In Rhode Island, Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green said Friday that students will follow federal regulations and take the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System starting later this month.
She emphasized, however, that the test results will not be used to evaluate schools or school districts as they have in the past.
Infante-Green said the tests are a critical tool to determine how much learning loss has occurred during the pandemic, especially for students who were already struggling academically.
“It’s really important for us to know if this child is one year behind or three years behind,” she said Friday.
Demand for Christmas trees noticeably increased during the 2020 marketing season, similar to other seasonal products such as fireworks and pumpkins.
âPeople are spending more time at home,â Bob Schaefer, general manager of Noble Mountain Tree Farm in Salem, Ore., said.
Despite reports of a tree shortage, Schaefer said the industry has actually brought supplies back into balance with demand after a prolonged surplus that depressed prices in the early 2010s.
The perception of scarcity may have been created by some U-Cut farms running out of trees early, but thatâs not reflective of an industry-wide problem, he said. âIt doesnât mean there arenât people down the road with trees available.â
Pandemic sparks boom in Christmas tree sales in 2020
Trees still available amid burgeoning sales
and last updated 2020-12-15 20:33:13-05
As many people started decorating early, it s likely 2020 is a boom year for Christmas tree sales. Some even bought a real tree for the first time.
In July, Bob Schaefer had a feeling it was going to be a big year for Christmas tree sales. The general manager of Oregon-based Noble Mountain Tree Farm says his company looks at the big holidays leading up to the Christmas season to get an idea of what the market will be like.
âThe next thing we watch is pumpkins - again, off the charts, early,â Schaefer said.
would say listen, no, no, we need more tests. across the board, everyone says that there s too many tests, too many standardized benchmarks that have to be met. no one seems to agree on the solution. i want to read a statement from bob schaefer, director of the public education national center for fair and open testing. a grassroots standardized testing group. they talked about the president saying belatedly admitting high stakes exams are out of control in u.s. public school s but doe not offer meaningf fuful action. now is the time to reverse counterproductive testing policies. congress and president obama must quickly approve a new law overhauling no child left behind that eliminates federal tests and punish mandates. what s going to happen is, or what should happen is that we need a new no, we need a new education law. the difference is there s probably going to be some annual
testing that is about informing instruction, because you need to know where kids are. but where bob is totally right is that right now, the stakes on those two tests are everything. frankly, the schools throughout the nation did what they were supposed to do, focus on those two tests. we need to have a lot of different measures like project-based instruction. we need to have classroom information. we need to make sure that we have real supports for kids so what we need in a new law is a much better accountability system that s much more about what kids need to know and be able to do, including allowing teachers to be creative. what s so interesting also is you have the education department, as you pointed out, admitting to blame in the statement released. it says in too many schools, there s unnecessary testing and not enough clarity of purpose applied to the task of assessing