My thoughts on testing

It is April here in North Carolina and that means annual testing at my house.  In NC all home schooled children are required to test every year using nationally standardized tests.  I personally hate achievement tests.  I hated them growing up when we were all required to sit at our desks and listen to the teacher drone on for the umpteenth time - "Fill in the bubble make your mark heavy and dark and if you want to change an answer erase your mark completely."  Where did all this come from??  Achievement tests to me are about the stupidest thing we do to children.  This is no measure of the knowledge of any child I know and only frustrates and humiliates children who do not test well or cannot communicate what they know in little round bubbles that must be colored in heavy and dark.  My high schooler's test is full of political correctness and some time I want someone to tell me what in the world that has to do with intelligence, reasoning, or the ability to communicate.  We do these tests every year because we are required to by law and I am also trying to teach my children about being good citizens and obeying the law, but I ignore the results of these tests completely.  I know full well what my children can and can't do because I am with them every day.  I know that children develop at different rates and not on a linear scale.  I also know that my ten year old has math days and non-math days.  There are days he gets up in the morning and for whatever funky reason he can't do math.  When these non-math days happen we simply read math books, biographies of mathematicians or play games, and then return to the math book the next day and he is fine and goes gang busters.  But if he tests on a non-math day people would think he is innumerate which he is not.   I know testing is not going away anytime soon so my April's will continue to contain this silliness, but I am so grateful that we live in a free land where we can homeschool our children and minimize the damage these tests can cause.

PS- I found this article today (April 20, 2013) and thought I would add it here.  Great article!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/17/eighth-grader-designs-standardized-test-that-slams-standardized-tests/