Why PAWS

What are PAWS? Why does Wyoming have them? Who are they for?

Here is what my 4th grade, 10 year old son thinks. "I am going to miss PAWS because we had lots of snacks and extra recesses. I'm not going to miss it because we don't have to write and read and all that all day long. We've been doing it about two weeks and it's too long."

In our town all students are on a 4 day school schedule so the last day for the elementary school to have PAWS was yesterday. My two elementary school children came home rejoicing! Every night we would hear the reminder that "We need to get to bed early and eat a good breakfast so we can do good on PAWS." (Gee, don't parents try to do that all the time? I'm amazed at our school's educators that got our children wanting to do good!)

PAWS stands for "Proficiency Assessments for Wyoming Students". That explains Wyoming has PAWS. This testing is for all Wyoming students grades 3-8 and 11. The idea is for individual student's performance in the areas of reading, writing, math and science (varying by grade)are tested and results are available to teachers in about a month so teachers can alter what or how they teach if needed.

According to a PDF file called PAWS_Participation I pulled off the PAWS site, testing is mandatory for all students with makeup dates offered and school's penalized for students not taking the tests. The tests should be embedded in the classrooms as much as possible with multiple choice portions being taken on a computer. The pdf also states, "The PAWS assessment results will be used for school, district, and state accountability purposes. Students take the assessment in one of three ways: the PAWS without accommodations, the PAWS with accommodations, or the PAWS-ALT."

"The schools pause to take PAWS" is the mantra of our local schools.

Qualified to blog on Wyoming?

What makes me qualified to write/blog about Wyoming? Well, one of my sorority sisters at Utah State University (USU) was from Wyoming. We would tease her because she was from Jackson. Jackson was much different than most of Wyoming and we all knew it. We'd say, "Jackson Hole", big emphasis on the second word, and she would smile her beautiful smile and state the town was simply called "Jackson". She was always a good natured about it but I'm sure she tired of it. I'm sure we were just all wishing we could claim something like "Jackson" as our home. So there, I had a friend from Wyoming.


I also lived in Montana quite a bit growing up and we would travel through Wyoming to get to our grandparent's home in Utah. Once we even had the family car run out of gas at South Pass and a truck driver gave us all six of us a late-night ride to Farson where we spent the night at the Merc. One of my childhood re-occurring dreams was of walking up some small stairs with a funny window part way up and using a tiny bathroom. I never knew where that dream came from until years and years later we stopped in Farson to get ice cream and we went to use the bathroom, there was my dream! Next time I go, I'll snap a picture of the stairs and post it here.

There you have my qualifications: I knew someone once from Wyoming, we drove through it when I was a kid, and our family spent the night at the Farson Merc. You get what you pay for on this site! (And I live in Wyoming now, of course!)

I am by far not the best qualified, there are many Wyoming experts. But I like the State so I will write what I know. I've lived here a few years. I've tried to learn about our state's many resources and so I've had a little interaction with some of the departments/agencies. It has been fun, like an education! I try to see the different historic/scenic/cultural sites from Fossil Butte, to Martin's Cove. I belong to a couple of fun groups, although I'm not real active. (WyoPoets, WyoWriters, Wyo State Historical Society). We take the Wyoming Wildlife Magazine which my 10 year old loves to read. My husband is a member of the Wyoming Education Association so that newspaper floats around our home.