Sharpen your #2’s please…
Well, it’s that time of year. One of the nice things about homeschooling (at least in our fair state) is that you don’t have to start testing your child until they reach age 7. This is nice mainly for the sake of laziness. But I find testing to be one of the great gauges of how your child (and you, the parent-teacher) is / are doing. If reading comprehension is lacking, just beef up the work in that area. If your child is precocious, you can ease of the pedal if you wish; something more difficult to do in a classroom setting.
This year we’ve decided to go with the CAT (www.setontesting.com). For one, I took the CAT as a kid and have some fond memories of it. It is similar to other testing services, such as PASS, but has a couple advantages. For one, it’s cheaper ($25). And if you have a lot of kids like we do, cheaper is better. It’s nice if you want to do your testing on your own time frame. It arrives quickly and you can return it when you like. It has times sections but still allows plenty of time to complete.
Does the test need to be administered by a certified tester?
You don’t need a certified proctor but parents have to adhere to the testing rules. The purpose of the test is to determine where your child stands in their education. There is no benefit from passing nor penalty for failing the various subjects, therefore no certified proctor is required. The tests are resubmitted to Seton for grading and you can expect results in the mail a few weeks later.