“The mission of CASAS is to assist adults functioning at or below a high school level in attaining the basic literacy skills to function effectively on the job, in the community, and in the family. We accomplish this by assisting state and local education, training, social service programs and businesses in the design and delivery of quality education and training programs that meet the needs of the participants by providing products and services in curriculum management, assessment and evaluation systems.” https://www.casas.org/about-casas/our-mission. Accessed 4/6/21.
The CASAS GOALS tests in Reading and Math are standards in our department for determining a resident’s placement in educational programming, and in some cases, his/her qualification for certificates in certain courses, per the requirements of said courses. For example, the job-skills course I teach, WorkReady(tm), requires that participants have either a high school diploma/equivalency or scores of 220+ on the CASAS Reading and Math tests to be eligible for earning the certificate at the end of the 60-hour course.
As a result, I have some students taking CASAS testing this week to see if they qualify to the certificate-level of WorkReady. Two have already declared their intentions not to take WR if they can’t earn the piece of paper that says they learned anything in the class, while another fellow has said he’ll take the class either way. He took the Math CASAS test this morning and was pleasantly surprised by his score. It wasn’t high enough, but it was much higher than he was expecting. He left the classroom with joy in his heart about that, saying with a laugh, “I’m not as dumb as I thought I was!”
“Not even close!” I called after him. “Not even close.”
In the end, whether he gets his slip of paper saying he learned all the material in WorkReady or not, this man is ready to take this class and learn all he can from it. He stood up from the computer after taking the CASAS Math test and said, “I know more math than I realized. I can do this class, too. I can study math between now and the end of June and maybe pass the math requirement to get the certificate. I’m not as dumb as I thought!”
I replied, “Look, there aren’t many years between us. For too many decades, the educational establishment taught us that math and real life had nothing to do with each other. But in fact, if math isn’t taught in the context of real life, then it’s being taught wrongly. They screwed us up, but we don’t need to stay in that old reality! You with your carpentry skills can apply math and learn to put concepts and procedures to it textbooks style. And yes, you can bring that test score up with some study time. You don’t have far to go.”
How we all “measure up” is based on where we’re starting from and where we’re going to. Bite-sized, short-term goals are needed for confidence-building. As we develop confidence, then we can set the bar higher, push harder, and do more, but do not despise the days of small successes. Build on them and then reach for the stars.
Mack Ames Books and Maine Moose Patrol 