BALTIMORE - (Business Wire) Project Lead The Way (PLTW), the nation’s leading provider of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education programs, and Prometric, the global leader in technology enabled testing and assessment services, today announced a new relationship for the delivery of online assessments to all 200,000 PLTW high school students in the 2009-2010 academic year, as well as for conducting research to gain new insight into how students learn and improve in STEM-related studies. In addition to online exam delivery to U.S. high school students, the research piece of the new contract will focus on tracking the migration of students from middle school to high school to post secondary studies and will provide PLTW with the opportunity to breakdown data into specific demographic categories. PLTW expects to assess more than 1,000,000 students over the next five years – the largest assessment of STEM students in the nation.
Online, in-school delivery of the assessment exams using Prometric IBT will give PLTW access to automated reporting tools that will allow greater visibility into student data and performance, as well as enable teachers and proctors to more easily manage the participation and performance of their respective student populations.
“Assessment of student achievement is a top priority for PLTW,” said John Lock, CEO of PLTW. “We want to produce the most relevant, reliable and timely data available about student learning and participation so that we can constantly improve our program and demonstrate that we are preparing students to become the most innovative and productive in the world. We believe that Prometric has the experience and infrastructure to deliver online assessments in the volume we anticipate.”
PLTW currently offers 10 courses for which it administers an end of course exam. The data will provide PLTW with the ability to explore the effects of PLTW programs on student content knowledge, academic core subject understanding, college readiness, and cognitive development. Online assessments will also allow PLTW to obtain real-time data about which courses students are taking, how many students are enrolled, demographic characteristics of those students, and data about how PLTW students are performing in math and science classes.
Bill Murtagh, Senior Vice President of Sales and Client Services at Prometric, stated, “We’d like to welcome Project Lead The Way to the Prometric system and look forward to working with them on their valuable and growing STEM programs in the coming years. Prometric’s IBT offering is a flexible and intuitive technology that will make the delivery of PLTW’s exams significantly easier to manage logistically. It will also provide participating teachers and students with added flexibility, greater ease of use and insight into performance data.”
In the coming weeks, PLTW will announce additional research initiatives, including the implementation of a pre-assessment test at the beginning of the school year. Those results could then be compared to the end of course exam results to determine gains in student learning. Other research initiatives will focus on “design thinking” and “creative and inventive thinking skills.”
About Prometric
Prometric, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ETS, is the recognized global leader in technology-enabled testing and assessment services. Its comprehensive suite of services, including test development, test delivery and data management capabilities, allows clients to develop and launch global testing programs as well as accurately measure program results and data. Prometric reliably delivers and administers more than seven million tests a year on behalf of 450 clients in the academic, professional, healthcare, government, corporate and information technology markets. It delivers tests flexibly via the Web or by utilizing a robust network of more than 10,000 test centers in 163 countries. For more information, please visit www.prometric.com.
About Project Lead The Way, Inc. (PLTW)
PLTW is a national, non-profit organization that provides rigorous and innovative science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for middle schools and high schools. The PLTW® comprehensive curriculum, which is collaboratively developed by PLTW teachers, university educators, engineering and biomedical professionals, and school administrators, emphasizes critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and real-world problem solving. The hands-on, project-based program engages students on multiple levels, exposes them to areas of study that they typically do not pursue, and provides them with a foundation and proven path to college and career success in STEM-related fields. PLTW began in 1998 in 12 high schools in upstate New York as a program designed to address the shortage of engineering students at the college level and has grown to a network of almost 3,400 middle and high schools in 50 states and the District of Columbia. More than 300,000 students are enrolled in PLTW® courses.
Prometric
Jodi Katz
Public Relations Manager
+ 1 443.455.6811
Jodi.Katz@prometric.com
