More Thoughts on Testing

The nice thing about giving standardized tests yourself (as opposed to having them done by a third party) is that you can see exactly what your child is missing. So, instead of just having a vague idea that Kid2 messed up on the punctuation test, I know that she pretty much blew it specifically on capitalization. Interestingly, she did fine with any and all capitalization issues in other parts of the test.

Also, I know what she missed on the Social Studies portion of the test, and I know that I really Do Not Care. I'm confident she can lead a happy and fulfilling life, and even accomplish wonderous things, without EVER knowing the answer to some of those questions.

I had heard that CAT5 is less rigorous than Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which is less rigorous than Stanford Achievement Test. Based on what I observed so far, having used ITBS and CAT5, that's true. The ITBS math computation section was a beat-the-clock type test, the type where the child learns to answer as many questions as possible as accurately as possible before the timer chimes. CAT5 math computation gave enough time to complete all the questions, check answers, then maybe go take a quick nap on the couch. It will be interesting to see how the scoring and norms stack up.