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Although we are a life learning family, the idea of testing is not foreign to us because we have friends who are in school or who are schooled at home and who test regularly. We also know families of natural learners who choose to take a standardized test every year to satisfy state homeschooling requirements. So grade levels and test scores inevitably become a part of the conversation at the end and beginning of every school year.

Fortunately, our state also accepts open assessments, which mimic how I was evaluated at the experimental college I attended, and where I designed my own degree. Last year for Natasha’s assessment, we looked at all the different things she had done in the past year, which curriculum categories they fit into, and most importantly, how they were relevant to her and to life in general.

For instance, a trip to the local food cooperative where the kids help with shopping and writing down prices can fit into a number of categories: math, social studies, reading, and writing. The assessment created family conversations around how we had spent the year, where we had been, what we had enjoyed, and what we might not try again.

This year Natasha, now ten years old, wanted to know at what level she was reading. I told her she was reading very well and enjoying books, that there was no reason to worry about levels and grades. She began reading in stops and starts when she was five. At the age of seven, that magical click happened in her brain and she has never looked back. She loves books, spends time lost in them, hates for a good one to end, and can talk intelligently about what she reads.

However, my encouraging response didn’t satisfy her; she wanted something quantitative. I reluctantly offered to get her a test. I hoped she would resist because I want my family to be free of the stress that grades, test scores, and other pigeon holes created by the educational system. But she was eager, so I set my prejudices aside and . . .

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Suzanne Malakoff lives and learns with her husband, Jan, and their three children, Natasha, Eli, and Aaron, near Olympia, Washington.