{"id":542,"date":"2005-10-25T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-25T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=542"},"modified":"2005-10-25T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2005-10-25T21:30:00","slug":"542","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

No costumes, please, we’re teaching to the test<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some Colorado “educators” are going to great lengths to show how hard they are working to raise standardized test scores. The latest gimmick at some schools is to ban school Halloween parties<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think for the most part the real reason schools are doing away with Halloween during the day has to do with the disruption and the loss of instructional time,” agrees Mike Crawford, principal at Palmer Elementary in Denver.<\/p>\n

The hallways at Palmer are decked with yarn-and-construction-paper witches and black bats carrying messages from second-graders on “What drives me batty.” But there will be no party; it will be business as usual.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other schools keep the party but try to make it “educational.”<\/p>\n

Carson [Elementary] holds a Literacy Day, this year on Friday rather than Monday, Oct. 31. Children get costumes and candy, but the catch is they must dress up as a character from a book and tote said book during the parade.<\/em><\/p>\n

At least we are hearing less about it being an “occult holiday,” but one principal remembers that objection too:<\/p>\n

As a veteran educator, he has been hearing Halloween objections, especially religious ones, since the early 1980s. But he says he must respect the [pro-Halloween] majority opinion in his school.<\/p>\n

“We’re not worshiping anything,” he says. “We’re playing dress-up.”<\/em> <\/p>\n

And he dresses up right along with the kids. Too many of these principals seem to have forgotten that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as the flying nanny sang.<\/p>\n

Tag: Halloween<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No costumes, please, we’re teaching to the test Some Colorado “educators” are going to great lengths to show how hard they are working to raise standardized test scores. The latest gimmick at some schools is to ban school Halloween parties. I think for the most part the real reason schools are doing away with Halloween […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-542","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":935,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=935","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":0},"title":"The Silly (Halloween) Season Has Started","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Just one of these for flavor: Cindy Kaie, self-righteous principal of Kohl Elementary School in Broomfield, Colorado, has decreed \"no Halloween party.\"In a newsletter sent home to parents, Principal Cindy Kaier wrote that the traditional Halloween party celebrated in classrooms each year will be replaced by a fall party on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1846,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1846","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":1},"title":"Today Show Goes Silly on Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's more than silly to Lenore Skenazy, who calls it the \"outrage of the week.\" She is the feisty author and blogger at Free-Range Kids. Anyone who has any contact with kids under 12 ought to be reading her. Imagine if the Today Show guidelines had been in place when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3244,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3244","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":2},"title":"Green Halloween?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"First of all, I took this photo on August 26th. Is this what the new Pagan future will look like? Everyone complaining that it is not even the equinox, but the stores are full of Halloween merchandise? This building used to be a Toys \"R\" Us store in Pueblo, Colo.,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/greenspirit.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3369","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":3},"title":"Did You Contribute to the Halloween Economy?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is worth more than $2 billion annually. Not really that big in the overall holiday picture, though. Halloween's haul was the smallest, accounting for a mere 2.6% of holiday spending. But for a few industries, October 31 is the night to shine. According to the National Confectioners Association, sweets-makers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9924,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9924","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":4},"title":"“Disturbing” Halloween Costumes from the Recent Past","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"No sexy nuns here.","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1934,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1934","url_meta":{"origin":542,"position":5},"title":"Halloween: “The Safest Day of the Year”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogger Lenore Skenazy reprints a valuable article looking at the \"urban myth\" of children being targeted by sexual predators at Halloween. Paul Stern, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County, Wash., agrees [that there is zero evidence for such a belief].\u00a0\u201dPeople want to protect kids; they want to do the right\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}