The Thirst for Freedom posted a nice entry regarding my post about researching homeschooling which received an interesting comment from Casper about homeschoolers and testing. With the accountability craze in the public schools right now, it is unlikely this is a concern that is going to go away any time soon and with the resolution put forth by one of our state senators to look into ways to bring more oversight to Nebraska homeschoolers, it is very likely to be quite relevant to us here in the near future.
I have gone into the testing issue a few times and my objections really rest on the fact that in a free society, private citizens are not accountable to the state. The state needs probable cause to search my home for evidence of illegal activity and the same should hold true for the mental capacities of my children. It is a philosophical objection based in my understanding of individual rights and of what it means to have a limited government. In the interest of saving a little space, I’ll just point out two past posts which really go into this issue in more depth:
- Why would homeschoolers object to state testing?
- My written testimony before the NE state legislature
But there are other issues with standardized testing than individual liberties in a free society. First, we need to look at the purpose of standardized testing:
- To report how well schools are performing to the public.
This is the real thrust of the accountability movement and is really an important function of standardized testing. I think this has gone to an unhealthy extreme in American education and I hope the pendulum will soon begin to swing the other direction. But the goal is a good one: provide parents with an independent measure to aid them in making educational decisions for their children. The point is similar to that made in the entries I linked above: in a free society, it is the state that is accountable to the people and it is we that maintain oversight of its functioning. I as a parent and as a taxpayer have a right to know what is being taught in the public schools and whether or not it is effective. I, however, am in no way accountable to the state or to the public for what I teach my children.
- To focus learning and instruction to state standards and key concepts.
This is the real problem with testing homeschoolers. We are not bound to state standards and we do not necessarily purchase curriculum aligned to state standards. On the surface, it may seem that a child that can read should be able to pass a reading test or a child that has been taught math should be able to pass a math test, but this is not necessarily the case. Almost half of my first grade class flunked our first benchmark when I was teaching because the district tested using a test from a different publisher than the math program our school was using. When we threw out the problems that had not yet come up in our program, my kids excelled. Looking over one standardized math assessment, my daughter would struggle with the section on congruent shapes because we haven’t talked about them yet. And there are other issues. The test talks about “fact families” but this concept has another name in her math book. She may or may not be able to figure it out from the question and available answers, but who knows what she will decide a “family” is when applied to numbers. She can, however, add and subtract numbers to three places with regrouping, a skill which is not on the test. So if she did poorly on this test, would it mean we had “done nothing?” Or just that we are doing things differently than the state schools?
And there are other problems which come with high stakes testing in general, whether it is in the public school or the homeschool. This gets a bit technical, but standardized tests, even those which are “criterion referenced” are not designed to make sure that all students have mastered a certain proficiency level. They are designed to discriminate between high achievers and low achievers, meaning that a student could achieve a basic proficiency in the subject matter and still fail the test. A summary of how these standards-based tests are developed which demonstrates that the idea of “some basic quality control testing” is not as easy as it might at first appear:
During the construction of both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests, test makers use a pilot test to determine which items (test questions) will appear on the finished test administered to students on testing day. The survivor items are ones that possess the proper statistical profile: survivor items are those that “discriminate” between high-scoring and low-scoring students. In other words, test makers only want items that are answered correctly by high scoring students and answered incorrectly by low scoring students. Any items that are answered correctly by almost all students will be eliminated from the final test. Items that almost everyone answers correctly are considered “too easy for the target population” (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2005, p. 102). Such “easy” items provide little helpful psychometric information; in selecting test items, test-makers want to choose the items that will be most helpful in distinguishing among students of differing abilities. Validity of high-stakes standardized test requirements for homeschoolers: a psychometric analysis
I am reminded of a situation related in a professional development seminar I attended in Texas back when Bush was governor. Texas students had gotten a little too good at the story problems and were recognizing the “key words” to determine whether a story problem called for addition or subtraction. So the language of the test began to change, resulting in problems that I as an adult had to read twice to figure out what they wanted…for a third grade assessment!
It is not that I think standardized testing is “evil.” It is just that I recognize its limitations. I have no problems with parents testing their own children. Many do…and I have as well. But the scores should be for the parent’s information to guide instruction, not as a comparison to children in other educational settings and certainly not as a requirement to continue to homeschool.
And one more old post for those of you who just love reading about psychometric testing: Standardized Testing: An American Addiction.
Principled Discovery is a place to stop and discuss news and information related to faith, family and particularly education. Pour yourself a cup of tea and join the conversation! 
The objection to our objections that I see most often is that our society has a vested interest in the quality of the education of its citizens.
The problem I see with this reasoning is that one could say that about a number of areas of private life, such as health and nutrition and psychological well-being. But most folks recognize that when someone has problems in those areas, they or their families and friends seek help. If the same idea were applied to nutrition and exercise, folks would very quickly object to the state taking a peak in their pantries or setting timers on their TVs.
Of course, then they trot out the idea that homeschoolers are isolated from society, and, like vampires, never see the light of day. I picture them as educational Van Helsings, dragging us into the sunlight to see if we burst into flame.
Other than the obvious objection that home education is part of the private lives of families, and that unless there is probably cause, HSers and the rest of the planet should be left alone, I find it alarming that there is this underlying assumption that parents who choose to home educate are not as invested in the nurturing and academic success of their children as the state. That flies in the face of everything we know about the parent/child bond.
Home educators merely want the same privacy rights that all American citizens enjoy and even take for granted. There is no viable reason to target and discriminate against homeschoolers.
I’ve long believed the key principle (behind the prevailing strategy) for this policy argument centers on education for children period, not home education or parent rights.
This is where I part political company with too many homeschool advocates. It’s much stronger to take Dana’s true statement:
“I have gone into the testing issue a few times and my objections really rest on the fact that in a free society, private citizens are not accountable to the state” –
and apply it to all free citizens. The rationale for enslaving kids’ minds to the body politic just because their folks enroll them in a school with draconian rules in the name of “accountability to the public” is unsupportable. and we all lose sooner or later.
(Imagine publicly funded health clinics and hospitals could institutionalize your kids for years for all sorts of intrusive tests and mass-required procedures, in the name of evaluating the health center effectiveness for some report to the public?)
But that is just it…I don’t think that sort of thing is all that far-fetched. We are beginning to see certain foods banned, and schools are starting to meaure BMI? “Public Heath” is becoming a bigger deal.
Ditto that- if those who support national health care are successful, how long before we are ‘accountable to the state’ for our lifestyle choices such as diet and exercise?
Thus it happens any time folks look to gov’t as The Answer to life’s problems. Creating gov’t programs does nothing to improve choice and opportunity for the citizens of this country. Rather it creates a stranglehold that politicians can exploit.
With children, they can claim virtuous and altruistic motivations, and many folks buy into the idea that if some legislation ’saves just one child’ from abuse or neglect, then the sacrifice of individual freedoms is worth the cost.
It is impossible to pass enough legislation to ensure that every child is safe and loved and provided for. And if you could put kids in fuzzy-wuzzy cocoons until they were 21, what kind of person would they be?
Right (I think?) — we need to look at the real issue, which affects us all whether our kids are in school or not. Home-educating cannot completely protect (even) us from institutionalized paternalism, and neither will the politics of “choice.” We need to meet this head-on and we need all the allies among schooled and schooling families we can get.
See my second comment here, on two views of “the new paternalism” in the May 9 Chronicle of Higher Education –
JJ- Yes. I’ve been thinking lately that’s there’s no forum for discussion and support in education that bridges the different issues of public schools, homeschooling, teacher training, etc.
I think one of the reasons the lines blur is that one very legitimate function of gov’t is law enforcement and maintaining infrastructure. Thus we get into our heads that we are accountable to gov’t, but as long as we are law-abiding citizens, is not true. The ’sword’ of gov’t is for the law-breaker.
The public education dynamic leaves parents feeling beholden to schools and teachers, and ‘answerable’ to them, instead of the other way around. In the past, the school was a function of the community, where local folks decided who taught their children, and the purpose of school was basically The Three R’s. As simplistic as it sounds, schools were able to prepare kids with basic skills. What they did after that was up to them and their families. As it should be.
Schools have become nothing more than another welfare program, with federal oversight that removes local influence and input much too far from the parents and taxpayers.
I also believe that the media has had an influence in how home educators are perceived. Instead of being viewed as parents who support educational choice, we are demonized as wackjobs who are stealing money from public schools. It is a falsely adversarial dynamic that sells papers and keeps everyone’s boxers in a bunch. It is difficult to convince someone that you care about the education of the nation’s children when Uncle Dan Rather has told them that you probably abuse your kids and have ‘abandoned’ public education by ‘pulling your kids out’ of the system.
I was just contemplating a post on testing as well; not standardized testing, just the plain, simple tests that come at the end of a unit or book or what-have-you.
In fact, my son is at the District office today taking those standardized tests. They do not bother me because I do not place any value on them. My kids have fun seeing where they fall in the percentage range–some are motivated to try harder, others shrug and couldn’t careless, and one contemplates and then lets it go.
The place in which I diverge with your analysis is:
**But the goal is a good one: provide parents with an independent measure to aid them in making educational decisions for their children.**
I do not think the goal of these tests even takes parents into consideration. I think it is purely for political purpose; for control; for monetary reasons.
Parents here, other than move their child to a private school if they can afford it, basically are at the District’s control. The District decides if they will grant a request of change of schools within the District. And to consider a District in another area/city/town also requires approval from the District in want: is there space and funding.
I don’t see accountability to the parents… unless, again, they have the financial means to move out of the public sector of education. Even home education has its requirements and is in question here in California.
And honestly, my high school students often just played with the tests–filling in whatever because they knew the tests did not affect their grades nor advancement within the school. I heard this over and over from students, not all students, but many.
OK, Shawna, maybe I should have clarified because I think it is largely political as well. When used properly, the point of standardized tests is to give an independent measure for parents to help make educational decisions and give teachers and administrators some information about teaching strategies and content issues.
When the tests become high stakes, there are completely different issues. I do not object to all uses of standardized testing, I just think we should recognize what they were designed for.
We are not currently using them for their designated purpose as outlined by industry standards and good testing practices outlined in school of ed programs.
Also, I think the problem in this is our notion of rights. We value education and have begun to view it as a right. It is even entering state constitutions. And actually, I don’t have a problem with that view, except that it comes at a time when rights have been redefined. Even those who oppose state involvement in education are falling into the trap. Joel Turtel, author of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children, for example, views rights very different from our founders:
What is an economic “right” such as the alleged right to an education? A “right” means that a person has a claim on the rest of society (other Americans) to give him some product or service he wants, regardless of whether he can pay for it or not.
But that isn’t what a right is. My property rights do not mean I have a claim on the rest of society, it means that no one else has a claim on my property that I have managed to take possession of.
Rights are inherent and unalienable. They are things you already have that the government protects and keeps people from seizing from you without due process. In this sense, I agree education is a right. It shouldn’t be taken from you, but it does not mean that you have a claim on anyone else for a certain type of education. I went into this more some time ago:
The Right to an Education, Part I
The Right to an Education, Part II
One might think, “OK, but how could anyone take your education from you?” And the answer is pretty simple: by allowing the government to define what education is in the first place.
So — we could call real academic freedom (for kids, too) the right, and free schooling the entitlement?
Works for me.
I, for one, happen to like data analysis and using objective measurements rather than subjective hunches (guess it’s my science background showing). As a parent, one of the things I considered when deciding not to enroll my child in our neighborhood school is that the standardized test scores were not what they ought to be given the demographics of the school. In fact, they are in the bottom 20% of schools in California with similar demographics. Without having that data available, I would’ve had a much more difficult time finding out that the school isn’t as good academically as it claims to be (”We’re a California Distinguished School!” they trumpet).
Standardized test scores aren’t the be-all-and-end-all, and certainly privately funded schools (including homeschools) should not be required to report student scores to the state. But I do believe they provide an objective measurement of certain skills, and one way to compare the quality of government-run schools (are the students doing better or worse than expected?).
Sorry to jump in this late in the game. We were standardize testing today! I agree with the majority here - it’s fine for parents to choose to test their children, but it should not be mandatory.
I agree, Crimson Wife. So long as they are used to do what they were designed to do…provide one objective measure among many…they are a good and useful tool. And the test is designed to test what the students in a public school are being taught, and the students are taught specifically how to take these tests. If a school or district is still performing poorly on them, there is probably a problem.
It just does not necessarily work in every circumstance. And it doesn’t necessarily work for homeschools, particularly in the younger grades. After all, testing starts in the third grade when many homeschoolers are really only just getting started with formal studies depending on the philosophy. Research has proven this is as effective (and in some cases more effective) than starting early.
And we took one today, too. Although it was just because my daughter has been flying through her new math program and I decided it was a little too easy. I wanted to see if she was ready to skip to the next one…not quite, but I think we’re going to skip through half of it.
I keep coming back to a line in a previous post, “Why are you afraid of taking a math test?” (maybe not a direct quote). A provocative question, but the more I think about it, the more it falls in the “Have you stopped beating your wife?” category. Looking at a standardized test as some valid piece of government oversight is asking us to be measured by the standards of a system we have found to be totally lacking. I am on day two of three days of standardized testing this week. It is entirely likely that one of my kids will miss no questions on his test. It will appease the government rep that counts such pieces of paper. But it will tell me nothing of value about what he has learned this year.
The best analogy that I’ve been able to come up with is insisting on assigning a standard size label to a made to measure suit. Unfortunately the jacket is one size (with extra wide shoulders and long sleeves), the trousers are another size (extra long and narrow waisted) and there are no government standards for vests at all.
I agree with this statement-
From Kaboose.com- Standardized Tests: What Grade Do You Give Them?
To develop a test, publishers construct questions based on the most common textbooks and curriculum for a particular grade, and that, according to many critics, is part of the problem. The tests look for what is common among schools, not which is unique. Subjects such as physical education, art, music, and foreign language, for instance, may help create a well-rounded student, but will be of little use on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.
Even though homeschoolers have submitted to standardized tests and done very well, the continued push is going to hurt home education, because part of the attraction to homeschooling is the opportunity for individualization, based on ability and interests.
I have waited until my boys were 7-8 years old to teach them to read- and they while they have managed to do well on the CAT, I don’t appreciate the pressure to make them do something that I don’t want them to do until I believe they are developmentally ready.
So now The Big Dog, who started with first grade math when he was 9 and is now getting ready for Algebra 1 next year (he’s 11)- what does standardized testing do for him or me? He isn’t in 9th grade in Language Arts, but no tests fit his varied levels of learning. So if I get a test that ‘measures’ his understanding of Algebra at the end of next year, it is not going to accurately measure his vocabulary or understanding of grammar, because it will probably contain concepts and literature references we haven’t covered yet.
My dd isn’t even going to take Algebra- she loves consumer/business math. I think learning the stock market and the American economy is quite challenging, and just as worthy of study as ‘higher math’. Are there any standardized tests that will accurately evaluate her?
I evaluate my kids throughout the year, based on the material we have covered. There is no test publisher in the country that has a working crystal ball with which to create a test that would help assess my homeschooling efforts or my kids’ progress.
Crossing my fingers that I formatted the link properly….
Ooh…very true, Sebastian:
A provocative question, but the more I think about it, the more it falls in the “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
We just did some testing, too, although not for the state. They can’t even get their ducks in a row when they write the test and deign the curriculum. Why would I want to be measured against it? Most kids will do fine, and the objections I raise here are less significant the older a child gets. After all, by 18 they should have caught up even if they had a later start.
But parents should be allowed to have an educational philosophy separate from the state. And good tests measure what is being taught, not what someone else decides a child should know by a certain age. There is room for individuality.
And the money is better spent on the kids whose parents have put them in the public system.
From a conversation my dh and I had just two nights ago with a public school teacher and her husband:
“So, since you homeschool, do you have to test your kids like we do at school?”
“It depends on what state you live in. In Kansas, we don’t have to.”
“It’s all about funding anyway. If the test scores aren’t high enough, the school doesn’t get as much money.”