Testing, Tracking and Time

I never enjoyed taking standardized tests. Didn't like them while homeschooled. Didn't like them in high school. But I tended to like the results because, well... I did well. The numbers were mostly encouraging and a nice reminder that I was learning. Or, rather, that I was "successful" in whatever schools consider success.

Now that I'm here at Sonlight, I participate in another kind of test. Today the tests aren't about how well I spell "accouterments" or can compute 1,902 - 847... now I track how well my posts affect you. How many people clicked my links? Did anyone comment? Did anyone buy anything?

Not that I blog to make money. That'd be lame, and I think my posts would reflect that. On the other hand, if I couldn't come up with a single testable/trackable method of measuring my efforts, I doubt Sonlight would let me continue doing this for very long. I may trick them for a couple years, but eventually someone here would catch on that I'm having way too much fun <smile>.

Testing and tracking are not the end-all of what we do. We're not interested in merely having our children graduate with honors. We want more from our students. We want them to be great people who go out and do great things in this world.

But much like clicks and sales and comments connected with this blog, so grades and scores and percentiles can help give us an idea of how well we're doing. How effective has the time we've invested been? Do these numbers/stats/marks indicate something else we should emphasize for a bit?

All that to say: Testing and tracking should been seen as tools to help us spend our time more effectively.

Today, I'd like to highlight:

Core 3