Austin Scholar #99: Why I love having tests to pass
& how to use tests to pass with your kid
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I love having tests to pass
How to use tests to pass with your kid
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to… (personal update included here as well!)
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I love having tests to pass
I love tests to pass.
This might seem weird to have a teenager use the words “love” and “tests” in the same sentence. But it’s true.
Tests to pass are objective measures of success and are often used at Alpha to prove that students have learned a specific life skill.
For example, the elementary-age students had to solve a Rubik’s cube, learn to juggle, and run a mile to prove they learned the skill of grit.
In high school, it gets a little more complicated.
As some of you might remember, a few weeks ago, a group of students was offered the chance to go to Mexico for the weekend to create a workshop on how to have a 75% chance of getting into an Ivy League college. But in order to go on the trip, we had to complete a test to pass: we had to review a list of ten students with their statistics and extracurricular activities and correctly explain whether or not they got into an Ivy League. (To demonstrate how hard this was, one student played their instrument in the president’s inauguration and was still rejected by Ivies.)
Everyone was freaking out about the test to pass and spent hours every day learning about college admissions and quizzing each other on example students. In the end, all of this studying paid off, and each of us passed the test.
The overall goal of this test to pass was to prove that we could add value on the trip – if we didn’t understand who would get accepted into an Ivy, how could we build a workshop about it? When we each passed the test, we proved that we were experts on college acceptances and that we would have insights to build into the workshop.
The trip ended up a success – primarily due to the knowledge we’d all accumulated during our time studying for the test to pass.
The Mexico trip is just one example. In the high school AlphaX program, as you may remember, we all build a masterpiece project. To get credit before graduation, our pitches (our overview of what we're building and why people should care) have to pass AI graders (pitching requirement), we have to reach 1,000 followers on social media (audience building requirement), and we have to confirm a group of mentors called a Board of Advisors (networking requirement). We can’t just have a goal to post on Twitter every day or write a good pitch. We need something tangible to show that we are becoming experts in each area.
And in academics, our high-standard test to pass (for high school students) is to get 100% on a standardized test in each grade level math exam, 5th-grade to Algebra. We can’t just finish an app, we have to prove we’ve mastered the content.
Oftentimes, I will, of course, struggle with completing the test to pass and just want to move on. But it’s that persistence – that continuous work to reach the goal – that displays true learning.
In the end, I always do appreciate having an “end product” to show for all of my work, even if it was hard to get there.
How to use tests to pass with your kid
Why are tests to pass important? There are a few benefits: increased grit, specific goals, tangible end products, and super high standards in whatever you’re learning (to name just a few).