The Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a leader in designing innovative performance tasks for measurement and instruction of higher-order skills and subject area assessments, has announced a new partnership with Otus, an integrated platform that gathers student data from its own or any third-party evaluation, and enables educators to monitor and plan for academic growth, social-emotional development, and personalized learning goals.
As a result of this collaboration, educators using both Otus and CAE’s College and Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+) will have a holistic picture of student performance by combining CCRA+ data with other assessment data districts are collecting – all in one platform, which will ultimately help them make instructional decisions to improve student outcomes.
Speaking about the initiative, President & CEO of CAE, Bob Yayac, said:
Partnering with Otus, a true industry leader, will help CAE positively impact the lives of more students across the country. CCRA+ is a valuable tool that can help educators identify students’ strengths and opportunities for improvement in critical thinking, problem-solving, and written communication. With this relationship, educators will have a more comprehensive view of their student’s needs and the support required to succeed.
With the integration, CCRA+ results will go directly into the Otus platform, allowing educators to create custom reports to analyze performance trends over time by student groups such as race/ethnicity, special education status, and English language learners. Educators can also identify students performing below expectations and add them to a personalized learning plan that supports their growth towards future readiness.
Chris Hull, President & Co-founder of Otus, added:
We are excited to join forces with CAE to introduce CCRA+ to the Otus community. CCRA+ is a highly effective assessment tool that empowers educators to understand better how students’ skills can be applied in real-world scenarios. This partnership underscores our commitment to preparing every student for their future, equipping them with the necessary tools to navigate their path to success.
The tie-up is a significant step forward for both CAE and Otus. For CAE, it will help to expand the reach of CCRA+ to a broader audience of educators and students across the country. It aims to provide Otus educators with a valuable new tool to measure their students’ future readiness and improve outcomes.
CCRA+ can be used for formative, interim, and summative purposes, including establishing a baseline for students, evaluating how their essential skills have progressed, and showcasing their skills upon graduation. The assessment’s results include norm and criterion reference data and detailed subscores to provide a complete picture of students’ progress towards mastery of Portrait of Graduate skills. Its results can be aggregated and analyzed at all levels – student, class, school, district, and state – to identify improvement opportunities and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions and curriculum changes.
The performance-based assessments developed by the Council for Aid to Education authentically measure the critical academic and career readiness skills of critical thinking, problem-solving, and effective written communication, providing students and educators with valid and reliable insights to support students’ success. The platform is used by more than 800,000 students at over 1,300 institutions worldwide and is supported by leading foundations.
Launched in 2013, Otus is an educational technology company dedicated to empowering educators to harness and act on educational data to improve learner outcomes. Over 240 K-12 districts and schools currently utilize the company, and it has delivered improved results for more than 1 million learners and their families. It was designed and constructed by teachers for teachers. This distinguishing feature is the foundation and driving factor for all future platform development and deployment.
