Utterly Meaningless

Do they charge everyone? English as a second language students, for example?

Apparently not.

Ken Cole, executive director for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, called the use of placement exams for home-schooled students “very common.”

“This isn’t because they don’t like home-schoolers or they hate those kids or anything,” he said. “We’re just making sure young kids get in the right arrangement.”

But he questioned charging a fee for the mandatory testing.

“This is free and appropriate public education – free, free, free,” Cole said. “Just like a kindergartner, when the 5-year-olds show up, you can’t charge them for an assessment.”

Absolutely, the test should be free.

I wonder, if a child tests ahead of his grade level, would they skip him up to his level, or put him in with his age-mates?

I think that if I had homeschooled a kid from kindergarten and then wanted to put him in a public high school, I’d feel a lot better about it with this sort of placement test being done. I can see how there could be a kind of curriculum creep that would put a homeschooled kid at a disadvantage with the specific textbooks and programs being used, even though the kid might have a good understanding of the subject in general.

Well… the parents should pay for it.

But they already do.

-Michael