How do parents ensure that their children make adequate annual yearly progress?
Different parents have different ways. One of the beauties of homeschooling is you can be flexible. My wife and I use a standardized testing as a way of monitoring academic progress. However, this is one of many data points we use. Standardized testing doesn’t measure developmental readiness, profound thinking, writing skills, understanding of complex historical events, character development, or self discipline. For example, we had a daughter who was a late reader. In second grade, she tested at below grade reading level. Because we have a family history of late reading, I didn’t worry about it. During this time, we listened to hundreds of hours of books on tape. About the time our daughter turned nine, everything changed. She was now ready to read. That year she tested at a 12+ reading level and was reading 60 chapter books a month. If we had focused on meeting the grade level requirements, we would have ruined her love of reading and caused ourselves unnecessary frustration. In some
