A New Test!! College and Work Readiness Assessment

I am sitting here in the corner of the main classroom, looking out over 13 teenagers, and my heart is content. The students are sitting around the table – physically all together, but each one absorbed in his or her own world: a separate “performance task” on the computer. All I hear is the rapid pattering of the keys on their laptops and the occasional, refocusing deep breath. This might just be every educator’s dream come true.

This is the scene of The Link School’s first crack at the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA). I first came across this test during my graduate studies last year, when it was mentioned in this article by Tony Wagner, in which he discusses the necessity for a different set of skills to become the focus in schools. The test seemed to be a great way to hold ourselves accountable for the kinds of things we like to think we are developing in our students – critical thinking, problem solving, media literacy, synthesizing research, analyzing information, written communication, and imagination. Then, a couple of weeks later, we visited Eagle Rock School and Professional Development Center, where we learned that they administer this test at their school and are very happy with the information they get from it. We plan to administer this test in the Spring, as well, to provide some insight into how well we are developing these skills in our students throughout the year. One of our main goals is to teach students to think critically, and this is one way to measure how well we are doing it.

You can find information here, but the general overview is that the test is divided into two sections: a performance task and selected respond. As the students are taking their tests, I can see on my proctor interface where they are in the process. The different performance task topics I see are “library digitization,” “paper or plastic,” and “school community.” The questions require students to analyze several different documents (charts, graphs, blog post, news articles, scientific articles, etc) and write a response based on a scenario and a task.

We should get the results in 4-6 weeks, and then we will know what we can do the rest of the year to continue developing these skills in our students.

Feel free to reach out with questions or comments; I tend to get (overly) excited about this kind of thing.

Happy weekend!

Emily