Testing Unschoolers

The pandemic was during a testing year for us, homeschool-wise. NY state has pretty strict reporting and testing laws, compared to, say, NJ, where you just let them know you're homeschooling and they don't ask what you're teaching or how it's going.

Despite the strictness, NYS still has laws that are considerate of unschooling. You aren't required to test until 5th grade. That means if your children haven't learned to read by age 10 or so (which is normal for unschoolers), that's not a problem. (Even in those cases, there are approved testers and tests that can work with that.)

With the pandemic, we haven't had to test in 2 years. So we haven't yet had to engage with the academic standards "the state" thinks children that age "should" have. 

This year, Jack, who is born in one of those "can go either way" months, decided maybe he wanted to be in the younger grade. When he was 5, he was reading, so I popped him to first grade. But in camp he chose to be in the younger grade, and now he wasn't sure which way to go. So I submitted that he'd be repeating the grade.

They asked me why.

So we decided to test Jack and see where he is. If he gets his 33rd percentile of his grade level, then we can keep him as is. If not, that is justification, and we'll hold him back. (You can still get under 33rd percentile and remain at grade level, but that's a different topic.)

A few observations about testing:

• Jack didn't really know fractions before this test. So we took an hour and I taught them to him, and he understood it pretty quickly, even though he needs some practice doing them. As an unschooler, I think it's kind of silly and feel with a child like Jack, who is mathematical, then he can wait until he wants to learn it and it will be quick. (He wanted to learn it when he discovered fractions were on the test. But in terms of long term life skills, he'll probably really learn fractions when he needs them, later, and this was just more playing around and seeing a bit about how they work.)
  
  
• My niece saw him taking the test and said, "I hope you don't fail!" Jack looked puzzled, like he had no idea what she was talking about.
  I realized that there is no failure in homeschool. There is no stress about failure, no thinking about failure, no worry about failure. It's just not on the radar. To Jack, testing is something we do for legal reasons and it gives no actual information on his true academic process nor progress, nor his value as a student or person. It got me thinking about all the times in school I worried about failing, how often I had that sick feeling during a test or after a test. And about children worrying about failing. 
  In homeschool, if you get the answer wrong or don't understand something, it just means you do it again until you do understand it or acquire the skill.
  
  
• For the first section of the test, I peeked a bit at Jack's answers as he wrote them. I estimate he got about half of them correct.
  When he finished, I asked him if it felt like it was suitable for his grade level or not. Was it very difficult? Super easy? He said it felt appropriate for where he was. It wasn't so easy but it wasn't very hard. He said, "I think I did well."
  My college aged child remarked, when I relayed this to her, that in LIFE, getting 50% of something right with no preparation is considered "doing well."
  
  
• I noticed a big difference in myself and my attitude regarding testing. I've been homeschooling for about 25 years now, and experience makes a huge difference in confidence and in philosophy. I remember so clearly worrying about every answer my kids got wrong and how, afterwards, I made a point of going over the question so that they'd have that so-important information about comma usage or decimals.
  But as I was looking over Jack's shoulder, watching him get the answer wrong, I kept thinking, "Meh, he'll have naturally learned that by the time he's an adult." or "No big deal, he can easily learn that when he wants."