Kaktus Kids and testing

As Kelly is preparing for her first College-Level Examination Program (CLEP) test, we are arriving at the time of the year when we like to take a nationally normed, standardized test. In the past the kids have take both the Standford Achievement Test (SAT) and the California Achievement Test (CAT). We liked the SAT better than the CAT, but were not wildly exacted about either as they are generally aimed at government school students and are not as well suited for homeschoolers. We were at a birthday party a few weeks ago where a lady told me about a different test that is valid for usage in North Carolina that was developed specifically for homeschoolers. It is called the Personalized Achievement Summary System (PASS) Test. The test is a two step process. First, the students approximate achievement level within his grade is identified with a placement test. The testing level for the main test is set to assure the student is tested on appropriate materials to properly test their achievement, not just their achievement relative to an arbitrarily, one size fits all, category set by the government as is done with the SAT, the CAT, the IOWA and other nationally normed standardized tests. We will report on how it goes when the process is complete in a couple of months.

Here are a couple of additonal notes:

• Congratulations to Kelly and Christian for the completion of the latest issue of Kaktus Kids!
• We had over 28,000 hits on our the main page of this blog since we started keeping track exactly one year ago. A little earlier this year, I started keeping track of the other pages, too. On the next anniversary I will try to report a few more of these numbers.

Update: KELLY PASSES THE FRESHMAN ENGLISH COMPOSITION CLEP TEST!!!! She has her first six semester hours (two semesters) of credit!