WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Greetings Eddies,
This week on the podcast, you’ll hear from Cassie Olguin. Before joining the team at Outschool, Cassie was a public school mom who pulled her daughter from traditional kindergarten after watching her endure 16 (!) mandatory tests in a single year.
If you’re seeing assessment dates pop up on your student’s OpenEd dashboard this month, it’s completely natural to ask the same question Cassie did: “Isn’t this exactly what we’re trying to escape?”
We get it.
The whole open education ethos is that students aren’t standard, and we aren't fans of traditional standardized testing either. So we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify how testing at OpenEd actually works—and why you don't need to stress.
Fall Screeners (K–3): Brief & Low-Stakes
What your young child faces this fall isn't a high-stakes exam. It’s a short, interactive diagnostic check-in, often taking place over Zoom in a brief session or two. There are no letter grades or impact on your enrollment. They simply give us a baseline to help guide your child's learning.
Summatives (3rd Grade & Up): Accountability & State Rules
Starting in third grade (within most states), state assessments come into play. Most happen in the spring, though some states now add checkpoints earlier in the year. Our district partnerships depend on healthy participation to keep OpenEd free and flexible for families. While OpenEd itself never penalizes low scores, some states (like Indiana) do have reading laws that require third graders to pass before moving on. Many states also require specific support, like an individual reading plan, for students who score below grade level.
The Bottom Line
For the vast majority of families—and especially those with K–3 students—these fall screeners carry no academic penalty whatsoever. You don't need to sweat a tough morning or treat a score as a verdict on your parenting. An honest effort is all it takes to help us keep the program free and tailored to your child.
If you have a kindergartner facing their first assessment soon, take a deep breath. I wrote a new step-by-step guide to screeners based on what I wish I’d known before my own six-year-old’s first one.
And now, on to the episode!
– Charlie (the OpenEd newsletter guy)
P.S. Last call for submissions to our back-to-learning gallery! We will announce 10 random winners later this week. Reply to this email or fill out the form for a chance to win a $25 gift card to the OpenEd swag store.
THE OPENED PODCAST
Cassie Olguin on Curriculum Decision Fatigue
Cassie Olguin comes from a family of public school teachers and never planned to homeschool. What changed her mind was watching her five-year-old go through sixteen standardized tests in a single (half-day!) kindergarten year.
Because five-year-olds cannot read test forms, the teacher had to pull students aside one-on-one while the other nineteen kids sat coloring.
“She can color at home,” Cassie realized. If kindergarten was turning into glorified daycare punctuated by compliance testing, she could do better at home.
Once she made the leap, she hit curriculum decision fatigue: “There are like eleven billion curriculums, and it was so loud that I almost didn’t do it.”
What saved her sanity was a single rule she adopted before opening any catalog - a rule that carried her eldest daughter to graduation at seventeen with 45 college credits (and explains why her twins have never used the same math program).
In this episode:
The one rule she follows before buying any curriculum
Why her twins have never done the same math program
What none of her three kids could do until fifth grade (and why she didn’t care)
The review site she recommends to every new homeschooler (hint: it’s Cathy Duffy Reviews)
Cassie now works at Outschool, which offers live online classes for kids ages 3 to 18.
Prefer audio? Listen on Spotify.
LISTEN NEXT
Liz Powell on why a former administrator stepped away from the system.
Dave Hoffman on a career inside public, charter, and private schools.
TL;DR
How a Five-Year-Old Takes a Screener
If you have a kindergartner in OpenEd, take comfort that you are not signing up for sixteen days of testing. What your child meets this fall is simply an interim screener: a brief baseline check-in to understand where they are starting.
In our new walkthrough, we break down what to expect so neither you nor your child feels stressed:
It’s a screener: A short baseline check-in - not a state accountability test.
Usually 1-on-1 and oral: A friendly proctor hops on Zoom/Meet and runs quick spoken tasks (like first sounds and early decoding).
Mouse/trackpad can be the hardest part: For computer-based formats, clicking and navigation are often the real hurdle - 5 minutes of “click the box” practice helps more than studying.
What it decides (nothing): No grades, no pass/fail, and no impact on your enrollment - it’s just diagnostic info to guide support.
Later (3rd grade+), tests do matter: The longer state summatives are the ones districts use for accountability, so participation and honest effort really count.
NEW BLOG
What to Teach First: Letter Sounds or Letter Names?
If you sit in on an early reading screener, you’ll notice proctors care far more about whether a young reader knows the sound a letter makes than its letter name. That’s the focus of our recent guide on why we recommend teaching letter sounds before letter names - not because we’re training kids for a test, but because it offers a window into the cognitive science of early reading as decoding.
Phonemic awareness - knowing that m says /m/ - is the single strongest predictor of early reading fluency. A child who can sing the alphabet song has memorized a melody; a child who can hear the first sound in cat is ready to read.
Sidenote: That’s also why oral reading screeners use “nonsense words” like vab, zot, or snork. By asking a student to read made-up syllables, the proctor is testing true phonetic decoding rather than whether the child has memorized common sight words from storybooks. We can empathize with any five-year-old who develops an immediate suspicion of testing after being asked to read nonsense words. Feel free to have a good laugh with them afterward about the silliness of adult tests.
If your child points to a letter on screen and shouts “B!”, the proctor will gently prompt: “And what sound does it make?” If they don’t know yet, don’t sweat it - that’s simply where the reading journey begins.
For the full breakdown of how to sequence this at home, read the complete article.
KIT & ED
Nonsense? Nonsense!
