Gotcha. I'm still thinking sending a note home with why there are 4 desks too few etc with contact info for the school board would probably work fine as well - some people will probably actually bother to harass the school board, and some (probably mostly the same people, but who knows) would probably contact the teacher with questions how they can help out (heck, I probably would have even back then, but at least it wouldn't seem mandatory to send in every single item at the most inconvenient-to-me time possible). And if this situation is really true as written, you really need something much more drastic than parents sending in a couple of matchbox cars and a tupperware lid.

Do you have any idea what it's like having no money because of an unemployed bipolar spouse, a baby, and an autistic preschooler, depression and an anxiety disorder, and then having the stress of being asked for these things, and then the guilt because you don't always have the ability to send those things in, and then the anger because you shouldn't have to donate these things, and all of that kind of stuff? Yes, I know that most people aren't in that kind of situation. But teachers sending out notes requesting stuff don't tend to think about who they send the notes to - they send them to everyone. Like the poorest most vulnerable people need to have it rubbed in. So, either think about who you're making these demands of before sending out notes asking for 'voluntary' (but really almost mandatory) donations, or just don't send out those notes. Take that shit up with the school board, the union, the media, I don't care who - it's supposed to be a FAPE - FREE and appropriate education.

We've done that for most of our marriage - I remember having only one at first, and it being annoying.

Breathing is totally optional. :glare:

But at what point is "I will pay for college except if you want to major in Y - I won't pay for Y" turn into "I'll only pay for college if you major in X"? I mean, they're different, obviously... but to a teen they might sound fairly similar, at least if the teen really wanted to do Y.

I'd probably be more inclined for a spa gift card in general, rather than facials specifically, or maybe something for having their nails done. But I've never had a facial either, and I'm almost certainly the wrong person to ask. It's not like getting waxed though - I know that much.

Of course, I have no clue if that would work for your son. Either way, :grouphug:

For incentives, you could say put points towards something he wants, so if he collects enough points, he gets it. I wouldn't however escalate points for ever higher scores... for one, you don't want him to spend extra time on getting a 90 in one subject instead of spending that time on getting a 70 in another - two 70s is better than a 90 and a 50.

*feels* being the key word there... even if you know he can get a 75, if *he* thinks he can't get a 70, then there's no reason for him to work for a 70 for any amount of incentives. So, in that case, it might make sense to put one unit worth of incentives on a number he does think he can attain, say, 60, and two units on a 65, four units of incentives on a 70, and 10 units of incentives on a 75 (and you can put even higher incentives on even higher scores). Once he's studied enough for a 60, he might decide he can put in some extra effort to get that 65, etc. Not that I think bribing is ideal, but realistically, even many adults have trouble putting in effort for nebulous future benefits without immediate incentives, and studies show that it does work... so long as the kid believes the incentive is attainable.

Above 60% as in "they're currently 60%, and you want them to be higher", or as in "they're currently below 60%, and you'd like them to be at least 61%"? If the former, maybe you could give him a concrete answer as to how high you want them to be, say, 70% (with the understanding that *sometimes* stuff happens and they're going to be lower, but that if he doesn't even try, less than 70% isn't acceptable). (don't ask me how to enforce that though - one thing you could do is pay him for any 70 or above, but if you do that, you might want to set up a pay scale so he gets more money for a 90 than for a 70, otherwise you're incentivizing getting exactly 70 (and when I say 'pay', it could be anything of value to him, including chore reduction or candy or w/e - the idea is that it needs to be something he wants in a quantity high enough for him to be willing to work for it - also, if he feels there's no way he can make a 70, then it's not going to work, so then you'd need to incentivize a lower number in order to get any effort)).

Brain drain is a serious issue for some countries - if you just let everybody with the means to leave get away, only the poorest and least educated/skilled people will remain, which makes your country even less desirable to stay in, etc. ETA: it's even an issue within countries, to some degree, with people leaving poorer regions, which then leaves that region worse off than if they stayed and started a business or w/e.

Again, intended to keep East Germans etc from getting to West Germany, not to keep West Germans out of East Germany. Basically, to prevent brain drain etc.

That fence on the border of all of the Soviet satellite states etc was called the Iron Curtain.

(((Slash)))

I don't understand why the kids get so mad about me asking them to clean up their mess - i.e. take their plate to the kitchen and clean up the crumbs. I just don't get it. This is not a new chore. But half the time they end up screaming and arguing and they lose privileges etc. It just... why is this worth fighting over?

I'm not 100% sure about the IOWA, but for the CAT/TerraNova, the 2005 was the most recent test until pretty recently. The companies creating these tests don't redo these things every year or anything. Either way, imo, yes, 2005 is still recent enough. I wouldn't advice taking a test normed in the 70s (there is at least once company where you can still get the 1970s CAT). But, the number of cultural/technological changes since 2005 are not so big that it would seriously affect a child's understanding of the test questions (for example, for the kindergarten level or something, on an old test you might find stuff like a picture of a rotary phone and expects the kid to know that it's a phone, and that might be considered to be an easy question... except that in 2017, that would not be an easy question for a 5yo). As for whether the percentile ranking is still valid... probably still close enough as well - if the kid scores above average, the kid is probably above average, if the kid scores below average, the kid probably is below average. It's not like these tests are super accurate anyway... if your kid scores at the 58th percentile taking it today, they could just as easily score at the 53rd or the 63rd percentile tomorrow or yesterday, depending on how well they happened to be concentrating, etc, w/e. It's not like kids have changed *that* insanely much since 2005, nor has the educational system in the entire US gotten *that* extremely much better or worse since then either (some individual schools will have gotten better or worse, but the US overall... probably not a big enough change to make one question the percentile ranking more than just day-to-day variability kids will have anyway).

Maybe try asking on the high school board, or Gen Ed?

Some schools do have their own tests. For example when DW and I took CS1337 at UTD, the strongly recommended first class was CS1336 (which covered very basic stuff, like loops, if/else, arrays), and our first homework assignment in class was to take a test to see if we really shouldn't be in CS1336 instead. And iirc if you had a lot of programming experience you could even skip CS1337 (if you talked to the department) - I think DW asked, but decided not to because she was a Perl programmer, and the classes were in Java. I looked it up, and with a 4 or 5 on the AP, you'd get credit for both 1336 and 1337, whereas with a 3 on the AP you'd just get 3 random credits (and you'd probably want to start in 1337, like DW and I did): https://oue.utdallas.edu/undergraduate-advising/ap-credit/ Of course, if you want college credit rather than to just skip pre-reqs, you'd need the AP.

Yeah, but Vancouver would have a sea moderate oceanic climate, whereas southwest Ontario has a... Great Lakes humid continental climate. London, Ontario is substantially colder than Vancouver (like, seriously... a big difference, just like Buffalo is at about the same latitude as Corsica, but unfortunately we don't have their climate). Latitude matters, but it's far from everything. Very far.

:grouphug: That's frustrating.

(((Spud))) I finished the yellow pages part. I now have 14 questions about the phone book and 14 about the yellow pages. I think I may have gone overboard a bit.

(this is obviously the first time I'm making such a work sheet. also, my motivation is mostly in giving them a clue of how information can be organized in useful ways, not so much in the almost entirely useless skill of actually using the phone book/yellow pages (we're not even in the phone book (nor in the yellow pages, for that matter, since we don't have a business))).

I mean, just tossing over 1300 pages straight into the recycling bin seems so wasteful... (I finished the phone book part, btw)

What on earth, yellow pages. When I was a kid, there'd be "see Automobile Repair" or w/e right before "Car Washing & Waxing". Who on earth uses the word "automobile" anyway? Certainly not my 7 & 10yos. And realistically, who uses physical phone books/yellow pages other than crazy homeschoolers with library science backgrounds who think that it would be worthwhile to teach kids how to use reference books so try to write up their own worksheets on how to use the thing that gets delivered once or twice a year anyway and is otherwise only good as fire starter? (yes, I know that was a horrible run-on sentence)

Apple Watches?? I don't know, but if you say 'Siri', they listen (I think you normally also have to hold the button).