Monday’s release, October 1, by the South Carolina Department of Education of 2018 results for the SC WIN Ready to Work (R2W) assessment highlights a number of positive performances for students of Aiken County Public Schools, including nearly 80% of 1,593 juniors tested passing the first offering of a state assessment to measure important soft skills for the workplace.
According to the S.C. Department of Education, the SC WIN assessment is a career-readiness assessment administered to all eleventh-grade students to determine student achievement in three key subjects: Applied Mathematics, Reading for Information, and Locating Information. The SC WIN assessment was administered during spring of the 2017-18 school year, and replaces the ACT WorkKeys assessment which was utilized across South Carolina from 2015-17.
New to this year’s assessment is the addition of an Essential Soft Skills (ESS) test that offers insight into a student’s individual skills in five key areas: Cooperation with Others, Resolving Conflicts and Negotiation, Solving Problems and Making Decisions, Observing Critically, and Taking Responsibility for Learning.
The Essential Soft Skills assessment focuses on skills such as problem solving, goal setting, decision-making, and self-direction, just the types of skills that play a vital role in workplace success.
“Our proposition is simple in Aiken County. We are deliberately focused on students graduating with a set of employable skills and a diploma,” stated Aiken County Superintendent Dr. Sean Alford.
WIN (READY TO WORK)
Aiken County juniors outperformed state scores in four of six overall SC WIN Ready to Work assessment categories. The categories included students who did not receive a certificate (16.6% for SC to 15.4% for ACPSD), students who received a certificate, and those receiving Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum certificates, according to results released Monday. Aiken County students also outpaced state scores in the new Essential Soft Skills test, with 78.5% of ACPSD students tested receiving a passing score, compared to 76.9% for the state.
“While we are pleased that we exceeded state performance in most areas, we will use the data from this assessment to help us address areas where we can continue to improve,” added Jeanie Glover, Chief Officer of Instruction for Aiken County Public Schools.
In the skill-specific tests of the SC WIN Ready to Work assessment for Applied Mathematics, Locating Information and Reading for Information, Aiken County 11th-graders outperformed the state in most of the six scoring categories. The categories ranged student scores from those who scored less than a Level 3 to those who scored at Level 7, or the highest scoring category for the assessment.
WIN READY TO WORK – STATE/ACPSD COMPARISONS
|
% Earned a WIN Certificate |
% Earned a Bronze Certificate |
% Earned a Silver Certificate |
% Earned a Gold Certificate |
% Earned a Platinum Certificate |
|||||
|
SC |
ACPSD |
SC |
ACPSD |
SC |
ACPSD |
SC |
ACPSD |
SC |
ACPSD |
|
83.4% |
84.6% |
20.1% |
21.3% |
54.1% |
54.9% |
6.8% |
6.0% |
2.5% |
2.4% |
STATE/ACPSD COMPARISONS – ESSENTIAL SOFT SKILLS
|
% Who scored PASS |
% Who scored FAIL |
||
|
SC |
ACPSD |
SC |
ACPSD |
|
76.9% |
78.5% |
23.1% |
21.5% |
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LINK TO DISTRICT PRESS RELEASE: 2018 ACPSD DATA RELEASE WIN R2W