Resources for homeschool families

Placement:

Start your child at the level in each course in which he or she last experienced success. Because of the way VHI curriculum works, your child can progress at his or her own rate.

It is well documented that children can only build on success, and therefore that is where you want your child to begin.

If you find your child masters the level he or she is currently working within, then you can move him or her on to more challenging material. This is the beauty of homeschool.

Testing:

Testing is only important if you are comparing one child to a like group of children. If you want to know how your child is doing in the 5^th grade math provided by the local school system compared to other public school 5^th graders using the same texts you are using, then it makes sense… sort of. I say sort of because your child is a homeschooled student and therefore public school students are not your child’s “norm group.”  Because homeschooling is so individualized, standardized testing can not tell you much about where your child scores on standardized tests compared to other homeschooled children using the same materials.

However, if your state requires testing, or if it is a homeschool option in your state that you have decided to use to meet regulations, do it.  Otherwise, your student can gain the skills necessary for taking college admissions tests (ACTs—SATs) in a few weeks during the junior-senior year of homeschool High School.

We don’t test in individual subject areas (other than informational quizzes) because students will either integrate the material or they won’t. Testing only makes sense in this situation if you are going to repeat the course because of missing information. This is unlikely in the homeschool situation. Your student will be living his or her learning and integrating information every day. Testing will not improve his or her learning.