Far Hills Country Day School Students engage in pilot testing program

Earlier this week, Far Hills Country Day School sixth graders had an exciting opportunity to work with research scientists from ETS (www.ets.org), world-renown experts in assessment and educational research, on an important pilot assessment project focusing on noncognitive characteristics in students.

Far Hills Country Day School, along with the Elementary School Research Consortium (ESRC), a collaboration of more than 20 national independent elementary schools, has been conducting leading-edge research on the newest assessments of skills deemed essential for success in the 21st century.

This past summer ESRC formed a partnership with ETS to develop an assessment tool and to conduct a longitudinal study of these key characteristics, such as persistence, teamwork, creative problem solving, ethics and integrity, all essential competencies for success in both academics and the workplace. This assessment tool and study will help the participating schools determine if students’ competencies improve through the course of their middle school education. Far Hills Country Day School is a member of the ESRC Assessment Task Force, and so it was selected as the location for the pilot lab. Students completed sample assessment questions and tasks and then offered feedback to researchers about the skills tested, the clarity of ideas, and the precision of language. It was a wonderful learning experience for students to play an active role in relevant, real-world research with scientists. Based on the work with FHCDS students and the prototype, ETS assessment designers will revise the assessment tool that will then be used in spring of 2011 by about 19 ESRC schools as part of a three-year longitudinal study. ETS currently is engaged in similar assessment projects with The Lawrenceville School and Columbia University.

Extensive ETS and Conference Board research documents that noncognitive characteristics are important or increasingly important and critical to college and workplace success. In part due to this research, ETS developed the Personal Potential Index, a noncognitive assessment which is now part of the GRE. Results are provided to graduate schools to use in the selection of students.

Early evidence also indicates that targeted instruction in noncognitive areas, such as time management and persistence, have positively impacted student performance. Based partly on these results, ETS seeks to collaborate with educators at the middle school level to learn about the potential impact of building such characteristics more intentionally through the elementary and middle school years.