Taking time to evaluate student learning is important. Through the year, it is important to determine where your child’s strong points and weak points lie.
Identifying strong points and areas of interest is important because that will help you know the types of things your son may be interested in pursuing and learning more about in the coming year.
Identifying weak points is important so that you can spend more time instructing them in those subjects to try to help them catch up to where they should be.
If your child is weak in a certain area, that may be a sign you should consider switching to a different curriculum for that subject. Sometimes just having things approached from a different angle will give your son enough stimulation for him to want to try harder.
Homeschooling parents usually have a much better idea of what their children know and what they struggle with than do parents whose children attend school outside of the home. As you’re teaching your child, it’s pretty easy to tell when they’ve grasped a subject and when you need to continue to work with them before moving on.
Homeschool children aren’t getting graded by anyone other than us, however, so it’s hard to prove to grandparents and the rest of the outside world that our children are doing well compared to their schooled peers. Not that this is necessary! But it feels good to show others how well our kids are doing.
Some homeschoolers turn to standardized testing in order to prove that their children are learning and are on par with other students. This isn’t necessarily an approach I would recommend.
For one thing, schools spend an inordinate amount of their time and resources preparing their children specifically to take these tests.
Because schools dedicate so much time to preparing their students for standardized tests, they have been forced to cut back or even eliminate other programs. Some schools have eliminated the arts, recess for young children and electives for high schoolers.
Teachers find they can’t have discussions about current events in the classroom because that material will not appear on the tests. Some teachers have almost eliminated entire subject areas such as science if the test will only cover language arts and math.
Because funding is tied to student outcome, schools devote entire years to “studying for the test” to ensure the highest grades possible. This can make it hard and undesirable to compare your children to if you are not using this same approach at home.
Of course, the test results of most homeschooled children compare favorably to those of sent-to-school children – so you will need to decide for yourself if this is an approach you want to take.
Homeschoolers run the risk of being overly concerned with how their children score on these tests and making the same mistakes as have the schools.
Instead of having your child take a standardized test, I would recommend having a list of skills and information that are taught for specific grades and using that to be sure that you are covering the information that other children their age are being taught.
Remember, not all schools teach the same things – and you won’t cover everything exactly the same as your local school… and that’s a good thing. There are things being taught in schools these days that make my husband and I very sad.
Character education is all but forgotten in the public schools or is at odds with what many families believe. Plus, parents don’t have as much time to teach life skills to their kids because they’re too busy helping them finish hours of homework every night.
So take heart! Remember the reasons you wanted to homeschool – it wasn’t because you wanted to duplicate your local public school. Stay true to your values and your sons will grow up with integrity and with plenty of learning accomplished as well.
Here are some ways to evaluate student learning that don’t involve standardized testing:
1 – Portfolio reviews which include samples of their work, projects, artwork, writing assignments, etc.
2 – Science experiments, research projects, and presentations
3 – Narrative reports are a great way for younger children to show what they have learned
4 – Self-Assessments such as journals, learning logs, and checklists
5 – Online assessments or quizzes
6 – Taking part in homeschool co-ops or online classes
Question: How do you evaluate learning for your child? Do you rely on standardized tests or do you have a different method that you recommend? Please leave a comment below.
