Taking a break.

There won't be anything going on here behind the curtain for a while. I'll be posting again in a week or so.

See you then.

Trivia - Music for Friday

The gifted, extremely popular singer who originally bore the name Virginia Patterson Hensley was killed by a tragic plane crash while on tour. What was her stage/recording name?

Trivia for Thirty Thursday

What number of gunshots is fired for the arrival of the president?
BONUS: How about for the vice president?
DOUBLE BONUS: For an admiral or general?

How testing works

Let's repost this, shall we?

Dear Parents: What happens in the testing room?
Heather Wolpert-Gawron / tweenteacher blog
07/24/2009

Dear Parents,

I’m going to walk you through what happens in a testing room to help demystify your child’s test taking experience.

First off, I’m told to take down anything from my walls that might help kids out. That means they are now emerged in a neutral testing environment. No Word Walls, no prompts, no student work. The room is either stripped to the bare walls or paper is stapled up over everything. This is so every school and every class has the same disadvantages. It’s also very depressing.

OK, so the day of the test, I walk down to the farthest place on the other side of the world and pick up a box that has all my testing materials in it, signing away my firstborn should I lose a pencil. I walk into my classroom, and at the bell there soon appears my testing group that consists of 36 students I’ve never seen before. Students, you see, are not necessarily assigned to classrooms they’ve ever been in. I don’t know them, and they don’t me. Kinda uncomfortable all around.

I notice there’s a girl crying. Her friend leans over and whispers that her boyfriend just broke up with her. I thank the friend for the gossip and ask the unfortunate casualty of tween-dom if she needs a tissue. She sniffs and shakes her head in the negative, suggesting she’s trying to be strong for the test for which she’s about to receive. I have no doubt this test is very high on her priority list right now.

I distribute the question booklet as I read a script word-for-word of directions and cautionary phrases. Profound ones like, ‘Read directions,” and such. The script keeps me in line. No unauthorized humor allowed on a testing day. The directions are mind numbing, and I can’t help but wish the testing company could hire some real writers for this thing, say, from 30 Rock or something? The script continues with monotonous instructions on where to put your name, how to write the number of the test on the answer sheet, where to write the name of our school, and where to write the school district’s name.

At this time, the students who just entered the school only a week ago from some other state or district raise their hands and in unison call out, “What district is this?” You tell them and hope their previous teachers covered the material that they are now being tested on in your room. bubble-test

I continue: “Everyone open to page 12 to begin the Language Arts portion of the test. This is represented by a picture of a #2 pencil. Now go to your answer sheet and find the picture of the #2 pencil. (pause for students to find the pencil) Now look at sample question A…” and so on. You ask for the answer for the Language Arts sample question A, and it is when someone answers ½ that you realize that he was on the Math section of the test. You ask them politely to please turn to page 12 as previously requested.

“When you see the stop sign at the end of page 32, you must close your book. Do not go to any other page.” (Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.) You say this with some skepticism knowing that at least 2 students will plow ahead simply because they are not paying attention to stop signs. We call this a California Stop and a cop can pull you over for just slowing down before accelerating ahead. It is a part of my job as test police to catch these students before they pull ahead of the class while in the test taking zone.

“You may begin.” And now starts the process of walking around the classroom and not saying anything, because I am not allowed.

The phone rings. The front office forgot we were testing and sent a call through with apologies.

A student raises her hand. ”I don’t understand this word,” she says. You look at the word and remind yourself that a certain percentage of the tests are meant to be above most kids’ heads, so you bite your tongue and don’t say anything. Perhaps you say something encouraging or suggest that she skip the question and return to it later, rather than sit and struggle with it now.

The phone rings again. This will happen two more times.

A student raises his hand and I ask him what he needs. He looks at me blankly and I realize he’s been placed in the wrong classroom. He doesn’t speak English. I send him to the appropriate room.

3/4 of the way into the testing period, the student who never shows up to school…does. He sits down and looks around realizing that he has appeared on one of the testing days rather than the assembly day schedule he had originally planned. He will spell out “This Sucks” on his bubble sheet with his #2 pencil.

I continue to walk around the classroom and hear a scream and a cry of alarm. A student has just realized that when she skipped #4, her bubbling had derailed for the remainder of the 46 questions. She has 5 minutes left to erase and re-bubble. I realize that these kids are really being tested on their ability to bubble.

We’ve been sitting there for 3 hours of testing. The kids are fried. I’m fried. The bell rings and the kids make a break for it. I wave to them knowing that we’ll be doing this all over again the next day. I pack up the supplies: count each pencil, eraser, scratch paper, alphabetize the answer sheets and booklets, and schlep them back down to the room on the other side of the world.

The materials will go into some locked-down Hazmet unit to await their release on the morrow.

And now here’s the LA Times with a report that California is having funding threatened if it can’t use test scores for their teacher evaluations.

Here are the facts:

1. A certain percentage of questions from standardized tests are meant to be too challenging (meaning, there’s only a small sliver of student pie who are meant to be able to answer those questions).

2. Questions that too many students get right are dumped from the test as being too easy. In other words, if every teacher did their job well, and teach the standards such that the kids can all answer a particular question, that question is deemed not challenging enough. So if too many teachers do their job well according to test scores, the test must be the problem, not the teachers who are the solution.

3. Taking funding away from failing schools will not lead to anything but more failing schools.

Trivia for Wednesday the 29th

The name for this animal comes from the Afrikaans words meaning "Earth Pig". Nearly six feet long and the size of a wild pig, this creature has little hair and a long rat-like tail.

Two for Tuesday the 28th

Two Literature Questions

1. Boris Pasternak's greatest work was suppressed and could not be published in the Soviet Union; it was finally released in Italy in 1959. Name the classic the Soviets banned.
2. “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.” This is the first line of a book that includes the Cliffs of Insanity, Rodents Of Unusual Size, and a sword made for a six fingered man. Name this novel supposedly written by S. Morgenstern, but whose “Good Parts” version was written by William Goldman.

Trivia for Monday the 27th

Who is this 1927 passage about?

"Suddenly and softly there slipped out of the darkness a gray-white airplane as 25,000 pairs of eyes strained toward it. Lines of policemen and stout steel fences went down before the rush of Parisians."

Enough Said

From Dave Marain at Math Notations comes word of this CNN Money article:

Most lucrative college degrees

By Julianne Pepitone, CNNMoney.com contributing writer
July 24, 2009: 04:39 AM EDT

Math majors don't always get much respect on college campuses, but fat post-grad wallets should be enough to give them a boost.

The top 15 highest-earning college degrees all have one thing in common -- math skills. That's according to a recent survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which tracks college graduates' job offers.

"Math is at the crux of who gets paid," said Ed Koc, director of research at NACE. "If you have those skills, you are an extremely valuable asset. We don't generate enough people like that in this country."

This year Rochester Institute of Technology hosted recruiters from defense-industry firms like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, as well as other big companies like Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson.

"The tech fields are what's driving salaries and offers, and the top students are faring quite well," said Emanuel Contomanolis, who runs RIT's career center.

Specifically, engineering diplomas account for 12 of the 15 the top-paying majors. NACE collects its data by surveying 200 college career centers.

Energy is the key. Petroleum engineering was by far highest-paying degree, with an average starting offer of $83,121, thanks to that resource's growing scarcity. Graduates with these degrees generally find work locating oil and gas reservoirs, or in developing ways to bring those resources to the Earth's surface.

"Exploration for new energy sources is high," Koc said. "The oil and gas industry has done relatively well the past year, even though oil prices are off right now."

Other highly-paid engineering majors include chemical engineers, who employ their skills to make everything from plastics to fuel cells and have an average starting offer of $64,902.

Mining engineers start at $64,404 on average, while computer engineers, who have an expertise in both coding and electrical engineering, pocket roughly $61,738 their first year out of school.

Left behind. Of course, not every student with an engineering degree will score a fat paycheck. RIT's Contomanolis noted that "average" graduates are feeling the pinch of fewer job offers. Still, in a tough job market, graduates with technology degrees have an advantage.

"It's a tech-driven world, and demand [for engineers] is only going to grow," said Farnoosh Torabi, employment expert and Quicken blog editor. "You can't say that about many fields, especially in a recession."

Perhaps that's why more and more college students are picking their majors based on a field's earning power, ultimately "choosing a major that pays," Torabi said.

Top non-engineering fields. Only three of the 15 top paying degrees were outside the field of engineering -- but they each still require math skills.

For computer science majors, who specialize in programming and software, the average salary was $61,407. Graduates with degrees in actuarial science took home about $56,320; and jobs for students in construction management paid about $53,199. Each of these fields has paid well throughout the years, Koc said.

What happened to well-rounded? There are far fewer people graduating with math-based majors, compared to their liberal-arts counterparts, which is why they are paid at such a premium. The fields of engineering and computer science each make up about 4% of all college graduates, while social science and history each comprise 16%, Koc noted.

As a result, salaries for graduates who studied fields like social work command tiny paychecks, somewhere in the vicinity of $29,000. English, foreign language and communications majors make about $35,000, Koc said.

"It's a supply and demand issue," he added. "So few grads offer math skills, and those who can are rewarded."

Trivia for Sunday the 26th

The Arc de Triomphe was erected to commemorate the victories of Napoleon Bonaparte. It is at the end of what street in Paris?
BONUS: What illuminating nickname is given to Paris?
BONUS2: What race ends with a stage down the Champs Elysees?
BONUS3: Who has won the race the greatest number of times?

Lightning Round Saturday the 25th - Vocabulary !

I'll give the animal, you give the collective noun. For example, if I were to say "antelope", your response would be a "herd of antelope". Seagulls would be in a "flock" and so on.

Ready?

1. _______ of ants
   
2. _______ of bacteria
   
3. _______ of bears
   
4. _______ of bees
   
5. _______ of buffalo
   
6. _______ of cats
   
7. _______ of crows
   
8. _______ of dogs
   
9. _______ of dolphins / whales
   
10. _______ of lions
    
11. _______ of penguins
    

Trivia - Flowers for Friday the 24th

These flowers bloom for a very short time, yet their petals are highly prized for making perfume. This flower grows from bulbs. Primarily associated with Holland, this flower has been the subject of price wars, economic crashes and the occasional time when one bulb could be purchased for the equivalent of $500 - $1000 apiece.

BONUS: The most expensive was Semper Augustus, extraordinarily beautiful with midnight-blue petals - that topped by a band of pure white, and accented with crimson flares. In 1624, a man owned the only 12 that existed. He was offered 3,000 ________ for one bulb, roughly equal to the annual income of a wealthy merchant. What Dutch monetary unit was this?

Trivia for Thursday the 23rd - Egyptology

The discovery of this piece of stone made the translation of the mysterious Egyptian hieroglyphics possible because it contained a passage of hieroglyphics that was also written in two known languages. Give the name of this stone.
BONUS: In what city was it discovered?
BONUS2: The soldiers who found the stone were part of whose army?
BONUS3: Give one of the other two languages that appeared on the stone.

Trivia for Wednesday the 22nd - Change is good.

What movement began on the evening of October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the Wittenberg church?
BONUS: How many theses were there?
What nation is Wittenberg in?
What branch of Christianity came out of this movement?