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Stupid

August 15, 2011 By

Diesel’s BE STUPID campaign is stupid, writes James Lileks on The Bleat.

According to the ad campaign, “stupidity is really what the square world calls creativity, risk-taking, imagination, and a refusal to live by the timorous precepts that constrain people who don’t wear Diesel.”


“And stupid consequently suffered a brain injury, resulting in even more betterer stupider that required tube feeding,” Lileks responds.

Take that, SMART! You don’t even TRY to put your head in a mailbox. Ha ha stupid SMART with your understanding of volume and vertebrae stress.

What’s stupid? Paying $285 for jeans, Lileks answers.

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: , , ,

Parent trigger: Empowerment or distraction?

August 15, 2011 By

California’s “parent trigger” law lets a majority of parents force changes at a chronically low-performing school,  including a new administration or conversion to a charter school.  Is the parent trigger a positive step or a distraction? Ben Boychuk, associate editor of City Journal, debates Julie Cavanagh, a special ed teacher in Brooklyn, on the Public Sector Inc. site. The discussion, which kicked off today, will go on for four days.

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: , , ,

Two visions of ‘core’ testing specs

August 12, 2011 By

The public can check out two visions of what common tests to match core standardsmight look like, reports Ed Week.

The SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has released its “content maps and specifications” (pdf) in English language arts.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) unveiled its “content frameworks” in both subjects.

Both documents serve to explicate the standards, highlighting key concepts or progressions of learning. PARCC’ s focuses on identifying the ideas that should be emphasized and how they could be grouped together, and SBAC’s describes the ways students should be able to prove that they have mastered the standards.

PARCC’s frameworks are open for public feedback until Aug. 17. The SMARTER specs are open for a first round of comments until Aug. 29; a revised draft will be issued in September with a second chance to comment. The math content specifications will be out soon, also with two rounds of comments.

Filed Under: Education