so, this week’s big unschooling dilemma: end of the year evaluations.
yep, quarterly reports are due around here, which means…well, i have to wrap my brain around all of the things my kids have accomplished over the past 10 weeks of homeschooling/unschooling and put it on paper. well, an email.
whatever.
oh, and figure out what kind of testing the kids will take in the spring to prove that they have conquered their respective grade levels.
because standardized testing, of course, confirms that.
<insert standardized testing rant>
(whew. i feel better now.)
in years long past, i opted out of standardized testing and wrote evaluations for each of the kids each spring, based upon what kind of ground they covered from start of year to end of year. when you stand in the same room with three children most of every day, as long as you remember what they did 10 months ago, that is not a difficult task. i usually jotted some notes in September and went from there…or compared where they were with the previous year’s report. we moved at a point in their education which allowed us to miss the mandatory testing year…and went to an entirely new system in PA. when we returned to NY, i began yearly CAT tests to simplify the process, and requested permission to administer said tests, which the school district granted. order tests in March, spring test on children on an April morning, send tests back to Seton Hall, and blammo…tests complete. do i think these tests give an actual indicator of my children’s performance in a given school year?Â
nope.
but…requirements must be met. so i meet them.
this year and now every year until they graduate, NY state requires that the girls take an actual test. they can continue with the CAT test, or take another test recognized by the district. this is fine. ish. but i find myself questioning the test i have chosen to give in the past, and the reason for giving the test. i also came across a couple of articles talking about the fact that parents have the choice to opt out of the standardized testing of their students in public schools at any point.Â
hmm.
so. today i research.Â
realizing that in the school system, this year would be a year of regents for the girls, i do need to consider what alternative i would choose if i chose one. at the same time…we’re in a different place. i don’t necessarily feel that fill-in-the-bubble or fill-in-the-blank testing gives a true indication of knowledge or understanding (actually, you can remove the “necessarily” from that sentence entirely) and the way we’re learning right now, formal, traditional testing is difficult. i’m looking at articles about “performance based assessment” and “project based assessment” and “cloze tests” and “rubrics” (oh, the catch phrases from my internship 17 years ago!!!). i’m considering having the girls take the information they write daily and, at the end of each week, writing their own personal assessment of their weekly accomplishments (which would certainly make my job this week easier…i’ll just send the school district their stuff. 🙂 ). i don’t know.Â
so what do you use? what’s your testing preference? homeschoolers, if you standardize test, tell me what you’re doing. i’d love to hear. got any fantastic recommendations for me?
All Is Grace 
#1 by Janelle on February 6, 2014 - 4:59 pm
I’m homeschooling three boys and we’ve never done standardized testing until my oldest son wrote his GED exams last spring. It was so stressful for me:) Our reporting process is fairly simple. I usually write a brief summary of what each kid has “done” during the year, using the language they like. It’s pretty meaningless, but it gets accepted.
#2 by malindar on February 6, 2014 - 5:09 pm
NY has some crazy requirements (standardized tests required every year, grades 9-12)…and i’m working my way through them now that the girls have hit high school (and especially now that we’ve changed our approach)…i’ve been able to summarize the kids’ work in the past and sometimes it feels meaningless in the grand scheme of what they *really* did…we’ll face those GED’s eventually. something else to which i’m not looking forward. but…wouldn’t trade any of this. worth it every day.
#3 by Michelle on February 7, 2014 - 12:43 pm
I kind of like the standardized tests, to reassure myself that they are “making progress.” I know, I know…. but it’s a personal flaw I can live with. 🙂
I’d love to see what others are using, because the one we use (PASS test) only goes up to 8th grade, so I’m going to need something else this year. I’m also interested in your point about public school parents having the option to forgo standardized testing. Why don’t we have that choice?
#4 by malindar on February 7, 2014 - 3:33 pm
i would assume it’s because there isn’t really any other way for them to check up on our “real progress” other than by some standardized assessment. prior to grade 9, you can submit a written evaluation in place of those tests…but after that, i’m sure it has to do with the fact that they aren’t taking regents/final exams (which you can’t opt out of in the public schools, obviously), so they have to have some generalized testing rule.
and i hear what you’re saying about the “making progress” reassurance. it was nice to get to the end of the past two years and have that number that said they were at grade level or above. at the same time…it really frustrates me that “at grade level” is so narrowly defined that a test my kids finish in 72 minutes (with breaks) is supposed to show that.