Old Lines - No Child Left Behind

Be honest, have you ever read a 670 page pdf Act of Congress? I have. Several actually. I don't have any proof that's quantifiably more than most acting congresspeople, but I hardly think the burden of proof falls on my shoulders.

On Jan. 8, 2002, George W. Bush signed into law the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001," and on December 10, 2015 it was repealed and replaced with the "Every Student Succeeds Act." I only tell you all that to point out that as far as the federal government is concerned, Lyndon B. Johnson had it right back in 1965, and if Americans would just stop being stupid and do well on national standardized tests we wouldn't be in any of these messes.

Let's refresh our memory, education is a totally bipartisan concern, but standardized testing is almost completely the only metric Republicans understand (though I personally question how many congressional Republicans know what a "metric" is). Not entirely their fault, it is true that the whole world was very focused on the concept of proving you're as smart as you claim to be at the time, but what is entirely their fault is the notion that schools repeatedly fail to produce desired outcomes from students because they aren't "businessing" hard enough. Also, the State determines what academic indicators are  relevant, and we forgot to force them to collaborate so there's 50 different standards and we don't got time to figure out if that school is at a complete disadvantage, let alone define what "highly qualified teachers" means. Just make those kids smarter or you'll have to try twice as hard next year with even less money. Also, unless your student specifically says they don't want military recruiters to contact them you need to supply student information to military recruiters.

To be fair, quite a lot of Democrats and Republicans didn't want this thing signed into law, but not enough and they did the dumb thing anyway. Also to be fair, I was years out of high school at that point, so I only had to experience the Reagan updates to that 1965 law (and they were bad enough).

What does this have to do with a 2014 Hardcore album from Baltimore Supergroup Old Lines. [Sarcasm voice] I don't know, I can't understand anything Matt's screaming at me. 

Well, their previous 2013 EP was titled If You See Something Say Something, so I feel like you probably failed the sarcasm portion of the SATs if you can't at least infer the mockery from the context of the fat kid accusatorily pointing at Sr. and Jr. President Bushes having a grand old time. Plus, in case you forgot, that's the year even Congress couldn't pretend it didn't need substantial revising anymore.

It's real good though, the album i mean. Super gargly, no production to speak of (except for the samples and maybe keeping the mics from getting damaged), just the indescribably nagging feeling that maybe a lot of kids did in fact get left if not behind, then as far away from earshot as possible. Shame they never made another LP. Maybe like Nailbomb, that was actually the point.

https://bottlesmusic.com/shop/records/punk/old-lines-no-child-left-behind-lp/