Let me begin by saying I am not a fan of standardized exams, for a whole variety of reasons, most of which have been articulated by writers far more talented than I, such as Alfie Kohn. That said, I have nothing against testing per se—but I think for tests to be useful they need to give you specific feedback, so as you can learn from them. And this is true whether the test is in swimming, driving a car, or algebra. So it follows that I am opposed to the way some standardized tests seems to be used: parent and child get little more than a “raw mark’” (i.e., no useful feedback to guide the student’s future learnings), and the test is used as a way to rank and compare schools / districts / countries, etc.

Daegan and I decided he would write the CAT-3 (we opted out of the provincial exams students do in grade 3 in Alberta, and could have opted out of all testing entirely), for a few reasons. First, the test was to be administered and marked by me (the answer key was included), meaning instant and specific feedback on areas of strength, weakness, and any developing ‘gaps’. Daegan was curious how he was faring compared to kids his age, and also curious what “typical grade 3 questions” looked like.

The test did give me some very useful feedback about some areas to focus on (writing conventions—i.e., punctuation—paragraph structure, spelling, and in math, subtraction with regrouping.) The subtraction with regrouping was an interesting one for me. Daegan in fact answered all 4 ‘subtraction with regrouping’ questions incorrectly, and had I not been able to see the specifics, I no doubt would have jumped to a wrong conclusion. Upon examining his answers (all multiple choice format), Daegan made the same small error each time: he “borrowed” from the larger place value to make the subtraction work for the smaller place value, but forgot to reduce that larger place value by one. So for example, 45-17 = 38 (correct answer 28), or 526-163 = 463 (correct answer 363) in Daegan’s world. A very small error, one we talked about, and a few days later during a math lesson that just happened to require some subtraction with regrouping, Daegan did it correctly. But if I hadn’t had that specific feedback, and only got a raw ‘math score” (Daegan made a total of 5 errors…but which 5???) or got somewhat more specific feedback: multiplication: 100%, addition: 100%, simple subtraction 100%, subtraction with regrouping: 0%….well, what would most of us parents do? We’d probably think the child hadn’t understood that concept AT ALL, and gone back and redone the entire unit, no doubt frustrating and boring us both.

So overall, the testing was a positive experience, other than being, in my 8-year-old’s words “TOO LONG!”. He is keen to do a test again in grade 6 (when kids here write provincial exams). He enjoyed “learning how to fill out the bubbles”, especially on the first page (his name, birthdate and so on—unnecessary for a home test, of course, but it seems to be a life skill in our culture.) We both got useful feedback on areas to focus on, as well as areas of strength, and the spread of his marks (from 59th percentile to 98th; from grade 4 to grade 11 levels) only confirmed our decision to continue to homeschool: the school system simply isn’t structured for kids like him. The spread between particular marks was also interesting and confirmed some of the challenges we have in his learning: his reading and language/vocabulary scores are several grades above his writing conventions and spelling; the same holds true between his math concepts score, which was more than 3 grade levels higher than his math ‘computation’ score. (He also—I know this from watching him on the test—is WAY faster and more confident at estimating than at calculating, which gives me ideas of how to better teach him to self-correct in math: he can use his strong estimation skills to ‘check’ that his computations are plausible).

Overall Daegan did very well on the exam, scoring above grade level in every area, and with an overall ‘combined’ score of the 94th percentile. So the exam put to bed any lingering doubts Jim or I had about not following a standard curriculum (we don’t follow the Alberta Program of Studies). We believed Daegan was thriving as a homeschooler, and saw such most every day—but it was still nice to have some external, black-and-white proof of it. Yes, even taking into account that standardized tests are poor mechanisms for assessing what many children know. For example, the standardized test didn’t capture a skill Daegs recently mastered:

After all, he’s still an 8-year-old boy.

Gareth is now reading at a grade 1.45 level (i.e., at a level of a typical child half-way through grade 1), whereas last year he registered as a grade 0.75. Gareth was able to read 29 words this year, focussed on simple phonetic words, words with silent e, words with double O (e.g., zoo) and words with double E (e.g. see). All other vowel and consonant blends stump him, so I’ll be doing more with him on decoding letter combinations in the next year (e.g., TH, AY, OU, etc.). Daegan never needed any explicit instruction in learning to read, so I’m treading new ground here—suggestions welcome! The 29 words Gareth was able to read this year were:

see, swim, sat, made, lake, frog, duck, green, dog, and, zoo, tree, dad, bed, run, pet, doctor, brush, slope, cake, soon, week, spend, tent, dusk, best, camp, dress, egg

It should be noted that, as I did last year, I wrote Gareth’s words out for him on index cards, as the typeface on the assessment itself is quite small. I am interested in his reading abilities, not his eyesight at this point.

Daegan is now reading at a grade 9.2 level, whereas last year he was at a grade 7.35. He read the words from grade P (i.e., Kindergarten) through grade 4 perfectly, and made 2, 1, 3 and 3 (out of 20 words each) mistakes in pronunciation on the lists for grades 5 through 8 respectively. It was at grade 9 that there was a big drop-off, as he was able to read these 11 (of 20) words:

ornate, priority, aquatic, aggressive, industrialist, nutritional, indispensable, malicious, premature, chastisement, legacy

and he mispronounced or missed entirely these 9:

regime, suffice, judicial, legitimate, arduous, masquerade, decipher, scrupulous, memorandum

It should be noted that while Daegan’s reading is at a grade 9 level, the rest of his literacy skills—such as spelling, writing, and sentence structure—are not. As I said, he picked up reading effortlessly; I take zero credit other than providing him with ready access to all kinds of books. His brain is just wired that way. Next year may be the last one for this assessment for Daegan, as there is only one more level past grade 9, that of high school (of which he could read 2 of 20 words). If anyone knows of other easy-to-use reading assessments, please leave me a comment as it is helpful to have a baseline each year to mark progress. 

dog, dad, see, pet, run, bed, duck, frog, green, sat, swim, tree, zoo, tiger, egg

unison, mistrust, algebra, bifocals, kindergarten, ample, comical, tolerated, perceived, gymnastics, quizzical, appreciative, computation, elegance, desperation, acrobatic, bolstered, expectation, cartoonist, confront.