Placement Testing

The mid-year swap: what re-teaching actually costs, and how to hand a resistant child a program he has already decided to hate

Issue 18 drew the line between ordinary settling-in friction and a curriculum mismatch worth acting on. This issue is for the family standing on the other side of that decision, the one that has confirmed the mismatch and now has to execute the swap: how much a new program actually costs in re-teaching versus how much it feels like it costs, how to introduce a replacement to a child who walked in already primed to resent it, and what a realistic first two weeks with the new material looks like. Plus the policy dispatch, on the federal tax credit guidance Treasury expects by the end of September and the scholarship-organization list that North Carolina law requires its State Education Assistance Authority to publish.

Issue 18 gave a family a way to tell a real curriculum mismatch from ordinary adjustment friction. This issue is written for the family that has already done that work and confirmed the mismatch is real: it covers what happens next. In our assessment, the re-teaching cost of a new program is smalle…