Homeschool Controversies: Assessing Home school Performance
By Mimi Rothschild
One of the typical challenges parents who home school face is quantifying and assessing the level of education their children are receiving. The majority of home school curriculums are based on alternative learning methods such as hands-on experimentation, explorative field trips and extracurricular activities. Though home schooling parents have access to public education testing for their children, it can be difficult to prepare home schooled students for such tests. Many parents who choose to home school experience some concerns over whether their children are learning and retaining knowledge at appropriate levels.
The standardized testing provided by the public education system is one way for home schooling parents to assess their children's performance. Home schooled students are eligible to take a range of standardized tests along with their publicly educated peers, such as the ACT and the SAT. It is often a simple matter to arrange for public standardized testing for home schooled students than most parents are aware; children from home school environments consistently perform as well or better than publicly educated students on standardized tests. The learning process most home schoolers follow enables them to apply reason and logic to what they learn, and excel when tested for performance.
Home schooling parents can also take advantage of alternative testing methods, or develop testing sets themselves. There are several publications dedicated to the development and implementation of alternative testing methods designed to assess a student's learning process. Parents who home school can equip themselves with the necessary tools to monitor their children's academic process through point-by-point methods of assessing creative thought, problem-solving, critical thinking and communication skills. Additionally, they can use the typical testing format for concrete subjects such as math and science.
Developing an assessment method can help home schooling parents to adjust their curriculum and educational approach in order to emphasize their children's strengths and fortify weaknesses. Testing can also assist in discovering and using an individual child's distinct learning style. Home schooled students possess the unique ability to learn at their own pace, in their own way, which in turn enables them to retain their knowledge longer and apply what they learn to real-world situations. Additionally, allowing home schooled students to take standardized tests can help them gain admission to college; it is a strategy more and more higher education institutions are accepting as the number of home schooling households in the United States rises. Whether a home schooling parent chooses standardized or alternative testing, the assessment of a child's learning level can only benefit the educational process.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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