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The Homeschool Minute ~ Hal & Melanie Young – Annual Testing

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Annual Testing

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Raising Real Men    

Melanie ran the group testing program for our support group for many years. About this time every spring, the calls would start, “What do all these numbers mean? How is my child doing? How am I doing?”

It’s that last part that’s the real kicker. Somehow these tests seem like a referendum on us! We need to remember:

You know how they’re doing already. You are the one who teaches them and answers their questions. You know where they’re struggling. Don’t be thrown when the test agrees with you!

If your children are young, understand standardized tests aren’t really reliable for younger students. The research really doesn’t support testing early elementary students with multiple choice paper tests.

Remember it’s just a snapshot. A test like this can only tell you how your child did on that particular test on that particular day. It can’t measure their diligence or determination, their capacity or their character.

So what do all those numbers mean?

National percentile tell you the percent of kids in the norm group your child did better than. The norm group is just the group they tested before they released the test to know how to grade it, like a sample group. So, a 55th percentile isn’t a failing grade, but merely an average one.

National stanine is just a shortcut way to show where you are on the bell curve. The average score of the norm group was assigned a five. Four, five and six are solid average scores landing in the center of the bell curve. One, two and three are below average and seven, eight, and nine are above.

Grade equivalent score is a little trickier. If your child scored 12th grade equivalent does that mean he can go straight to graduation without finishing the 4th grade? Sorry, nope. All it means is that he scored as well as a 12th grader would have on the 4th grade test – that doesn’t mean he knows a thing in this world about algebra! Grade equivalents are only accurate within a year or so, other than that, it just means he did really badly or more likely, really well.

But, what do you do if your child really didn’t do as well as you’d like?

Consider the situation. Were they sick? Or distracted? Or anxious? Do you think this was a good indicator of how they’re really doing? If not, just ignore it. If so, time for some changes.

Change it up! The wonderful thing about homeschooling is we’re not bound by what everyone else is doing this year. If your children are stumbling on math computation, then introduce timed fact sheets–or do more of them. If it’s grammar, add in some more practice. We can grow and change and adapt to meet our children’s needs. That’s worth a whole lot!

Here’s to a great year–next year!

Your friends,

Hal & Melanie

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