What I told my kids before the writing test was this: Do your best, have fun with it, write as much as you can because length impresses them, and check your spelling one more time before handing it in. I’m looking forward to seeing their scores, though if past performance is an indicator, I have probably already predicted what they’ll be….

That made no sense to me, but then the facilitator, who meant well, but knew that many of the children would not be able to finish all that reading, told them to just read what they could and guess on the rest- then they could have snacks and go to the playground. All they heard was “guess, snacks, and playground. Nearly every kid in the room just filled in bubbles without even trying. I didn’t want the kid to stress about it, but I did at least want them to give it some effort.

The same year, my older child bombed the writing test with the prompt “Why do you think this was a good title for this story.” She had not thought it was good at all, but they told her she couldn’t say that. Instead of asking her to just write about her thoughts on it, they wanted her to defend something she thought was dumb. The test came back with poor results, although she had won several writing contests that same year. I decided they were too young to play the game and we went solo for a few years.
Now, they are older and we are back with a charter. At this point, the benefits are worth it. They are enough to understand jumping through hoops and figure it is part of their job for the resources they get throughout the year.

I still think it’s a lame assessment though.