Homeschool placement tests and skill checklists

What a homeschool placement test does

A homeschool placement test answers one question: where in a program should this child begin? It is not a diagnosis, a grade report or an achievement test. A good one is short, adaptive — so it skips what a child has clearly mastered — and it ends by naming a specific starting point with the reasoning behind it, rather than a score you then have to interpret alone.

This matters because age and grade are poor guides. A child can decode fluently and spell poorly, or read accurately and understand little. A placement check separates those strands so you buy and teach the right thing.

A skill checklist does the opposite job. Instead of testing a child, it lists what a stage requires, so an adult can read down the list and see what is secure, what is shaky and what has never been taught.

HARVEST: the reading placement, open to everyone

HARVEST is Faith Schooling's reading placement assessment. It takes about 20 minutes for the core reading scope — longer only if you choose a wider scope — adapts as you go, runs entirely in your browser, and produces a printable report. Nothing is uploaded: the questions, the scoring and the report stay on your device, and it is open to everyone.

It works through seven sections, in the order reading skills develop — from the ear, through the eye, to the voice.

• Phonemic awareness — rhyme, blending and segmenting spoken sounds.
• Letter names and sounds — naming each letter and producing its primary sound.
• Decoding — short vowels, blends, digraphs and long vowels, routed adaptively.
• Sight words — high-frequency words met before they can be fully decoded.
• Encoding — spelling what you hear, the dictation side of phonics.
• Fluency — words correct per minute on a levelled passage.
• Comprehension — short questions about what the child has just read.

Take HARVEST Open the assessment directly

What HARVEST cannot tell you

Its math result is a grade, not a starting lesson. The Math Only check, about 15 minutes, gives a math grade estimate and points to the matching Building Number Sense grade, but not a week or lesson within it. Confirm the grade by inspection: every Building Number Sense grade page shows eight hand-picked sample pages, and the Kindergarten through Grade 2 teaching guides can be read in full, so an adult can see the real level of the work before choosing a grade.

It is also guidance rather than a diagnostic. The Terms state that its scoring and recommended starting level are informational guidance, not a diagnostic, and the assessment itself states that it does not diagnose learning disabilities. If you have concerns about a child's progress, that is a conversation for a qualified educator or clinician.

And it is a snapshot. Re-running it after about eight weeks is the honest way to see whether the placement held and whether the work is moving.

Building Number Sense grade pages Parent and teacher tools

Free homeschool placement tests, compared

Most Christian homeschool publishers offer some way to choose a starting level, and most of them are free. They differ in what is measured, how much of the marking falls to the parent, and whether the result names a starting point or only a grade.

Each row was read on the publisher's own site on September 5, 2026. Publishers change what they offer, so check before you decide. "Not published on their site" means we could not find it, not that it does not exist. Every one of these tests, ours included, places a child into that publisher's own sequence, not into anyone else's.

The same table with each publisher's page linked

Checklists you can print now

Faith Schooling publishes a small set of short printables through the Apostolic Academy, free and open to everyone. Four of them do checklist work in the ordinary sense: print them, read down them, decide something.

Kindergarten Readiness Checklist Homeschool Curriculum Comparison Worksheet Christian School Evaluation Checklist All free printables

Using a scope and sequence as your skill checklist

There is no single downloadable K–5 skill checklist here, and inventing one would be less useful than what already exists. Two published resources do the same work better.

The first is the scope and sequence printed on every reading grade page: 35 weeks per grade, each showing the skill taught, the focus words, the sight words, the Bible hero, the virtue and the Scripture. Reading down a grade's table tells you what a child at that level is being asked to do, week by week.

The second is the learning path at /learn/, which sets out four sequences in order: learning to read, math practice, reading, grammar and language practice, and early learning and handwriting. Each step explains what the skill is, the readiness signs to look for, the mistake it commonly produces, and the mastery check that says it is secure — which is exactly how a checklist is meant to be used.

The learning path, skill by skill Grade 1 scope and sequence Letter sounds Spelling

How mastery is judged once you have started

Placement gets you to the right starting line; a mastery rule keeps a child from being moved on too early. Inside the Faith Schooling programs a skill counts as mastered when the child demonstrates it at 90% or better across five or more sessions on different days. That is tracked with daily exit tickets, weekly mastery checks that use parallel forms so a retest is not the same questions, timed drill sheets with personal-best tracking, and a skill ledger in one place.

The practical effect is that the calendar stops being the pacing device. A child who needs three more weeks on blends gets them; a child who has blends secure in four days moves on.

Walk through a complete lesson A real sample week

Is this the right approach for your family?

It fits a family that wants to place a child honestly, keep its own records, and teach from a script. Everything named above — the placement, the printable checklists, the learning path, the scope and sequence tables, the reading teaching guides and the first three sheets in every practice set — is open to everyone with no membership.

HARVEST is a free, private placement tool for choosing the right Faith Schooling reading starting point. Families keep their own grades and records and add any standardized achievement test, evaluator report, or formal certification required by their state or umbrella program.

How we compare with other publishers Frequently asked questions