Good morning. Gigi the parti poodle here and normally I am not a reporter, but I must alert you of another faux pas committed by the College Board.

This week students in the Great Pacific Northwest were taking an AP test when a fire alarm went off. The students were required to leave the testing room and file outside for no less than 20 minutes. The alarm was not set off by any of the students taking the test. But rather the alarm went off in a shop class at the other end of the building. College Board has instilled a digital exam in which they did not incorporate into the program a way for the proctor(s) to stop the timer on all the students’ test in case of an emergency.  Such an option should be programmed into any and all College Board tests to be used for emergency situations and the proctor(s) should then be able to restart the timer again once all the students have returned from the emergency and are ready to commence the test. At present, only students with disabilities can receive a College Board test where they can pause the test for breaks.

College Board therefore charged the students a hefty fee for a truncated test, cheating them out of at least 20 minutes of test time for a three hour and fifteen-minute test or roughly 10% of the promised testing time. Because of this they have put the students at risk for lower test scores. Lower test scores that could determine the difference of a student having that test accepted or not accepted at the college of their choice. College Board has not offered the students an opportunity to re-take the test, nor have they offered to refund their money.

As you may be aware, the controversial College Board has been sued before for creating unfair testing conditions where students were unable to upload their answers. They were also involved in other illegal activity such as phishing student information on AP tests in 2019 and selling it for profit.

As a poodle, I am appalled that this is what has become education. In my humble opinion, I believe the College Board should either offer to allow the students to take the test again, free of charge, on a designated day clearly offered to them, at the same hour of day, in the same location, prior to the end of the school year, or refund the money in full to all the students who took that test. Otherwise, the College Board has not provided the full and promised services for which the students paid, and the company should possibly be sued by the state for damages, negligence, and possibly embezzlement if leaving out a way to stop the timer in their program in the case of an emergency was intentional. Until next week, I bid you adieu.

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: BLACK BAG (2025)-PEACOCK

This week’s pick is from one of my favorite directors, Steven Soderbergh who also did the cinematography and editing on this project as well. This is a smart slick espionage film about trust and a rather profound commentary on marriage written by David Koepp.

Legendary British intelligence agent George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is told by a higher up Philip Meacham (Gustaf Skarsgård), to investigate the leak of a top-secret software program code-named Severus. The catch is that one of the suspects is George’s wife another legendary agent named Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). George is happily married to Katheryn and is distressed by the possibility she has betrayed the nation. If there is one thing George cannot stand it’s a liar. George and Katheryn invite the four other possible suspects to dinner. George drugs their food to try and get a few hints out of them as to who might be the traitor. The four suspects include a managing agent named Fredie Smalls (Tom Burke), his girlfriend who is a satellite specialist named Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), an agency psychiatrist named Dr. Zoe Vaughen (Naomie Harris) and her boyfriend, managing agent Col. James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page). Although George does not immediately get the answer as to who did it at the dinner, he gets a lot of answers about their private lives, and the dinner ends somewhat violently. Over the course of the week tensions rise sharply as Philip dies unexpectedly, Kathryn suspiciously leaves for Zurich, and George tries to figure out who he can and cannot trust as he closes in on the source of the leak.