How Do You Assess Grade Levels for Homeschool Students?

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Linda Woolridge and I'm a home school mom. I've been home schooling for over ten years now. How do you assess what grade level your child is currently working on? Well, it can be tough but the easiest way is to go online, to any curriculum that you are interested in. A lot of them have grade level tests. They want to sell you their curriculum and they want to make sure you're happy with it. So they'll give you a test that your child can take and then they will tell you which level of their curriculum to buy. It gives you a really easy idea, might not be completely accurate but pretty close of where your child is performing. Another simple way to find out which grade level your child is working on in any particular subject, is to take a look at how they're doing in the book that you're using. If you have a sixth grade book and they're getting 80% or more of the answers correct, then they're performing at least on a sixth grade level. If you have a book that they're reading and the reading level is sixth grade and they're able to read it and answer questions about it, then they're at least on a sixth grade level there too. There are also assessment tests that you can use. Such as the CAT, the SAT, or any one of a number of tests that individual evaluators will use and they'll give you what are called stanine scores and grade levels associated with how your child performed on that test. Remember that with those tests, basically what they're telling you is that your child performed as well as a percentage of kids in that grade level. It doesn't necessarily mean if your eleven year old performed on an eleventh grade level that your child is qualified to be in eleventh grade, it just means that they performed as well as most eleventh graders, on that particular test at that particular time. Those are some ways that you can figure out which grade level to use with your child. I hope you have a wonderful home schooling day, I'm Linda Woolridge."