Labeling
NEW RULE
S top believing slogans, especially the ones that come out of the White
House. Twinkies aren’t wholesome goodness, and the “Clear Skies Initiative” isn’t really going to bring clear skies. And it turns out that the “No Child Left Behind” law actually leaves lots of children behind. It leaves so many behind, in fact, that they have a name for them now: “pushouts,” as in “we’re pushing you out of school so that our cumulative test scores will be higher.”
Yes, that’s what this is all about. Our “No Child Left Behind” law is written like this: As a state, you get federal money for your schools, but only when two main things happen—you make test scores go up and dropout rates go down. How best to achieve both of those goals? By making the dumber kids ... disappear!
The “Texas Miracle” in education, it turns out, was all about raising test scores by making almost the entire bottom half of the class drop out, and then falsely lowering the dropout rate by putting those students in phony categories like “transferred” or “enrolled in GED” or “dating Demi Moore.”
We weren’t actually improving the system, but we were making it look like we were where it matters: on paper. It’s not for nothing that all those Texans looked up to Enron. For the 2000 election, Houston’s dropout rate was given as 1.5 percent. After the election, it was revised to 40 percent, probably by the same guy who makes up the budget. I don’t need a degree in fuzzy math to know that 40 percent is not “no child left behind.”
And if you say “no child” in your law, it takes a Texas-size nerve to then treat those kids like cards in a gin rummy game, where you get to ditch the two low ones, and where bodies just disappear like dissidents in Argentina or that Heather Locklear airport drama.
George Bush ran for office as the education guy, and his caring about leaving no child behind is what softened him into a compassionate conservative. So it seems wrong to find out that what we’re really doing is just handing lots of kids a GED kit and telling them, “Good luck exploring your other educational opportunities, like learning how many vials of crack you can carry in your underwear.”
As no one could tell you better than our president himself, we don’t all blossom early in life, so maybe writing off so many kids so early isn’t so wise. It might amuse the President to know that this is exactly what they do in his favorite country, France, but France has more of a social safety net than we do. Our safety net has a name. It’s called prison.
People say education is the cornerstone of our democracy—they’re wrong, of course. The cornerstone of our democracy is campaign cash and lots of it. But shouldn’t education still count for something? As the president himself might say, “We can do gooder.”
BILL MAHER C
NEW RULES
C3 Pee-Yew
NEW RULE
You can stop releasing Star Wars now. We’ve seen it. I don’t care if it’s in a box set, if it’s remastered or redigitized, if there are bonus scenes or a director’s commentary; it’s still a space movie for guys who can’t get laid.
Call Hating
NEW RULE
Ass-kissing must be done in person. Yes, I’ll “continue to hold” but not because you said, “Your call is important to us.” If my call was really important to you, you’d hire a human to pick up the damn phone.
Can You Hear Me Now?
NEW RULE
No more cell phones in movie theaters. You’re not a cardiologist on call—you’re a putz whose babysitter wants to know where the ketchup is. And then you tell her, in the middle of the movie! Sometimes it’s so loud in the theater, I can barely hear what the black people are yelling at the screen. There’s a simple solution: Put your cell phone on vibrate and then up your ass.
Car Tune Network
NEW RULE
Keep your homemade mix CDs to yourself. I know you spent weeks trying
NEW RULE
S top believing slogans, especially the ones that come out of the White
House. Twinkies aren’t wholesome goodness, and the “Clear Skies Initiative” isn’t really going to bring clear skies. And it turns out that the “No Child Left Behind” law actually leaves lots of children behind. It leaves so many behind, in fact, that they have a name for them now: “pushouts,” as in “we’re pushing you out of school so that our cumulative test scores will be higher.”
Yes, that’s what this is all about. Our “No Child Left Behind” law is written like this: As a state, you get federal money for your schools, but only when two main things happen—you make test scores go up and dropout rates go down. How best to achieve both of those goals? By making the dumber kids ... disappear!
The “Texas Miracle” in education, it turns out, was all about raising test scores by making almost the entire bottom half of the class drop out, and then falsely lowering the dropout rate by putting those students in phony categories like “transferred” or “enrolled in GED” or “dating Demi Moore.”
We weren’t actually improving the system, but we were making it look like we were where it matters: on paper. It’s not for nothing that all those Texans looked up to Enron. For the 2000 election, Houston’s dropout rate was given as 1.5 percent. After the election, it was revised to 40 percent, probably by the same guy who makes up the budget. I don’t need a degree in fuzzy math to know that 40 percent is not “no child left behind.”
And if you say “no child” in your law, it takes a Texas-size nerve to then treat those kids like cards in a gin rummy game, where you get to ditch the two low ones, and where bodies just disappear like dissidents in Argentina or that Heather Locklear airport drama.
George Bush ran for office as the education guy, and his caring about leaving no child behind is what softened him into a compassionate conservative. So it seems wrong to find out that what we’re really doing is just handing lots of kids a GED kit and telling them, “Good luck exploring your other educational opportunities, like learning how many vials of crack you can carry in your underwear.”
As no one could tell you better than our president himself, we don’t all blossom early in life, so maybe writing off so many kids so early isn’t so wise. It might amuse the President to know that this is exactly what they do in his favorite country, France, but France has more of a social safety net than we do. Our safety net has a name. It’s called prison.
People say education is the cornerstone of our democracy—they’re wrong, of course. The cornerstone of our democracy is campaign cash and lots of it. But shouldn’t education still count for something? As the president himself might say, “We can do gooder.”
BILL MAHER C
NEW RULES
C3 Pee-Yew
NEW RULE
You can stop releasing Star Wars now. We’ve seen it. I don’t care if it’s in a box set, if it’s remastered or redigitized, if there are bonus scenes or a director’s commentary; it’s still a space movie for guys who can’t get laid.
Call Hating
NEW RULE
Ass-kissing must be done in person. Yes, I’ll “continue to hold” but not because you said, “Your call is important to us.” If my call was really important to you, you’d hire a human to pick up the damn phone.
Can You Hear Me Now?
NEW RULE
No more cell phones in movie theaters. You’re not a cardiologist on call—you’re a putz whose babysitter wants to know where the ketchup is. And then you tell her, in the middle of the movie! Sometimes it’s so loud in the theater, I can barely hear what the black people are yelling at the screen. There’s a simple solution: Put your cell phone on vibrate and then up your ass.
Car Tune Network
NEW RULE
Keep your homemade mix CDs to yourself. I know you spent weeks trying
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