“Standardized tests can’t measure initiative, creativity, imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, or a host of other valuable dispositions and attributes. What they can measure and count are isolated skills, specific facts and function, content knowledge, the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning.” — Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar
Testing, like many other educational concerns, should be a personal decision. Some questions to consider before making this decision include: which tests will be used and why, how might the testing process affect the learner, how will the test results be used, and are there less intrusive alternatives that can be utilized instead? Testing, in the home environment where parents are always very aware of how well their children are doing, is unnecessary and intrusive. Testing is under fire from many teachers and educators ,and many educational establishments are attempting to eliminate standardized testing in their schools. Very careful consideration should be taken before any testing is done to children for any reason. Looking for good information and perspective on standardized testing? Try these resources:
• Home Education Magazine’s collected articles on Testing, Assessing and Evaluating Children’s Lives:
“How Do We Know When We’re Done?” by Cafi Cohen (J/A 98) If you attend high school, it’s simple. From roughly the ages of 14-18, you sit in a chair six hours a day for 180 days each year. You study carefully balanced amounts of English, math, social studies, and science, and take extras like foreign language, physical education, and drama. Do all that with passing grades, and they give you a diploma.
But how do homeschooling families decide when their teenagers have completed high school? What combination of academic work, accomplishment, and time is enough? How do families evaluate their teenager’s learning and decide What’s Enough?
The GED Option, by Karen Kirkwood (J/A 2006) The General Education Development (GED) certificate serves as a valuable stepping-stone for some homeschoolers. Three of my nephews also have received GED diplomas. One recently started community college and another is working as a teller at a bank. The other one just finished his B.S. and is headed for a doctoral program. For homeschool students not planning to attend college, the GED diploma serves as a sign of accomplishment.
College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests are a very effective tool homeschoolers can use to solve many problems that legislation-happy folks might think required new laws. CLEP tests can be used to document high school transcripts and diplomas, strengthen applications for college admission and financial aid, convince potential employers and others that a young person is qualified, and support the claim that a homeschooler should be granted Tier I status when enlisting in the military. In short, when homeschoolers need to demonstrate, in conventional terms, what they have learned and how qualified they are, CLEP tests can be used.
CLEP – the College-Level Examination Program – testing. The College-Level Examination Program® or CLEP provides students of any age with the opportunity to demonstrate college-level achievement through a program of exams in undergraduate college courses. There are 2,900 colleges that grant credit and/or advanced standing for CLEP exams.
What Testing Was Like, Danetta Mecikkalski (M/J 96) My husband saw some of the emotional benefits of home education, and he knew that the boys were having fun, but for him the bottom line is education. Would they have more opportunities in the future if they attended school? Were we keeping up to grade level?
Lessons I’ve Learned from Standardized Tests, Sally Hunt (M/J 96) I have learned a lot from this testing game–things the educational authorities that sanction such tests probably never intended.
Portfolio Assessment, Ana McDonald (J/F 96) As committed as I am to home education, I’m fully aware that my children may someday want or need to enter the mass educational system. They shouldn’t be placed in remedial classes simply for lack of documentation of what they already know.
An Interview with Cafi Cohen, by Marsha Ransom. Home Education Magazine’s Older Kids’ columnist, Cafi Cohen, homeschooled her two children, Jeff and Tamara. Her first book, “And What About College?” (Holt Associates, 1997), is a guidebook for families looking toward college after homeschooling.
Test-Related Resources
• FairTest- The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial.
• Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing A new Facebook page created by homeschooling advocate and activist Melissa Platero.
• The Case Against Standardized Testing – Alfie Kohn’s devastating indictment of standardized testing. Drawing from the latest research, he concisely explains just how little test results really tell us and just how harmful a test-driven curriculum can be. Written in a highly readable question-and-answer format, The Case Against Standardized Testing — which includes some material previously published in The Schools Our Children Deserve — will help readers respond to common questions and challenges.
• Howard Gardner, author of The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts And Standardized Tests, Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences, and many more. One of the world’s foremost authorities on the topics of intelligence, creativity, leadership, professional responsibility, and the arts. This link goes to a biographical profile of Howard Gardner, focusing on his considerable contributions.
• David Elkind – From Lillian Jones’ Best Homeschooling site, the essay Much Too Early! by David Elkind, Ph.D.: Although David Elkind is a professional educator rather than a “homeschooler,” his writing offers the wisdom of experience and research that can be of great benefit to any parents concerned about providing the right start for their children.
• The Case Against Standardized Tests, by Chris Carter – “The not-for-profit are different from you and me. Tennis courts, a swimming pool, a baseball diamond, a croquet lawn, a private hotel, 400 acres of woods and rolling hills, cavorting deer, a resident flock of Canada geese – I’m loving every minute here at the Educational Testing Service, the great untaxed, unregulated, unblinking eye of the American meritocracy.”
