CSAP-SHMEESAP

CSAP has been going on for 3 days now and tomorrow is the last day.  Colorado Student Assessment Program.  I say CSAP-SMEESAP.  However, this is the first year that Jordan is actually "into" it.  She said to me after her testing yesterday how she was feeling like she was doing well.  This is her.  "Mom, you know when I used to take CSAP in school and how I hated it?  Well, I used to just mark any answers just so I could finish it and I wouldn't care if it was right or wrong.  This time I'm actually reading through every question and I'm taking my time and I think I'm getting most of them right.  It feels good!"
 When she was in public school and CSAP would come to town it was, in my opinion, ridiculous how they would hype it up and get the kids so nervous.  Hannah, my 5th grader, has been talking about CSAP for 2 weeks now and it's not for another 2 weeks.  When the school would get Jordan's results for her test we would set up a meeting with her IEP teacher, and teacher and go over it.  She would test low and bottom line is, low results bring the schools bar down.  So the question was what could we do as parents to get her to get these scores up.  We were told we needed to read to her more, she would need to read to us more, we needed to do math over the summer, we needed to do more science and language arts over summer.  It always felt like we were not doing our job as parents because my kid was below average.  When summer came we had our books set aside that we were going to read and our math facts that we were going to tackle.  She did read over the summers and did some math facts and learned science just growing up on 5 acres with a river in her backyard and mountains all around.  Now, I'm not going to go into this very deep but why in the world is this time any different from taking the tests before?  The bottom line is that this is how she is doing with life since we started homeschooling.  She is plugged in more and tries more and her confidence level is so much better.  She keeps amazing me with her attitude about learning and it just confirms yet again, why I pulled her out of the brick and mortar school for home.  It shows.  Even though I disagree with CSAP.   She keeps saying and I do too that after she repeats 8th grade, which is another blog, we are ready for high school in the brick and mortar style again.  I'm just not so sure.  I love that she is happy, confident, LEARNING and psyched about it and just generally doing well.  Her mood swings are few, still there but few.  She is doing great and her being glad she felt she did well on her CSAP test is a good feeling.  Even though I still say CSAP-SHMEESAP