Because Friday night is the perfect night for data nerdery, I shall comment briefly on this Supreme Court decision. 🧵

https://twitter.com/jonathanturley/status/1931098864141926441

In general, the Privacy Act of 1974 requires written consent from the subject of the record before it is disclosed. However, it contains 12 exceptions to this rule: 5 U.S.C. §552a(b)(1-12). Some of these are familiar (e.g., if the recipient has a court order) and some obscure.

I've been thinking about the over-the-top response to RFK Jr.'s remarks on profound autism. It comes down to triage systems and the values embedded in those systems.

With thanks to @annbauerwriter for helping me think this through. 🧵 The more familiar triage is hospital triage. If you show up in the emergency room with a broken ankle, you could be waiting for a long time while the doctors treat people with strokes or gunshot wounds to the abdomen first.

These sob stories claiming that layoffs at @EDcivilrights are leaving kids with disabilities without protection are getting absurd. The data show that OCR wasn't providing them meaningful protection well before the layoffs. 🧵 I'm curious what the journalists and Congressmembers who've reported on this have to say about journalistic diligence, so I'm going to tag a bunch of them. @BernieSanders @merkolodner @ReporterMarina @mkeierleber @MarkALieberman

Parents have been asking if rumored changes to the US Department of Education could harm enforcement of federal special ed laws.

The most generous thing you can say about US DOE enforcement is that the amount of effort is non-zero. And that's very generous.🧵 What is enforcement? In the military world, we talk about deterrence through denial and deterrence through punishment. If you want to make someone not do something, you either prevent them from doing it (denial) or you make a credible threat to punish them for doing it.

Lots of people are in a tizzy about @DOGE personnel accessing sensitive and classified information. Let’s clear a few things up. 🧵 The ideas of classifying information and granting security clearances derives from Executive Orders, starting back in the 1950’s. The EO currently in force is EO 13526, created by then-President Obama through minor tweaks to previous EOs.

Here's an explainer thread about what I think would happen in special education if the US Department of Education went away. I have no insider knowledge about plans, but this thread is how I would do it. 🧵 Credentials first. I'm the mom of a daughter who is on the more severe end of the developmental disability spectrum. Her IEP is basically "one of each" and she attends a special ed private day school. She's a sassy tween now and has been receiving IDEA services since age 2.

The presidential election is over and Virginia remains a blue outpost in a sea of red. It's time for the true story of how Glenn Youngkin became the governor of Virginia in 2021 and why Republicans will not repeat the gubernatorial upset in the next few rounds. 🧵 (Tagging @mtaibbi, as I'm still hoping he'll publish the crazier aspects of the Virginia COVID school closure story someday.)

Man, @COVIDSelect really missed the mark today. The AFT's trigger for closing schools wasn't the part they put in the CDC guidance about new variants. It was the part they put in to force schools to give teachers at "higher risk" virtual teaching as an ADA accommodation. 🧵 From the February 12, 2021 K-12 CDC guidance, "At all levels of community transmission, employers should provide reassignment, remote work, or other options for staff who have documented high-risk conditions or who are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19...

Urging all of my fellow parents of special ed students to make this the year. Ask for more than the bare bones summer offerings that the district recommends. This year, you can ask for more, and there's a good chance you'll get it. Build your super packet! First piece for your packet. "Students with Disabilities May Be Entitled to Compensatory Services if They Did Not Receive Appropriate Evaluations or Services During the COVID-19 Pandemic". Don't let the school pretend this guidance doesn't exist! www2.ed.gov/about/offices/…

Let's explore the history of why we wear cloth masks for COVID, shall we? Most people these days have two mental categories of masks: disposable surgical/cloth and respirators (N95). In fact, there are three categories: disposable surgical masks, cloth masks, and respirators. Cloth masks and paper masks are different in one crucial way; paper masks have a waterproof layer to stop droplets while cloth masks usually do not. Anyone who's worn a cloth mask (all of us at this point) know that they get moist...

The @CDCgov's case thresholds (new cases per 100K persons for last 7 days) defining low, moderate, substantial, and high spread do not appear to have been scientifically validated. Unless we develop some validated thresholds, we'll be stuck in the pandemic forever. A thread. Let's start by tracing back the reference begats and begats and begats. The current thresholds used to make the scary red/orange/yellow/blue maps come from this July 30, 2021 CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report. cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7…