"Ok, so let me see if I've got this straight."
I was on the phone with my friend Bob. I've known Bob for years. He's a former Navy guy who now does electrician work at Disneyworld. He's seriously bright, but doesn't know squat about computers. And he was trying, once again, to figure out what the heck I was doing with my life.
"You're starting another Notes publication?"
He stretched out the word "another" so it seemed that he was entirely incredulous of my actions.
"Well, yeah," I responded with some enthusiasm. "But this one's on both Notes and Domino."
"I think I understand Notes. It's this kinda email, database, group-think thing from IBM, right?" I hadn't heard it described exactly like that, but he was certainly in the ballpark. "But what the heck is Domino? Didn't Kim Basinger play Domino in Never Say Never Again? You're writing about a Bond girl?"
I shook my head. Of course, he couldn't see that through the phone. "Uh, no Bob. We're not doing a journal on James Bond, as cool as that might seem. We're doing a journal on Lotus Domino, a very cool server technology, and on Notes. They work together."
"So you're not writing about Claudine Auger, who plays Domino Derval in Thunderball. And you're not writing about Kim Basinger, who pretty much remakes the character as Domino Petachi in Never Say Never Again," Bob was spouting Bond flick facts with a scary degree of finesse. "You're just doing another techy journal on this Lotus Domino thing?"
"Yep."
"But haven't you done this before?"
Bob was right. We had done this before. In fact, we'd created no less than four Lotus journals, and a book. Back in 1993, I wrote a book called Lotus Notes 3 Revealed! It was the second book ever on Notes and was quite popular. Based on the success of the book, we did our first journal, Workspace for Lotus Notes. Since we were new to the whole journal publishing business, we partnered with The Cobb Group division of Ziff Davis. Ziff, as you probably know, is the largest independent publisher of computer magazines, and Cobb is their division that produces journals and newsletters.
The other part of the "we" in this, by the way, is Managing Editor and Vice President of Publishing, Denise Amrich. While I've been responsible for the overall direction and technical vision of the publications (the editor-in-chief), Denise has been responsible for making it all happen.
Cathcart snatched the letter out of Korn's hand, waving it back and forth. Say, how do you know its bad news anyway if you haven't opened it huh? " Korn shook out of his trance " Well it does say urgent in big red letters on the front, and we only get those letters when there's trouble. "
"I'm going to make a big request of you today," he said, pocketing his souvenirs with satisfaction, "so I thought you ought to know something about me. I didn't want you to think I was just some
Standardized tests should not be used to measure student proficiency. These tests are becoming much more challenging and high stakes, resulting in a significant amount of stress and anxiety in students. Standardized testing has become a huge weight on students which is leading to test anxiety. Jasmine Evans writes in her article “Problems With Standardized Testing,” from Education.com about critics of the No Child Left Behind, an act passed in 2001 one under the administration of George W. Bush, who say that there is a lot of pressure on teachers, students, and parents, and school officials as a result of these tests. They say the pressure to...
Students spend the majority of their time preparing for standardized tests, instead of spending their time learning. In addition, standardized tests give students anxiety, and could lead them to want to drop out of high school due to all of the stress. I believe that standardized tests should not carry so much weight in the education system. They should serve as checks of the educational system rather than as a determinant of the future of
“Are you writing about this?” She asked, extending her hands to include the group of protestors.
“She is a very successful musician, who never studied music in college. She even wrote the music for the show Waitress.”
General testing in today's school systems has a negative effect upon the actual learning of the students. Standardized testing narrows school curriculum, labels children as failures at a young age, and uses money that could possibly be used in a more productive manner.
Standardized testing shows that it takes more than just giving students test to see who has the higher grade. Students must be allowed to grow and take an interest in education by guiding them and not forcing them to have higher test grades. Taking standardized testing is like how Stephanie Schneider puts it, its “like checking if a plant was growing by ripping it out and checking” (Schneider, and Christison 30-32). The United States used to be a country of originality, but now they have swapped it out to have a competition on who can have a higher score.
This argument goes along with the other two mentioned and explained above. There isn’t much that is positive to say about these assessments. It places so much pressure on students to perform well and pressure on teachers to teach what is going to be on the test. This brings negative energy to classrooms. An article by Greg Jouriles helps explain why we don’t need these tests. He claims, “Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don’t already know” (Jouriles, Greg). He also goes on to explain that one’s test score isn’t reliable and that we should trust the teachers when grades are published. A school system can accurately judge the students in the school on what they are good at better than the standardized tests do. They can break down many different aspects of what students need to improve on and what they are already knowledgeable of. Students need to learn more than just the test information. Only studying and learning test material makes students less diverse and leads to boring lectures in the classroom. Another article written by an organization called Fairtest adds, “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores” (Fairtest). These tests punish students for what they can’t control, making them stressed and panicked that they won’t graduate or move on to the next grade. Some children are from low-income families attending schools with large classes with little to no materials for learning what is on the test. In addition to that, some teachers have never been educated on test content, which is not their fault, and this results in low-test scores. This all leads to why there are such negative feelings throughout classrooms of many
Standardized tests are designed to show you and the teachers where you are as far as learning skills go. They have pros and cons, but in the end, they are just there to help the education system. And they determine how far in life you will go. Meaning, you have to take standardized tests to get into some universities and one of the requirements to graduate high school is to pass the standardized tests. So, no matter how much parents, students, or even teachers think the standardized tests are unfair, they are only there to help us and we need them in order to make sure we are getting the education that we deserve.
I said to Alfonzo that someone wants to say hi and check up on you, I passed him the phone on speaker, they spoke for about 4 to 5 minutes. Alfonzo passed me back the phone.
I smiled with an uncertainty of having not given him what he wanted. He gathered up his camera and turned to go ask the same question to the other cast members. Their answers were short, and silly.
“Would you like one?” He smiled. I knew that he knew how I would answer.
It's nearing the end of the school year, and students and teachers alike are in a panic. Have the teachers taught enough? Have the students learned enough? All this worry and stress stems from one very specific issue: standardized testing. All of this commotion is just another indicator the standardized testing does more harm than good. Standardized testing is an inefficient and harmful practice that puts too much pressure on students, incorrectly categorizes test-takers, and results in ineffective teaching. (maybe rephrase, order-wise)