• Summer Reading
  
• Homeschooling at the Speed of Life- A Review
  
• Hands-On Resource for the Dog Days of Summer
• Helping the Estes Family of Hands and Hearts
  
• Reprintable Article: Year-End Testing- Let the Buyer Beware! (If you read nothing else, you need to read this!)
  

Dear Friend,

It's hot outside! Aside from the near-daily watering of my garden, I've been enjoying the cool indoors and sampling some of the goodies on my summer reading reading bookshelf. Here's a sample of what I'm enjoying now:

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (almost finished with this)
A History of Illuminated Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel (a large, beautiful, scholarly volume)
Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James Taylor (absolutely fascinating)
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (just starting)
Romantic Poets (Wordsworth and Coleridge-- beautiful as always)
The Bible of Illuminated Letters by Margaret Morgan (lovely to look at, practical to implement)

I'm also catching up on back issues of some of my favorite magazines-- Threads, Fine Gardening, Cottage Living, Country Gardens-- and looking forward to the first new issue of an old favorite, Victoria, which will resume publication this fall. While I sew or practice illumination and knotwork, I'm listening to two Teaching Company audio courses-- The English Novel and Classics of American Literature (not simultaneously, of course!). Classics of Russian Literature awaits as soon as I finish the first two.

The dog days of summer are a wonderful opportunity to enjoy creative indoor activities that sometimes slip away during the school year and the outdoor seasons of spring and fall. I have had my own belief in the importance of hands-on creative pursuits confirmed by James Taylor's Poetic Knowledge. In discussing the value of art, music, and poetry, he refers to Aristotle's four customary branches of education-- reading and writing, gymnastic experience, music, and drawing-- as foundational for a life of virtue. Taylor's classic, holistic view of education tips the current education system, with its emphasis on fragmentation and disconnected skills, on its head, and kicks it into the educational dungeon where it belongs. I'm really enjoying this book!

So what's on your reading list? I'd love to hear about it.

Enjoy the rest of summer-

Janice Campbell

Homeschooling at the Speed of Life by Marilyn Rockett

Hands-On Resource for the Dog Days of Summer

Benefit for the Estes Family of Hands and Hearts

Year-End Testing:

Let the Buyer Beware! 

A reprintable article* from-

Janice Campbell
http://www.EverydayEducation.com

In my nearly two decades of homeschooling, I've discovered that most homeschool parents suffer from a bit of testing anxiety. There's nothing quite as intimidating as having your entire year of teaching weighed in the balance and found wanting! Unfortunately, I'm not the only person who has realized that parents have insecurities. and the wolves are circling, waiting to take advantage of you at your most vulnerable moments. If you are forewarned, though, you can be forearmed, so I'll share what I've observed.

The Background

In many states, homeschoolers are required to have students tested in basic subjects at the end of each school year, using standardized tests such as the California Achievement Test (CAT) or the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Depending upon specific state laws, students may take the exam at a local public school, through a private administrator (these can be found through your state homeschool organization), or at home with the parent as the test administrator. I have always opted for the latter option, as I believe that any student will achieve more accurate test results when tested in a familiar, relaxed setting.

Although most homeschoolers realize that the education establishment has little to offer, many have a lingering awe of the testing process. They somehow imagine that testing will be better if it's done by a stranger in an uncomfortable setting. (This couldn't be farther from the truth, but that's not the point of this particular warning!) For a variety of reasons, they choose not to administer the test themselves or to have it administered by someone else in the homeschool community.

Every Parent's Nightmare

Every year I talk to parents who are dismayed by test results that don't match their student's capabilities. This year, I talked with a family who had taken their 13-year-old son, who had just completed eighth grade, to a commercial tutoring center for a standard CAT. I was appalled to hear their story! The tutoring center (part of a chain of centers which shall remain nameless) did the following:

• Started an entire battery of expensive, evaluative testing using tests for grades 8, 9, and 10, rather than simply administering the grade-appropriate CAT as in previous years.
  
• Offered a significant discount when the parent objected to the unexpected tests and the much-higher-than-expected charge.
  
• Included a psychological test along with the academic portions of the exam (without letting the parent know this would be done). The parent would not have known this if the student hadn't mentioned it. 
  
• Prepared an extensive, official-looking report of the test results, labeling a number of scores "fair" and "poor," including above average scores on the 9th and 10th grade exams.
• Provided a 'consultant's' written comments on the test scores that contained spelling and usage errors. 
  
• After an interview with the parents, in which the student's alleged weaknesses were highlighted, the center presented a tutoring plan that would "help make school easier with strategies." (I'm not kidding-- that's what is written on the report). 
  
• This wonderful plan, for 180 hours of tutoring (at over $40 per hour), was offered with full financing, in case the parents didn't happen to have the full $6,804.00 lying around. (Again, I'm absolutely not kidding.)
  

That's Outrageous!

The student's mom called me the day after the test, still shocked and upset by the unexpectedly negative evaluation. She and her husband were actually wondering if they needed to sign up for the recommended tutoring. After hearing the story, and asking for the hard numbers -- percentile rankings and stanines-- for each area of the test, the answer was obvious.

The student's scores fell into the 5th and 7th stanines (out of a possible 9), which indicated that the student was scoring at or above average for his grade level. This is obviously very acceptable, but by attaching negative labels such as "fair" and "poor" to the scores, the tutoring center created a sense of emergency, which provided an effective foundation for the sale of their tutoring services. While every parent would like to see their student's scores fall into the 99th percentile, "above average" is still very good, and no cause for alarm-- or a second mortgage.

In the counseling session at which the student's test results were revealed, the parents were told that the tutoring center "worked with a lot of homeschooled students." While I am sure the centers have a useful function for some students, I find this disturbing. If the experience of the family I spoke to was typical, I believe that the tactics used by the center bordered on the unethical. Among other things, they administered far more extensive tests than were requested; they labeled results with subjective evaluative words that created a sense of crisis; they took advantage of natural feelings of parental anxiety in order to try to sell an expensive product.

My Recommendation

This is far from the first horror story I've heard about commercial tutoring centers, so if you must use one, I suggest the following:

• Understand that the tutoring center exists for the purpose of selling you a very expensive tutoring package. 
  
• Do not permit any testing other than the state-required minimum.
• If the testing center tests your student at multiple grade levels, be aware that this provides them with additional opportunities to provide negative labels on perfectly acceptable results. 
  
• When you receive the results, focus on the numbers, rather than the tutoring center's evaluative words. (If you see that the student has scored in the 80th percentile -- that is, better than 80% of all students who took the exam-- you will understand that this is a good result, even if the tutoring center labels it as "poor" or "fair.")
• Use the numerical results to help you address areas of weakness in the next year, but realize that test scores do not always accurately reflect a student's knowledge.
  
• If you have questions about the results, or feel that you need help with areas of actual weakness, contact your state homeschool organization (www.heav.org in Virginia). They often maintain a list of qualified homeschool consultants that can help you decide what you need to do next.
  
• If you feel that your student has a genuine learning disability, your state organization should be able to direct you toward special-needs consultants whose values are compatible with your own. 
  
• In any difficult situation, talk with more experienced homeschool parents in order to gain perspective. You can learn much from those who have gone before!
  

The Bottom Line
The parents I spoke with are experienced homeschoolers with a strong, well-designed curriculum, but at the moment of the hard sell in the "counseling session," they experienced genuine feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, and even failure. Fortunately, they didn't let themselves be persuaded to sign the tutoring contract, but how many parents would find it difficult to resist? We all want to do what is best for our children, and few of us feel totally adequate for the big task of teaching teens. We can be vulnerable to the suggestion that our children's needs are not being met, so we need to have counselors that are trustworthy. Beware of wolves in sheep's clothing!

*This article may be reprinted in its entirety, provided that the following information is included:

Copyright 2007 by Janice Campbell, author of Get a Jump Start on College!, Transcripts Made Easy, and a forthcoming high school literature series, has been writing and speaking in central Virginia since the late 1980's. She homeschooled her four sons from kindergarten into college, using the principles she now shares in her books, workshops, and her free e-newsletter. Sign up for it today at www.EverydayEducation.com or www.Janice-Campbell.com!