Nope–not one. Not a single one of my home schooled children has taken even one test. We’re not required by the state to take standardized tests until 5th grade–so maybe in 4th grade I’ll let her take a test for practice. . .maybe. Yet I know other parents are reading this scratching their heads thinking that I’ve gone off the loopy end. But bear with me–here are a few reasons I ditch the testing.
Testing Limits Student Productivity
There are several subjects for all three of my kids where they are light years ahead of where they ‘should’ be. I really believe that one reason they are ahead is that they are not limited to simply study what will be on the test. Instead I encourage them to go deeper and broader into a subject. In our house, we have a subject called ‘expert studies’ which is really a fancy way of saying, “Pick a subject, whatever you want, and learn all you can.” My daughter very consistently picks authors and reads through entire collections. My son on the other hand, generally picks an animal to study. But they’ve now become ‘experts’ in several different things and fields and their studies have taken them so far beyond a test.
Testing Is Harder for Me
Yep–I admit it. I am totally interested in doing the least amount of work possible. If you give your children tests. . .you have to grade them. In fact, educational research shows that if you don’t give relatively immediate feedback on the test, then testing is completely useless as a learning tool. So you have to grade it and you have to do it quickly. To be blunt, I have better things to do.
Testing is Pointless
For me testing is pointless. I realize that there are many parents who really feel like they need that measure of academic evaluation and there are kids, especially ones who were used to school, who really may do better under the pressure of having to know a certain amount.
But my kids only know learning as fun and interesting, and have never been to school. The reason I say it is pointless is that I know exactly where they are. Since they are my only students, I know what they understand and what they don’t. I don’t need a test to tell me that and they don’t need the pressure. If they don’t know it, we go over it. But they don’t fail a test.
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