The Council for Aid to Education is positioning its Collegiate Learning Assessment, or CLA +, as the post-college SAT:
The 90-minute exam is based on a test that has been used by 700 schools to grade themselves and improve how well their students are learning.
The CLA + will be open to anyone — whether they are graduating from a four-year university or have taken just a series of MOOCs — and students will be allowed to show their scores to prospective employees. The test costs $35, but most schools are picking up the fee. Among schools that will use CLA + are the University of Texas system, Flagler College in Florida and Marshall University in West Virginia.
The CLA + is scored on the 1600-point scale once used by the SAT “because everyone is familiar with that,” said Chris Jackson, director of partner development at the Council for Aid to Education. Instead of measuring subject-area knowledge, it assesses things like critical thinking, analytical reasoning, document literacy, writing and communication.
Educational Testing Service, which developed the Graduate Record Exam (GRE), is addressing the same need for a standardized non-GPA measure of academic skills with two new certificates for high scores on its Proficiency Profile, which assesses critical thinking, reading, writing and math:
Educational Testing Service was surprised to learn through a survey last spring that more than a quarter of businesses were using the GRE to evaluate job applicants, said David Payne, an ETS vice president.
We may be entering a new golden age of testing, Steve Sailer suggests — until these new tests reveal an even larger performance gap.
CLA sounds like it’s a couple steps closer to the FSOT. All things considered, not a bad direction to head.