Do Homeschoolers Need Formal Evaluations To Determine Their Children’s Academic Progress?

Originally published in GWS 69 as OBSERVING VS. EVALUATING 

Jan Hunt (who recently moved from BC to Oregon) sent us a copy of a letter that she wrote as a follow-up to a radio talk show with the BC Minister of Education. Jan had called in to the show and had given a brief answer to the minister’s question “How can homeschooling parents determine their children’s academic progress, if not through formal evaluation?” She then wrote the letter, from which we excerpt below, to give a more thorough answer to the question.

The assumption that homeschooling parents somehow lack awareness of their children’s progress, and therefore require formal evaluation of that progress, is undoubtedly related to the fact that homeschoolers function beyond the arena of the schools, and our philosophies and methods are not well known or understood. It is with the hope of clarifying our theories and procedures that I have written this letter. How do homeschooling parents know their children are learning? The answer to this question is, to put it most simply, direct observation, my husband and I have only one child (Jason, who just turned 8). If a teacher had only one child in her classroom, and was unable to describe the reading skills of that child, everyone would be dismayed—how could a teacher have such close daily contact with one child and miss something so obvious? Yet many people unfamiliar with homeschooling imagine that parents with just this sort of close daily contact with their child require outside evaluation to determine their child’s progress, This puzzles homeschooling parents, who cannot imagine missing anything so interesting as the nature and direction of their child’s learning.  … Any parent of a preschool child could tell you how many numbers her child can count to, and how many colors he knows—not through testing, but simply through many hours of listening to his questions and statements and observing his behavior. In homeschooling, this type of observation simply continues on into higher ages and more complex learning. There are many times in the course of a day when a reasonably curious child will want to know the meaning of certain printed words—in books and newspapers, on board game instruction cards, on package labels, in the TV daily weather message, on mail that has just arrived, and so on. lf this child’s self-esteem is intact, he will not hesitate to ask his parents the meaning of these words. Through the reduction of questions of this type, the actual reading aloud of certain words, and the evidence of appropriate behavior associated with printed words (“Look, Daddy, this package is for you!”) it seems safe to assume that reading is progressing in the direction of literary. This may seem to outsiders to be overly general, but homeschooling parents learn through experience that more specific evaluation is intrusive, unnecessary, and self-defeating.  … Interestingly, a child’s progress is not always smooth; there may be sudden shifts from one stage to the next. Thus, formal evaluation given just prior to such a shift may give unfair and misleading information. At a time when I knew (through a reduction in the number of requests for me to read certain signs, labels, and so on) that Jason’s reading was improving. I told him one evening that I was unable to read a book to him because of a headache. He said, “Well, you just rest and I’ll read a book to you.” He proceeded to read an entire book flawlessly, at a level of more difficulty than I would have guessed he had been able to read.

Thus it sometimes happens in the natural course of living with a child that we receive more direct and specific information about his progress. But it should be stressed that this is part of the natural process of “aiding and abetting” a child’s learning, and that requiring such direct proof is almost always self-defeating. Had I required him to read that book, he might well have refused, declaring that he couldn’t read it yet—because he would have felt the anxiety which anyone feels under scrutiny. But because he chose to read voluntarily, and his accuracy was not being questioned, anxiety was not a factor …