What is the best standardized test for relaxed homeschoolers?

[Climbing Rose]

We are required to test in certain grades (3, 5, 8). So since I 'have' to choose a test, is there one that would be best for DC who are not used to being tested?

We live in PA, if that matters.

I have heard that one test is easier, that one is oral, and that one may be more for special-needs children..? Not sure if what I am hearing is right.

Also, can anyone explain to me how these tests work as far as scoring? I keep being told they are not scored like regular tests, but I am not really getting it. (Maybe pregnancy brain there! =)

I just heard yesterday of an option that lets your child take a "non-graded" (?) test, for children whose parents just won't pick an arbitrary grade level for them at test-taking time...? I would be interested in that if anyone knows about it.

I just don't like thinking about the testing. My children aren't *in* grades, so I have to just pick out of thin air for them, or go by what they 'would be' in (but aren't). Is seems so silly. But I think I 'need' the test scores to turn in here in PA.

[annettemarie]

We did the Peabody. Our evaluator is super relaxed and she administered it.

[4evermom]

We did the CAT.  It can be done at home as long as it isn't administered by the parents (that's a PA law, not a test rule).  It was a multiple choice, fill in the bubble format.  Although it is a timed test, you can take as long as a break as you want in between the timed sections.  Ds took the test over the course of a week.  He is unschooled and was a late reader but he did fine, regardless.  He did think the reading passage for the reading comprehension was overwhelmingly long (2 stories less than a page of text, each) but he'd only really started picking up reading in the previous 6 months.  He ended up reading the beginning and the end and making educated guesses which worked well for the reality based story but not the fantasy based one.

I think we got back two types of scores.  One essentially was whether the child did average, above average, etc in each section.  The other gave percentiles which just means it says how well your child did compared to the other kids who took that test at the same time of year.  50% would mean half the kids did better and half did worse, even if they all did really well and got the majority of the questions right.

You do need to send in a copy of the test results to the school district at the end of the year.  And you'll show a copy to your evaluator, as well.  As long as you pick one of the approved tests, whatever kind of score they give you will be acceptable.  There is a list and other info on Pauline's site: http://home.comcast.net/~askpauline/hs/homeschooltesting.html

[tankgirl73]

Hewitt Homeschoolings' PASS test!

It's just like the CAT but targeted to homeschoolers.  So it's not timed (like 'standard' standardized tests are).  It's also more fine-tuned to get useful results.  A standardized test is the same for all grade 3 students, for instance.  This gives percentile results for a population, but if a particular student is an outlier -- either high above or well below average -- that test will not give helpful or accurate results for that students.  For instance, a student who is struggling with grade 3 level math might get almost no questions right and a really really low score.  That tells you they're not functioning at the same level as most grade 3 students, but tells you nothing about their actual level of functioning.  Maybe they would be doing really well with grade 2 level questions.  Similarly, if a student maxes out the test getting all the answers right, you know they're higher functioning than average but no idea what their true level is.  This actually happened one year with my son (before we found the PASS) -- he got 100% correct on a CAT test, I think it was the Reading portion of his grade 4 test and it said that was a grade 7 equivalent or something... but because he maxed out, we don't know if he might have been ABLE to score higher given the opportunity.

So the PASS tests let you work with sub-levels, or ranges of levels.  They overlap each other... the whole range of the booklet starts with easier questions and works up to harder questions.  Each sublevel has mostly the same questions as the previous one, but the easiest questions at the beginning are dropped and harder questions at the end are added.  You do a little pretest to get an estimation of your best sublevel.  They say that for the most accurate results, you should get between 50-80% correct, as I recall.  In other words, you have to get lots of questions WRONG in order to truly evaluate what you know and what you don't know!  I think that's brilliant.  If you get more than 80% right, then you should try the next level.

When you get your test results, they're well broken-down.  Within each test there are subdivisions, for instance in math you'll have assessments in number sense; fractions; decimals; operations... etc etc.  In each subdivision you get 'average, above average,' etc etc along with an explanation of what it means.  You get two sets of percentile scores.  One is normed against other homeschoolers who take the same PASS test.  The other is calculated to be normed against the average american public school student.  It explains for you how your nationally-normed percentiles will be higher than the homeschooled ones because hs kids do better heehee... for instance, sonny bubbles got like 75th percentile on something against other homeschoolers (meaning he got a better score than 75% of the other homeschoolers at his grade level), which was the same thing as 95th percentile against all kids at his grade level.  ;)

The PASS also gives a raw score -- not number of correct answers, but a kind of personal ranking system.  This is used to compare progress year to year.  Percentiles show your level only compared to other kids in the same year -- it doesn't show individual PROGRESS at all.  If your percentile is 50th in grade 3 and 90th in grade 4, it doesn't necessarily mean you got way smarter... it COULD just mean everyone else did worse.   Or if your percentile drops, it doesn't mean you got dumber -- you could still have learned a LOT, just not as much as everyone else.  So their raw scores are ABSOLUTE... maybe you have 612 one year, then 623 the next.  That shows progress, whatever your percentiles were.  They tell you what the average scores for each grade level are too, so for instance I can see that my son's grade 6 math levels were almost as high as the average grade 8 students, using these raw scores -- the percentiles can't tell you that.  

So not only are the PASS tests more comfortable for homeschoolers, I've found them to be much more USEFUL in terms of real information than the regular CAT tests.

[4evermom]

Originally Posted by tankgirl73 

Hewitt Homeschoolings' PASS test!

Sounds pretty good!  Unfortunately, the OP, being in Pennsylvania, is limited to these choices or sending her kids into the public school to take the PSSA with the schooled kids:

   1. California Achievement Test 
   2. Comprehensive Testing Program (CTPIV) 
   3. Iowa Test of Basic Skills 
   4. Metropolitan Achievement Test 
   5. Peabody Achievement Individual Test – Revised Version
   6. Stanford Achievement Test (not to be confused with the SAT test for college admission) 
   7. Terra Nova 
   8. Woodcock Johnson Revised Tests of Achievement III

[Climbing Rose]

Thanks! I suppose I will use the CAT since I want something we can just do here at home and be done with. I appreciate the help and advice!

[mattemma04]

We used the IOWA test and ordered it from Piedmont in NC