Vox Sentences: Carson vs. Trump vs. Rubio vs. Bush

The showdowns to watch for in tonight's GOP debate; America's most important standardized test; and a brushback pitch in the South China Sea.

TOP NEWS

Spluttering Donald, gentle Ben

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

• The third Republican debate of the 2016 presidential campaign started at 8pm Eastern tonight on CNBC.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• There are still a lot of candidates participating, but the debate will only take two hours. It was originally supposed to be three, but CNBC decided it would rather change the rules than have Donald Trump boycott the debate (as he threatened to do).

  [Washington Post / Jose A. DelReal]

• Trump has been getting grumpy about a lot of things recently! He's fallen behind Ben Carson in the polls and is not happy about it. Look for him to go after Carson tonight; see if Carson responds.

  [New York Times / Jonathan Martin]

• Meanwhile, look for the flailing Jeb Bush to do the only thing that could possibly save his campaign: going after Marco Rubio, who is rapidly becoming the Republican establishment's choice for "eventual nominee."

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• Look for Bush — or another candidate — to attack Rubio's Senate voting record. (In the words of this amazing Washington Post headline from this weekend, "Rubio gives up on Senate.")

  [Washington Post / David A. Farenthold]

• Watch also for Ted Cruz. Cruz's plan from the beginning has been to let the outsider candidates flame out, then swoop in and secure the conservative base. But since the outsider candidates haven't flamed out yet, he may be more interested in attacking them.

  [Politico / Shane Goldmacher]

Misnaepery

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• The National Assessment of Educational Progress — the nation's most important standardized test — has released its 2015 results, and they are, in the words of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, "not great." The US' math scores dropped from 2014 to 2015 — the first time that's happened since 1990.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• Duncan urged Americans not to speculate about what the results meant, then totally speculated. He mused that an "implementation gap" while teachers learn how to prepare students for Common Core state tests might explain the drop.

  [Los Angeles Times / Joy Resmovits]

• Critics of Common Core and testing-based reforms, meanwhile, are treating the results as proof that Duncan and his reform-minded compatriots have failed.

  [Washington Post / Valerie Strauss with Carol Burris]

• Both of these reactions are dumb. In the education-wonk world, there's a name for them: "misnaepery," or using the NAEP results to justify your preferred education policies.

  [Education Week / Stephen Sawchuk]

• The NAEP is good at testing exactly what it tests: how well students in various grades are doing in reading and math. It doesn't test how they're learning.

• Even to figure out which states are best at educating their students, you have to reweight the test results demographically — as the Urban Institute did earlier this week for the 2014 NAEP.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• And you can't do much by comparing NAEP results to state proficiency test results, because state proficiency tests are too easy.

  [Achieve]

US to China: "We see you, dudes"

Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty Images

• The United States has China on notice: earlier this week, it sent a missile destroyer into waters in the South China Sea that China claims for itself.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• The South China Sea is a pretty important region strategically (as you can tell from this BBC article and attached map).

  [BBC ]

• It's also very important economically, with rich deposits of oil and natural gas.

  [The Diplomat / Michael Fabinyi]

• Under international law, countries can claim water up to 12 nautical miles from their shores. That leaves most of the South China Sea open as international waters.

• But China has been building its own islands in the middle of the sea so it can claim a 12-mile radius around them. (This graphic from the National Post shows how.)

  [National Post / Mike Faille]

• So the US sent a "Freedom of Navigation" (somehow abbreviated FONOP) mission earlier this week, which basically functions as a "We see you" to China.

  [Center for Strategic and International Studies / Michael J. Green, Bonnie S. Glaser, and Gregory B. Poling]

• FONOP missions aren't unheard of. (You can see the traffic patterns in this map.)

  [Ankit Panda via Twitter]

• But the US is apparently preparing to send repeated patrols — which represents a bigger commitment to telling China to step off.

  [CNN Philippines / Gerg Cahiles]

MISCELLANEOUS

The alpaca bubble has burst. In case you didn't realize there was an alpaca bubble, here's what's up. [KUNC / Luke Runyon]

• Six Americans a year are shot by dogs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's too many.

  [Washington Post / Christopher Ingraham]

• Cutting chidlren's sugar intake improves their health in as little as ten days.

  [NYT / Anahad O'Connor]

• The story of how Hocus Pocus went from a total critical and commercial bomb to a beloved cult classic (personally I, Dylan, think the critics got it right the first time).

  [Yahoo / Jen Chaney]

• In Florida, governors can grant ex-felons the right to vote. And Jeb Bush was loathe to use that power.

  [Mother Jones / Pema Levy]

VERBATIM

"What happened from there on K Street SW was a rather impressive dance-off between the police officer and the teen." [Washington Post / Perry Stein]

• "A 41-year-old Austrian journalist named Jack Unterweger checked into the Cecil while he worked on a story about crime in L.A. for an Austrian magazine. Unterweger used his reporting work to secure ride-alongs with LAPD vice cops and those trips were revealed as scouting missions when it was later discovered that Unterweger was also a serial killer with a penchant for strangling prostitutes."

  [Matter / Josh Dean]

• "Zola goes to Florida, and what follows is—well, you know that part of Their Eyes Were Watching God where Tea Cake gets rabies? It’s like that, except instead of the Everglades it’s a strip club and a series of increasingly terrifying motels and apartments, and instead of a rabid dog it’s a white girl named Jess who tricks for $100 until Zola sets her up a Backpage account, and instead of the reader it’s a man named Jarrett who won’t stop crying, and instead of Tea Cake it’s a guy named Z who, if the story is true, gets put away for an assortment of crimes, including murder."

  [Jezebel / Jia Tolentino]

• "Right now, if you live in New York City and want to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 70mm IMAX, you’d have to drive two hours to Philadelphia."

  [ScreenCrush / Mike Sampson]

• "When we talk about sexual assault or prevention, there tends to be the perception of ‘oh, you’ve ruined someone’s life.’ My life was not ruined."

  [Meghan Warner to NY Mag / Allison Davis]

WATCH THIS

Republican Fight Night: Wait, who are all these people? [YouTube / Johnny Harris, Joe Posner, Joss Fong]

Vox / Johnny Harris, Joe Posner, Joss Fong