Is there any place a homeschool parent can purchase new accelerated reading quizzes.?

Renaissance Learning will not sell to homeschool customers.Is there any place a homeschool parent can purchase new accelerated reading quizzes.?
Okay - I am a school media specialist and we use AR quite a bit. I'll take your word for it when you say RenLearn will not sell to homeschool customers. So - here are a couple of suggestions.





First, realize that AR checks reading PRACTICE. It is a way for those of us with 20+ kids to verify that a child is actually practicing reading. It is not a test of comprehension, and certainly not a test of concept mastery. But, when we want to know if a child has actually read a book on grade level, we can give him/her the AR test, and we get a pretty good idea if he/she has read the book, or just sat there and daydreamed during reading time.





But... if you are HOMESCHOOLING !!!!!!...... You have the time to actually (a) observe your child read, and (b) talk to him/her about their book.





After talking with a child for about a minute, I can usually tell if they have read the book, even if I haven't. Just open the book and read a couple of paragraphs, and ask the child ';Okay - what's happening here.'; Unless your child has a tremendously vivid imagination, they can't just make-it-up on the fly. They will either tell you what's happening in the story, or they will just laugh. (If your child CAN make-up a new story, forget homeschooling and get them an AGENT!!!)





So - unless there is some great reason to want AR, don't worry about it. If you want to give your child AR points, you can always look-up the point value (free of charge) on the AR web-site (';Order Quizzes';) and award those points when you are sure they have PRACTICED by reading the book.





Also - here's an alternative. I don't know where you live or why you homeschool. Maybe your live the Australian outback where there is no school for 100's of miles. But... if you live near a school where your child(ren) would otherwise attend. you could visit the principal and ask if you could use their library - AR and all.





After all - you ARE paying taxes, right?





As a media specialist, I have done this several times. You see, when a school buys the AR software, they get permission to ';enroll'; a certain number of students - for the sake of argument, let's say 800. This is usually in multiples of 50. So - if a school has 776 students, they have to buy the 800 ';package.'; In other words, they probably have some ';extra'; enrollments out there. Kids move in, kids move out - you HAVE to keep some extra enrollments if you want to run a good AR program.





So, talk to the principal and see what they can do for you. One year (when I worked in middle school) I had about 10 homeschoolers from the neighborhood. Their parents would bring them in (and stay with them) for about 45 minutes each week. They would browse my awesome collection, check-out books, take AR tests, etc. Before long, they were coming-in to do research for projects, use the computers, etc. They found my media center to be MUCH more kid-oriented than the children's dept. at the public library.





So - that's my answer.... Use the ';personal'; alternative to AR, or talk to the school principal to see if your child can do AR at your local school.





(Note: I say principal, not media specialist, because many media specialists don't like to think ';outside the box.'; If the principal won't help, then try the school board member.)





Hope that HelpsIs there any place a homeschool parent can purchase new accelerated reading quizzes.?
I would also add that you can go to www.bookadventure.com and take free quizzes on a lot of books. They don't have the selection of Renlearn...but kids earn points and get rewarded by mail. I think it is run by Sylvan... My son loves it...

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I don't think you legally can.





To be honest, as a former teacher who looked into the Accelerated Reading stuff, I say forget the idea. You'll find out so much more about what your child got out of a book by reading the book yourself and talking with your child about it--favourite parts, things they didn't like or didn't understand. This makes reading enjoyable! It's something to share instead of be quizzed on all the time. It's a useful system for a classroom teacher who has to evaluate the reading of 20-30+ kids, but it's got it's definite drawbacks and I would never recommend it for a parent at home.