Thursday, June 5, 2008

Standardized Testing and Homeschooling

We are at the end of the school year. Of course, as discussed in my last post, The Girl will be homeschooling in a couple of specific topics over the summer, but the general academic homeschool year is over.

Sometime before August, I have to provide proof of adequate progress to the school board, and this brings up one simple and inescapable fact: school boards like standardized tests.

They really like them.

A portfolio assessment is an option, but our school board has never done one, and offers no suggestions as to HOW to do one. They offer several acceptable choices for standardized testing, however.

On the one hand, I feel that I've spent all year growing away from these arbitrary measures of memorized facts and the interpretation of trick questions. It's one of the reasons we homeschool, and it feels a bit fraudulent to go back to them now.

On the other hand, as a single mother who is going to be forced to take on more work next year, rather than less, I feel the need to keep our hand in with these tests. After all, The Girl may have to re-enter the school system at some point, and good test scores will smooth the way.

I know this is true because every one of my teacher friends that I have discussed this with gets a looke of relief on their faces as soon as I tell them I am planning on having The Girl test this summer, and not only that, but we are practicing for the test by taking our state standards released tests for fourth grade. This is generally seen as a very smart move on my part, as a way of making sure The Girl is on a level with other fourth graders in our schools.

Still, part of me is disappointed that we have to test at all. After all, I work in the system, I know how arbitrary the tests are. I know that we don't really know what we are measuring with them more than half the time. I know that the scores off of any of the tests that I give her will provide only the tiniest sliver of insight into what she has actually accomplished this year.

And yet, we will be testing.

Not because I feel it will tell me anything I don't already know, but because it prepares The Girl for the day that she has to go back to being a cog in the academic machine, just like I am preparing to go back to full time work, and be a cog in the employment machine.

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