Testing, testing.

"What are we doing today, Mom?"

"Something a little different.  Today at one o’clock a lady is coming over and she is going to ask you some questions."

"Why?  What kind of questions?"

"Oh, math, spelling, things like that.  The state has a rule that you have to take a test every year."

"To see if your mom’s teaching you okay?"

"Something like that.  You’ll probably have fun."

We had our first experience as a homeschooling family with a nationally norm-referenced standardized test, as Minnesota law calls it.  In Minnesota, homeschooled students are required to sit for one such test each school year; as long as one parent has a bachelor’s degree (or one of several other qualifications that I can’t remember), we don’t have to report the scores to anyone. 

I believe in standardized testing, although maybe I’m biased because I was always the kind of kid who really loved test-taking.   Mark too:  What, you mean we don’t have to have school for four days?  And we spend it taking a test that shows how smart we are?  Sweet! 

I chose the PIAT-R, a.k.a. "Peabody," because it’s not a written test; it’s a verbal interview.    We have plenty of time to learn how to fill in bubbles later on.  I hired a local woman to come and administer the test at our schoolroom table. 

I was really pleased with the test methodology.  Oscar was totally comfortable, and he squirmed with delight when he knew the answers to the questions.  I had explained ahead of time that everyone gets about the same number of answers wrong on this test, because the idea is to keep going until you miss a certain number, and then it stops; so he should not be surprised when he got to some questions that he didn’t know the answer to, because that’s how the test works.  He accepted this and seemed to enjoy himself, uttering a good natured "Darn!" when he missed one. 

I was particularly interested in the spelling portion of the test.  I’d made up my own spelling curriculum, and was curious about whether the order of presentation of materials had been effective.  I watched as Oscar got every word right all through the early ones — all material I’d presented to him already — and then, spellings that I knew he hadn’t studied yet began to show up, and sure enough, he missed them all, bang bang bang (but gave answers that followed the phonics patterns he already knew — e.g. giving "wether" for "weather").  So I was really pleased!  He was right where I had expected him to be based on the spelling study we’d done up to now.  And it was right on grade level, too.

At the end, the tester let Oscar choose a new pencil from a colorful sheaf she’d brought with her, let Milo have one too, wrote up the results, handed them to me, and left.  Painless, and only a little more than an hour.