In 2020, music theorist Megan Lyons and I analyzed the seven most common undergraduate music theory textbooks used in the U.S. We found that only 49 of the nearly 3,000 musical examples they cited were written by composers who were not white. A composer, arranger, performer and producer, Jones was a musician whose influence on American music is hard to overstate. He won 28 Grammy Awards, wrote multiple film scores and was intimately involved in some of the most important musical developments in America in the mid-to-late 20th century, such as the rise of the jazz artist as pop music arranger. He produced the world's best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.' Early on, he performed with legends such as Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, and he produced and arranged music for vocal titans such as Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Diana Ross. His pivot to pop music in the late 1970s helped usher in a revolution of funk, disco and early hip-hop....
The Department of Education has been a source of political controversy since its creation in 1980 during Jimmy Carter's presidency. President Ronald Reagan, who was first elected that year, called for it to be disbanded. As a scholar of educational policy and the balance of federal and state roles in American education, I believe that understanding the department and its leader's responsibilities is especially important today. Every child in the United States is required to attend school in some capacity, and what happens at the federal level can have real-world impacts on students ranging from preschool to grad school. Some of the Education Department's key responsibilities include administering Title I funding to help schools serving low-income students obtain an equitable education regardless of their socioeconomic status; managing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ' known as IDEA ' to ensure services for students with disabilities; and overseeing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid ' or FAFSA ' which helps millions of students afford college....
Among Donald Trump's many campaign-trail promises was his threat to dismantle the Department of Education, which he has claimed without basis is filled with 'radicals, zealots, and Marxists.' But the president-elect seems to want to have it both ways: In trying to hamstring the federal agency, Trump says he will give power back to the states. But he has also said he is prepared to use executive power to crack down on schools with policies that don't align with his culture-war agenda. Trump proposed dismantling or dramatically cutting the DOE during his 2016 run, but he didn't follow through while in office. This time, even if he does stick with it, he's not likely to succeed: Because the department was elevated to a Cabinet-level agency by an act of Congress under President Jimmy Carter, shutting it down would likewise require an act of Congress. Passing such a law is a probable nonstarter even though Republicans will soon control the House and Senate. It would require a 60 percent vote in the Senate (at least as long as the filibuster is in place), and some Republicans would likely not support cutting the DOE, because it could be unpopular with their constituents. Red, rural, low-income areas are among the parts of the country whose school districts receive the most Title I supplemental funding from the agency. Although the DOE has found its place in the crosshairs of the culture wars, its daily function largely involves distributing funds to K'12 schools and administering federal loan programs for college students'not getting involved in the curriculum issues that inflame the political right....
On Wednesday, Oct. 9, three student inventors affiliated with the Lemelson-MIT Program (LMIT) shared their stories of what inspired them to invent with U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and employees of the U.S. Department of Education attending a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration. The panel discussion, entitled 'Spotlight on Latino Student Innovators & Aspiring STEM Leaders,' was part of a larger event ('Creando Futuros Brillantes') sponsored by the White House Initiative for Hispanics. Elias Escobar Argueta, a high school junior from Calistoga, California, spoke about his LMIT InvenTeam's DulceTemperatura, a patent-pending invention designed to help farm workers keep cool and warm when working outdoors, and another device to help cool firefighters. Also participating were two former Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam students: Katia Avila Pinado from Pomona, California, who holds a patent for her team's invention, Heart and Sole; and Lesly Rojas of Salem, Oregon, whose team developed an adaptive flow rate cup for people with dysphagia. Avila is now pursuing a degree in networks and digital technology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Rojas is pursuing a degree in electrical and computer engineering at Oregon State University....
