Florida’s PERT Test to Utilize McCann’s College Success™ Platform

EWING, N.J., November 8, 2010 –

McCann Associates and the Florida Department of Education announced today that they have successfully implemented the nation’s first and only state assessment to incorporate Common Core Standards. The assessment, the Postsecondary Education Readiness Test (PERT), has been successfully launched in 28 colleges. The PERT will be used to assess a student’s readiness for college-level work and to identify appropriate course placement. The assessment will be available to high school and entering postsecondary students.

PERT is powered by McCann’s College Success™ platform, a highly accurate and reliable computer-adaptive placement testing system delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS). Utilizing sophisticated branching algorithms, the assessment will allow targeted course placement as well as a useful Response to Intervention (RtI) tool for individualized instruction aimed at correcting deficiencies.

The new College Placement Test will primarily be used to properly place students in the courses that will best fit their needs and help them succeed. The implementation of this placement test signifies the successful completion of phase one of the PERT.

In phase two, McCann will administer and score diagnostic tests in math, reading and writing. This will provide targeted diagnostic feedback to help educators better identify students’ specific strength areas, as well as areas of needed improvement, resulting in increased graduation rates.

In the final phase of the project, developmental education courses will be redesigned to address specific areas of weakness in a given subject. As a result, students will be able to build their understanding of specific knowledge areas without the need to take entire courses over again.

The specific core skills measured within McCann’s College Success™ are:

• Reading Comprehension
• Sentence Skills/Writing
• Arithmetic
• Elementary Algebra
• Intermediate Algebra
• College Algebra
• English Language Proficiency

Dr. Judith Bilsky, Executive Vice Chancellor with the Division of Florida Colleges, said, “We are very proud of the hard work our staff and faculty volunteers have contributed to this cost-saving, cutting-edge project, which will further help align our assessments to our readiness standards and instructional programs. Helping more of our students enter and succeed in postsecondary education is essential for our nation’s continued prosperity, and this new readiness measure will prove critical in the pursuit of that goal.”

“We are so proud to be able to partner with the great state of Florida and be a part of their students’ academic journeys,” said Scott Kramer, Regional VP of McCann Associates. “We look forward to assisting students and parents in reducing college costs by placing more college-ready students in the appropriate classes and shortening the time from college entrance to graduation. We feel that our experience with PERT in Florida can certainly help other states that are involved in the Partnership for the Assessment Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), as they create assessment systems to increase the number of students who graduate high school ready for college and careers.”

About McCann Associates

As an innovative leader in assessment, certification, learning management and business intelligence solutions, McCann Associates changes the way the world learns and makes decisions. Leveraging advanced technology delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS), McCann currently provides solutions for Higher Education, Government and Public Sectors, Public Safety, and Corporate HR and Employee Learning. To learn more about how McCann Associates can help you, visit http://www.mccanntesting.com.

About the Florida College System

Florida’s colleges remain the primary point of access to higher education in Florida, with 58 percent of the state’s high school graduates pursuing postsecondary education beginning at a Florida college, and 81 percent of freshman and sophomore minority students in public higher education attending one of Florida’s 28 colleges.