federal court revived complaints about city government that arose a year ago after the Dearborn mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, told Ted Barham, a local pastor, that he was not welcome in the city and he would stage a parade when he left. The lawsuit by Margot Cleveland, a journalist for The Federalist, accused the city and its mayor, a Democrat, of favoring the Muslim faith over other religious beliefs in a city with a population of over 100,000 people that is majority Arab American. read more
Settler colonialism is not a story of friendly relations throughout. The confrontation with an unfamiliar other creates wariness and suspicion and often leads to violent outbursts in which non-combatants become innocent victims. The story of Manhattan in the seventeenth century was no exception, as the bloody conflict between Dutch settlers and Native Americans in 1643 shows. On the evening of 25 February 1643, soldiers and settlers of the colony of New Netherland massacred a large number of Native American men, women, and children belonging to Munsee nations on and around Manhattan. The victims were surprised in their sleep. They had assumed they were safe because they had recently sought shelter near New Amsterdam from Indigenous enemies. Dutch sources indicate that at least eighty and perhaps up to one hundred and twenty Munsees were murdered. read more
Here is the translated transcript of the defining, concluding portion of General Juan Velasco Alvarado's historic address delivered on June 24, 1969, which announced the Agrarian Reform Law and fundamentally shifted the social structure of Peru: read more
I posted the same question to AI about the period between 1980 and 2020. Just not seeing a lot about the power of teachers' unions yet.
Between 1980 and 2020, the push to eliminate or de-emphasize the SAT was led by a mixture of advocacy organizations, high-profile university leadership, and grassroots education coalitions. Their efforts gradually shifted the college admissions landscape from universal testing toward the modern "test-optional" model.
The primary forces driving this movement during those four decades included:
1. Advocacy Groups (The Groundwork)
FairTest (The National Center for Fair & Open Testing): Founded in 1985, FairTest was the centralized backbone of the anti-SAT movement. Led by public education directors like Robert Schaeffer, the non-profit aggressively campaigned against the test, arguing that it was a poor predictor of college success, was culturally and socioeconomically biased, and favored wealthy students who could afford expensive test preparation. They meticulously tracked and promoted colleges that dropped the test requirement to prove the feasibility of a test-optional system.
2. Influential Higher Education Leaders
Richard C. Atkinson (President of the University of California System): In February 2001, Atkinson delivered a groundbreaking speech recommending that the massive UC system completely drop the SAT I requirement. A cognitive psychologist by trade, he argued that the test did not align with high school curricula, focused too heavily on vague notions of "inherent aptitude," and forced a destructive commercialization of test prep. Because UC was the largest single consumer of the SAT, his public denunciation sent shockwaves through higher education and legitimized the test-optional debate for selective, public universities.
William Hiss (Bates College): As the Dean of Admissions at Bates College, Hiss led the school to go test-optional in 1984. Over the next few decades, he published influential, long-term studies demonstrating that there was virtually no difference in college graduation rates or GPAs between students who submitted SAT scores and those who didn't, providing the movement with critical empirical data.
3. Professional Educational Associations
National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC): In 2008, NACAC released a landmark report urging colleges to reconsider their reliance on the SAT and ACT. The report highlighted fears that standardized testing created barriers for low-income and minority students, prompting a significant wave of liberal arts colleges to eliminate the testing mandate over the subsequent decade.
4. Early-Adopting Institutions
Prior to 2020, a steady stream of individual universities stepped up to challenge the status quo. Following early leaders like Bowdoin College (which went test-optional in 1969), schools like Wake Forest University (2008) and the University of Chicago (2018) made waves by dropping the requirement, proving that elite, highly selective institutions could maintain high academic standards without the SAT.
By the time the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and forced widespread test-center closures, the decades of groundwork laid by these individuals and groups made the sudden pivot to a near-universal test-optional model a smooth and logical transition for over 1,000 universities.