My Beef With Standardized Testing

This week my kids are doing standardized tests. I have a real beef with standardized testing. 

I’m not administering these tests because I believe they’re valuable, but because I have to in order to comply with the law.

The whole thing is making me irritable. I resent this intrusion of the state into my family life and parenting.

Since I don’t have to actually show the tests to any authorities, and if they showed up at my door and requested them I would flatly let them know that fact, it’s especially annoying that I have to stop TEACHING in order to test my children.

I dislike standardized tests for several reasons. One, a standardized test proves that a child a) is good at testing (and doesn’t tell you how intelligent they are or how well they learn) and  b) has been taught what’s on the test.

“3. to choose or establish a standard for.”

Who should best decide what “standards” I set for my kid’s education?

“…And these words that I am commanding you today must prove to be on your heart; and you must inculcate them in your son and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up.” Deut. 6:6,7

(This is the primary reason I homeschool, so that I can do this teaching all day long.)

Since the state doesn’t give birth to my children, feed them in the night, clothe them, hold them when they’re sick, read stories for hours each day, worry when they begin toddling around, and teach them right from wrong, I don’t think they should get to decide what my kids learn and what assessments I use to gauge their learning.

With responsibility comes privilege. The government is not responsible for my children, I am. Therefore, I have the privileges and the rights to educate them in the best way I see fit.

The state has requirements for my homeschool, but don’t provide any assistance whatsoever. I buy my own school supplies, books, textbooks. I pay for field trips. I pay school taxes to support a system I don’t believe in, a system that by their own admission is failing its citizens.

The kids are doing well on these tests, incidentally. But it’s interesting to me that my 10 year old daughter, who is a wonderful student and reading constantly, is showing signs of test anxiety.

I assured her that noone is going to see this test but me. I explained to her my feelings about testing so she understood where I stand, but she’s still stressed about it and did quite poorly on the  practice test.

“1. to bring to or make of an established standard size, weight, quality, strength, or the like: to standardize manufactured parts.”

Kids (like all people) don’t come standardized and I don’t believe their education should be either. There is no body of knowledge that every 10 year old or 14 year old “should” learn.

As I explained to my children, what if there was a test for all 40 year olds and the government demanded that 39 year old adults take it so we can “pass”? How would I do on the test? How would your dad do? What would be on the test? (And who gets to decide that?) Are we both intelligent? Do we know the same things? And does it matter?

How do you feel about standardized testing in your homeschool? Is there a requirement to do testing in your state?