It’s a particularly notable rap feud though.

Kendrick Lamar is fucking brilliant. To Pimp a Butterfly and Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City are absolute brilliant albums that examine blackness in America, alcoholism, family dynamics… he’s a god tier lyricist.

And he basically dropped diss after diss on Drake - musically brilliant, while also airing out the fact that Drake is a sexual predator, involved with Diddy parties - like Kendrick was doing some shit akin to exposing an Epstein through music so fucking good and catchy that it took over TikTok and the world.

It’s probably the biggest feud since the West Coast/East Coast rivalry of the 90’s - which ended up with several people dead. Kendrick won with the power of his writing. Like people genuinely are expecting Drake to possibly kill himself, because you can’t beat the fact that every teen in America was singing along to “tryna strike a chord - probably A minor.”

I get being dismissive of pop culture in general, but I would strongly advise anyone who hasn’t listened to Kendrick to have an open mind. The show was also brilliant and layered - he brought out Serena William to crip walk to further own Drake - he had stalked and harassed her for years.

The thing is, standardized tests don’t measure learning. They measure the ability to take standardized tests. It’s not an “education” to teach students “make sure to fill out every question! make sure to use process of elimination to improve your odds!” There’s a reason that the kids who can afford test prep do better - because they learn to take the test, not the material.

Its a system that creates perverse incentives.

And yes, it’s not popular with teachers because the test results don’t match the students. The way you ensure quality is standards, and hiring qualified teachers. The problem at this point is that the pay and work conditions are not commensurate with the education and work required - so states are hiring “adjuncts” as baby sitters.

ACT/SAT are private companies, that determine what those test scores should be and represent. Stakeholders like teachers, students and parents are entirely removed from the equation.

These tests also do not match the standards. The ACT science section (which at least is supposed to be optional soon) does not align with NGSS.

The things that are impacting education are the climbing class sizes, the teacher “shortage” (eg, unqualified adjuncts are cheaper and don’t join unions) and the fact that we basically stopped teaching children to read for several years (eg, “whole reading”/guessing what words mean from context replacing phonics instruction.)Testing more does nothing to address these issues, and actually incentivizes these problems.

expand national standardized testing like SAT to happen at more levels, and focus on grading the schools, not the kids

No - this is part of the problem. We aren’t allowed to teach anymore. I taught chemistry, but I was told that I needed to focus on the ACT - like, I needed to regularly incorporate entirely unrelated material for test prep.

Elementary school is even worse. Science and social studies are deprioritized because the big testing is on reading and math.

It’s funny that his concerts regularly get cancelled when the venue finds out who he is.

Oklahoma just introduced a bill to ban corporal punishment for children on IEPs. It’s currently entirely legal to paddle any child - disabled or not.

I guess France is the same country where “Lemon Incest” debuted at #2.

Despite being flagged to the French authorities by the FBI in 2004 for viewing child abuse imagery on the dark web, for which he was convicted and given a four-year suspended prison sentence in France in 2005, he was never prevented from working with children and continued to gain prestigious jobs in hospitals across the country.

Does France not have registries? What the fuck?

“Anonymous” isn’t like a formal group. The entire point is that anyone can say that they are anonymous. So yeah, people talk a lot. You can do whatever you like as anonymous.

Having a real grand time adding a song from any musician I hit to a play list. I fucking love Awaz now.

Then, instead of hiring teachers, you can hire unqualified babysitters. Pay them nothing, and there’s no need to comply with IDEA, IEPs, unions…

Only works if you take it in advance. There’s not really anything that helps when you wake up at 3 am and think you are dying - other than puking, which makes the problem worse long term.

Look at what happened to David Reiner if you really want to be sickened.

I’m pretty sure that I’m intersex myself and had something done to me when I was an infant, but there is no way for me to ever find out. My only evidence is apparently my dong is pretty massive for a trans dude, which is a nice thing to hear from a nurse.