ACT goals and workforce readiness.
Dear Parents,
The Department of Public Instruction has told us that the three WorkKeys tests that will be given in Wisconsin to all high school juniors beginning in ’14-’15 will be: Reading for Information, Applied Math, and Locating Information from charts and graphs. Students will be able to earn certificates to potentially present to employers in the interview process that will provide evidence of their abilities and readiness for success. Certificates can be earned at bronze, silver, goal and platinum levels based on the student’s results on the WorkKeys test.
Possibly the most important aspect of the ACT results for us as educators in striving to better prepare students for both college and career readiness is that we can give students highly aligned assessments from 7th grade to 11th grade, and this will provide us a great deal more clarity about each student’s progress in learning, where their strengths are and what areas need more attention. The Explore and Plan components of the ACT Family of assessments will be called Aspire beginning next year. Aspire results at all grade levels will provide predictive information about how students will do on both the ACT and WorkKeys tests, so we will know if students are on-track toward their goals after high school. These measures, as well as optional classroom interim assessments four times per year, will provide specific information about each student’s learning so that if a student’s progress is falling behind their goals and career plans, we can take steps to provide more support and intervene with additional efforts to get them back on schedule.
As we become more and more skilled in using learning data, our goals will evolve to have a greater focus on producing expected, or greater than expected, growth each year for a high percentage of our students.
If you have any questions about this topic or related issues, please do not hesitate to give me a call at 920-564-2346 x1001.
Scott