Council for Aid to Education Archives

Eagle Rock to Host Council for Aid to Education Training March 14

Early next month, we’ll be opening the doors of our on-campus Professional Development Center for a daylong Council for Aid to Education (CAE) training on Performance-Based Assessments. For a few years now, we’ve been closely associated with the works of this nationwide, non-profit council, which is committed to helping education institutions measure and improve learning outcomes by offering innovative assessments and developing custom tests.

In particular, here at Eagle Rock, we use CAE’s College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA+) alongside more than 300 other schools throughout the country and internationally. The CWRA+ assesses higher-order thinking and written communications skills for students from all walks of life — from the most privileged to the most disengaged.

So, it’s no wonder we were eager to help out when CAE asked us to host the March 14 training from 8:30am-5pm, which is entitled, Performance-Based Assessment Workshop.

The training offers participants the opportunity to Continue reading…

Winter-Spring 2019 Briefing from the Professional Development Center

As Eagle Rock School’s staff members and students immerse themselves into the school’s 77th trimester, our non-stop Professional Development Center (PDC) continues its work in helping high schools across the country develop programs and protocols aimed at re-engaging youth in their own education.

For decades, our dedicated Professional Development Center team has signed on to collaborate with progressive and innovative educators around the United States in order to enhance educational strategies and design. To achieve the objectives and goals these educational organizations have developed for themselves, our facilitation builds on the assets they already possess (we refer to it as asset-based facilitation).

Please see the schedule below to see what’s on our facilitation agenda for now through the middle of April (and use the information presented at the end of this briefing to get in touch with us about your organization’s upcoming professional development-related needs):

JANUARY 2019

Jan. 21 – 23

Princeton Program for Teacher Preparation, Estes Park, Colo.: Dan Condon, Eagle Rock Associate Director of Professional Development, along with Doen Lee, our 2018/2019 Fellow in Professional Development, are hosting Ally Markovich from the Princeton Program for Teacher Preparation here on the Eagle Rock campus. In this visit, Ally will have many opportunities to observe Continue reading…

Why We Use The College and Work Readiness Assessment

CWRA If you’ve read some of our blog posts about the classes offered here at Eagle Rock, you know we push the boundary of one’s imagination to create engaging classes for those who are disengaged (see This Trimester Offers Classes from Statistics to Dystopia and Eagle Rock Classes That Add New Meaning to the Term ‘Non-traditional’ for a sampling of our classes). This then brings up the question of how do we ensure students are demonstrating the knowledge, skills and attributes to make the most of their lives now and in the future? After extensive research, we decided to adopt the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA+).

As Larry Myatt (Co-founder, Education Recourses Consortium) wrote here on the Eagle Rock Blog back in October of 2013, performance-based assessments are difficult to measure but decisive nonetheless. As a result, the CWRA+ has been used by more than 300 middle schools and high schools throughout the United States and internationally. These schools work with students from all walks of life, from the most privileged to most severly disengaged. CWRA+ — which is an initiative of the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) — effectively assesses higher-order thinking and written-communication skills. These include analysis and problem solving, scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical reading and evaluation, developing an argument and critiquing various sources of information, as well as writing effectively. Because of our adoption of the CWRA+, we can stand side-by-side with other schools around the country in demonstrating we are graduating young people with the intellectual skills necessary for life success after high school.

Specifically, the CWRA+ provides evidence that the student being assessed has demonstrated critical-thinking skills throughout high school, thinks independently, and can come up with creative solutions to complex problems. We believe this is superior to the more familiar standardized assessments where the measure of student success relies on Continue reading…