iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 18/09/2026

I'm not proud but I lol'd here.

110

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 28/08/2026

Solid mailbag for Kathy in the local paper this week. www.news-gazette.com/business/kat...

010

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 13/08/2026

It's, uh, pretty big, we can read it from like two miles away.

020

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 30/07/2026

Always interesting to compare teaching to the economy-wide rates (quit and total separation rates, in this case).

1113

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 11/07/2026

I know the conventional wisdom about the EBF is that "the adequacy target...account[s] for...the number of students receiving special education services" but I think this is basically false. capitolnewsillinois.com/news/as-illi...

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 09/07/2026

Please, professors only hear what they want to hear anyway. www.chronicle.com/article/the-...

120

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 25/06/2026

My "this is not an emergency" t-shirt has a lot of people asking questions, etc.

000

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 04/06/2026

Seems like a red flag. Where are we at on the Frontiers/MDPI/Emerald journals these days?

510

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 26/05/2026

"some" and "as much as" are doing a lot of work here.

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 24/05/2026

I'm skeptical that the right way to message this is by drawing a distinction between "vacancies" and "unfilled positions". www.education.ne.gov/press_releas...

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 18/05/2026

Despite recent increases in revenue, districts in CA have a variety of reasons to worry about what the future holds financially, e.g., due to enrollment/attendance declines, the expiration of Prop. 55, and, for some districts, unfunded retiree health insurance liabilities.

101

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 15/05/2026

There's substantial variation in salary schedule change. I estimate 11% of districts saw real, collectively bargained salary schedule growth of the magnitude that other workers saw over this period. (11%, but those comparisons are tricky.) The median district saw a decline!

101

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 15/05/2026

One upshot is slower growth in salary, and esp. teacher salary, spending. That growth seems to have been driven by teacher experience, more hiring, and, recently, one-time bonuses. But real teacher salary schedules are basically unchanged over the last 20 years in California.

112

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 15/05/2026

Longtime readers may also be unsurprised to hear that much of new district spending is for staff benefits, which has more than doubled per-student. Required pension contributions have more than tripled. Districts also bear the brunt of large increases in medical benefit costs.

131

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 14/05/2026

Another not-entirely-unrelated answer is that a disproportionate share of new money is going to administrative and pupil services activity. That still leaves room for growth in spending on instruction, but a good bit less growth than for spending overall.

111

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 14/05/2026

Where is all the new money going? One big answer is special education. While per-student spending is up by about 67% over the last 20 years in CA, per-student SPED spending is up 123% (i.e., it's well more than doubled).

111

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 14/05/2026

I have some caveats on the equity side, e.g., around data quality. I also note that I continue to find a "funding trough" that suggests LCFF's supplemental grants might be insufficiently generous for districts with more - but not vastly more - disadvantaged students.

221

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 13/05/2026

Texting with my dad about this.

040

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 13/05/2026

I also do a little to look within-district, and find evidence that districts spend more in their schools with more unduplicated (low-income or EL) students. So some suggestive evidence that funding for those students is making it to the "right" schools, at least.

111

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 13/05/2026

I also show some success in terms of CA's equity goals for funding. For example, districts with more disadvantaged ("unduplicated" in CA jargon) students tend to have higher funding levels. Particularly districts with the largest shares of these students, who are eligible for "concentration" grants.

211

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 12/05/2026

One of the main takeaways from this iteration of the District Dollars report? School districts in California have recently seen big increases in funding and historically high funding levels, due to growth across federal, state, and local funding.

133

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 30/03/2026

Wow I knew @mattbarnum.bsky.social was having an impact but I missed this announcement from the Stanford GSE.

170

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 10/02/2026

e.g., interested in which states have passed education-related AI policies? www.aipolicyatlas.com/map.html

000

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 18/01/2026

Lead front page story from the Springfield Journal-Register this AM. www.sj-r.com/story/news/l...

000

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 14/01/2026

For the comparison to teaching:

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 14/01/2026

I'd lost track a bit of some of the data series as they were offered (or not) in FRED so asked Claude to update the vacancy rate charts I used to make periodically. Not bad, though it required some coaching to correct some pretty glaring mistakes. And of course there could be more.

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 07/01/2026

One thing I don't understand is the reliance in so many places on "chronic absenteeism" (arbitrarily-binary) rather than attendance rates. Just use the overall attendance rate to incentivize the improvements I assume we're looking for here, right?

330

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 07/01/2026

I have gotten cooler on moving to enrollment-based funding, particularly post-pandemic. Not opposed, exactly, but definitely cooler. "Unsure" is probably where I'm at.

200

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 29/12/2025

This is a very funny complaint to have about Space Dances with Wolves 3. www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar_fir...

120

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 26/12/2025

The junk mail takes a dark turn sometimes.

120

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 22/12/2025

Your (my) regular reminder that the city's declaring a TIF surplus to backfill the school district budget and also to give the district money to give back to the city to help cover the city's pension obligations. It's hard to remember!

000

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 30/11/2025

I asked Gemini for Phoebe Bridgers' next album cover. Not bad.

020

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 30/11/2025

This thermostat keeps finding new ways to not work. Here it is running the heat when I woke up (orange flame) despite the temperature inside (70) being well above the target temperature (67). It's like we're being gaslit by ecobee.

400

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 25/11/2025

Guess we took care of it. trends.google.com/trends/explo...

291

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 10/11/2025

So here's the interesting thing (imo). The teaching force (public + private) grew from 1.3M to 3.7M between 1955 and 2021. With a bit less rounding, it's an increase of 188%. And if you look at the change in total nonfarm payroll in the U.S. from October 1955 to October 2021 it's...189%.

211

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 10/11/2025

My first "key finding" is about the aggregate size of the teaching force, and how it's grown both a lot in absolute terms and much faster than student enrollment. OK, sure, so the workforce grew faster than the student population, fine, whatever.

100

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 03/11/2025

If you want to use one you should first have to be able to explain what a random effect is.

000

Paul Bruno @paul-bruno.com · 28/10/2025

Weiss is obviously not serious but I have my doubts about the claims i keep seeing in this...screenshot. ABL: Always Be Linking, etc.

000