What Part Do They Play in the Admissions Process?

"What do you mean my child has to be tested?" The Admissions Office has heard that question repeated often. It is asked by apprehensive parents who may be confused, put off, or just plain curious about what an admissions assessment is all about.

The term "test" created so many misconceptions that the School changed its admissions literature and hopes, in so doing, to change the focus of why that activity is called for as part of the admissions process. Instead of testing, we have used the word assessment because the School uses these measures to gain insight into the ways a child learns, not as a test of intelligence. Every applicant, to prekindergarten through eighth grade, is required to take the appropriate Wechsler Intelligence Scales assessment.

Too often the score that results from an assessment is understood to represent intelligence, and children--more likely, their parents--are burdened with that score throughout their school careers. Parents whose children score low worry about their child's future academic potential and career possibilities; parents whose children score high worry about their child being challenged enough to reach his or her potential, or worry if their child's school record does not live up to the high assessment score. We do not believe that assessment scores should be empowered with such predictive value.

Instead, we look at these measures of assessment to understand the way a child learns, and his or her comparative strengths at the time the assessment was done. With the youngest applicants' assessments, we can learn, among other things, whether a child is able to perceive spatial relationships, can remember the sequence in which things occur, can draw upon imagination to complete a story, can use muscles in arms and legs for physical activity, and muscles in hands and fingers for drawing. These are things useful for a school to know so that it can address its students' needs. They are important for parents to know so that they can actively assist in their child's development, with attention to specific areas should such attention seem desirable.

The assessment is one helpful piece of information in the admissions process. More information is gained through parents, observations of children in classroom settings, children's creations as they are submitted through the admissions process and gathered on the day of a child's visit, and recommendations of previous teachers. The Admissions Committee of the School looks carefully at all of the data, sometimes requesting that the Admissions Director talk further with parents or ask a child to come for a second visit. We seek to gain as complete a picture of a child as we can to see if the School seems a good place for her or him. Ultimately, we hope to fill our classes with children of diverse backgrounds and interests and of varying abilities, for an important part of the School's philosophy is to have children learn to respect and value each other's differences.

Capitol Hill Day School's Admissions Office wishes to help parents find the educational program that best suits their children, as do admissions offices at other schools. To that end, we encourage organizations that perform the assessments to share information with parents as clearly and promptly as possible. And we look forward to parents telling us as much as possible about their children's physical growth, social skills, and intellectual interests. The admissions process should help parents learn more about their children at the same time that it helps schools learn about its student body.

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