WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2025
Storyline All the Way Down: For decades, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has published a large volume of education data from four major testing programs—the Naep, the Timss, the Pisa and the Pirls.
For decades, we've been asking this question:
Why do they even bother?
As a case in point, consider the commander's remarks at today's lengthy "cabinet meeting." The event started with an oration by Elon Musk.
Musk was decked out in his Dark MAGA outfit, looking like someone you might cross the street to avoid walking past on the sidewalk. Eventually, the commander repeated last week's oration about our pathetic public schools, especially because of Joe Biden.
He delivered the oration last week as he spoke to Sean Hannity. Today, he delivered it again. Using CNN's reasonably accurate transcript, we join the oration in progress:
PRESIDENT TRUMP (2/26/25): ...You go around Washington, you see all these buildings with Department of Education. We want to move education back to the states, where it belongs. Iowa should have education. Indiana should run their own education.
You're going to see education go way up. Right now, we're—we're ranked at the very bottom of the list. But we're at the top of the list in one thing, the cost per pupil. We spend more money per pupil than any other country of the world. And yet it's Denmark and Norway, Sweden—
And I hate to say this. And we're going to get along very well with China, but it's a competitor. They're at the top of the list. They're among the top ten usually. And they're a very big country.
So we can't use that as an excuse, right, because we're a very big country too, but we're—we were ranked last time—under Biden, we were ranked 40 out of 40.
They do the 40 certain nations that they have done for a long time. It seems to be 40, for whatever reason. And we were ranked number 40. A year ago, we were 38. Then we were 39. We hit 40. And so we're last in that. And we're first in cost per pupil. So I would say that's unacceptable.
Lawrence, you have something? Go ahead.
So went the commander's review. Stupendously, "Lawrence," whoever that is, removed a softball from a bag and asked the commander this:
LAWRENCE (continuing directly): So, Mr. President, I know you like competition. And I know it's early. So which department are you most impressed with?
(LAUGHTER)
Sad! Once again, we found ourselves asking this:
Why does the NCES even bother? Why do they bother publishing all those education data, when life in these United States is now, almost wholly, Storyline All the Way Down?
The commander was taking questions today; he took a boatload of questions. No one asked him what testing program is supposed to be the source of his gloomy assessment about the pitiful U.S. kids who supposedly ended up Worst in the World Thanks to Sleepy Joe Biden.
His extremely gloomy factual claims don't even seem to make sense. But as has been true for decades now, no one present in the room actually seemed to notice or care.
Nor have we seen anyone offer a review of his peculiar comments to Hannity regarding our pitiful schoolkids. The NCES may keep publishing data, but nobody seems to care.
Today, we offer one addition to the slapdash critique we offered last week. It involves this part of the commander's statement:
Right now, we're ranked at the very bottom of the list. But we're at the top of the list in one thing, the cost per pupil. We spend more money per pupil than any other country of the world. And yet it's Denmark and Norway, Sweden—
He seemed to be saying what he said last week. When it comes to public schools, those nations are ruling the world.
In fact, here are the data from the most recent administration of the PISA Reading Literacy test. As you can see, American students outperformed their counterparts from Denmark, Sweden and Norway on that particular test.
Nor do the three countries the president named rank at or near the top of the world on the PISA, the TIMSS or the PIRLS. Also, Iowa and Indiana aren't particularly high performers on the domestic NAEP.
Beyond that, we know of no international test on which American students rank fortieth out of forty nations—produce the worst scores in the world. What is this guy talking about? Nobody asked or cared.
Why does the NCES bother? The commander has an idea in his head. He will continue to vocalize his idea, and major elites from Blue America will continue to stare into air.
Information no longer exists. As our nation is overrun, it's Storyline All the Way Down, and it has been for dozens of years.
Does Somerby not know that Trump canceled the NAEP test for 17 year olds this year?
ReplyDeleteElon admitted he made a mistake by firing the USAID Ebola Prevention team. Here are the consequences:
ReplyDelete"Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine physician with decades of experience in global public health who has worked as an epidemiologist in Africa and survived Ebola himself, outlined the harm that the mistake had actually caused. “On January 29, Uganda reported an Ebola outbreak,” he wrote on X. “Normally the U.S. would’ve very quickly sent one of our Ebola experts to help the response. But this time, we didn’t. Because we couldn’t. Because this administration wouldn’t let them go right when this outbreak was declared.” He further noted that officials in Uganda had tried to call the White House for days but received no response, and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which handles Ebola prevention in the U.S., is losing hundreds of “frontline experts” thanks to DOGE."
'Musk told cabinet members: “We won’t be perfect. But when we make a mistake we’ll fix it very quickly. So, for example, with USAID, one of the things we accidentally canceled, very briefly, was Ebola prevention,” he said, laughing slightly. “I think we all want Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately.”
DeleteThe U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was among the first federal agencies that DOGE attempted to rip up by the roots as Musk, Trump, and allies have spread misinformation about its spending on humanitarian work abroad. Thousands of employees have been placed on leave. Withdrawn support from the U.S. has disrupted critical health programs and clinics around [the world] that provide access to life-saving medical care and work to prevent the spread of infectious diseases including tuberculosis and malaria. While Musk claimed that no harm was done by the pause of Ebola containment measures, his blitzkrieg against the departments of the administrative state on behalf of the Trump administration has effectively kneecapped multiple HIV and AIDS relief agencies, because some of their funding goes towards the distribution of condoms and contraceptives.
Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia wasted no time taking aim at Musk for his chuckling comment about an often fatal virus that has devastating effects on the communities that experience an outbreak. “An average person who did something as incompetent as ‘accidentally cancelling Ebola prevention’ wouldn’t be applauded, they’d be fired,” he posted on X, Musk’s social media platform. “Musk is failing up in this administration because he didn’t earn his job, he bought it. It’s corrupt, and risks Americans’ health and safety.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine physician with decades of experience in global public health who has worked as an epidemiologist in Africa and survived Ebola himself, outlined the harm that the mistake had actually caused. “On January 29, Uganda reported an Ebola outbreak,” he wrote on X. “Normally the U.S. would’ve very quickly sent one of our Ebola experts to help the response. But this time, we didn’t. Because we couldn’t. Because this administration wouldn’t let them go right when this outbreak was declared.” He further noted that officials in Uganda had tried to call the White House for days but received no response, and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which handles Ebola prevention in the U.S., is losing hundreds of “frontline experts” thanks to DOGE.
Elsewhere, humanitarian aid worker Jeremy Konyndyk, who led Covid-19 and disaster response at USAID under Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, respectively, accused Musk of demolishing the nation’s ability to confront catastrophic epidemics. “I’ve actually led Ebola outbreak response at USAID,” he wrote in a thread on the social platform Bluesky, calling Musk’s claim to have immediately restored Ebola protections as “bunk.”
“They have laid off most of the experts, they’re bankrupting most of the partner orgs, have withdrawn from [the World Health Organization], and muzzled CDC,” Konyndyk wrote. “What’s left is a fig-leaf effort to cover their asses politically.” Widespread cuts at the CDC and USAID had “wrecked” any response capability, he said. “Elon’s vendetta against USAID and the federal workforce is shredding all of the systems that the [U.S. government] has built up to protect the U.S. homeland against global outbreak risks,” Konyndyk concluded. “Scrambling to recall a few staff and issue some belated funding is just window dressing.”
Musk wasn’t the only unqualified MAGA loyalist at Wednesday’s meeting to downplay a potential health crisis. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s conspiracist anti-vax head of Health and Human Services, fielded a reporter’s question about a measles outbreak in Texas that has killed at least one person, an unvaccinated child, according to health officials in the state. Kennedy said of the outbreak itself: “It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.” But the child who died marked the first recorded death from measles in the U.S. in a decade. (The respiratory disease was declared “eliminated” in the country in 2000.)
DeleteKennedy wrote in a 2021 book that people “have been misled by the pharmaceutical industry and their captured government agency allies into believing that measles is a deadly disease,” and that “outbreaks have been manufactured to create fear.” On Wednesday, he suggested that 18 other children are currently hospitalized with the measles in Texas as a simple quarantine measure. A doctor at the hospital told NBC that, in fact, they had all been admitted because they were having trouble breathing — and that none were vaccinated.
All told, Musk and RFK Jr. painted a grim picture of the U.S. response to epidemiological threats in the months ahead: not only fewer resources and gutted health institutions, but utter dishonesty about everything going wrong.'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-doge-accidentally-202149474.html
Kennedy had his own kids vaccinated.
DeleteHere is what else Musk is doing:
ReplyDelete"He’s the greatest genius the world has ever known:
Days after Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency cut hundreds of jobs at the Federal Aviation Administration — including critical safety roles — his company, SpaceX, has secured a contract with the agency to use Musk’s Starlink satellite internet to help manage U.S. airspace. Yes, it’s a massive conflict of interest.
According to Bloomberg, which first reported the deal, the billionaire approved the shipping of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA last week. In a statement released Monday, the FAA wrote that one such terminal is already being tested “at its facility in Atlantic City and two terminals at non-safety critical sites in Alaska.”
It’s not a conflict of interest. It’s straight up corruption. And apparently, he just did this despite the fact the Verizon has a $2.3 billion contract already in place. But hey, the genius gets what the genius wants.
Earlier this year, the FAA ordered SpaceX to carry out an investigation of what the company called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” (read “explosion”) of its Starship rocket. Last year, the agency proposed $633,009 in civil penalties against SpaceX, citing failure “to follow its license requirements during two launches.”
The move prompted Musk to declare that “the fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!”
It might be why almost immediately after being granted virtually unchecked administrative powers, Musk set his “chainsaw of bureaucracy” against the agency that regulates his own company.
As Philip Bump quipped on BlueSky, “I think I just figured out why his spaceships keep blowing up.”
From: https://digbysblog.net/2025/02/26/elons-taking-over-the-faa/
You hate Musk because the government is paying him to utilize a product it needs and only he can provide.
DeleteEveryone knows the Biden FAA order for the investigation for an event that is ordinary was Democrat bullshit intended to sideline Musk. Backfired didn't it?
DeleteSpace X is a debacle, they can't even get a payload into orbit, unlike every other space corp/org. The best they could do was launch a rocket carrying a banana which then exploded. They keep leaving debris all over the world from their failed rockets.
DeleteRemember that rocket that landed by itself? Oooooh, ahhhhh said the Musktards. Except uh oh, NASA did that way back in the 90s, for a fraction of the cost.
Musk is a fraud, a snake oil salesman.
No one is jealous of Musk, he is universally disliked by all except the most loyal fanboys, he's fat and out of shape, he can't form simple sentences, and he has herpes. NO THANKS
No payloads in orbit by SpaceX?
DeleteSpaceX has launched over 7,000 payloads. An extensive deployment of Starlink satellites, which account for the vast majority of their payloads, alongside other missions like crewed flights, cargo resupply missions, and commercial satellites. The Starlink constellation alone includes over 7,000 satellites launched, with frequent missions adding dozens at a time—recent launches often carry around 20-24 satellites each. Beyond Starlink, SpaceX has conducted 455 Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches by this date, with missions like the Transporter series (e.g., Transporter-12 with 131 payloads) and others delivering hundreds of additional satellites and spacecraft for various customers.
Also Elon's Tesla roadster is still up there.
Musk keeps enriching himself. Wow. What about the rest of us?
DeleteMusk has received billions of taxpayer money in subsidies.
DeleteWhy is Somerby not mentioning that the Dept of Education is set to be disbanded? It is almost as if Somerby doesn't care that we are being set up for a corporate takeover of education, privatizing, after Trump et al. convince people that our existing education system is not working -- which requires that we be worse than other nations on international tests.
ReplyDeleteSomerby complains about information, entirely missing the point of why things are being said as they are. Don't waste your time reading Somerby's discussion of education. Read Peter Greene at Curmudgucation instead:
He at least talks about actual education issues, not whatever Somerby's blog is about today, mumble mumble do we need statistics mumble mumble. Storyline storyline. These international tests, an old theme of Somerby's, are unimportant when they are doing away with comparative testing within the USA so that corporations can take over and there will be no way to tell whether they are doing a good job or not, without any standard of comparison, even within our 50 states.
Someone who cared about education would follow such issues regularly and not just mention them whenever Trump says something about them.
Forgot to paste the link, sorry: https://curmudgucation.substack.com/
DeleteDoes Somerby really have to refer to Trump as "Commander"? He was doing it before Trump won the election. It rankles because that is an honorific given to people who have earned it, not buffoons. And no one is really sure if Somerby is being ironic any more. In the current context, Elon seems to be the commander while Trump is along for the grift, not clearly aware of what is going on around him any more.
ReplyDeleteWhat are they injecting the president with these days? The most likely explanation for the large bruise on the back of Trump's hand is an injection bruise. What are they giving him?
"And no one is really sure if Somerby is being ironic any more."
DeleteI am. He is.
"For decades, we've been asking this question:
ReplyDeleteWhy do they even bother?"
He's been asking the wrong person. He should be asking "Why do I even bother?" since it has been such a long long time since Somerby discussed anything meaningful, and even then it was to support right wing talking points. I recall him supporting book banning the last time he talked about education at all. And then there was the whole argument about whether MS had actually improved its reading scores, with Somerby taking the negative position and presenting specious arguments contradicted by the data Quaker kept posting, showing that retention could not explain recent gains given that it had been going on for more than 20 years. Somerby never yielded on that one because he doesn't read anything (much like Trump). Drum did though, to his credit.
Why does Somerby bother writing anything these days. He is out of his league, woefully behind in current info, and his support for Trump is damaging to our democracy. It is time for him to go back and re-read Wittgenstein or Einstein for Dummies, and he doesn't need to tell us he doesn't understand either. That is a foregone conclusion.
Good-bye old man...
Agree.
DeleteThe important question is whether education will improve or get worse if the federal government gives money to local schools as block grants, rather than the current system, where the Dept. of Education does a lot of research and has a lot of control over local education. My seat-of-the pants guess is that the Dept. of Education research is mostly bogus. People in the Dept. of Education have to keep recommending new things in order to justify their positions. Yet, the best approach might be for local school systems to look at other systems and just copy whichever approach works best. However, I might be entirely wrong.
ReplyDeleteDavid, no one is suggesting block grants. They are suggesting having corporations take over schools. The Dept of Education is going away. Your belief that the Dept of Education is bogus is majorly ignorant of what it does.
DeleteAnd yes, you are entirely wrong about your idea of schools just copycatting each other, instead of testing whether approaches work or not and trying to develop teaching methods that take into account developments in cognitive science (how people learn and solve problems).
In an age where technology is increasingly important, people need better skills, not just whatever their local district can throw together. Trump and Musk don't care if we slide into becoming a 3rd world country. Our universities currently attract top students worldwide. They won't if Trump/Musk destroy our schools. Doing away with research grants and destroying feeder schools in K-12 will do that.
Musk fired the IGs so no one would be able to investigate their own fraud. He is destroyed the NAEP and other centralized and standardized research and assessment programs so that no one will know how bad the schools are getting, as Trump/Musk allow corporate buddies to loot the schools. That has already happened on a smaller scale in FL, for example, where schools were required to implement educational curricula developed by DeSantis grifter cronies, with no accountability for learning outcomes.
The right sees education as indoctrination, not learning. That's what kids will be fed, if Trump and Musk get their way. Our kids don't deserve that.
Public education makes it harder for right wingers to indoctrinate their kids, thus their kids are more likely to not become right wing.
Delete"However, I might be entirely wrong."
DeleteIndeed.
Hey, DiC and Trump might be entirely wrong. But why don’t we experiment on our nation’s children, using them as guinea pigs? What could go wrong?
DeleteInteresting that Trump canceled the naep. Like Covid, if you don’t test, you’ll never see bad results. Genius.
DeleteOliver Willis at DKos discusses Trump's odd subservience to Musk:
ReplyDelete"The Cabinet meeting is just the latest instance of Trump ceding the spotlight to Musk in a manner starkly at odds with how he has angrily pushed back on past insinuations that he’s not in charge. Trump’s submission to his billionaire backer also raises new questions about his state of mind."
I think Trump's attitude toward Musk is most closely similar to the way he bows and scrapes to Putin. Willis tends toward cognitive decline as an explanation. But unlike Trump, Musk actually has money, and perhaps it is Musk and Putin with the deal going.
He can't even think outside of a conspiracy theory. That's when you know your brain is broken.
DeleteTrump and Elon Musk are two powerful men who have invested a great deal of trust in each other. They won an election together. One had to win it to vindicate himself against corrupt political forces who wanted to imprison him and the other is a humanitarian who was driven to dedicate his energy and fortune to politics when the same forces ruined his son's life.
Trump's granddaughter calls Musk "Uncle." Trump likes rich people. Musk understand Trump holds great power so is deftly solicitous. They appear to like each other. Musk says he loves Trump as much as a straight man can love another straight man.
There will be no ugly divorce.
Trump is too feeble to operate on his own and he knows it, so he is now dependent on Musk.
DeleteWe all have our creepy uncles.
That could be part of it. The point is there is mutual reliance and Trump's famous ego is unlikely to require a separation and Musk has no reason to instigate one.
DeleteThe reason the fascist like 6:44 have to rule by force is because they realize they already lost the "culture war". So fuck em. We will live and exercise our freedoms.
Delete“There will be no ugly divorce.”
DeleteI wouldn’t go that far. There is no earthly reason for that blanket statement.
Another day, another sack of money made from short selling Tesla.
DeleteMusk and Trump are morons out to destroy our country.
They are both un-American.
"One had to win it to vindicate himself against corrupt political forces who wanted to imprison him"
DeleteOn the scale of corrupt political forces where would you rank Trump?
“ One had to win it to vindicate himself against corrupt political forces who wanted to imprison him"
DeleteYes, let’s all focus on how everything revolves around Trump.
"... and the other is a humanitarian..." LMFAO
DeleteKevin doesn’t share David’s enthusiasm for the Ukraine minerals agreement:
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/the-mineral-wealth-agreement-explained-sort-of/
Yes @7:26, Kevin is unenthusiastic, although he acknowledges that the deal could produce some benefit to the US. "Some unspecified share of an investment fund that may or not ever be profitable."
DeleteI myself am disappointed that the deal only gives the US some unknown amount of money. I thought the deal would give the US actual mineral resources.
As was explained yesterday, this mineral deal was created by Zelensky a year ago, Trump's only contribution was to attempt to change the terms so he could personally benefit, but Zelensky wasn't having it and Trump had to cave, per usual.
Delete@7:47 what personal benefit was Trump trying to get? Was he asking that some of the money go to him personally?
DeleteFrom the agreement, specifically regarding where the joint fund will get its money:
Delete"For the avoidance of doubt, such future sources of revenues do not include the current sources of revenues which are already part of the general budget revenues of Ukraine."
So, the fund will not be funded by activities currently budgeted as sourced of revenue by the Ukrainian government. Are they currently mining and extracting minerals as a source of venue in Ukraine? The way this reads, if there are mines currently in operation and providing money to the budget of Ukraine, they are not liable for use by the joint fund in the future.
"Estimates of Ukraine’s supposed mineral wealth are based on outdated Soviet-era surveys that didn’t take into account the viability or cost of developing them."
Delete"The Ukrainian Geological Survey (UGS) estimates the cost of exploiting Ukraine’s 10 largest known mining prospects at $15 billion — comprising the construction of mines, quarries and around 20 new processing facilities."
Let’s remember and soothe ourselves by remembering that, as the United States, like the Titanic, sinks by virtue of poor leadership, TRUMP ALWAYS WINS, and Trump will not be thwarted. As he destroys all of the life rafts, except his own, and musk’s, we can admire his brilliance as we drown.
ReplyDeleteA media blog might mention the rightward move of the Washington post, constantly identified here as “blue media.” Also, The NY Times, losing writers like Krugman, sometimes quoted here.
ReplyDeleteI guess this move is intended to make WaPo profitable. I wonder if it will work. Will it drive
Deletemore liberal readers away or attract more new conservative readers? My guess the former.
Does Bezos know this? Maybe. But he did it anyway. Why?
DeleteYou can't run a fascist oligarchy with an independent free press. Everyone knows this, it's in the instruction manual for successful fascist coups.
DeleteAnother reminder that rich people are poor people with more money.
DeleteRFK Jr is making epidemics great again. Kevin explains:
ReplyDeletehttps://jabberwocking.com/rfk-jr-makes-his-public-debut-as-hhs-secretary-better-watch-out/
What this clown is doing is mind boggling stupid and predictably so. What could go wrong appointing a recovering heroin addict to the highest post in US health? People will die unnecessarily as they did in the many thousands during Trump 1. That poor kid with measles who died and the others that will follow, all on account of the misinformation sowed by these right wing shitheads and their congressional republican enablers. Shameful.
ReplyDeleteThose minorities aren't going to treat themselves like shit.
DeleteOh fanny burp! Why did you have to come out now?!
ReplyDeleteOnly the best brain worms.
ReplyDelete'We're in some other world now': Judge calls out Trump DOJ for running to SCOTUS over 'unappealable TRO' and asks if 'only what the current president wants' is law now
ReplyDelete“Special counsel [is] nominated by the president and approved by Congress, to protect whistleblowers against retaliation,” the judge said. “[I]f your position is that that person could be fired if the president was concerned that that person would blow the whistle on actors in his own administration, how does that make any sense?”
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson
Obviously this judge doesn't understand the Dickhead in Cal interpretation of the Constitution making the executive a PresiKing with the power to commit crimes unimpeded by any old lousy Special counsel. How is the PresiKing expected to commit crimes with this do-gooder breathing down his neck?
The Supreme Court is indeed supreme over all the lower courts. So this statement is silly.
Delete“Judge calls out Trump DOJ for running to SCOTUS”
Obviously SCOTUS has the power to overrule lower courts.
Not before the lower courts have ruled, you fucking fascist horse's ass.
DeleteHey, stop it! DiC knows more about the law than some dumb 'ole federal judge. After all, he watches Fox News.
DeleteDickhead, why don't we just dispense with all these lower courts for the next four fucking hellish years and just have a revolving door between the tRump corrupt DOJ and the corrupt SC 6? Just one big happy incestuous family, the DOJ packed with tRump's lawyers and the SC letting tRump sit in their lap anytime he wants.
Delete@9:56 the lower court didn’t rule. They issued a temporary stay. SOCUS put a temporary hold on the temporary stay.
DeleteDavid is exaggerating his befuddlement, in service to the bigotry he craves.
DeleteYou really are one dumb sonofabitch fascist, Dickhead. The TRO was to stop the PresiKing from firing an independent Special Counsel until there is a trial. The SC can't put a hold on that, that is idiotic. That would make the original fucking trial a moot point, jackass. The guy is going to be fired before he gets a day in court, you fucking fascist freak.
DeleteI can't believe it's been a month, and Trump hasn't made consensual sexual relations illegal, yet.
ReplyDeleteIs Trump going RINO on us?