I've got more punishment in store. Trying to Stand it like a man...and give some back.
Los Angeles, CA
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There's nothing wrong with this country that a few hundred thousand summary executions wouldn't fix.
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My car thermometer just read 108 degrees on the 10 Fwy at Vermont, This was NOT in the brochure.
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Jackie Chiles takes the Cornell 7 Case:
Ketemine?
You took the Ketamine?
You snorted the Ketamine off his dick?
Who told you to snort the Ketamine off his dick?
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The best there was, the best there ever will be. 🐐
Ten years ago today, Vin Scully signed off the @Dodgers airwaves for the final time.
“You and I have been friends for a long time, but I know in my heart that I’ve always needed you more than you’ve ever needed me.”
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The blind guy can see it clearly ...
I’d be back on USC if we’re 7-5 but tgose 4 losses came while we tackled well, pressured the qb, had above average special teams, looked like a fundamentally aggressive, tough team, and were competitive. I don’t know how you lose doing all that but say you did, I’d be like okay… Progress.
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Lincoln Riley has done the nearly impossible. He's got a 4-1 team full of great young talent, but most fans want him fired, and his team is both a laughingstock AND the most hated team in America. Uncanny incompetence and unlikability.
USC suspends Desman Stephens II for one game as a result of his conduct last night against Oregon. He will NOT play in USC’s game vs Washington on Oct. 3. Lincoln Riley: “Desman’s actions in last night’s game are unacceptable and are not reflective of USC Football nor of his personal character.”
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AltandCatchFire retweeted
A week later, I'm still thinking about NHJ's article on NYC schools. It was courageous but a huge missed opportunity to call for real reform.
She blames school choice, inequality, segregation, the wealthy and herself. But she seems reluctant to criticize the actors and policies implicated by the failures she documents, perhaps because those conclusions would be uncomfortable for many of her ideological allies.
- She describes absentee teachers, poor instruction, unresponsive administrators, and students who graduate without mastering the material. But she never calls for greater accountability at the district, school, principal, and teacher levels.
- She documents teachers failing to fulfill basic responsibilities but doesn't explore whether tenure and other employment protections allow chronic teacher absenteeism and poor performance to persist.
- She laments the concentration of disadvantaged students but doesn't consider whether NYCPS should consolidate under-enrolled schools, thus allowing more resources towards instruction and increasing socioeconomic diversity.
- She describes her daughter earning As in honors classes despite substantial gaps in her knowledge. Yet she doesn't consider the value of standardized testing as a check on grade inflation and identifying learning gaps before they compound.
- She describes how experienced teachers choose to work in better schools but doesn't salute the districts that have had “reform superintendents” like DC, Dallas, Denver, and Houston that have used cash bonuses to incentivize the best teachers to work in the most disadvantaged schools.
- She notes that eliminating homework harmed her daughter, but doesn't examine how the movement against homework is largely driven by equity advocates who argue that it can turn unequal home circumstances into unequal academic outcomes.
- She condemns school choice yet uses it to secure a better school fit for her daughter, without noting it’s the only realistic escape valve for families who can’t move or afford private school.
- She describes the “impossible balancing act” of teaching students at vastly different levels but doesn't explore how academic tracking can help students at both ends of the academic spectrum.
- She describes disruptive students who harm the classroom environment but doesn’t ask for stronger disciplinary actions to protect other students.
- She documents a school that lowered academic expectations in pursuit of equity but doesn't acknowledge how doing so perpetuates the very achievement gaps those policies seek to eliminate.
Hannah-Jones’ story was powerful. She supplied the evidence for a broad examination of why schools are failing disadvantaged students. It could have been the strongest call in a generation for urban school district reform.
Segregation and poverty are real obstacles. But they cannot become explanations that absolve everyone else of responsibility. We can’t wait to solve all societal issues before demanding higher performing schools.
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AltandCatchFire retweeted
Nikole Hannah-Jones' bad decisions for her own daughter, and false accusations against parents like me, would not matter so much if the damage was limited to her own child--she has the resources and social capital to remedy her mistakes. But her Social Justice advocacy, and her simplistic race-based ideas of what is needed to fix failing schools, deprived an untold number of the very children she says she set out to help of a good education.
NYC public schools has indulged, lavishly funded, and endlessly celebrated her toxic ideas. And the results are in: NYC test scores have free-fallen while cost per pupil soars, and families, of every color, are fleeing.
The sad part is we know what works to educate kids--there are myriad success stories out there. But to implement the kind of policies that would actually improve the education, and therefore the lives, of so many public school kids would require a genuine renunciation of the racism Hannah-Jones has peddled for so long. 6/7
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AltandCatchFire retweeted
Welcome to the neighborhood, @lucasmuseum 📍
The Lucas Museum, founded by legendary USC alum George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, is now officially open! ✌️
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We have the exact idea on what to do with them. Sort the kids. Bad kids get continuation school then expulsion. But like enforcing crime that would effect too many brown and black people and make liberal white women feel icky, so the good kids are just going to continue to suffer
My only thought re: the NHJ essay is that we, as a culture and a country, have no idea what to do with the "bad kids." The "bad kids" who make classrooms impossible, who make teachers' lives hell, who cause problems pretty much from the jump.
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I would ask "Why would @RoKhanna and @Timodc say such obvious, checkable lies - and in service of a criminal alien?" but I know the answer "Because they think it will help them win elections dummy!"
No one should be shot in the back and denied urgent medical care.
The shooting of Venezuelan DoorDash driver Wilber Garcés Pérez by ICE in Austin demands a full investigation.
Abolish ICE. Prosecute rogue agents.
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Perfectly said:
"Some kids are smarter than others and should go to more challenging schools. Sending smart kids to bad schools in the belief that those schools will then become great is based on zero evidence. It’s ideological faith healing"
I was moved by the piece. I think NHJ was sincere in her beliefs, and sent her child to schools based on those sincere beliefs. She’s now deeply troubled that she may have done the wrong thing.
But she still does’t seem to have reconsidered the accuracy of those beliefs.
Some kids are smarter than others and should go to more challenging schools. Sending smart kids to bad schools in the belief that those schools will then become great is based on zero evidence. It’s ideological faith healing.
Not every kid is going to be able to learn calculus. Most of them are not going to brain surgeons or megalomaniacal AI researchers. Which is fine, we already have too many of those.
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THIS is the best take on the latest Nikole Hannah Jones kerfluffle. Forget Jones' own kid - the reforms Jones and her ilk championed have screwed up public schools all across the nation, but there is also almost no escape even in charter or private schools.
I have some thoughts!
Nikole Hannah-Jones interviewed me at the height of woke-1 to champion and virtue signal her “fight for every black child” and disparage and dismiss my fight for all NYC public school students to enjoy the rising tide that lifts all boats of academic rigor and meritocracy.
She thought my support of the Specialized High School Admission Exam, the SHSAT, was racist. I thought her school politics were deeply misguided, and well, quite racist.
Unlike Hannah-Jones I have nothing to walk back.
I knew then what she has just figured out that her identitarian race-based grievance project would not fix anything. And in fact, it has hurt all public school students. Not just in NYC—her Magnum Opus of racial grievance, The 1619 Project, is taught in schools across the country and its reasoning is used to dismantle and stop the creation of the kind of high school that her daughter ultimately chose—the one that finally taught her algebra.
NYC Public School students score lower on all academic metrics now than they did when her daughter started school—and we tax payers pay more for it. Enrollment continues to plummet while those in charge dumb down standards and hide results. So much of that is because any solution that challenged Hannah-Jones' race-baiting—endorsed by The Times and Democratic leaders alike—was verboten.
Like Hannah-Jones I have a HS junior. My two older kids have graduated from NYCPS and are in college and my youngest is in NYCPS elementary school. I have qualms with parts of their education but also many success stories. Can you get a great education in NYCPS? Yes. But you have to fight for it. And insisting on the schools that grade math homework is a start.
Knowing what your child is learning and mastering is a non-negotiable. Standardized tests help with that, but are a starting point only. Blaming phantom racists instead of understanding the role parents play was and is a lazy cop out.
There is still an effort–alive and well right now-to dismantle great schools like NYC’s specialized high schools because they use standardized admissions tests. The effort still relies on the same failed logic that Hannah-Jones has peddled for years. She insisted that kids like her daughter who did not score high enough on a test to gain admission were the victims of racism. But she refused to acknowledge that poor Asian kids whose parents had NONE of the resources that her daughter enjoyed (or should have enjoyed) (English speaking parents, resources to pay for prep classes, knowledge of how the system works, etc) were not racist oppressors—but kids willing to work hard and apply their smarts with parents that prioritized subject mastery and took the time to make sure their kids were actually learning.
Her daughter is right. She deserved much better. But it is not the cauldron of racist grievances that Hannah-Jones still cannot let go of that failed her daughter. It’s her daughter’s parents that did not figure out for NINE YEARS that their daughter was not learning enough.
New York City Public Schools should be among the best in the world because we have so many incredibly talented, smart and hard-working students that could and should learn more by being challenged more–and that means sorting kids into cohorts where they can rise to the level of their abilities and willingness to work. In other words “screening”—the exact project Hannah-Jones fought against for so long and which she has now relied on to rescue her daughter’s education.
You’re welcome Nikole. Your daughter’s chosen high school would not exist but for parents like me who fought so hard to keep screened schools.
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An all time bed shitting decision by Greg Schiano. Going for it on 4th down at your own 20 when your team is playing great. Probably saved USC from an all time humiliation.
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