I had a conversation with SO about the FCAT and the kids scores last evening. He was under the impression from listening to skuttlebutt that the FCAT was going to be done away with, therefore was not important. I pointed out to him in the last two years they have introduced a science section, year one the score didn't "count" for graduation, year two it did. How if they are introducing new testing sections are they just going to do away with it?

I left him alone to think about this point while I made dinner. During dinner he brought it up himself. That he did not understand how they could pass most of the test, fail these areas, but have excellent grades in the classes that correlated to these test areas. The test grades out on levels 1 through 5, average is a 3 and that is what is needed to graduate. He admits fsd does not read, that the only thing she reads on a regular basis is incoming text messages and lord knows her friends do not use punctuation, capitalization or correct spelling in those. My question of how can you expect her to pass a reading class if she does not READ seemed to be a lightbulb moment for him.

I offered him my solution of bribing/offering an incentive to the kids to do the online course on Florida Virtual Schools. After dinner he went online and looked at it. I am truely greatful he did! I was going to offer these kids $1 per assignment completed and an additional $50 if they got the course done over the summer. There are more than 200 assignments in the course!! Minimum of $500 to get both of them to do it!

He readily admitted that he did not have the cash to offer the incentive, that if I wanted to do it he would appreciate it. We tossed numbers around for awhile. FSD needs help in reading, so if she completes ALL reading assignments and tests in the FCAT Prep prior to summers end she will get $100.00 flat. If she chooses to do the other sections, each additional section will be worth $25.00. So she get paid $175.00. (Reading, Math, Science, Writing). Same for FSS, his problem area is Math. He does the math portion and he gets $100.00, each additional section is another $25.00 for a total of $175.00. SO is going to pay for the additional sections if they choose to do them. Male pride hit for me paying all of it, he wanted to pay part of it. Multiple payments of $25.00 each is easier for his budget and since I offered to pay for all of it, I am happy as a clam to end up paying potentially $200.00 instead of $500.00.

SO then decided to call BM to discuss what we were going to offer the kids as an incentive. I expected it all to derail right there, but amazingly enough BM was on board with the idea since it was the kids choice to do it or not. They can do it and make money or they can choose not to and fail themselves both academically and financially. She even offered to kick in money for it as well so SO and I were not bearing all the costs. So IF the kids do all of the sections it is $116 and change per adult. If they only do their worst section it would be roughly $66 per adult.

Turned out a lot better than I expected that conversation to go.