On Tuesday, October 26 Clay Career & Tech teachers attended a training session on a new test prep program called On-Line Compass Prep.  The program was developed in partnership with Owens Community College, NW Ohio Tech Prep and the Stackable Certificates subcommittee and is designed to prepare students to take a college entrance exam, specifically the Compass/Asset Test.  Ten Career Tech teachers will be able to make this resource available to their students for use at home or during study halls.  This is an important step for our students to take.  Compass/Asset is the means to measure college readiness after high school.  It is also a benchmark that students must meet in order to qualify as a Tech Prep Completer. The “Tech Prep Completer” label is a key component needed to qualify for a $2000 scholarship at Owens Community College.  Junior career & tech students will take the test in the fall.  Seniors will take their second attempt in the spring.  The goal is to attain a score of 41 or better in Math, 39 or better in Reading and 41 or better in writing on the Asset test. 

The Compass Online Test Prep is divided into two distinct areas:  Mathematics and Reading/Writing.  Mathematics includes Pre-Algebra (story problems, fractions, percents, proportions, order of operations, etc..), Elementary Algebra (linear equations, geometric formulas, application problems, exponential expressions, and polynomials) and Intermediate Algebra (factoring, solving equalities/inequalities, application problems with the quadratic formula). 

The Reading/Writing breaks down the two areas.  Reading will cover such topics as context clues, inferences topics and main ideas.  Writing practices grammar (verb tenses, redundancy, modifiers, comma placement, introductory elements, rules for apostrophe, semicolon, colon, dash, quotation marks, capitalization) and writing style and organization (introductions and conclusions, topic and concluding sentences, author purpose). 

You can learn more about Tech Prep at www.techprepnwo.org.