Did They Learn Enough?
It’s the question attentive parents everywhere are asking: “Was it enough?”
With the weighty responsibility of our children’s health, education, and social well-being planted firmly on our shoulders, there is often a knee-jerk reaction of “Nope.” We almost never feel like we have done enough. If that’s you, you are in good company—so give yourself a moment to step back and see the big picture.
Chances are, your student has grown and learned a great deal this year. Is there more our kids need to learn? Of course! But, that’s why they aren’t graduating from college this year… there is still time.
Warm fuzzies and mutual back-patting aside, how do we know if our children really have learned enough?
Simple. Test them.
Squirrel: The Big Picture
Tests are historically controversial within the homeschool community and, as such, come with a whole host of reactions. There tend to be two viewpoints.
View One
The first is that we think grades and report cards are not that relevant to homeschooling; that since the traditional purpose of grades is for the teacher to communicate with the parent about a student’s progress—and, since parent and teacher are now the same person—report cards are no longer necessary.
Some homeschool parents also express concern that tests and grades are not only unnecessary but that they potentially stifle the love of learning and artificially introduce stress into the home learning environment. While tests can be stressful, like any life skill it takes practice to achieve mastery. And, let’s be honest—tests are a very real part of our world. Avoiding them not only does our students a disservice, it also makes it difficult for to to measure their own progress and learn how to manage success and failure—which is, arguably, a practical life skill all its own.
View Two
Another perspective is that grades and national percentiles offer the clearest picture of learning and, therefore, are the ultimate measurement of student growth. While it’s true that data helps us measure growth over time, there is a lot more to a learning than bubble sheets can quantify. If we are brutally honest with ourselves, sometimes as parents we are hungry for a solid report card because it lets us step off the worry train for a bit—as though good grades will get our child that much closer to a successful life. (In some ways—dirty little secret—high marks also make us feel validated as parent-teacher.) Achievement pressure is not a new concern. And homeschoolers, unfortunately, are not immune to wanting our children to do well—not only for their own benefit but also to reflect well on our work as their teachers.
I can certainly appreciate both views—the desire to encourage our students to excel in a measurable way as well as the desire to foster a genuine love for learning. And, it’s easy to feel trapped between the two perspectives. But, what if there’s a third view?
The Third View
What if we saw exams and grades as neither performance trophy nor disciplinary measure, but as a useful tool of measurement? Report cards and exams would then become benchmarks—ways to measure progress, to make sure our children are learning, and to identify any areas where our children need support. Exams could also be a practice run, helping our children learn how to handle stress in practical, healthy ways. We could use those benchmarks to help them develop the life skills of setting goals, managing achievement, and learning (and recovering!) from failure.
Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program
While testing can be a mildly controversial topic, let’s assume we are working with that third perspective: that tests are simply a tool we can use as parent teachers to identify strengths and gaps. If that’s the case, how do we use tests, and where do we find them?
Excellent questions.
Every year—whether or not the state requires it—I give my children standardized exams. It’s the last lap of our school year (meaning no assignments all week) so my kids look forward to it. They also look forward to their results. We keep scores a secret within our family unless the kids want to share (and they often do), and there are no consequences attached to the numbers (good or bad). The test is simply a tool.
In the early years, I chose the California Achievement Test (CAT) because it gave my kids a chance to experience bubble tests at home, I could administer the tests myself over multiple days, it was inexpensive, it was available as early as 2nd grade, and—important to me at the time—the results were completely private. That’s correct: if you order and administer the test yourself, it is yours—no one outside your household (of any authority) can see it unless you show them.
The CAT was a great intro test and we used it every year from second grade onwards. However, as the years went by, I wanted to expand our subjects with a more nationally recognized exam, so we added the Stanford-10. (Side Note: There are a lot of great national exams out there…this just happened to fit our needs well.)
Wait, two tests every year? Yes. Because I started our kids with CAT, I want to continue to measure their growth using the same variable. (If I switched tests part way through, I couldn’t compare results year over year because the instrument for measuring would have changed). Plus, my kids now see CAT as their “warm-up” and Stanford-10 as their “test”—neither of which are cause for concern to them.
Stress-Free Tests
Please understand, I say all this as someone who is not only a professional teacher by training but also as a parent of four children—two of whom have anxiety challenges and one of whom has dyslexia. Tests aren’t easy. But, isn’t that the point? Isn’t life full of tests but we just rename them things like “interviews” or “promotions” or “licensure”?
On a practical level, we do three things to de-emphasize test stress. First, and most important for us, I select Untimed Tests. I attempted timed for one year with my anxious kiddos but it was self-defeating. If my true goal was to measure how much they learned (versus measure if they know how to take a test) I needed to make the test untimed so I could quantify learning rather than test them on testing itself. To check my theory, I actually gave my kiddos identical tests—one timed, one untimed—at different points in the same year. The effects of the timer were fascinating; so, we test Untimed, for now.
No Downside
Second, I emphasize there is no downside to the test—that I’ve never seen a student get a zero, and that no one will make them quit homeschooling just because of their score. (If they want to quit homeschooling, that’s an entirely different article.) I sit with each child individually through the test to make sure they don’t click “D” for every answer just to get back to playing with their friends. (Yes, I have one of those kiddos too). And, weeks before we take the tests, I remind them that this is just a tool to help me figure out what to teach them in the fall. That seems logical to them—and it is, isn’t it?
Chunk As Needed
Third, we break the tests into whatever sized chunks the kids need. One of my kiddos needs the whole thing done in a day for sanity; another can only manage 30 minutes a day before hitting overload. One of the beauties of administering these tests myself is that I can make the test environment flex around my student. Does she need to sit on an exercise ball in front of the laptop? Great! Does he need a snack handy? Sure thing! Again, if my goal is to measure knowledge capture, I can flex the test to meet their needs.
End Game
At some point, the goal of testing for us graduates beyond simple knowledge capture. After all, the big picture (as I mentioned in the beginning) is that tests are a natural party of everyday life; I want our kids to know how to test well. So, after a few years of testing for knowledge growth, I begin to flex my children and not the tests.
By the end of our homeschool journey, my goal is to work our way closer and closer to an actual testing scenario so that, whether it be the DMV, the SAT, or the ASVAB, my kids know how to do their best on whatever test life hands them.