Help! How Do I Evaluate My Student's Progress?

 

Help! How do I evaluate my student’s progress? Many homeschool families use a testing service for a variety of reasons: to determine an appropriate grade level curriculum, to evaluate their student’s progress, or to fulfill a state requirement. Unfortunately, many services require an official to supervise the test-taking progress. In response, Christian Liberty offers its own testing service that will provide you with the results you need, but without the hassle of finding a proctor “authorized” to administer the test.

The California Achievement Test (CAT) is a nationally recognized achievement test for students entering grades 2-12 and can be taken online or in the traditional paper format. The online version is taken on your computer and can be purchased directly from www.christianliberty.com. The results are available immediately upon completion. The paper version is mailed to you and can be purchased directly from the website or by phone. Once completed, the test must be returned to Christian Liberty for scoring. The results are then mailed to you.

There are five different levels of the CAT, each of which is designed for a specific range of grade levels. Level 1 is for students entering grade 2. Level 2 is for students entering grade 3. Level 3 is for students entering grades 4-6. Level 4 is for students entering grades 7-9. Level 5 is for students entering grades 10-12. Each test level provides scores for the following seven subject areas: reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, mathematic computation, mathematic concepts and problems, language mechanics, language usage and structure, and language spelling.

Test results are reported in grade equivalent, stanine, and percentile formats. Grade equivalent scores represent the grade level of each student’s ability when compared to the median average score of other students at the same academic level. Scores outside the student’s actual grade level do not necessarily mean the student should be moved to another grade level. For example, if a 5^th grader scored a 7.5, this does not mean he is ready for the 7^th grade. Rather, it means that the student understands some of the concepts that the average 7^th grader knows, and is advanced compared to his peers. Stanine scores are used mostly by test evaluators for calculation and statistic purposes. Derived from the term “standard of nine” the results are based on mean averages and standard deviations. In general terms, scores of 1-3 indicate below average achievement, scores of 4-6 are average, and scores of 7-9 are above average. The percentile scores represent a ranking of the student within a norm group. For example, a score of 73 means that the student did better than 73% of all students in the group. It does not refer to the number of questions answered correctly.

The CAT provides a basis of measurement for how well the homeschool student has progressed. It is recommended that students take an achievement test annually to evaluate the success of your home education, as well as being a valuable indicator that school is actually taking place in a bona fide and successful manner.

Happy Homeschooling!