Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

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Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Elizabe
th Burmaster, State Superintendent of Public
Instruction
A Component of the Wisconsin Student Assessment
System Available on the Internet November 2004
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Overview of Todays Presentation

• The Wisconsin Career Assessment (WCA)
• WCA Objectives
• Report on Last Year
• Whats New This Year
• Preparing To Use the WCA
• Ideas for Using It With Students

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• Is available without cost to all schools that
  administer the WKCE to their 8th and 10th grade
  students
• Is web-based, thus, accessible from any
  Internet-ready computer
• Is optional - schools can choose to use it or not
  use it
• Is based on the Interest Profiler, ONET's
  validated assessment.

The Wisconsin Career Assessment (WCA)
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The objectives of the WCA are
To provide students with immediate assessment
results To help students identify occupations
that may be of interest to them To help
students explore possible academic and
educational options
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The objectives of the WCA are (cont.)

• To help parents/guardians become aware of their
  child's occupational and educational interests
• To support critical workforce and economic
  development goals in Wisconsin.
• To provide schools with information on the
  occupational and educational aspirations of their
  students

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Last Year

• 250 districts used the WCA
• More than 31,000 students took the WCA
• 25 logged in more than once
• 8 logged in after school hours
• The average time to complete the WCA was 11
  minutes (upon entering registration code to
  receiving results)

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Whats New This Year

• A Feedback form
• US DOE career clusters (8th grade only)
• Students are allowed (on a limited basis) to
  retake the WCA
• A Batch report name, access code, outcome
  interest code, occupations of interest, target US
  DOE career cluster

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Whats New This Year (cont.)

• Aggregate report containing
• number of students completing the WCA
• number of students with multiple accesses
• number of retakes
• number of students beginning the WCA by month

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Preparing for the WCA

• Send in your pre-ID label file to the WKCE
  Testing Contractor
• All DACs will receive an email with either their
  registration code or (if they registered last
  year) their username and password (see handout).
  This email will be sent approximately November 1.
• Login to http//wca.wisc.edu/tools
• Assign your SACs (optional)

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Preparing for the WCA (cont.)

• Reserve computer resource rooms
• Distribute access codes to students (see handout)
• If your school has WISCareers, let students know
  they can link directly to it from the WCA
• Use the helpful DAC and SAC Tools to assist in
  administration of the WCA

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Preparing for the WCA (cont.)

• Technical support for the WCA (800)
  442-4612 ext. 12 or 14 or email
  wc_support_at_education.wisc.edu

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Ideas For Using the Results with Your Students

• Get parents/guardians involved share results at
  parent/teacher conferences, and through
  newsletters, emails, links on your website.
• Look at the top Favorite occupations of your
  students and invite people in those occupations
  to speak at your school, in your class, or at
  student organization meetings.
• Have 8th grade students use the WCA to help plan
  their high school coursework and career and
  work-based learning opportunities.

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Ideas For Using the Results with Your Students

• Have 10th grade students write down their current
  career plan before taking the WCA and compare the
  plan to their results
• If you have WISCareers, have students save their
  WCA results to their WISCareers Locker and do
  further research on occupations of interest.
• Encourage students to continue to research and
  explore career interests and participate in
  career and technical education activities.

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Ideas For Using the Results with Your Students

• Encourage students to do community service
  projects in the area of their career interests.

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Ideas For Using the Results with Your Colleagues

• Discuss with faculty and staff, the career
  interests of the students and any patterns in
  their WCA results. Encourage colleagues to
  motivate students in all subjects by connecting
  career interests to their course content.
• Align or integrate student career interest
  results to the available courses and activities
  to evaluate how well the school is serving the
  career interests of their students.
• Use the results to improve and enhance the
  Pre-K-16 career development efforts of schools
  and community organizations.

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The following slides have copies of screens from
the WCA and the WCA tools.
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