Posted by Susan Richman on August 31 2009 at 16:10:44:
In Reply to: Special 'Surprise Blessing' at each Fall Testing site where we have 40+ students-- one student will get FREE TESTING! posted by Susan Richman on August 27 2009 at 13:05:17:
I know some parents are a bit confused that PA Homeschoolers offers a FALL testing service-- it just seems to *natural* to expect testing in the *spring*, when the school year is winding up, and you´re testing what the child has actually learned that year. So what´s with ´fall testing´, anyway??
I´ll be honest-- one of the reasons we offer our major testing service in the Fall season, is because we have the *time* to offer this sort of comprehensive all-over-the-state service at that time. In the spring we are so very busy with dailiy homeschooling evaluations, winding up the year´s work on all of our AP Online classes, and helping all the families with graduates in the PA Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency diploma program, that we simply wouldn´t have time to also travel about the state testing hundreds of homeschoolers. And since evaluations and graduations *have* to be in the spring, we had to find another time of year to be available to help homeschooling families meet their testing requirements.
But once we started offering Fall Testing, way back in the first full year of the homeschool law, we began seeing more and more advantages to this approach-- for the *families* involved. Here are some of the advantages I´ve seen:
1) Fall Testing helps you meet this requirement-- and check it off your ´list´ and be ready to move on to other delights... like the real learning you want to do! Some people really feel the ´weight´ of testing over them, as if it´s a judgment on their year-- with Fall Testing this ´weight´ is lifted much earlier! If students do well, then it´s full speed ahead learning in the way you love best-- you know you´re now ´done´ with preparing for testing, and you still have virtually the whole school year ahead of you!
2) Fall testing helps you gain perspective on what you might want to emphasize as you help your child build skills and prepare for your spring evaluations. Let´s say your child´s fall test scores show a weakness in reading comprehension. Well, rather than need to panic-- as it´s now SO close to the end of the year and your evaluation meeting and turning everything in to the school district-- you can instead take a deep breath.... and choose to gain perspective instead. You can admit that *maybe* your child does need more help and guidance in reading-- or maybe more encouragement to begin reading for pleasure and enjoyment from books at an easier level than the grade-level readers you´ve been joylessly plodding through. Maybe you want to start *reading aloud* to your children more-- and taking the time to stop and talk about the meaning of new and unfamiliar words, or common phrases and sayings that your child right now just may not ´get´. Maybe you´ll want to make a point of buying a dozen new story books for your home library each month (visit those garage sales and 2nd hand bookstores if you need to watch spending!). Maybe you´ll want to make sure your child meets the *best* children´s and young adult writers-- and not just ´Illustrated Classics´ or ´Captain Underpants´ or ´Starwars´ novels (useful as books like these can be at times!). Maybe at least temporarily you´ll want to use instructional reading materials that are a bit easier for your child to feel successful-- or maybe you´ll want to check online discussion groups with homeschooling parents who´ve helped weaker readers. Maybe you´ll try to assess more clearly where your child is having challenges-- is it that he really can´t yet decode words with ease? Is it that your child gets very nervous in ´timed testing´ situations? Is it that your child was a bit under the weather during the testing day? Gain perspective-- and that you have a full school year ahead of yourself to find ways to address all of these issues in helpful ways. By spring, you´ll be ready to truly share about your PROGRESS since the Fall.
And with our Fall Testing service, we can offer a very reasonable brief phone consultation ($15 for each half hour) to discuss your child´s scores and what types of questions seemed most difficult. We maintain full test security (ie, we´re not telling you exactly what the questions were that your child missed!), but we can let know more clearly understand what *category* of strengths and weaknesses your child showed. We do ask that parents wait till our Fall Testing season is completed before calling :-).
3) With Fall Testing, you know that you will always have the *option* of testing again in the spring-- or just showing in your portfolio that you´ve addressed the area of relative weakness by having a strong portfolio presentation. Some families choose to retest in the spring-- and this is always an option, but not our favorite one. Instead, we generally suggest that parents take the perspective they´ve gained (see #2 above), and make plans to demonstrate in the porfolio how the child has really worked to make progress in that area. Say, a child showed a marked weakness with math word problems, especially word problems with several steps (this is the type on most achievement tests now, btw-- kids are not immediately ´clued in´ on just which operations, or sequence of operations, they will need to solve a given problem...). By the spring, you should have accumulated many fine samples of the work with more multi-step problems that your child has worked with-- and your child might even want to demonstrate his good and growing ability for your evaluator at your spring meeting. You might even have some original word problems that your child has written himself that demonstrate growing ability with math thinking-- with these types of clear demonstrations in the portfolio and during the interview, evaluators will be very pleased that indeed progress is being made.
4) Fall Testing is NOT ´harder´ than spring testing-- because students are given the testing level appropriate to the *beginning* of the school year. Say, when I test 3rd graders in the Fall, I´m using what the TerraNova test calls ´Level 12´. This level test is the one suggested for BOTH the end of 2nd grade AND the beginning of 3rd grade. Now, when the test is *scored and normed*, we use a slightly harder ´grading scale´ for the beginning 3rd graders-- we´re using the offical ´norms´ for the Fall season of 3rd grade that come with the test. Likewise, the 5th graders take ´level 14´ in the Fall-- which is also suggested for the typical *spring* 4th grader-- and the rising 5th graders are expected to do a bit better on this test than the spring 4th graders. Now, we could also do it the other way-- we could give ´level 13´ to the rising 3rd graders, and score it using norms that would be more ´relaxed´ than those for end of year 3rd graders. We choose the first option-- using the lower level test, scored a bit more ´toughly´. We feel this lets the students feel the greatest level of success-- they are not hit with material that they aren´t expected to have covered yet.
5) Fall Testing does indeed meet all requirements of the PA homeschooling law. The law requires testing in 3rd, 5th, and 8th grade-- and it does NOT specify when during that school year testing must be done. We´ve known of some public school districts that routinely do testing in the fall season-- they view this as a diagnostic help to their teachers, and a help in their planning for the year. Testing with our Fall Testing service fully meets all requirements of the law-- no one has any trouble with their districts feeling that ´spring testing´ is the only option. And if you get a nice ´form letter´ in February letting you know about the PSSA (the PA state test used in public schools), you can just smile and let them know that you´ve been very responsible and have *already* completed testing arrangements :-).
6) With Fall Testing, you´ll *definitely* have your test results to show in your year-end portfolio-- both to your evaluator and to the school district! I know personally as an evaluator, that quite a few families I see in the spring for evaluations have to do a bit of a ´shuffle´ about test scores-- they´ve had testing done, BUT the scores aren´t back yet. Sometimes they won´t come back for weeks yet... maybe not till mid-July. When using testing services that rely upon sending tests back to ´headquarters´ for scoring, the delays can be even 8 weeks during the very busy late spring testing season. Though I´ve never heard of a family getting in ´trouble´ with a school district or evaluator over these types of delays, I think it´s always best to *avoid* this type of ´wait´ if at all possible. When we travel about the state doing Fall Testing, we bring all the needed tools and software to score up and print out score reports while we´re ´on the road´-- we often mail scores out to families in just a couple of days (and often the *next* day!).
We hope to see you at one of our Fall Testing sites! Fall testing is a relaxed way to meet this requirement of the homeschool law in a positive and responsible way-- and in a way that can make the REST of your year go very well!
With best wishes,
Susan Richman, PA Homeschoolers ( and 3rd grade Fall Tester! )