(From the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education)
In support of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's goal that all students graduate ready for college and career, the Department has announced ACT WorkKeys® as an additional academic measure that districts and charter schools can use to gauge students' proficiency as they graduate from high school. This assessment is focused on the practical application of literacy, mathematics, and the ability to efficiently access information.
Reading for information, applying mathematical calculation and problem solving, and locating information are skills employers say are critical to job success. Use of the assessment can help students identify their current career skills as well as identify areas that need improvement as they plan for their futures. Students who succeed on the assessment qualify for ACT's National Career Readiness Certificate.
"One of our primary goals is to make sure students graduate ready to succeed in college and career," said Dennis Cooper, assistant commissioner in the Office of Quality Schools. "Including the use of the WorkKeys® assessment as an option for districts and charter schools helps us do that, and it gives students, parents and teachers another way to see how well students are learning."
ACT WorkKeys® is a component of Missouri's Certified Work Ready Communities (CWRC) initiative. The state was one of seven in the country chosen to participate in CWRC. The initiative is a voluntary effort guided by community leaders to align workforce and education to meet the economic needs of the state and local communities.
3 comments:
Let's see--communication,math, information skills--so they make sure the students can say "Do you want to SuperSize your meal while they text their friends??
Oh boy!!! Another test! And that means more $$$$ for a test company.
And probably more test practice and less real instruction.
I'd really like my kids to have teachers TEACHING them to read, write, do math, understand how society works and how our country came to be (ugly parts and all). I want them to be able to have an intelligent conversation and be able to think and determine truth.
I DO NOT want all their time spent trying to learn how to take every blasted test that someone (without any background in how learning happens or child development) has deemed the ultimate in deciding their future or the future of their teachers and schools.
Here we go. Just one more hoop to stress out students, teachers and anyone else forced to live by numbers from computer generated reports.
I am in complete agreement with everything 5:11 said. There is no such thing as teaching anymore. Teachers are paid to give tests and collect data, not teach. How students are supposed to learn when they move from one test to another to another is beyond me. I feel so sorry for the students today. The tests are ridiculous. The big push now is pretest and post-test. You give a student a test over something they have never learned, "teach" them in the limited time you have before the next assessment, and then test them again to see how they do. Surprise! They score better on the post-test. This is how the district manipulates data to show that the students are learning. Of course none of what they "learned" is retained, because they never have a chance to spend any real time learning it and applying it to real world situations. Testing is not teaching.
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