According to a news release this week, CAE’s secondary and higher education assessments, such as its College and Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+), the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+), and Success Skills Assessment (SSA+), work to evaluate students’ critical thinking, problem-solving and written communication skills. The announcement said new features in the testing platform include 30-minute assessments with questions focusing on data literacy, critical reading and evaluation, as well as supplemental curriculum materials and an expanded help desk for educators administering tests.
“There is widespread agreement that critical thinking, problem-solving and written communication skills are essential to academic and career success,” Bob Yayac, president and chief executive officer of CAE, said in a public statement. “However, based on conversations with clients, it is clear that educators need to explicitly incorporate instruction, practice and assessment of these skills to increase success and better position students for their next step. The improvements we are introducing reflect that focus.”
Among other functions, the announcement said, the platform now features improved reporting capabilities, automated through a cloud-based data warehouse that integrates data from multiple sources on a digital dashboard for more complex statistical calculations, in order to reduce the time it takes to receive assessment results.
“Performance feedback is vital, whether for an employee or a student,” Yayac added. “The quicker we can give educators feedback on student performance, the faster they can assess which students need additional help to improve the skills most in demand by higher education institutions and employers. By offering instruction and practice performance-tasks with our assessments, we continue to fulfill our mission of improving student outcomes.”
Student capacity for critical thinking and problem solving, going beyond surface-level content knowledge, have been areas of concern for CAE in recent years. A poll it took earlier this year showed that 94 percent of educators and administrators rated these skills as “extremely valuable” for academic success, and the nonprofit partnered with Texas A&M University last fall to make them a focus of its business school.
