Assessment for High School

Assessment, as you can imagine, is different for each student and each class. An elementary student is assessed for mastery in different ways than a high school student. We assess a student’s mastery of woodworking differently than we do his mastery of chemistry. These observations leave us no assistance in grading our high school level mathematics students.

Here’s some things to consider when assigning a grade to your math student:

1. Why am I assigning a grade? For a transcript? To compare him to other students?
2. What factors into a student’s grade?
   • • • Participation (attitude is a big deal for pubescent boys)
       • Homework (is it complete? Does she show her work?)
       • Competency (does he remember the material?)
3.  How do I measure mastery of a subject?

A mathematics student wants to excel in all three of the areas. He should be able to decipher and solve problems, do hard things without complaining, and show how he worked toward a solution. This leads us to the three actions to take for assessing a student’s mathematics mastery.

1. Speak to your child about the study of mathematics. It’s hard. We expect them to struggle some. Striving to complete an assignment without complaining, whining, or being disrespectful gives the student good marks in assessment.
   • • • • I’d weigh the participation aspect of mathematics at 20-30% of the total grade. Work ethic and attitude is very important.
2. Check your child’s math homework weekly. Ask questions to see if she is remembering some of the material. Is she showing her work and circling her answers? Is she getting most of the answers correct?
   • • • • I’d weigh the homework portion of the classwork at a full 50% of the final grade. Homework is the vast majority of the work, and since we teach to mastery, if he needs more time to complete the homework, take it. Unless your child refuses to do a job well done, homework is almost always an A.
3. Each semester administer one traditional test. That’s it. Just one per semester. This is to give your student a chance to show how much of the difficult material he understands. This test can be open or closed book. If you are a math master, we have semester finals for you for your course - they are posted after Thanksgiving and after May 10^th each year.
   • • • • This formal assessment should complete the final grade for the class. If your student is nervous about tests, consider having him do practice tests with the chapter reviews, or give him midterms as well as finals.

Remember, assessment is a tool. which you yield for the benefit of you and your student. Use assessment to work for you and your family, don't bend your homeschool around an assessment plan. 

Need more structure to tracking grades? Our email subscribers this week are receiving an assessment spreadsheet for this very purpose. Signup to get yours too!