The yearly Advanced Placement exam-grading marathon has begun. There is a scoring session for each AP test, and in English 2,500 teachers — half at the high school level, half college-level — spend 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day for a week scoring Literature and Language essays written by more than 700,000 high school students. The reading remains one of the only ways high school students can be measured by college standards. The College Board has always made the case that its tests mirror college work, and as a college teacher and reader of AP exams, I agree that AP does indeed measure skills we would like our college students to possess.
On what do I base that conclusion? I have explored the relatively new College Learning Assessment exam, designed to gauge whether students in college have the skills needed for the workplace. The released tests, and information I received during a CLA workshop, have confirmed striking similarities between the testing philosophies of AP and CLA.
| What kids are reading | ||
| This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories. Information on the books below came from Amazon.com. | ||
| Books about local food | ||
| 1. | Up We Grow!: A Year in the Life of a Small, Local Farm by Deborah Hodge and Brian Harris (ages 4-8) | |
| 2. | Food in Missouri: A Cultural Stew by Madeline Matson (young adult and adult) | |
| 3. | Local Farms and Sustainable Foods by Julia Vogel (ages 9-12) | |
| 4. | To Market, to Market by Nikki McClure (ages 4-8) | |
| 5. | Journey Around Cape Cod & the Islands Cookbook: Tasty treats and Interesting Tidbits from Cape Cod and the Islands! by Martha Day Zschock and Heather Zschock (ages 4-8) | |
| 6. | The Farmer’s Market Cookbook: Seasonal Dishes Made from Nature’s Freshest Ingredients by Richard Ruben (young adult and adult) | |
For example, this year’s AP Language and Composition test asks students to utilize three of seven documents on the locavore movement and compose an essay identifying key issues and examining implications for the community. The documents include a cartoon, an excerpt from a food history, a chart from an environmental magazine, an opinion article in a business magazine, an article from a blog focused on the benefits of locavore consumption, and an excerpt from the book “100-Mile Diet.”
The skills required to write a cogent essay on locavorism, citing provided sources, are similar to those needed for the released CLA exam administered by hundreds of colleges and universities. In this college assessment, students are asked to synthesize several documents on a small plane crash, and make a recommendation to a company interested in purchasing a similar plane. The documents, as is true in the AP test, are of varying reliability: newspaper articles, a Federal Accident Report, an article by an amateur pilot, an email exchange, and photos and charts depicting the plane’s performance.
For both assessments, students must be able to persuade an audience and assess the value of each source. The CLA task is perhaps a bit more difficult than the AP task because students have more time (the AP task must be completed in 40 minutes.) The CLA also requires students to use all sources, not just three of seven. But it’s clear that educational communities on both high school and college levels have decided that these skills are important for young adults as they enter the workplace.
The two assessments are similar, even though they are administered to students four years apart. That doesn’t sound like it has the makings of an educational revolution. But for the first time in decades, benchmarks at advanced high school levels and college levels are the same.
This synchronicity is heartening. Can we agree that persuasive writing, and an ability to read, interpret and synthesize documents, are admirable goals for all levels of learning? Isn’t it true that a discriminating eye that can assess the value of sources is invaluable in the workplace? If so, a new, more unified day has dawned in the fractured field of education!
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
