It’s a good thing Accelerated Reader wasn’t around when I was in third grade. I doubt there would have been AR tests for the Perry Mason novels I loved.
For unindoctrinated uninitiated, Accelerated Reader bills itself …

Maybe we’re weird, but I swear this kind of stuff happens here all the time. We’ll be out enjoying the day or running errands, something will catch one of the guys’ attention and before I …

Big Guy brought the project home from school Monday. It started with a typed note attached to a brown bag – bring three things to school that represent something important in your life. You’ll talk …

Boots’ school operates on a color system – kids start the day at green and either move up to yellow, orange and then red or down to blue, purple and gray.
The problems with that are …

Last year, it brought  “mean, range and mode” to second grade. Later we saw estimations that caused many a kid to howl “why can’t I just solve the problem?” instead of rounding addends  to get …

Even though this year’s bus stop is a much longer hike for Big Guy than last year’s “roll out the back door” location, my plan had been to let him walk the third of a …

I’ll say this about our first adventure in standardized testing land: Big Guy’s results from the spring exam dovetailed perfectly with his performance in the classroom. I’m just not sure that either indicator is accurate.
In …

I started out with good intentions, declaring as school let out that the guys would read for a half hour each day.
That soon devolved to bribing – they’d earn one “Mom Buck” for each 30 …

There’s an impressive list of organizations backing the TIME Act – a bill pending before Congress that would provide grant money to schools that extend their schedules by at least 300 hours a year. There’s …

The lack of health-care workers in schools is nothing new.
We saw the impact when Big Guy was in kindergarten and cooled his heels in the office for half a day after a snooty secretary diagnosed …

The guys go to a school that ends at second grade, though the weight of the entire student body has been thrown behind this week’s state testing.
The kindergarteners made posters supporting the second graders – …

I am not in favor of bullying.
I am not against school officials taking swift action against anyone who breaks the rules or laws on their campuses.
I am, however, opposed to making principals in charge of …

Why is it that Boots can “die” endlessly on Mario and still go back for more, yet he used to get frustrated to near tears if he wasn’t the first to answer a question in …

You know what they say about kindergarten being the new first grade?
Well, forget it. It turns out that advanced kindergarten is life in the slow lane. The real competitors in the “get your kids ahead …

Though he’s finished all the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” books and the 10-volume “39 Clues” series – does that make it 390 Clues? – Big Guy is not much on stories. He has a …

I’ll admit to occasionally rolling my eyes at someone’s back after a frustrating conversation.
I’ll cop to longing for a voodoo doll so I could return the torture an annoying person was inflicting on me.
But those …

For years Russian was the only foreign language taught at the high school I eventually attended. To my knowledge, no one during that era grew up and defected to the Soviet Union.
I took three years …

I am not a helicopter mom. In fact, once I get past freaking out at the amateurish nature of the guys’ “made it myself” art projects, I silently mock picture-perfect productions that scream parental micromanagement.
I …

How can we promise to leave no child behind when we’re abandoning so many of them at the start?
And how can we hope to have a race to the top when some kids are a …

It’s a classic case of the cliche about two wrongs not making a right. Make it three wrongs in this case.
A California high school student, who, according to Mashable was upset over his homework load, …

My only consolation as I read the note from Boots’ teacher is that he wasn’t the one in trouble this time.
Please talk to your children about not having boyfriends and girlfriends at school, she wrote. …

Note to Florida Rep. Kelli Stargel: I’ve already passed kindergarten. Second grade, too! Therefore, it really doesn’t matter what my kids’ teachers think about my performance. I’ve earned a diploma and a degree. It’s the …

There’s name calling, and then there’s name calling.
We have zero tolerance for one kind in our house: Anything that’s gender, race or sexual preference-based. I called Big Guy out recently for saying, “that’s so gay,” …

“I am heavier than him uh huh.”

“That is shinier than that yep it is.”

“I am happier than him OK right.”
Overlook the confusion about usage of he/him. I’ll work on that one later. Right now, I’d …

It’s not that I had the “bad math experience” in school that a recent newspaper article talks about – though I’m not sure what a “bad math experience” is because the article never defines it.
At …

The guys’ backpacks are camouflage. Their lunch boxes, though, are Buzz Lightyear. We have a camouflage model left over from last year, and since only one guy takes his lunch these days that means they’d …

For Big Guy it fell into the category of Things That Are Really Important. That meant he was going to keep pestering me until I got around to making it happen.
For me it fell into …

Mommy, am I Student A or Student B, Big Guy asked.
Huh?
Am I Student A or Student B, out of the ones in my school folder.
I was stunned that he’d read his school folder, especially given …