In Tony Wagner’s book “The Global Achievement Gap” he talks about the problems with standardized tests (SAT, AP, etc) and the fact that they don’t measure the critical skills that colleges and workplace are asking for. He then gives an example of an instrument that has been developed for colleges (initially) and secondary schools to measure critical thinking, problem solving and written communication. The college version is called the CLA (College Learning Assessment) and the secondary version is called the CRWA (College Work Readiness Assessment). They are designed to be given to entering freshman and graduating seniors to identify what progress students have made – it is not for assessing students, but effectiveness of programatic efforts to build better problem solving skills. There is more information on their website: http://www.cae.org

The instrument is a ninety minute open ended problem where students have to understand and attack a problem given multiple resources and possibly divergent outcomes. This was the first I have heard of this and am intrigued by the notion of utilizing this to assess student thinking.

It seems somewhat like the ETS iSkills test http://www.ets.org/iskills we piloted this test on our campus 2 years ago and were impressed by the design and the unique challenges it presented students.
A few issues we saw in the iSkills test and I think would be similar in CWRA are that there is not extrinsic motivation for students to give it their best attempt, as the results are not used for any college or work related goal.
Also, I wonder if this is measuring all we need it – for instance it doesn’t look at all the dimensions folks like Pink and Wagner champion – group work, empathy, symphony, global awareness, etc.

The use of technology here to assess student development in critical thinking is a powerful opportunity for schools to see what is happening in these 21st Century skills.
One provocative idea is to have staff take the instrument as well – as much to consider what a problem solving assessment is like for their own assessment, as well as to understand the test from a student perspective.

Real thinking assessment is rare in education. Still one of the finest curricula and assessments I have ever used in 25 years of teaching was the IPS curriculum http://www.sci-ips.com/. The final assessment at the end of understanding properties of matter a was a ‘sludge test’. Student pairs were given a mixture of solids and liquids and given a week to separate and determine the constituent parts of the mixture. Each mixture was unique, so even if groups talked about strategies, each team’s approach and identification was unique. It was clear to me 20 years ago that this was doing REAL science and made scientists of my students. The students were excited, challenged and REALLY engaged.