Standardized testing Essay Example for Free

Standardized testing Essay Standardized testing has assumed a well-known role in recent efforts to advance the quality of education. Regardless of where they went to school or what curriculum they followed, students are tested on the same material, which can be loosely grouped into knowledge domains and skill sets that encompass; natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, reading, speaking, writing, and mathematics. National, state, and district tests, combined with minimum competency, special program, and special diploma evaluations, have resulted in a greatly expanded set of testing requirements for most schools. By definition, a standardized test is a test where the same test is given in the same manner to all test takers. It is administered and scored in a consistent or â€Å"standard† manner. It is designed in such a way that the questions, conditions for administering, scoring procedures and interpretations are consistent, and are administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. 3 Using standardized tests to perform assessments is beneficial for several reasons. First, because standardized tests yield quantifiable information (scores, proficiency levels, and so forth), and results can be used in screening programs. Second, standardized test results provide information regarding an examinees areas of strength and weakness. Third, standardized test results allow a student to be compared to age- or grade-peers. And lastly, standardized tests can be used to assess students progress over time (e. g. , re-administering tests after the application of an intervention or following the institution of a remedial program the most significant benefit of results from a test given in a standardized fashion is that the results can be documented and empirically verified. This then allows for the results to be interpreted and ideas about an individuals skills generalized. Although standardized testing is beneficial in some situations, the validity and value of traditional standardized tests are subjects of increasing debate. Recent studies raise questions about whether improvements in test score performance actually signal improvement in learning. Student’s performance on one particular day and does not take into account external factors. There are many people who simply do not perform well on tests. Many of these students are smart and understand the content, but it doesn’t show on the test. Many students also develop test anxiety which hinders performance. Finally, there are so many external factors that play into test performance. If a student has an argument with their parents the morning of the test, chances are their focus isn’t going to be where it should be. In elementary schools less time is being spent on sciences, social studies and the arts to make way for  preparing the students  to take the tests in math, reading and writing. Teachers feel strong pressure, especially from district administrators and the media, to improve their students test scores. With the stakes getting higher and higher for teachers, this practice will only continue to increase. The sad reality is that it fosters an atmosphere that is boring and lacks creativeness. Teachers have such pressure to get their students ready for these exams that they neglect to teach students skills that go beyond the tests. But despite criticisms of standardized testing, the proficient teachers of today do not accept that their students have limitations, or are incapable of learning any given concept. Instead these teacher work hard every day to make material relevant for their children and develop lesson plans that speak to individual lesson plans. While both critiques and proponents of standardized testing could debate their sides all day, the need to assess students to determine both their progress and the progress of their teachers and schools is undeniable. Standardized testing evaluates students early in their education on their readiness both scholastically and behaviorally Students and their parents are able to measure at least generally their progress and areas in which they need. Standardized test shape people’s futures, so they need to be created fairly, so everyone has an equal opportunity to have a successful future. While the jury is still out on whether or not there is a better method of determining individual student progress. The need for a common measure to compare students to bring about change is still more present than ever.

History of Tobacco Laws

History of Tobacco Laws Coffins of Black In 1775, Percivall Pott, a surgeon at St. Bartholomews Hospital in England, noticed a marked rise in cases of scrotal cancer in his clinic. His patients were mostly chimney sweeps, who spent a lot of time in contact with grime and ash. He noted that the minute invisible particle of soot could be found under their skin for days, and that scrotal cancer bust out of a superficial skin wound called a soot wart. Based on these observations, Pitt suspected that it was the chimney soot that caused the scrotal cancers. That would mean that the cancer was potentially preventable. But removing the carcinogen was perhaps difficult to achieve. But with the embarrassing plight of chimney sweeps exposed, social reformers sought to create laws to regulate the occupation. The Chimney Sweepers Act was passed in 1788 to prevent master sweeps from using children under eight. In 1834, the age was increased to fourteen. By 1875, the use of young climbing boys was forbidden. In 1761, an amateur scientist in London, John Hill, claimed that he had found one carcinogen tabacco could cause lip, mouth, and throat cancer. In England, tobacco was rapidly escalating into a national addiction. Cigarette smoking soon spread through Europe and across the Atlantic to the United States. As cigarette consumption became a national addiction, it would be difficult to discern an association with cancer. The Emperors Nylon Stockings In the United Kingdom, government statisticians alerted the Ministry of Health in January 1947 that an unexpected epidemic of lung cancer was emerging in the country: Lung cancer morbidity had increased fifteen-fold in the prior two decades. In February, the ministry asked the Medical Research Council to organize a conference of experts to study this inexplicable rise of lung cancer rates and to find the cause. The experts at the conference pointed to every breathable form of toxin except cigarette smoke. Without any consensus, the council appointed Austin Bradford Hill, an eminent biostatistician, to devise a systematic study to identify the risk factor for lung cancer. Hill recruited Richard Doll, a 36-year-old medical researcher who had no experience in performing a study of this scale. *** In the United States, a medical student name Ernst Wynder encountered a case of 42-year-old man who died of cancer of the airways of the lung. The man was a smoker with tar-stained bronchi and soot-blackened lungs. Wynder had never seen such a case before, so he applied to the medical school for money to study the connection between smoking and lung cancer. But he was bluntly told that the effort would be futile. He wrote to the U.S. Surgeon General, but was told that he could prove nothing. So Wynder approached his mentor Evarts Graham, the great heart surgeon in St Louis. Graham was a heavy smoker and didnt believe the connection between cancer and smoking. But he agreed to help Wynder with the study in part to disprove the link and lay the issue at rest. The Case-Control Studies In St Louis, Wynder and Graham followed a simple method. They recruited a group of lung cancer patients and a control group without cancer and asked them about their smoking habits. They used smokers to nonsmokers ratio within each group to determine the smoking-cancer connection. In the UK, Doll and Hill followed a similar method in their study. They asked social workers in the hospital to interview the two groups of patients in and around London. To counteract biases, they included other questions such as how often they eat fried fish into the survey. By May 1, 1948, the result of their study was: The one and only statistical association with lung cancer was cigarette smoking. They published their study in September 1956. Meanwhile, Wynder and Graham in St Louis had also arrived at the same conclusion. The published their studies a few months earlier. The Prospective Cohort Study It might appear that Doll, Hill, Wynder and Graham proved the link between lung cancer and smoking. But they had proved something else. In a case-control study, the risk is estimated post hoc by asking lung cancer patients whether they had smoked. The interviewer could have unconsciously probed lung cancer patients about their smoking habits more aggressively than control group. In the early 1940s, an Oxford geneticist named Edmund Ford faced a similar notion. The solution was to follow a cohort to capture the change over time. Doll and Hill followed Fords work with deep interest. There was a centralized registry of all doctors in Britain that could be used for a cohort study. Every time a doctor in the registry died, the registrar was noticed with a detail description of the cause of death. On October 31, 1951, Doll and Hill sent out survey letters to about 60,000 doctors. About 41,000 of them responded. Doll and Hill used the data to create a master list, dividing it into smokers and nonsmokers. Each time a death was reported, they found out the cause of death from the registrars office. Between October 1951 and March 1954, 789 deaths were reported, and 36 were attributed to lung cancer. All these 36 deaths had occurred in the smokers category, showing a strong correlation between lung cancer and cigarette smoking. A thief in the Night In 1956, the percentage of smokers in the US adult population had reached an all-time peak of 45 percent. Cigarette sales had climbed to stratospheric heights and the tobacco industry had transformed their advertising by targeting their advertising to selected segments of the population. By the early 1960s, an average American consumed eleven cigarettes per day, nearly one for each waking hour. In the mid-1950s, public health organizations in America were undisturbed by the link between tobacco and cancer. But the tobacco industry was worried that the link would scare consumers away. In 1953, three years before Dolls prospective study was public, the heads of several tobacco companies met in New York to prepare a counterattack. They saturated the news media in 1954 with an advertisement titled A Frank Statement, obfuscating facts and creating doubts about the connection between lung cancer and tobacco. They had already formed a committee called Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIRC) to act as an intermediary between the hostile academy, the embattled tobacco industry, and the confused consumer. The director of the committee was Clarence Cook Little, who the Laskerites had deposed as president of ASCC. Little was a strong proponent that lung cancer was hereditary. Studies had shown a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. But correlation, Little argued, could not be equated with cause. To counter that argument, Bradford Hill prepared a list of nine criteria that could prove a causal relationship. No single item in that list proved causality, but scientists could pick criteria from the list to strengthen or weaken the causal relationship. In the February 1957, Evart Graham died from bilateral bronchogenic carcinoma. Two weeks before he died, Graham wrote to his friend Alton Ochsner: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦bilateral bronchogenic carcinoma sneaked up on me like a thief in the nightà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦You know I quit smoking more than five years ago, but the trouble is that I smoked for 50 years. In 1954, in a book entitled Smoking and Cancer, Graham had wondered whether it was time for the US Public Health Service to at least issue a statement of warning. A Statement of Warning In the summer of 1963, a team of three men visited the laboratory of Oscar Auerbach in East Orange, New Jersey. Oscar Auerbach was a lung pathologist who believed that cancer grew from a precursor lesion precancer to its full-blown form slowly, and methodically, over a long period of time. Long before lung cancer became symptomatic, he found, the lung tissues contained layers of precancerous lesions in various stages of development. He had recently completed a monumental study comparing lung specimens of nonsmokers and smokers, which was considered a landmark in the understanding of the genesis of lung cancer. The three visitors were William Cochran, Peter Hamill, and Emmanuel Farber. They were three of the ten-member advisory committee appointed by the US surgeon general. The   mandate (of the committee) was to review the evidence connecting tobacco to cancer so that the surgeon general could issue an official report. US Surgeon Generals Report In 1961, the American Cancer Society, the National Tuberculosis Association and the American Heart Association had sent a joint letter to President Kennedy urging him to appoint a national commission to investigate the link between tobacco and cancer. Kennedy assigned it to his surgeon general, Luther Terry. Terry appointed ten members to his advisory committee. Each member brought insight to a unique piece of the puzzle. Piece by piece, a consistent picture emerged. The committee found the relationship between smoking and lung cancer was one of the strongest in history. Luther Terry released his 387-page report on January 11, 1964. The report was released on a Saturday in part to minimize its effect on the stock market. It was front page news and a leading story on every television and radio stations in the United States and abroad. The FTC Action The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was a federal agency whose mandate was to regulate advertisements and claims made by various products. Given the link between cigarettes and cancer, as acknowledged by the surgeon generals report, the FTC recommended that cigarette makers would need to acknowledge this directly in advertising their products. The FTC recommended to imprint the message into the product itself. Cigarette packages and all advertisements were to be labeled with Caution: Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Health. It May Cause Death from Cancer and Other Disease. The proposed action from the FTC spread panic through the tobacco industry. Rather than being regulated by the FTC, the tobacco industry voluntarily requested regulation by Congress. In Congress, the FTCs recommendation was diluted as it changed hands from hearing to hearing, leading to an amended bill called the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act (FCLAA) of 1965. It changed the FTCs warning label to Caution: Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health. The words cancer, cause, and deaths were removed from the original label. Battle on Cigarette Advertising In late 1966, a young attorney named John Banzhaf asked a local television station to provide airtime for anti-smoking announcements. The station refused. In the summer of 1967, Banzhaf filed a complaint with the FCC. The FCCs fairness doctrine required public media to provide free air time to opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. The FCC announced responded that its fairness doctrine applied to the request for anti-smoking announcements. With the FTC consent, Banzhaf sued the TV station. The suit went to trial in 1968. The court ruled that proportional airtime had to be given to pro-tobacco and anti-tobacco advertising. In February 1969, the FCC announced that they would rigorously police the proportional air time clause.   A barrage of anti-smoking advertisements appeared on television. In late 1970, faced with the daily brunt of negative publicity, tobacco manufacturers voluntarily withdrew cigarette advertising from broadcast media. Lawsuits Against Tobacco Manufacturers Rose Cipollone started smoking when she was a teenager in 1942. She tried to quit, but relapsed later with greater dependency. In her quest for the safe cigarette, she had switched brands and tried new filters periodically. In 1981, Cipollone was diagnosed with lung cancer. By August 1983, the cancer metastasized all over her body. She started chemotherapy, but had a poor response. She died on October 21, 1984 at age 58. Marc Edell, a New Jersey attorney, heard of Cipollones diagnosis in the summer of 1983. He sued for the Cipollones against three tobacco manufacturers whose products Rose had used Liggette, Lorillard, and Philip Morris. In previous lawsuits against the tobacco companies, the tobacco industry had all declared victory. Edell acknowledged that Rose Cipollone had read the warning labels and knew of the risks of smoking. But what matter was what the cigarette manufacturers knew, and how much of the cancer risk they had revealed to consumers. Edell asked the courts for unprecedented access to the internal files of the three tobacco companies. These documents showed that the tobacco companies knew smoking was linked to cancer, and the struggles within the industry to conceal the risks. In 1987, after four long years, the court decided that Rose Cipollone was 80 percent at fault. Only Liggett was liable for the remaining 20 percent, as Rose Cipollone smoked their cigarettes before the 1966 warning labels. Lorillard and Philip Morris got off without punishment. The jury awarded $400,000 in damages to Antonio Cipollone. Lawsuits by the States In 1994, Mississippi was the first state to sue the tobacco industry to recover its public healthcare outlays linked to smoking. Several other states soon followed. Faced with the prospect of defending multiple actions nationwide, the four largest cigarette makers proposed a global agreement in June 1997. In 1998, 46 states signed the Master Settlement Agreement with the four companies. Since 1998, an additional 47 cigarette makers have joined the agreement, making it one of the largest liability settlements in the United States.

Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima Essay -- Rudolfo Anaya Bless Me Ultim

Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima, the author uses Tony’s dreams as a way of displaying various symbols. Three symbols that are used often are weather, water, and the Golden Carp. Weather is used to represent conflict. Water represents cleansing, and rejuvenation. The Golden Carp symbolizes religion and Tony’s beliefs. Because dreams are not an exact mirror of reality, they become the perfect tool for introducing symbolism. The author uses the dream as a way to access the recurring themes of the book. Weather affects the lives of everyone. When the weather turns foul, it makes life more difficult. Stormy weather in Tony’s dreams represents the conflict in his life, and the lives of those around him. One example of the weather in his dreams is the wind. In one of Tony’s dreams the wind is used to represent conflict that disrupts the peace that is a still lake. "There was a howling wind as the moon rose and it’s powers pulled at the still waters of the lake."(Anaya 120) The wind here is used to represent forces of disturbance caused by nuclear testing taking place south of the town, just as wind kicks up dust and blurs the view. Another element of storms is thunder and lightning. In Tony’s dream he sees, ".....a flash of lightning struck and out of the thunder a dark figure stepped forth. It was Ultima......I sought more answers, but she was gone, evaporated into a loud noise."(Anaya 71) Lightning can offer glimpses of illumination, but then darkness retu rns, and the noise of the thunder that follows deafens the ears. This represents the moments of good that can occur within the midst of conflict. Ultima’s appearance gives Tony a glimpse of where he needs to search for innocence, but he is still confused from this encounter. He continues to search for answers. Another significant weather occurrence is the appearance of mist. " The mist swirled around me. I was at the river, and I heard someone calling my name. I peered into the dark mist but I could see no one." (Anaya 61) Just as the mist leaves a person feeling isolated, the mist represents the war and how it left Tony separated from his brothers. Weather, in the form of wind, thunder and lightning, and mist, provides powerful symbolism for the conflicts in Tony’s life. Cleansing and rejuvenation are themes that are suggested by the author, and symbolized thro... ...eath he had seen he can’t really trust the gods because they continue to let people that are close to him die. Tony’s belief in the power of the carp is beginning to fade here because he can not understand why the carp, and God continue to let people die. Tony knows what the carp represents, so he blames the carp for these deaths. All of these quotes show how the Golden Carp represents the power, and the importance of Tony’s religion. The Golden Carp was the most important religious symbol in Bless Me Ultima. In Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, the other uses Tony’s dreams to show the reader symbols of conflict, rejuvenation, and religion. The weather in this story is used to represent conflict. Weather is shown in Tony’s dreams to represent conflicts in his life. Water is used to represent cleanliness in rejuvenation. We all use water to clean ourselves, but in this book water is shown to clean the mind, body, and soul. The Golden Carp is shown to be a symbol of Tony’s religion. The carp is a symbol that Tony turns to for answers in his life. In all of Tony’s dreams the reader is able to gain a better understanding of Tony’s life through the use of symbols in Tony’s dreams.

Jeff Bezos: The Founder of Amazon.com Essay -- essays research papers

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964. His mother, Jackie, was in her teens when he was born and she was only married to his biological father for about a year. She married Mike Bezos when Jeff was four years old. Mike was a Cuban who escaped to the United States when he was fifteen. He put himself through college in New Mexico and eventually became an engineer at Exxon. Jeff went to Princeton and studied electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a GPA of 4.3 on a 4.0 scale. After he graduated from Princeton, Jeff joined a high-tech startup in New York called FITEL. After two years at FITEL, he joined Bankers Trust Company. At Bankers Trust, he setup computer systems that managed $250 billion in asse...

Drought Essays -- Environment, Agricultural Field

Introduction: Drought is the most significant factor restricting plant production on majority of agricultural field of the world (Tas&Tas, 2007). During drought stress, improper adjustment of photosystem II and thermodynamic damages disrupt the flow of electrons and lead to production of free radicals. Oxidative damages results from incomplete detoxification of reactive oxygen species. Damages caused by oxidative stress includes; inactivation of enzymes, lipid peroxidation, protein degradation and destruction of DNA strands, reduction in chlorophyll content and pigments color (Friso et al., 2004, Gechev et al., 2006; Baruah et al., 2009). Detoxification of reactive oxygen species in plants, includes enzymatic mechanisms (such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalse (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), peroxidase (POX), glutathione reductase (GR) and mono dehydro ascorbate reductase (MDAR) as well as non-enzymatic mechanisms (such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, carotenoids and ascorbic acid, AA) (Friso et al., 2004, Ramachandra Reddi et al., 2004). In enzymatic antioxidant systems, catalase (EC1.11.1.6) is an oxidoreductase located in peroxysomes and considered as an important enzyme to counter hydrogen peroxide produced in stress conditions so that at drought stress conditions new isomorphs of it are released and the rate of former isomorphs increases (Srivalli et al, 2003 and Khana-chopra and Selote, 2007). Peroxidase )EC1.11.1.6( as another enzymatic antioxidant systems, is an oxidoreductase that has one homogeneous –b as a prostatic group and catalysis oxidation of the proton giver compounds with H2O2 and consequently cause H2O2 to breakdown (Jiang and Zhang, 2004). In most studies under drought condition increase in ... ...ion of hydrogen superoxide hydrogen and peroxide occurs and causes disruptions in activity of some scavenger enzymes of reactive oxygen species like catalase in drought stress. This issue leads to increase of lipids peroxidation and finally damages chlorophyll and cell membrane. The plant to alleviate the adverse effects of oxidative stress caused by drought stress increases the activity of some involved enzymes in removing reactive oxygen species, like peroxidase, by stimulation of gene expression. This condition can be seen more in resistant lines. The stress-resistant lines having these traits reduce damaging effects of oxidative stress through degradation and inactivation of reactive oxygen species and because of more stability of cell membrane and chlorophyll under these conditions, access to high yield is probable due to sustaining photosynthetic capacity.

Circuit City Stores Essay

Objectives: * achieve leading market share in each served market in order to benefit from ad and logistics synergies * resist take over attempt Current Business Strategy * In retail stores, they measure by per unit square foot to measure capacity( exhibit 3b) * They sell brand name product * Cut commissions * Customer survey to support customer satisfaction * Switched management teams. * Invested in the POS system * Store remodeling, ex. Expanding to Canada, with small stores Evaluate External analysis * Market: is massive, growing at 8 % a year forces: * Rivalry: – Cost circuit city more to get out of business – Number of the competitors; and revenue are big, these will intense the rivalry – Product mix: there is a lot of product differentiation, ability to differentiate, can focus on different target market. This makes the market rivalry less intense. – Customer services is declining, could lead to increasing? * Barrier to entry: – not hard to enter the market – not hard to open a specialty electronic store; no need to special skills, and no need for massive inventory Brand loyalty to the product not the store Substitute for electronic retail * Ebay, online ( not very competitive, not a strong force) * Customer * No brand loyalty, low switching cost * Purchase dispersed * Demand is not declining * Supplier * Specific supplier are required * Fast and efficient supply chain * Require good relationship with supplier is critical (ex DVD sales) * No shortage in supplier

Advantages and disadvantage of Going Green Essay

The major advantage, undoubtedly, is that the use of green technology reduces the pollution of the environment. The damage that is usually done to the environment when hotels use diesel products is very catastrophic. Diesel products emit a lot of hydrocarbons into the air that cause global warming, which is known to hamper marine life and make some species of the marine bio diversity extinct. However this can be avoided if the industry adopts green technology. The industry has also come alive to the fact that ecotourism is a major attraction to many people who want to conserve the world we live in. People appreciate and value those involved in environmental conservation and majority like being associated with them. The adoption of green technology by the hospitality industry improves the public image that people have towards the industry. The world today is doing everything to combat global warming which is seen as a major threat to future earnings of almost each sector in the global economy. Tax Savings Significant federal tax benefits are associated with going green and several deductions apply for the cost of energy-efficient improvements. Some states also give green building tax credits. Reduced Costs One of the main benefits of hotels going green is that business owners get to considerably lower their operating costs. By turning environmentally friendly, hotels can see a 30 percent reduction in their costs.†¨Ã¢â‚¬ ¨ Disadvantages: Potential clients may not believe that green design can be luxurious. (â€Å"Just because you’re green doesn’t mean you don’t have a particular style, or can’t produce a certain luxury. People are starting to understand that, but it was a real hurdle.†-Lori Dennis, a Los Angeles-based interior designer) Sourcing furniture, fixtures, and materials is more work. Even though options are improving, â€Å"the range of choices is narrower, and you’re doing more work,† to find everything from energy efficient lighting to low-flow faucets to natural upholstery fabrics. (Lori Dennis, a Los Angeles-based interior designer) When you can’t find what you want, you have to make it yourself. â€Å"That’s a con, because it’s a lot of work, but it’s also a pro, because it’s fun and, before you know it, you’ve designed a whole new product range.†(Lori Dennis, a Los Angeles-based interior designer)