"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.
"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
“Albert, Dr. Cabell here. I have Scott and Ephraim present, and I wanted you to tell them about the print you located.”
Standardized testing is not the best way to measure how well a teacher teaches or how much a student has learned. Schools throughout the United States put their main focus on standardized tests; these examinations put too much pressure on the teachers and students and cause traumatizing events. Standardized testing puts strain on teachers and students causing unhealthy occurrences, Common Core is thrown at teachers with no teaching on how to teach the new way which dampers testing scores for all students, and the American College Test determines whether a child gets into college or not based on what they have learned during high school. Standardized tests are disagreeable; tests should not determine ranking of people.
“She is a very successful musician, who never studied music in college. She even wrote the music for the show Waitress.”
He seemed confused. He didn't know what I was talking about. Now, they are forgetting what they do and what they say.
According to Fyona Rose, “Not only do these tests belittle students' and teachers' hard work, they also leave them with negative feelings toward school and drain their love of learning” (Rose, 2015). This means that standardized testing can ruin the enjoyment of learning for both students and teachers. The reason standardized testing still happens is because it has become a standard for schools each year. But if the standard is bad something should be changed. Many who do not like standardized testing to do not believe that testing should be done away with, but rather be changed to accommodate the growing needs of society as a
Roderich quickly nodded his head, and turned back to the microphone. He said to the crowd, "How about a different song. One that I made up. I like to call it, Piano Man."
"Yeah, well all except one sir," his security chief replied. "We have one other product under development, code named XXX41. Highest possible security rating. No other person inside these walls even knows of its existence. This," he continued, waving his hand at the five scientists, "Is the development team."
Standardized testing, I feel, is a waste of time. There are multiple kids, such as myself, that after long periods of testing no longer do their best because they begin to get discouraged. There are students that get good grades throughout the entire year but do so poorly on their standardized testing that it makes them feel as though none of their school work even mattered. Not only do these tests not test the ability of a student, but they also give teachers different ratings on how the children do. With the tests giving ratings for each teacher it not only puts pressure on the students taking the tests, but also the teachers to make sure all of the information is covered for the standardized tests that they don’t even get to create on their own. I don’t understand why we put so much pressure on these tests when in all reality they don’t even show your true growth in
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.
Standardized testing doesn’t provide a true picture of a student’s ability. According to the article “Pros and Cons of Standardized Testing”, Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one particular day and does not take into account external factors. Meaning that the student is judged on how smart they are with this test. This is unfair because there are many people who are smart but have test anxiety allowing them not to focus on the test. Many other people understand the subject and know what to do but don’t show it on the test.
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 testing is such a huge and essential part of public schooling. Most people think something so major is wanted by everyone, but most people involved in public schools, such as parents, students, and teachers oppose these tests. There is a lot of unfairness when it comes to standardized testing. The tests have a larger impact on students and teachers than they really should, with only one per year. The ratio of importance to standardized testing isn’t equal at all, which is why there is a lot of opposition and hatred towards these tests. Standardized tests, an extremely popular thing when it comes to public education, are a huge problem for parents, students, and teachers associated with these districts and are ruining education
standardized test can be difficult. That's why some schools don't highly recommend it. Some test are just billions and billions of dollars for a contract. Standardized test can be stressful. Some test can be like brain washing for kids. Some kids take their education very seriously!