To me, taking a standardized test is like having a class photo taken. You prepare your child and do what you can to have the best results but in the end you know it's just an image depicting what your child was like on that day. For the photo you'll groom them well, maybe give a fresh haircut and buy a new shirt, but you wouldn't have plastic surgery done on them to alter their appearance.
And when you get the results, you may have a photo that shows your child at their best, great expression and good appearance. Or the photographer could have caught them at a bad moment, with an odd expression or about to sneeze. If that were the case, you wouldn't fly into a panic wondering why your child looks that way in the photo. If they were blinking you wouldn't say "Oh no, my child cannot see and I never knew it!", you'd just say "Well, this photo doesn't really reveal my child's true appearance".
It's the same with standardized tests. You prepare them to do their best, teach them good test-taking strategies, have them well-rested & fed, review the things that they'll be tested upon. When you get the results you should see scores that don't really surprise you, you'll see the same strengths & weaknesses you suspected all along. However, you may get results that you did not expect, and before you panic, consider all the many reasons for that. There are many variables that can affect test scores, from discomfort in the room to distractions, confusion with instructions, the tone of the proctor (seemingly helpful or harsh), nervousness, fatigue, etc.
Poor scores can be helpful though, to show you things on which you may wish to focus more attention in the future. Remember that the standardized scores just show how your child compares with other children of the same age who took the same test under the same conditions. I always liked to see how many questions were on a section, and how many my child attempted. If there were 20 math questions and he got 10 correct it would look like he'd only had 50% success. But if out of 20 questions he attempted 10 and got them all correct, it's a 100% success. Perhaps he should work on doing his computations faster, but I was pleased to see how many of what he attempted were correct.
Once my son's scored very poorly on a section that I knew for certain he was very skilled in doing. I saw that there were 10 questions but he only attempted 9. I knew that he could fly through these problems, and probably did not run out of time. I concluded that he must have bubbled the answers in the wrong places, answering #1 in the space for #2, and going down until he ran out of room. He had the right answers, but must have put them in the wrong spaces.
I've also found that standardized tests are not as objective as you'd like to think, and if you have a different point of view from the test writers you could score more poorly than you should. I think that homeschoolers are sometimes at a disadvantage, not being as familiar with institutional classroom culture than other school children. You can also be at a disadvantage if you live in an extreme climate, and don't share the same perspective as those in places with changing seasons. There can be questions on autumn leaves, dressing for the snow, picnicing outdoors, etc that can puzzle some children unfamiliar with these things.
But if your state requires its homeschoolers to take these tests, that's not the worst thing. Go ahead and have it done, hopefully there's a local homeschool group that offers testing for the community. Help your child do their best without getting anxious about it, and take the results with as many grains of salt as you wish.
And when you get the results, you may have a photo that shows your child at their best, great expression and good appearance. Or the photographer could have caught them at a bad moment, with an odd expression or about to sneeze. If that were the case, you wouldn't fly into a panic wondering why your child looks that way in the photo. If they were blinking you wouldn't say "Oh no, my child cannot see and I never knew it!", you'd just say "Well, this photo doesn't really reveal my child's true appearance".
It's the same with standardized tests. You prepare them to do their best, teach them good test-taking strategies, have them well-rested & fed, review the things that they'll be tested upon. When you get the results you should see scores that don't really surprise you, you'll see the same strengths & weaknesses you suspected all along. However, you may get results that you did not expect, and before you panic, consider all the many reasons for that. There are many variables that can affect test scores, from discomfort in the room to distractions, confusion with instructions, the tone of the proctor (seemingly helpful or harsh), nervousness, fatigue, etc.
Poor scores can be helpful though, to show you things on which you may wish to focus more attention in the future. Remember that the standardized scores just show how your child compares with other children of the same age who took the same test under the same conditions. I always liked to see how many questions were on a section, and how many my child attempted. If there were 20 math questions and he got 10 correct it would look like he'd only had 50% success. But if out of 20 questions he attempted 10 and got them all correct, it's a 100% success. Perhaps he should work on doing his computations faster, but I was pleased to see how many of what he attempted were correct.
Once my son's scored very poorly on a section that I knew for certain he was very skilled in doing. I saw that there were 10 questions but he only attempted 9. I knew that he could fly through these problems, and probably did not run out of time. I concluded that he must have bubbled the answers in the wrong places, answering #1 in the space for #2, and going down until he ran out of room. He had the right answers, but must have put them in the wrong spaces.
I've also found that standardized tests are not as objective as you'd like to think, and if you have a different point of view from the test writers you could score more poorly than you should. I think that homeschoolers are sometimes at a disadvantage, not being as familiar with institutional classroom culture than other school children. You can also be at a disadvantage if you live in an extreme climate, and don't share the same perspective as those in places with changing seasons. There can be questions on autumn leaves, dressing for the snow, picnicing outdoors, etc that can puzzle some children unfamiliar with these things.
But if your state requires its homeschoolers to take these tests, that's not the worst thing. Go ahead and have it done, hopefully there's a local homeschool group that offers testing for the community. Help your child do their best without getting anxious about it, and take the results with as many grains of salt as you wish.
