Editorials

Freshmen angered by new standardized test

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Standardized testing is a big part of the American education system, but there are many holes and missing parts to the system.

A standardized test is any exam that is administered and scored in a predetermined, standard manner. According to parcconline.org the tests are used to determine placement in schools, states and countries. Though the tests show placement, there are flaws in the standardized testing system.

Students do not see the tests as work that shows their great achievement but as a test they need to do well on to live up to the expectations of parents, teachers and higher level education schools. Not doing well on a certain test could prevent students from going to the college of students choice.

The tests do not show what each student is capable of achieving. According to institute4learning.com, the testing process is looking for a specific format for responses and does not value the students’ creative view because  the response is not viewed by an actual human. A machine is looking for something that could not be there in the desired form.

The testing processes are not for educational purposes at all. They exist for administrative, political and financial purposes.                                   The  Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career administration make billions of dollars, and  politicians get elected based on promises for higher standardized test results. Also,school administrators get funding and avoids penalties by boosting test scores.

Students are the only ones who do not directly benefit from the testing. To them, it is a stupid test they have to take each year. The tests often place them into the class level they will be in the next school year.

The tests put unnecessary pressure and stress onto a student to do well. The standardized tests do not test what a student has learned but what they have most likely memorized weeks in advance for the test, meaning that after testing, the student will forget the material to memorize for the next upcoming test.

The new common core standard that schools nationwide adopted set higher standards in education in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade, according to parcconline.org.  The new PARCC assessment the freshmen class  recently took  is  part of the new standard. The PARCC assessments, or Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, are assessments made by concerned educators, parents and employers who want assessments that better measure students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills and their ability to communicate clearly.

These tests are designed to prepare young children who have no idea what they want to do for future colleges and employers. The new standardized tests are made to groom a whole new generation to fit into the ever growing and competing world of jobs and real life.

The freshman class has no desire to be part of the PARCC testing process. After testing, students said the tests were hard, the questions unclear and should have been considered as a form of torture. Students were unsure on how well they did on the tests, given that much of it was did not make sense.

“The tests are really difficult and  aren’t worth the time,” freshmen Maria Petrecca said.

To the students, no one saw why the tests were necessary. To graduate, students who are freshman and under are required to have 18 points in each subject; many freshman joked that graduation rates will drop due to the difficulty of the PARCCs.

Only thirteen of the fifty states are taking the PARCCs, the others decided that another standardized test is unnecessary. When it comes to testing that can determine a future, the testing should be seen nationwide and if proven too difficult that thirty-seven states pull out, there should be a reconsideration.

Freshman Cody Kowalczyk said, “The tests were either way too simple or so complicated that there was no way we would have known the answer.”

Editorials

Profanity in the classroom questioned by many

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Teachers are not all that much different from us. They were once students, they were teenagers and they have been through the same challenges and obstacles as current students, so usually, they cut us some slack. Now, it is our turn to return the favor.

Recently, a harsh video went viral–a teacher was caught cussing out one of his students. He threatened and insulted the student. This video not only caused a small social media riot but caused some conversation in the teaching world about the widely “unspoken rule” about refraining from cussing in front of students. Now, students are asking themselves the same question.

Teachers throughout our building have, at one time or another, used a so-called “inappropriate” word. Some of these slips happen by accident or in a moment of weakness, and sometimes more mild cuss words have been used for comic value. Students see these slips as happenings that humanize teachers. Swearing in front of a class is something most educators try to prevent, but based on the context for which the cuss word or words is used determines it appropriateness. Each circumstance can be quite different.

Those comical teachers may be doing it to make their class giggle a little. The use of curse words in this situation is solely for the purpose of being funny. It seems acceptable when the words have been used in a light-hearted manner.

Although, a fine line does exist between the use of these cuss words for comical emphasis (or used accidentally) and these inappropriate words being used to express anger towards a student.

This line is crossed when a student’s name is used in context with the unnecessary word or used to insult a student. Teachers are supposed to be role models to their students. Just like we have to respect them and refrain from using swear words at them, they should respect us just the same–even if they are the person in charge.

Neither the Student Code of Conduct nor the Employee Handbook outline anything about teacher’s behavior in class. While the Student Code of Conduct prohibits students from using “profane, obscene or vulgar language or gestures at school, on school buses or while engaged in or present at any school sponsored event or activity,” teachers have no restrictions to the language they use. We can assume that teachers refrain from cussing due to beliefs and values based in professionalism or fear of persecution from administration.

Debate.org held a survey called “Should teachers be allowed to swear at school?” Forty percent answered yes and sixty percent answered no.

Videos, just like the one that went viral, are of teachers using excessive profanity. They all have been gracing the Internet, from more cases in Chicago, IL to Memphis, TN. It seems that the condition of the schools and the attitude of the students, conditions that greatly differ from the high school’s, pushes these teachers into these rants. A obscene rant would be less expected and therefore more provocative from a teacher from the high school.

In 2012, people in the state of Arizona tried to pass a bill which would prohibit teachers, including college professors, from swearing in and outside of the classroom. This bill would have prevented students from learning certain literature because of vulgar language, such as “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, a book read by most high schoolers that many people note for its relative “excessive use of racial slurs.”

It seems as though the use of cuss words depends on the type of teacher and in the situation the words are used. For now, swear words do not seem to be a problem in our school.

Within this modern generation, swear words have increased in use by people ranging from children to adults. Profanity is a rising epidemic that fills classrooms with a new influence, but whether or not teachers use it is completely up to them.

Community

Public library sponsors movie day

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The Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library will be having a movie day on March 25. The library is offering free admission and popcorn.

“The Theory of Everything” is the movie being shown. A story about the famously known physicist Stephen Hawking.

The movie is based on a memoir written by Hawking’s wife, Jane, titled, “Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen.”

With a budget of 15 million dollars, the movie ended up making almost eight times as much as it cost to produce. The final price made in the box office was 114.6 million dollars.

The movie stars Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as Stephen Hawking’s wife, Jane. The film also has Charlie Cox, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, Christian McKay and David Thewlis, who all have important supporting parts.

“The Theory of Everything” has a runtime of 123 minutes.

The film was nominated four times for a Golden Globe award but only won two. The film won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and Best Original Score.

21st Screen Actors Guild Awards nominated the movie three times, and it ended up winning the award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.

Also, the movie was nominated 10 times in the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), and won awards for Outstanding British Film, Best Leading Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Redmayne went on to win many awards for his role as Stephen and also starred in “The Pillars of the Earth” and on BBC’s “Birdsong.” More recently, Redmayne had a role in the 2015 movie “Jupiter Ascending,” alongside actress Mila Kunis.

Jones has been on many different shows and in many different movies, such as “The Treasure Seekers” (1996) and “Like Crazy” (2011).

The screenwriter, Anthony McCarten, has been interested in Hawking since 1988 when he read Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time.” Then, when McCarten read Jane Hawking’s memoir, “Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen,” in 2004, he began to create a screenplay that followed the book.

News

Orchestra receives Superior rating at state competition

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The last weekend of February was an exciting time for the high school orchestra. They participated in the Ohio Music Education Association large group contest.

The orchestra has been going to the contest for around 20 years, and now, it is a tradition. The previous director, Frances Hamilton, started taking the orchestra to the contest, but they did not go last year because they went to New York City for a competition.

At the beginning of the school year, the orchestra members took to a new director, Sarah Behal. She kept the tradition of state contest going.

The orchestra attended the contest at Hudson High School on Sat., Feb. 28. The students and director believed that the event at Hudson was well organized.

“A lot goes into arranging and organizing such a large event, and [the orchestra is] very grateful for the hard work the staff at Hudson put in,” Behal said.

The directors of each high school orchestra must pick pieces from a required list of music. The music is organized into three classes: A, B and C. Class A is the hardest music and class C is the easiest music to play. The Stow orchestra performed in class B. Behal choose “Eureka!” by Keith Sharp, “Romantic Etude” (Etude Op. 10 No.3) by Frederic Chopin arranged by Robert Longfield and “Declarations” by Jeffrey S. Bishop. The three pieces had a unique character that showcased the different playing styles of the orchestra.

“Playing a variety of styles shows the judges that the orchestra is dynamic and able to play whatever is thrown at them rather than being limited,” Behal said.

The three pieces of music took a little under two months to prepare. The orchestra also practiced sight reading during class. Sight reading is when students look at a piece for the first time and then try to play the piece. It is one of the determining factors of the contest and is a skill the students need to continue to practice.

At the contest, the piece the orchestra had to sight read was “Odessa” by David Bobrowitz. The students had four minutes to look at the piece for the first time. Behal then had four minutes to discuss the piece with the group. During the combined eight minutes, the students were not permitted to play at all. They were not allowed to talk except for questions to their stand partners; however, they were allowed to tap or clap out rhythms and silently finger their part without actually playing. If they were to do any of the things not allowed, they would be disqualified from the contest.

The orchestra received a rating of I at the contest.  The contest runs on a I to V rating scale, with V being the lowest and I being the highest. The I is the superior rating and is reserved for the exceptional performances. In the past five years, the orchestra has received a rating of II in class B; however, in the past 15 years, the orchestra has gotten a handful of Superior ratings in both class B and C,  and the rest were either ratings of II or III. Going into the contest the orchestra was trying to break the five-year drought of I ratings, and they achieved that.

The orchestra had some setbacks in trying to get the music prepared to have a great performance. Their class time to prepare was limited because of snow days, two-hour delays and freshman testing the week before the contest. Even though class time was limited, the students and the director think they did an excellent job at the contest.

“I think the orchestra did really well,” sophomore Amber Vogal said.

They think that they did really well as a group and individually at the contest and are happy with the rating they got.

“I put all I had into the competition, so I believe I did well,” sophomore Nicole Stamper said.

The orchestra was able to read the comments the three judges and the sight reading judge wrote during the contest. There are some things the orchestra wants to work on in the coming months. Some will be easy to fix, and others will take longer.

A couple of things the students want to work on are posture and playing position as well as how in tune the group is. As the group gets more accurate in their music, Behal wants to incorporate vibrato. Vibrato would help make the sound of the group warmer and more mature. Behal also would like the students to become more independent in recognizing when they have messed something up, mark it in their music and then wait for her to point it out to them.

The students also recognized some other things they want to work on, which includes taking their time so they do not speed up while playing and recognizing the key in which a piece is written in.

“The vibrato should be improved for me and recognizing the key,” sophomore Gwen Goebelt said.

The orchestra is excited about their rating and is looking forward to applying the comments the judges made. The orchestra is now preparing for their last concert of the year which will take place on Mon. May 4.

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