Assessment, Mastery, and Testing (oh my)
Curriculum is underpinned by our values and beliefs about what a student should know and how they should come to know it. (Prideux 2003)
The heart of My Texas Homeschool was around long before I had homeschool experience or understood teaching to mastery. I gave a talk at our local homeschool conference about curriculum and assessment. I still stand by 90% of what I said, but I did leave out mastery and its relationship to assessment. In hindsight, I think that’s a big omission on my part. Experience gives me the opportunity to rectify the issue.
Teaching to Mastery
Jean Piaget is the reason I failed my first pedagogy exam. That happens when you don’t know about THE child psychologist who has had a heavy influence on education and its formation as a system. Friends, I’m not one to discredit a man’s ideas because they were used to form the education system that many find flawed. Some of what Piaget said made a whole lot of sense, specifically that true learning happens when we construct knowledge and meaning from our experiences. There is not a homeschool parent I know who doesn’t agree with that - it is largely the reason we all homeschool, to be the guide or facilitator of those experiences.
It’s also the reason we know when our child approaches mastery or has mastered a concept. We see their educational and life experiences first hand, and it’s not very hard to judge mastery when you see the process day in and day out. Read through - and at the bottom of this post is a freebie meant to help you track mastery and growth areas for your child!
What is assessment?
There’s two types of assessments: Formative and Summative. High Stakes testing falls under summative assessment, which is why it’s unpopular.
Here’s the thing, though. Assessment has gotten all scrambled up over the years. Assessment is about guiding instruction, not being the end result. When we make the goal of assessment the end of instruction, it loses it’s usefulness because you can’t retool instruction when the goal is to immediately move on. It doesn’t make sense to demonstrate learning in a cumulative way. It makes way more sense to demonstrate learning bit by bit as we learn. If something obviously didn’t stick, then hey, let’s look at what specifically was the problem.
Say your child doesn’t have a firm grasp on multiplication memorization. In a traditional scenario, you get your poor grade and the school year barrels on whether you can keep up or not. Ideally formative assessment took place along the way, and some time was spent trying to catch your child up on their times tables.
When you homeschool though, you have time to slow all the way down. We have time to stop and work on times tables until they’re mastered. Not taking the time to do this is setting a child up for issues in mathematics down the road. I was one such kid, and I’m sure many of you can relate.
Two types of assessment
Formative Assessments are the day to day assessments in our education and life. They are natural, and often don’t need a script. They include things like worksheets, discussions, projects, quizzes, basic checks for understanding (what many of us would call narration, which has more depth that basic checks), and whatever other form of casual check-in that allows you to see how your child is doing in their various studies.
Summative Assessments are the unit tests, end of course tests, final papers, and the like. They have their place but are considered so much more important than formative assessments. This doesn’t make sense to me, because if a student can’t perform on a summative assessment, the opportunities formative assessments should have provided were missed. That’s unfair. There’s a reason that every assessment in college studies are summative. It’s believed you arrive knowing how to study and conduct your own self-check formative assessments. In that setting, summative assessments do make some sense.
It’s also kind of easy to see how student’s arrived to college unprepared, on the basis of assessment alone.
How should I assess and document?
I’m going to give the homeschool answer: Do what works for you, while keeping the laws of your state and goals for your child’s education in mind. That’s a big statement, with a lot to consider.
Documentation Ideas
First, have documentation at the ready that complies with your state laws and what they require
You can keep a portfolio - this works great in elementary
Projects or scrapbooks serve as documentation too - so long as they have work samples!
Keep report cards or progress reports
Regarding High School, I highly recommend a transcript
Mix and match the above to create a document that shows your child’s academic journey
Match your child’s goals for education
If the goal is love of learning, for instance, a portfolio will fit the bill with samples of work
If your hope/goal might be college, keep documentation through beginning high school credits. This means that you can document in whatever form you choose up until your child starts taking high school credits, then you need to switch to a transcript.
Whatever your goals may be, a document of the projects, activities, and time spent together learning will always be appreciated.
What has worked for you?
If you have a way of doing assessment or documentation, I’d love to know! You can join me on Instagram @mytexashomeschool or email me at hello@mytexashomeschool.com - Thanks for reading!
As an additional thank you, below you can click on a free progress & mastery download. This would be a great cover sheet to a portfolio subject area, or just a good way to remind yourself you’re doing a great job and your kids are progressing.
