Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three

Every state has its own set of homeschooling laws. Some states have absolutely no requirements, some states have very stringent requirements, and Colorado falls somewhere in the middle of that. One of our requirements here is state testing on alternate years beginning in third grade, or having a paid evaluator for your student on those same years. 

Our enrichment program offers several chances to test throughout the year, and while we still might go the evaluation rout with Parker come year’s end, he also wanted the opportunity to test, so we all loaded up and headed down for a test day today. 

His first year testing back in third grade I remember being shocked to see him come skipping out of the school with Michael just 20 minutes or so after they’d gone in. I listened as he proudly told me that he’d been the fastest test taker there and hadn’t even used the paper they provided to work out difficult math problems. This is obviously not the best test taking strategy, and his scores did reflect that in the end. They weren’t terrible by any means, but they certainly weren’t what we know he’s capable of. 

This year he’s a little older and a little wiser. He went in knowing to take his time, read everything carefully, and use as much paper as he needed to. He fell somewhere in the middle as far as finishing times went, but the first thing he said when he came out was “I feel really confident about that!” He bragged about using both sides of his paper to work on, filling them both up, and said he only had a couple of questions that he wasn’t sure about. He did mention that there is one he knows he got wrong, because as he noticed that it was incorrect and went to put the correct answer the question timed out and bumped him to the next one. I think timed questions on state tests is pretty idiotic, especially when they are also told not to rush but to take their time and read each question thoroughly, but we’re not going to stress about it. He did his best, and that’s all I ask.