How do you assess your kids according to the standards?

Maybe you are a public school teacher or maybe a parent who is concerned about the core standards. I, too, was very concerned when I brought my kids home. I wondered: "If I ever want to send my kids back to school, I want them to be in line with their peers." "I don't want my kids to fall behind." "I don't want my kids to have gaps in their education." I was so concerned that I contacted the school to ask for copies of the standards and was told to "google it." I even reached out to see if I could have a copy of a blank report card with which to assess my child, and was told I could not since it was all online and there was no way for them to print me a blank one. I was lost and confused, but little did I know this was a blessing.

I went to the internet and started to browse the standards for my state. Here is a copy of the National Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. The document is 99 pages long, but remember this is for grades K-12 and a variety of subject matter. The standards were developed to help us to determine the knowledge students should have at the end of a particular grade and not necessarily how it should be taught. In the same way that we developed goals and reasons for homeschooling (as discussed in our "Why do I want to homeschool?" post), the government has developed goals that school children should reach throughout their education, which is a wonderful thing. I believe without goals, we may all be teaching slightly different things depending on the region in which we live.

Here is a copy of the Mathematics Core Standards.

Each curriculum has a scope and sequence. That's fancy terminology for what will be covered in a curriculum. We look at the year and then the overall curriculum to make sure that it covers the content we want it to. When we take a test, we are measuring if we have a certain knowledge set. If your child performed poorly on a standardized test it may not be that they are unintelligent, but rather that they don't understand certain concepts or possibly that they weren't even taught it. Here's an example: I taught music in a high poverty school district in Kalamazoo. Eighty-five percent of our kids were on free or reduced lunch. The results of a certain standardized test showed that the students didn't understand perimeter, so we were asked in music, PE, art, and in the classroom to use that language purposefully in our teaching. The kids weren't unintelligent and they may have even been taught the concept but not enough to understand it or remember it.

I bet you are wondering where I'm going with all this? As you can tell, I'm not anti-standards at all. BUT, I do think that we all become so caught up in the standards that we forget what our goal is. Have you ever heard this saying?

The goal of my home education is to teach my kids how to be lifelong learners and how to think and evaluate life through the lens of a Christian perspective. If I do this, even if I miss the quadratic formula or the parts of a persuasive essay, they can learn them later in life. The thing is, there will always be gaps in a child's education. The goal is not to stuff as much knowledge into them as we possibly can. The goal is to foster good discussion, teach them how to ask good questions, and for them to be humble enough to receive coaching, but also strong enough to stand against unbiblical things and stand up for the biblical ones. Now the standards don't intimidate me, but that does!

I tried to look at all the standards for my kids and I obsessed over if they were learning the "right" things. I was exhausted and my focus was all wrong. When I let go and just focused on quality learning, everything fell into place. Pick a curriculum and don't worry about it. Make adjustments as you go, if necessary. The writers of various curricula didn't set out to write a curriculum to be poor quality and not teach important concepts. If you follow a curriculum throughout its entirety, the major concepts WILL be covered. That work has honestly been done for you.

Your child may not excel in spelling, but maybe they do in math. Another child may not excel in math, but in writing. Help them to get a good foundation in their "weaker" subjects, and then I wouldn't worry too much about it. God has designed each of us for a unique purpose, and if we were all cookie-cutter then the world would not be an exciting place. As homeschoolers, we have the ability to help develop and focus on our kids' strengths. We all have weaknesses but we also have those strengths. In life, we don't have to be good at all of it, but we do have to be good at something. Society is what elevates certain positions above others, but we need all of them to make the world work.

My goal of this post is to give you some peace of mind, and to help you to let go of the standards and just foster a love of learning with your child. Remember, you are not just training them in their education but training them in life skills.

Jessica