October is here and with it comes beautiful fall weather and sweaters, pumpkins and chili. At The Academy, October is also the month we participate in standardized testing.
As you know, The Academy’s mission has always been and continues to be shaping students’ affections for truth, goodness and beauty. This mission is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify and has direct implications for the way we think about testing.
As a classical school, our curriculum does not directly align with the concepts and ideas included on the standardized tests currently available. Despite this, The Academy believes standardized tests are one of many helpful tools we can use to track student progress in some academic areas.
Philosophically, standardized testing gives one external measure of the effectiveness of our curriculum, our teachers, each class, and individual students. Although this measure cannot assess the more qualitative measure of students’ affections, it does give a perspective as one component of a holistic view. Practically, utilizing standardized tests helps us measure student engagement with grade level materials and can help support needed interventions.
Additionally, despite our hesitancy to acknowledge standardized testing as a fully accurate measure of student achievement, we do believe exposure to standardized tests is needed as a learned skill for students to be prepared to participate in future academic experiences outside of The Academy.
Based on these philosophical and practical beliefs that align with the mission and vision of The Academy, our 1st-8th grade students take the Stanford 10 standardized test (SAT10). This year, testing week will immediately follow Fall Break on October 19-22. For the first time, we will also be offering the PSAT for our high school students on October 14.
As always, we enjoy partnering with you and welcome any questions you have about the SAT10.