A few weeks ago, Captain Science did the first round of standardized testing since he’s been out of public school. He took the ITBS through a neighboring homeschool co-op and it was an overall interesting experience.
Both days ran very late. In fact, the first day ran so late (almost an hour) that the director rescheduled the next day’s testing to account for an extra hour and a half…and they still ran another 45 minutes late over that! I’m pretty sure they took long breaks between every 15 minute test section.
Captain Science felt like he aced the math and the language arts, but he was a little concerned about the social studies, since he hasn’t actually had any of the stuff they covered. Oops! Told him it didn’t matter; all I want is to make sure he’s on track in math/LA and to satisfy the state’s requirements for standardized testing. None of this is the part I’d call “interesting,” however.
No, the interesting part was when, the day after testing, I picked Captain Science’s backpack up from the floor where he’d tossed it…and his test booklet and Scantron fell out. *headdesk*
That was an “oh, shit!” moment, because I was pretty sure that taking the test off site invalidated the test, meaning we’d wasted two days and $60-ish dollars on a test that would never get scored. The front of the book declared it to be property of whoever it is that distributes and scores the tests, so I emailed the test proctor and let her know we had her booklet and ask if I could drop it off. I became ever so happy to be a homeschooler when she let me know that, since the tests are only for our benefit (we have to DO them, but the state doesn’t get the scores), she’d just let me bring her the booklet and the Scantron and no one would need to be the wiser.
I zipped the whole kit n’ kaboodle up into a gallon-sized Ziplock bag, because for some reason, that made me feel like it was some how not being compromised by being away from the testing facility, and brought it to the proctor the next day. Results are already back and she’s mailing them to me.
The quirkiness of homeschoolers is how the test book came home to begin with — space cadet son + apparently equally space cadet proctors — but the quirkiness of homeschoolers also allowed us to turn the results in anyway. I’ll call it a win.
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[...] ur doin it wrong by Smrt Mama Jun 04 2011 TrackBack Address. Captain Science’s ITBS results have already arrived, and they are…interesting, to say the [...]
So, if you don’t administer it yourself next year, I’m thinking about going down to Decatur where Abbey does it. We could carpool. They do it in March is the plus in my head… especially since I like to travel in May.
I might be on board w/ that.
They have to take the tests, but the state doesn’t get the results? WTH?? They just want you to have a benchmark to compare to, or what?
We have to do testing every three years and keep annual records, but we aren’t required to turn them over to the state unless the documents are subpoena’d for some kind of court case — like if they were accusing us of neglect or something.
Crap, I’m glad you wrote this post! I forgot to send in our stupid test results. We tested back in December and I haven’t thought about it since. Quirky homeschoolers, indeed.
By the way, I’m glad you’re not dead.