Looking for an exam proctor

[Anonymous]

My son attends an online high school affiliated with a well-known, west coast university. He will need to have proctored 5-6 midterms and 5-6 finals approximately 2-3 hours in length. We expect to pay for these services. We are looking for live proctoring services or certified educators who would be willing to do this. We have already connected with NOVA and U o M, but need to provide a couple of additional resources to his school. Aside from wandering through the FCPS tutor list, are there other proctoring services that we should consider?

[Anonymous]

Try the public library. I know at least one librarian who has proctored exams.

[Anonymous]

A bit OT, I had not heard of online HS before. Took a look online, and now I'm curious.

Why did you decide to go this route, rather than attend public school?
I am assuming that the student experience is similar to homeschooling.
Were you looking for something more challenging than public school? Or was it more a social issue?

Sorry for derailing... but this is new to me.

[Anonymous]

I believe some of the large learning centers like Sylvan and Huntington may offer this as a service.

[Anonymous]

Thanks to all for the responses...a friend at a local private school came to the rescue and we have this set for midterms.

To Anonymous @ 10/2/12 9:06:

I homeschooled my son for 1st through 8th grades and continue to homeschool my daughter. Neither of my children would have enjoyed their academic successes in a traditional school setting, public or private. My son wanted to attend a more traditional high school (for which I was infintely grateful), so we went through the application process. Although he was accepted to several very nice schools in the area, we understood that he would need to be pulled out for math and science and taken to a 4-year college for those classes. There were no options for him to progress in these schools as the courses only covered AP level work. That plan didn't make much sense to me and it was a concern for him. This distance program offers college level courses (and I understand some will carry university credit) with a gifted set of peers. The application process and the coursework is not for the fainthearted. The school has said that he should plan to devote 8 to 10 study hours outside of class to each of his five courses, although I feel like the load is a bit less for him. Placement tests, not past performance, determine the courses students may register to take. (This means that he will need to place into his course selections next year by examination as well.) My son placed into all the courses he wanted and is engaged, enjoying the intellectual interaction with students and instructors, and is having a great time with the work. I would highly recommend a look at the program. It's not for everyone, but an excellent option for some. Finally, I'm probably not the person who you want to talk to about socialization because we found that in homeschooling, there was much more socialization than in a school setting. On one level, it was great, but following an emergent curriculum we found that our days were much easier to manage without the pressures of meeting a group. Instead, my children preferred to work on topics they selected for as long as they wanted. Given an interesting topic and the resources to explore, it's still amazing to me how deep the dive into subjects can be. My children have many other opportunities to be social and enjoy the company of friends, it just isn't during the "school day." We're not a typical homeschooling family and we understand and embrace this. Hope that helps.

[Anonymous]

You can use a tutoring center. Look at the Proctor guide for your school, you may be able to use someone who is a teacher for a local school district. I was able to use a friend who is a teacher to proctor my DC's exams. Worked out well because teacher's husband had been laid off and I was able to pay her to proctor and help them financially when they really needed it.