To TABE or Not to TABE: One Agency's Options

Bernie Driscoll
Taunton Adult Literacy Center, Taunton, MA

The Taunton Adult Literacy Center offers several programs. Our classes consist of two ABE, two ESOL, a Pre-GED class and a GED class. We hold classes two or three times a week from 9-12 in the morning. Our student ratio is 60% women and 40% men. Some of the students are employed and others are not. Many of the students work in the home. The ages of the students range from 18-65.

The goal of our program is to meet the needs of the individual student. People participate in our program for various reasons. Some come to improve their language skills; others seek better employment or to continue their education. We try to help students achieve their personal goals.

As the assessment person, I talk with the student at intake and find out his or her individual reason for attending our program. I try to find out a little about their past educational experience. Once I have gotten a feel for where they may be academically, I decide which test to give them. We have different tools and tests that we use to assess students depending on their abilities.

We use the TABE test when a student attended school for several years. For many students who come into our program the TABE test is very intimidating, not only the content but the test itself. If we see that a student is very nervous then we start them with our one page in-house assessment. The students see one page instead of many pages and the undertaking does not seem so overwhelming.

We then feel we are able to get a better understanding of the person's ability. The test has basically the same subjects as the TABE: whole numbers, computation and concepts, geometry and algebra. The main difference is it only has 25-40 questions, not 90 like the TABE.

Our goal is to place students in appropriate levels, but also to have them walk out of the assessment protocol with a positive attitude about school. Many of our students have had negative prior experiences in school. They began to believe that they were incapable of doing math. We often hear: ‘I can't do that.'In order for these students to be successful in their educational endeavors, we must have them overcome the belief that they cannot do it.

Teachers also take part in the assessment process. Once the students are placed in the class the teachers assess them on a daily basis through class participation, classroom observation, formal testing, informal testing, informal testing projects feedback between the student and teacher, and in some cases working with math games on the computers.

Twice a year teachers in the higher level classes use the TABE test to compare the scores the students had at the start of the class to that of the midterm and the final. The majority of the students are comfortable with testing at this point and are anxious to see the progress they have made.
Testing in the lower levels is not as structured. The teacher might opt to do a formal test at the end depending on the individual student. Many times the teacher looks at the student's portfolio and assesses using what they have collected over a period of time. If a student is to move on to a higher level we need scores documented; therefore formal testing is done.

After many years of actual testing and evaluating students we believe our new system works well. Enrollments high and retention is impressive. Very few students have dropped out in the last year. We hope that some of these assessment ideas will be helpful to your program.

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Originally published in Adventures in Assessment,
Volume 12 (Winter 2000),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2000.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.