00:00 - Janae Daniels (Host)

Is there a better way to assess whether kids are learning and really diving into the learning, other than paper tests? And I'm not talking about standardized tests, I got a whole lot to say on those. But other than paper tests, are there better ways to evaluate kids? Well, that's what we're going to be discussing today is various ways that we can evaluate and assess kids without always having to give them official paper tests. But before we get into today's episode, just a reminder that next Wednesday, november 5th, we have our monthly workshop. I'm super excited. We are doing a special Christmas school Merry and Meaningful, helping kids discover the heart of Christmas. You don't want to miss that. We've got some special giveaways. That's at 12 pm Mountain Standard Time. You do need to register. You can do that at schooltohomeschoolcom, where you can also sign up for our newsletter and get tips and tricks and all sorts of wonderful things to help you in your homeschooling efforts or, if you're thinking about homeschooling, maybe a little bit of confidence to help you take the plunge. So with that, let's get started. All right, my friends, I am so excited to talk about testing today.

01:08

Now, y'all, when I started teaching school, public school I had a little dilemma in that I was a theater teacher, and when you're a theater teacher, paper tests are a little tricky. I mean there was some things that I could test them on. But I felt like, well, I've got to make sure kids are learning right. And I had roughly 150, 170 students a day and so I had to, like I had to give them grades. I was required to give them grades and I was required to test them. But the dilemma is when your class is predominantly performance based whether that is, with they were creating costume designs and performing through art they were creating costume designs and performing through art or they were actually doing monologues or scenes I had to figure out a different way to assess them and assign them a grade. Now, y'all know I'm not a big fan of grades, because grades have become the end as opposed to a means to the end. Right, for most kids it's like what do I need to do to get a good grade on this? What do I need to do to ace the test, as opposed to that existential, like? It's a process and we need to find joy in the process.

02:39

So I went to the band teacher, mr Piewicz, who was also my department chair, so he was my direct supervisor, if you will. And? And so, mr Piewicz, what do I do right here in the fine arts department? Um, we, we don't really have a lot of things that we can put on paper as far as testing. And so he said well, uh, you, could you know um do? Did they come prepared every day for class with what they needed? He's like we, we have to give grades and evaluations based on um, uh, whether or not the kids have practiced Um, and then for the assessments, you might create a rubric like. These are the kind of the expectations when you perform or do your final performance. You know, was their performance memorized? Was it not A lot of history? Teachers have to do this type of thing, and so that's what I ended up doing and it worked fine.

03:47

When a child is in public school, a teacher creates evaluations so that they can compare students, or 25 students, or, in my case, 150 students with as many classes as I taught. It was necessary, right, that's necessary for a standardized system where they're trying to conveyor belt kids through a system, that type of things becomes necessary and it's not as individualized. That type of things becomes necessary and it's not as individualized. The great thing is is when you homeschool. You don't have to give those types of assessment because you're with the child all the time. You see the child's progress. I thought it was really fascinating when we started homeschooling.

04:47

My now 13-year-old Jacob was at the time eight and he was going into third grade. When we started homeschooling His teachers. We'd always go to the parent-teacher conferences and his teachers were like he's doing great, he's incredibly smart, he's incredibly gifted. He's incredibly gifted. He's a hard little worker. You know his reading is fantastic. He's the best reader in the class. You know this is what we always got. But I'll never forget that first day of homeschooling I assigned him a castle in the attic which, according to the book list said it was for ages 8 to 12.

05:23

And Jacob was turning was eight, turning nine, and so I said, okay, let's read a castle in the attic and I gave him the book that first day and he sat there and he started to cry while I was trying to work with the other kids and I was really frustrated with him that he wasn't reading because he was, according to his teachers in school who had to assess him and all of the other kids that they had and I don't fault them for this. He was on grade level for reading right, except for and he could. He could read the words, he could phonetically sound out everything. But what I discovered very quickly as I sat with him and read with him and talked to him, it became very clear very quickly that his comprehension for the text was grossly lacking. And I realized that he was.

06:31

His reading level was not where it needed to be and I had chosen a book that was too difficult for him. He could read the words, but the comprehension wasn't there. Read the words, but the comprehension wasn't there. And so I very quickly realized that, sitting next to him, and so I was able to drop him down to. We moved to instead of doing a castle in the attic, which was a long chapter book with tiny words and long chapters. We dropped down to the little bear books and frog and toad books and he very quickly brightened up and was more than happy to read with me. It was more age, appropriate for him, for his emotional development. They were shorter chapters, so he was able to gain more confidence. Now he's a great reader.

07:19

Again, he could do phonetically, he could read the words, but the comprehension was not there. Because it was. It was a little bit too mature for him. And the the books the book I had originally chosen and the decoding of the words and the comprehension was still a struggle. Right, I didn't have to give him a paper test on a castle in the attic to discover that I didn't, I just had to sit with him and discover that.

07:47

So that's where I want to talk about. What are some other things that we can do to discover how a child is doing with learning? Now, are there times that paper tests and quizzes are okay? Yeah, sure, if you want to see if they understand a math concept, which, again, I'm working on a whole thing on talking about math, as I've discovered what the industrial titans and the pseudo intellectuals and the educators and I use air quotes with that did in the turn of the 20th century. Well, I will be delving back into math again, but for today I want to talk about we're talking about the assessment pieces. Yeah, quizzes to see do they understand this basic math concept? Fine, right, I don't ever tell the kids their quizzes or tests. I'm like let's just do this. See how you do right, spelling? Yeah, paper is absolutely appropriate for spelling, but what about other things. What about history? Are paper tests really that effective? As far as standardized testing goes?

08:53

In some states you might be required as a homeschooler to have your children do standardized testing. We have the option to do an evaluation with a professional evaluator or do a standardized test. My kids have done both and I found the standardized testing lacking, even though my kids tested at college level when they took them. My middle schoolers tested at college level. Jacob, that same eight-year-old, took a standardized test and scored at 11th grade level for reading, writing and math. Again, I told you the comprehension piece. I quickly realized as a mom that he struggled with comprehension and that's something that we worked on, but I found that the standardized test lacking.

09:40

Now here's the interesting thing. I have administered standardized testing in the public school system. I had to, I was required to as a teacher. Haven't come to my classroom. We did the whole. You know like you can only bring in a pencil, you can. You know all of that, all of the things that you have to do with standardized testing, and I quickly discovered as a teacher that I disagreed with them. I saw my colleagues struggle, the core teachers of the. You know the, the, my language arts friends, my math and science friends quickly I discovered how painful it was for them that they they were not able to teach the way that they wanted to teach because they were perpetually worried about the standardized test, because back then the test reflected on them as teachers and yet it didn't. They had to teach to the test, right. So there's always the controversy around standardized testing.

10:36

When my kids were still in public school, I actually started opting them out of testing because I realized that it was in one at least one of my children. It was causing testing anxiety and it was unnecessary. Right, the test didn't reflect on the kids at all. It was showing that they could regurgitate information that wouldn't necessarily go into long-term memory and it wasn't information that was important. So there's my two cents on standardized tests. I don't think that they're necessary. I think that they're irrelevant and, as a public school parent, I stopped having them take those tests. We would opt out of them every year. Now I have since moved to an evaluation with a professional evaluator to fulfill my requirements as a homeschool parent in my state. Every state is a little bit different and you might be required to still do standardized testing. If that's the case, I'm so sorry, but take them with a grain of salt because they don't actually evaluate anything. Okay, so let's talk about this Now.

11:40

Penn State Learning says that there's a difference between testing, assessment and evaluation. They say a test or quiz is used to examine someone's knowledge of something, to determine what he or she knows or has learned. Testing measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached. I don't know about that. Evaluation is the process of making judgments based on criteria and evidence, and assessment is the process of documenting knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs, usually in measurable terms. The goal of assessment is to make improvements as opposed to simply being judged In an educated context. Assessment is the process of describing, collecting, recording, scoring and interpreting information about learning. Yeah, we're dealing with children. Yeah, those are very, they're very technical. They sound very educational, don't they? All those things, all those differences, and yet I think to myself I am raising children, and children all learn differently and they all glean different things. Um, so, so I think it's interesting.

13:04

As we talk about I was very worried my first year of homeschooling about making sure my kids were tested, that they were learning at the grade level that they were supposed to. And by my second, third, fourth, now we're going on the fifth. Now we're going on our sixth year of homeschooling. I think that those things are not as important. I don't think the assessments are as important Evaluations or testing in the traditional understanding of testing you know paper tests and are they doing these things and do we have a rubric? I don't think that they're as important.

13:44

But the question came to me from a prospective homeschool mom. A good friend of mine is thinking about homeschooling and she said Janae, I'm so scared, like how do I test my kids and what do I do, and is there a different way to test? I have a couple kids who have severe test anxiety and how will I deal with that if I end up homeschooling my kids? And I was like homeschooling my kids and I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, let's slow down, unlike the public school system where it's a conveyor belt and these teachers are having to evaluate all of these kids all the time. When we're homeschooling moms, when they're with us all day, every day, we see when they're lacking in something. Let me give you a. For instance.

14:27

My daughter Kara is nine years old and she's become a very good reader. We stress the phonics. She didn't start reading until two years ago, struggled up until that point she would have been labeled learning disabled. She would have had that label slapped on her so fast. The reality is she's a brilliant kid and she doesn't have those labels. So she hasn't come to believe those things about herself that she would have had she been in the system. Now I know she would have been labeled those things Again, I was a teacher. I know how the system works. I get it. She doesn't have those labels.

15:06

But the other day she loves to write. She's working on learning sentences and paragraphs and she loves to write fiction. She writes her little heart out. The other day she was writing a whole bunch of stuff and I was looking at her writing and lo and behold, she and I have discussed this in the past. I saw holes specifically in spelling, and so this year we have been working on spelling and I still see, okay. So she's still struggling with certain vowels and putting vowels in in the middle of words. I see that as a mom I don't have to give her a test to know that. How do I know that? I'm with her all day. I look at her writing every day and I see, okay, there's some holes. She struggles with ease, specifically like words that have ease in the middle of them she struggles with. So I don't have to give her a test to know that I don't.

16:18

I evaluated her by just looking and reading with her and reading her work and reading her writing and reading her work, reading her writing. So the first thing as homeschooling parents that we do is we observe Without having to give them a paper test. We can observe as I sit with them and we do arithmetic or, in Jacob's case, he's in a higher level math, he's in geometry. I can observe Now the program that he uses. It does little mini assessments throughout without calling them assessments, and so he'll be like oh, I did not do good, I think I need to re-go over how these particular concepts, mom, because I don't I'm not getting them right. He sees that and I see that, without giving him an official test, ok, but as. So as parents, we can start to observe things. I observe with Jacob. You know his he's been working on handwriting.

17:18

I believe that kids should learn cursive. If they want to be able to read our founding father's documents, such as the constitution and the declaration of independence, they need to be able to read cursive and they feel pretty proud writing cursive. But looking, just observing y'all, I can observe. Okay, jacob, kara, katie, you are struggling in cursive here, like you're attaching the letters incorrectly. So let's, let's, let's fix that. We can, we can fix that. I don't have to give them a formal test to do that because I'm observing them all the time. So that's the one.

17:54

The first thing that we have going for us as homeschooling parents is that gift of observation. When there's not 30 kids in the classroom, there are, you know whether you've got one child or you know eight children you can. We get to observe them because we are with them every day. So that's the first thing that we can do in lieu of a paper test is observation. We have that blessing in that time to observe. The second thing that we can do is we can ask them questions, we can have conversations with them. We don't have to give them a quiz on a book that they're reading, but rather we can have big, juicy, deep conversations with them and learn very quickly if they're understanding the text. That's what happened with Jacob and a castle in the attic is.

18:50

I'm like well, what did you like about what you read in the chapter and he's out there. I'm like can you at least retell what you read? Couldn't? If I was in the public school system, I couldn't ask. Teachers don't have the capacity to sit with every child all of the time and have them do narration of what they've read. Or, you know, they can't do the oral narration with them. They don't have the capacity. This is not anything about them as teachers. It's literally, when you have so many students, you do not have the capacity to do that all of the time, whereas at home we do. We can say, hey, let's have a conversation about this. Tell me what you just read about. What did you like, what did you not like? Or, in some case, they write narration. When they're becoming tweens they can start to write short sentence narrations as they get older. They can write longer paragraph narrations as they go into high school. But conversation we can have on a daily basis, conversations about what they've read. Let's talk about history. What do you think about that? Isn't that fascinating? What I find is when you take away the, that official quote, paper testing, they're more likely to not worry about what's going to be on the test and they start to absorb information, absorb the things that they find fascinating and interesting We've had many really cool discussions on.

20:29

We were reading a Tuttle Twins book on eminent domain and so we read the book together and what happened with the Tuttle Twins and this thing that happened. And Tuttle Twins are a series of books that cover government ideologies as well as civics ideas, and so we were reading about eminent domain and man, kara and Jacob got very fired up in conversation about eminent domain and what they thought about it. They got really upset by eminent domain and like, how can the government do this? That's taking it, essentially stealing property. They might, you know. And here they are, and they were young as we. This was last year we had this conversation and Kara was eight and Jacob was 12. And Jacob was like, well, are they going to get a fair value price of their land? And I said, well, no, they don't always.

21:30

And we were able to look up some news stories about people who've had their land taken, where it was grossly undervalued and taken from them. And what can be done. If, with this right Y'all, I didn't have to give them a test on eminent domain, we were able to sit and have a really powerful discussion about it based on the reading Like they were emotionally fired up. We've had the same thing happen talking about inflation and you talk to care about inflation, she gets fired up about the Federal Reserve printing more money. She understands. She understands better than most adults do. So the second thing that we can do is start to have discussions with our kids and, by the way, as homeschooling parents, oftentimes we're learning alongside them Things that we may have learned when we were younger or may most likely not have learned. There's power as we're learning alongside them, having these really juicy, deep conversations.

22:29

Katie and I often will be reading stories together, listening Katie and I often. So Katie's 17. And she and I will listen to audio books together while she works on her art projects and she asks me every day, mom. She's taken a couple of college courses in person. She was invited once again to be part of the Honor Society we just got a letter in the mail and so, as she's working on her art and her logic homework, she's taking a logic class and an art class, and the art class is actually harder than the logic class. The art teacher has a high expectations and she's loving it right. She's learning all sorts of really cool things through this art class.

23:13

So as we've been working on her, her art, she and I have been having deep discussions and and I look at her art and she's like, let's talk about mom, what do you think about this? Last night she came in, uh, late last, and she'd been working on a couple different techniques and she said what do you think? Should I do the pointillism you know pointillism technique, or should I do this? This lattice technique, like which technique do you think would look better on this project that I'm working on, this, this ink project that she's working on? And and I was able to look at how she's doing. Her art teacher does not give her paper assessments but rather comes and evaluates you know, how are you doing with this and how are you doing with that. So we can look and observe and then have deep conversations. So katie and I will listen to books and then we'll have deep conversations about what we're reading and I don't have to give her an actual evaluation to determine that she's learning stuff. I don't um. So deep conversation, asking deep, juicy questions. That's the second way we can see if our children are learning. Third thing is we can give them projects and sometimes they assign themselves projects I have.

24:31

Jacob is in a construction class right now and he and Kara had this idea that they really are. Our dog is getting old in age and our dog is having a hard time getting in the car. So I've been. He's huge Y'all, he's like 95 pounds and I've had to lift him into the car to take him to vet appointments and to take him to the groomer. And Jacob was really concerned about that because he can't leap into the car anymore and he has to be lifted. So Jacob decided he wanted he assigned himself a project that he was going to create a ramp and he's been learning all about building and he's been learning how to really utilize geometry more in the construction class than he has actually in the math class that he his online math program. But he and Kara built a ramp for the dog but we really quickly discovered some problems with it and so he went back and fixed the problems with the ramp. He he chose two by fours, which the dog is having a hard time walking on, the two by fours, and he realized, okay, we need to have wider boards, the angle's okay for the dog, but I maybe need to do a slope. And so he did a project and he was able to evaluate himself and I was able to evaluate the process. I didn't have to give him a grade, I didn't have to test him on anything. He created this project and then he himself was like, if I was going to give myself a grade on this project, I'd probably give it a c. But I want to reevaluate it right. Sometimes we give tests and then that becomes the end. But assessing and evaluating, when a child can do that with you and go, oh, you know what, this is not working. I need to adjust this. Or when they make a recipe Jacob also loves making sourdough bread.

26:28

Kara loves baking. Yesterday morning she wanted to make German pancakes or Dutch babies, and we were almost out of eggs and she's like OK, mom, I need. What do I do when we don't have enough ingredients? I'm like're gonna have to cut the, the recipe in half, and so she was figuring that out. You know she's nine and she's like okay, so I don't know what half of a fourth is, and it takes a fourth of a cup of sugar. So I was like okay, well, let's do an eighth of a. It's an eighth of a cup and this is how you figure it out. And she's like, okay, got it Right. By the way, do you think that that is in her brain? Now? A half of a fourth is an eighth. You better believe it. We haven't even started fractions with her yet. She's still working on multiplication, and so she, but she got it right away. She's like, okay, got it. And you know, half of four eggs is two eggs. So she's doing division in her head. But then she made the Dutch babies and she's like, okay, yeah, the recipe turned out right.

27:36

It's good she was able to evaluate herself. I wasn't giving her a test, it wasn't official assigned schoolwork, but she was able to evaluate. She is always she and Jacob are always cooking. But she was able to evaluate. She is always she and Jacob are always cooking. Katie is the same. They're always cooking and they're always evaluating their um, how they're doing with their cooking, like, did, did this work? Uh, did I like this?

27:59

And so by doing projects whether that's cooking projects or hands-on projects, maybe they're sewing something, that's cooking projects or hands-on projects, maybe they're sewing something, they're making something we start to see how they're doing. We start to assess are they learning these things? Do they understand? Are they making the same mistakes twice and it becomes a very natural thing where failure is acceptable, because failure enables them to improve. Oh man, that recipe turned out awful. Well, that's okay. What could I do differently in the future to make it more successful? And then they utilize that. So projects are another way to evaluate or assess how they're doing with things and then finally just ask them how do you think you're doing? Do you understand this? So those are three things that you can do without having to give them paper tests on things. By the way, what does a paper test actually evaluate? Have you ever thought about that? It evaluates what they can recite back from rote memorization, what they can recite back from rote memorization. It's actually not that effective in seeing what they're actually learning or if they're understanding concepts versus conversations and observations and projects right, those are far more effective to see if a child is learning, and those types of things enable failure, and failure is great, because true learning comes as we fail and then have to adjust and fail, and we adjust and fail and adjust.

29:34

I've shared the story before. A couple of years ago, jacob was really into animation. He is not anymore. Right, he has discovered animation is not his passion. He likes doing it, but it's not his passion. And so he wanted a YouTube video. I said we could set up a YouTube video. He didn't have his name on it and and I was like, oh, let me evaluate your YouTube channel. And he said what I'll do. You know, mom, here he is at the time he's like 10. And he's like mom, you don't know that much about YouTube and I will know how I'm doing on YouTube without you giving me a grade. Do you know how? I'll know, mom, I'll get views. And if I don't get views, then that means I need to readjust what I'm doing. Whether it's my thumbnail, whether it's the content. I'll have to figure that out. Youtube will tell me if I'm doing well or not by how many views I get. Is is that, is it the content pushed out or not? He understood that as a 10 year old, I didn't have to evaluate him to say you did a good job or not. Like um, he let YouTube that be the evaluator, that that natural evaluation there was, that those natural consequences that enabled him to then make adjustments.

30:46

So no, as a homeschooling parent, you do not have to constantly give your kids tests. Now there are other homeschoolers who passionately disagree with me on this. There is a classical homeschooling YouTuber that is passionate. We've got to prepare our kids for testing. We've got to get them all geared up and I'm sorry I am about the process over. The actual final like is the outcome that they are a good writer right now. Now I'm more interested in the process of them becoming a good writer, and are they learning themselves to make corrections? Are they failing where they need to and then learning from the failures? I want them to fail. I don't have to call it a failure, but that's what it is is, oh man, that sourdough did not turn out. What needs to be adjusted so that it's delicious the next time, so that it rises properly the next time. So again, people passionately disagree with me.

31:50

And then those who are like well, what if they don't get into college? And what if they don't know how to take tests? Well, y'all, I believe testing anxiety comes from kids taking tests nonstop as children and like Pavlov's dogs going I failed this test, ah, now I have anxiety, right, when kids don't ever have tests and they finally take them. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do a multiple choice test to figure out how to do them right. It doesn't, but they don't and this is very non-scientific, right. This is my personal opinion.

32:30

I think that testing anxiety comes from perpetually doing tests and learning to hate them, being conditioned to hate them, being conditioned to be afraid of them, as teachers are having to teach to the test. Then the children they feel that anxiety from the teachers. They know that, like kids are smart, they pick stuff up. But those homeschoolers that I've known who have gone to college have done really well with assessments, even though many of them never really did assessments officially, like did official paper assessments. They do just fine with SATs. They don't see them as the end-all be-all, they see them as part of the process but it's not a big deal. Versus kids I've seen in the public school system with severe test anxiety and I do have a child who gets test anxiety, who was in the public school system for a long time my kids now.

33:23

To them it's like meh, you know when we use an evaluator, um, she asks them questions. Show me what you've done, let me see that, let me see your progress. Wow, you started your pictures like this and now you're drawing like this. Well, look at that. You know that that's far more powerful powerful, in my opinion, than a paper test that is wanting conveyor belt learning Plus. Children are all so different and they're going to glean different information based on who they are. Anyway, so those are the three things. Technically four things observation, conversation projects and then asking them. Things. Observation conversation projects and then asking them. I hope this helps as you are trying to assess whether your children are learning or not.

34:13

Y'all have joy in the journey with these kids. Learning is a lifetime pursuit that we get to go with them on through into adulthood and then, once they're adults, they're on their own. But we're still there. We're still there to mentor and love them, be with them when they need us. It switches into adulthood. They don't need us quite as much, but I want to be the kind of parent where they still ask us questions. They still want our opinions. I have that with one adult child, not so much with the other adult child, but that's okay. I hope you know that you are doing better than you think you are. You got this. Hope to see you in next Wednesday's workshop. We'll talk next week.