Texas: The Miracle State. Texas’ test scores on on their state test (TAAS – Texas Assessment of Academic Skill, renamed in 2003 as the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) were so good that the test and the teaching methods accompanying it were used as a model for No Child Left Behind when G.W. Bush was in office in 2001.

Anyone wonder why the Texas scores were so phenomenal? It was because the schools only tested the students they knew would pass… i.e. the upper-class white students.

Finally, board members and administrators in Texan schools spoke out, detailing how schools would hold students back in 9th grade who were not expected to do well on the 10th-grade graduation required TAAS. Some student were held back 3-4 times. Others, held back and then miraculously jumped into 11th grade, not eligible to graduate because they had somehow skipped over 10th grade, and the 10th grade test. Students were “encouraged to leave school, or to enroll in GED programs.” Some students were suspended over test-taking time. Others expelled for absences or fined at $500 per day of unexcused absence over a certain number, forcing students to “drop out of school to save their families from financial ruin.” The vast majority of these students were low-income students of color.

And Texas isn’t the only state this happens in. It just happens to be the one Nation-wide legislation was based on. Education in our country is fucked. The example above is at the high school level, but the system is so bad, you can walk into a class of Kindergarteners and know that only 1 out of every 10 low-income five-year-olds will make it through college. If you can predict that when the kids are that young, they don’t even stand a chance.

This is also true for other states, such as MA

(For reading material, check out this book. It’s really good: The Flat World and Education, by Linda Darling-Hammond)

-etw

The low road

What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can’t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t stop them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.

But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.

Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organization. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.

It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again and they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know you who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.

-Marge Piercy

From “The Moon is Always Female”, published by
Alfred A. Knopf, Copyright 1980 by Marge Piercy.

-etw

So, Valentine’s day is coming up, and I’ve been enlisted by multiple friends to help figure out what they should get their significant others. It’s helpful that I’m extraordinarily single so I have plenty of time to do so. Here are some handy suggestions from, uh, a not-so-professional professional… all of these are taken from Etsy.com, which is one of my favorite sites for online “window”-shopping; it’s “your place to buy and sell all things handmade”, according to their tagline. The pictures all link to the listing for that particular product, because I’m kind of obsessive with crediting. Check it out:

1) The romantic print option:

These prints are kinda adorable. There, I said it.

2) The gets-straight-to-the-point option:

Enough said.

More “great” ideas after the jump. (Those quotation marks are supposed to be slightly facetious. It’s hard to convey nuance in print form, so I’m telling you specifically.)

Made this poster design thing this evening … the photos are by me, but I grabbed the map background thing from Google images. I was bored and fiddling with Photoshop + Illustrator. Graphic design experiments are fun!

…so here’s another one I did a while back.

Way back when, I wrote a blog post about a Hippie Commune. I took pictures, but they were film and I only recently had time to develop them. So here they are, starring Adam, who is the one under the sparkly fabric.

-etw

So I got the newest Adobe Creative Suite (which includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator) for Christmas. Upon returning to school I finally got to use my tablet in combination with these programs, and it’s awesome. Here are my first Photoshop+tablet creations, in order. I’m still learning Photoshop, but here goes…

(click for bigger versions, but they’re really huge)

Plus, it is 60 degrees here. That is weird.

One Is the Loveliest Color: Commitment? Art project? OCD? Five New Yorkers who wear only one color all day, every day (and it’s not black).

I think I would kinda go crazy if I tried to do this. Only one color? Gahh!!

—–

The New Age Cavemen and the City

Again, I think I would kinda go crazy if I ate hunks of meat and fasted for a day afterwards. This is especially interesting because it sort of makes sense, except for the fact that we do have access to all these resources and commodities that we didn’t have in, well, prehistoric times. Like tofu. I mean, if you don’t have to eat meat, why would you? I guess these people kind of think the opposite of that, though.

—–

The Children of Cyberspace: Old Fogies by Their 20s

This one discusses the pace at which technology is accelerating, and how it creates such different experiences for people are pretty similar in age. “College students scratch their heads at what their high school siblings are doing, and they scratch their heads at their younger siblings. It has sped up generational differences,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project. I don’t know if I’m scratching my head at what my high school age brother is doing, but some parts of this article are interesting to think about.

- cjs

P.S. Check out the new banner! I’m still learning Photoshop, but it’s a start.

I’m taking a class on feminism. Out of 50 students, four of them are male. And of the four males, one of them may or may not be genderqueer, in which case I suppose calling him male would be a misnomer.

The feminism we’re learning about is not the stereotypical, man-hating radical feminism that some people might think. However, I have learned a bit about the radical, man-hating feminists too, which (albeit being a misrepresentation of the feminist movement as a whole) are pretty damn funny.

This is what I’ve learned from the radical, man-hating feminists of the 1970’s:

1. “Feminism is the theory, Lesbianism is the practice: – Ti-Grace Atkinson, a feminist author. She went on to say, “The price of clinging to the enemy [a man] is your life. To enter into a relationship with a man who has divested himself as completely and publicly from the male role as much as possible would still be a risk. But to relate to a man who has done any less is suicide. . . . I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.

2. The lesbiennes radicales, a french movement from the early 80’s, declares, ”Heterosexuality is a political regime which must be overthrown.”

3. In 1968, a group of radical feminists from New York staged a protest of the Miss America pageant, throwing high heels and bras into a “Freedom Dumpster” in downtown Atlantic City.

I think we should have more freedom dumpsters, personally. We could throw all kinds of shit into them to protest. Like GMO’s and dollar bills. Then again, maybe we should have a giant freedom compost bin instead.

-etw

“A political system based on force, oppression, changing people’s votes, killing, closure, arresting and using Stalinist and medieval torture, creating repression, censorship of newspapers, interruption of the means of mass communications, jailing the enlightened and the elite of society for false reasons, and forcing them to make false confessions in jail, is condemned and illegitimate,” [Ayatollah Montazeri] wrote.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, I would say.

On the losses in a particularly ravaged battalion in Afghanistan… “…he [Colonel Neumann] added that even during the worst summer months, his troops were nonetheless “quick to park their emotions and get back to the task at hand.”" (-NY Times)

When did apathy over human death become the task at hand!?  Since when has continuing the act that led to the deaths, instead of taking care of those injured or dying, been the task at hand!?

What is wrong with this picture?

-etw