Welcome to Gaia! ::

I love the new items but what to buy sweatdrop

I may just have to get some more gaia cash and buy it with that...lol
I wants a custom edit from you 3nodding

biggrin
I still want a custom of Berkita, the one you priced for me.

Edit: which I don't quite remember what it was *bricked*

I didn't buy anything from the new update cause I have no gold and no (current) desire to liquidate all my '04 items I don't wear. xd Though I will say I kinda regret giving away my Angelic Scarf... Seeing as how right after I did, I didn't ever hear from the person again. =x=;;

No matter what way the wind blows,

Poor Alex.
And Good luck on your scary tests.

I will always love you.

Well, at least you get multiple chances to take it. I was satisfied with the score I got when I took it the first time, but I could have done better if I took it again.

Standardized testing is stupid anyway. Just remember that it's not a measure of your intelligence, just a measure of how much funding the state will give your school/school district.

My mom's a special ed teacher, and the special ed department in our school district ranges between kids who are mentally disabled, learning disabled, underprivileged and from poor backgrounds, delinquents, and recent immigrants who haven't even been given a chance to be taught English yet. The school she teaches has the highest percentage of special ed students in the district (for a non-special ed-exclusive school) because other schools dump the kids they don't want on them. It's all a money game.

You see, every single child has to take standardized testing the same as everyone else. Special ed children are not exempt. So when the entire school takes an exam, the poor special ed kids don't even know how to answer the questions properly and get atrocious scores.

The state doesn't look at the special ed kid scores separately from the normal student scores, but averages them together. Thus, the special ed kids bring down the scores of the entire school, negating any high grades the normal children achieved.

The state then sees that my mom's school has below-average scores and assumes that all the children are stupid and that the teachers aren't doing their job. They immediately cut funding and send bureaucrats to the school to "fix" things with their bureaucratic garbage.

The normal children, who are forced to go to this school because they live in the neighborhood and their parents have a low income, gain an unfair reputation of being "stupid" because of the school they go to.

The tragedy of all this is that my mom and other special ed teachers want to teach their students things that would actually be USEFUL to them, such as how to handle money and read basic signs. But instead, they have to dedicate all of their time to teaching them how to pass standardized tests. What's the point of teaching the 8th grade standardized reading program if the student can't even recognize the letters that make up their own name?

So standardized testing can die and burn in hell. It's unfortunate that they determine your placement in colleges, but luckily in the REAL world the college you go to isn't as important for securing a job as is your real intelligence, your experience, and your work effort.

nice hat, adonis ^_~. i must say, even though the jolly hat is more expensive and more rare, i really like this hat much better because it's all joker-like.