With thousands migrants potentially traveling through the Western Balkans this year, this MPI Europe webinar explores the implications of the buttressed EU border on the bloc’s neighbors, the migrants transiting these routes, and the local communities. Experts also explored how the European Union can support efforts to address irregular migration in neighboring countries, and what are the tradeoffs and considerations that policymakers must weigh. 

The high-stakes gambit taken by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to allow tens of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants free movement to the Greek border demonstrated the fragility of the EU-Turkey deal and the European Union's broader approach to outsource migration management to third countries. This article examines the causes for the tensions, the EU approach to external partnerships, and a hardening European attitude towards unwanted arrivals.

Teachers unions are scapegoats for low student performance.

Five California educators last week filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state's top teachers' union from collecting dues through mandatory paycheck deductions.

Three Oregon school employees sued their union in federal court last week, arguing it's unfair that the teachers' union only lets members drop out and stop paying dues during the month of September.

Mike Matthews wrote several sexist and racist blog posts a decade ago that were recently unearthed.

The Michigan ruling could be a signal of what's to come after the case on union fees that's currently being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the aftermath of this spring's teacher protests, more educators are running for state office—and the National Education Association is seizing on the political moment.

We consider the problem of clustering and completing a set of tensors with missing data that are drawn from a union of low-rank tensor spaces. In the clustering problem, given a partially sampled tensor data that is composed of a number of subtensors, each chosen from one of a certain number of unknown tensor spaces, we need to group the subtensors that belong to the same tensor space. We provide a geometrical analysis on the sampling pattern and subsequently derive the sampling rate that guarantees the correct clustering under some assumptions with high probability. Moreover, we investigate the fundamental conditions for finite/unique completability for the union of tensor spaces completion problem. Both deterministic and probabilistic conditions on the sampling pattern to ensure finite/unique completability are obtained. For both the clustering and completion problems, our tensor analysis provides significantly better bound than the bound given by the matrix analysis applied to any unfolding of the tensor data.

Kazuki Okamura.

Source: Brazilian Journal of Probability and Statistics, Volume 33, Number 3, 586--637.

Abstract:
We consider a random object that is associated with both random walks and random media, specifically, the superposition of a configuration of subcritical Bernoulli percolation on an infinite connected graph and the trace of the simple random walk on the same graph. We investigate asymptotics for the number of vertices of the enlargement of the trace of the walk until a fixed time, when the time tends to infinity. This process is more highly self-interacting than the range of random walk, which yields difficulties. We show a law of large numbers on vertex-transitive transient graphs. We compare the process on a vertex-transitive graph with the process on a finitely modified graph of the original vertex-transitive graph and show their behaviors are similar. We show that the process fluctuates almost surely on a certain non-vertex-transitive graph. On the two-dimensional integer lattice, by investigating the size of the boundary of the trace, we give an estimate for variances of the process implying a law of large numbers. We give an example of a graph with unbounded degrees on which the process behaves in a singular manner. As by-products, some results for the range and the boundary, which will be of independent interest, are obtained.

Klemm (Family)

ACT and the American Federation of Teachers are partnering to provide free resources as educators increasingly switch to distance learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The post ACT and Teachers’ Union Partner to Provide Remote Learning Resources Amid Pandemic appeared first on Market Brief.

The New York City police department (NYPD) is conducting an internal investigation into a May 2 incident involving the violent arrests of multiple people, allegedly members of a group who were not social distancing

The rainbow sports bra and leggings set from Splits59 is a must-have for anyone craving a pop of color in their workout wardrobe.

When the province eventually conducts its review on the response to COVID-19, the president of the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union can think of one thing in particular that needs to be discussed.

The University of Manitoba is laying off dozens of employees as it tries to find savings at a time when post-secondary schools have largely been closed since COVID-19 emerged on the Prairies, a union says.

The union that represents thousands of Manitoba workers is asking what safety protocols were in place when a construction worker was killed after a trench wall collapsed on him earlier this week.

As automakers look to restart the industry, union representatives are looking to ensure safety is the number one priority for workers.

Opening remarks by Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, at the Online Edition of The State of the Union conference organised by the European University Institute, 8 May 2020.

OM Peru recently completed their second medical outreach this year. Mayelo Gensollen, OM Peru's leader, shared his impressions from the experience.

Celtic Connections

The staff union for the National Education Association is threatening to strike over contract negotiations.

Blaming teachers unions for all the ills afflicting public schools does not stand up to scrutiny.

To the Editor: Education Week Teacher blogger Nancy Flanagan recently wrote about how some states require a higher score on state certification tests for teacher-licensing exams—which makes it "unreasonably difficult" to get into teaching—while others eliminate licensing requirements to fill classr.

In the face of well-funded opposition to organized labor, teachers will not be silenced, writes NEA President Lily Eskelsen García.

Within days of the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish union fees for nonmembers, conservative groups—including ones with ties to Ed. Secretary Betsy DeVos—launched email, social media, and billboard campaigns to try to convince teachers not to join their unions.

As teacher take the lead in protests over pay, unions face an uncertain future, writes Berkeley sociologist Bruce Fuller.

In the aftermath of this spring's teacher protests, more educators are running for state office—and the National Education Association is seizing on the political moment.

"This lawsuit will enable teachers like me to recover the agency fees that we were wrongly forced to pay against our will," said one of the plaintiffs.

In the wake of the 'Janus' Supreme Court case, teachers' unions are facing more than a dozen legal challenges backed by right-leaning groups that could further dampen their membership numbers and finances.

Whether Janus will be a death blow or a turning point for unions depends on what they do now, writes Paul Reville.

With the Janus case looming before the Supreme Court, teachers' unions are knocking on doors to try to boost membership and mitigate financial loss.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is partnering with think tanks and advocacy groups across the country in a campaign encouraging public employees to consider dropping their union memberships.

With the first charter school strike in the books—and teachers coming out victorious—experts say both unions and charter schools may need to rethink how they’ve long operated.

Teachers who do not belong to their unions see value in the organizations but still say they would opt out of paying mandatory fees if given the choice, finds a new survey.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case that held the potential to deal a further blow to public-employee unions after last year's "Janus" decision.

Efforts to unionize teachers in charter schools are picking up in a handful of states, and counter efforts by school administrators to tamp them down often backfire, according to a study by the University of Washington's Center on Reinventing Public Education.

A national union for principals is campaigning to increase its membership, drafting in part off the momentum created by the surge in educator activism over the past two years.

Both the AFT and the NEA vowed to engage their members more deeply this year in deciding who to back for the White House. How well have they done?

With the first charter school strike in the books—and teachers coming out victorious—experts say both unions and charter schools may need to rethink how they’ve long operated.