It seems that my post, No Child Left Behind Homeschool, has stirred up some controversy. So, I think I’ll revisit the subject and clarify what I was laboring, apparently unsuccessfully, to say.

• We should be glad that kids today for the most part do not have to sit for norm-referenced testing every year. Criterion-based assessments actually provide useful information to parents.
• I am not advocating that independent homeschoolers be held to state standards or NCLB. I am saying that for those of us who enroll our kids in a public homeschool program and have to take the Standards Based Assessments (SBA’s) required by NCLB can make good use of the information the assessments give.
• SBA’s essentially measure a student’s mastery of a subject or skill. Isn’t that what homeschoolers do? We don’t move on in a subject until our child has got it figured out. We don’t leave our own kids behind; hence the title of the post.
• It took an act of Congress to bring public schools to do what homeschoolers have done all along, mastery before promotion.

So, that’s it. That’s what I intended to communicate and still firmly believe.

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