Key Train Rocks!

This week has taught me some of the politics of the school that will end up serving both the community and students graduating from Baldwin High School (BHS) in the most effective fashion possible. This all relates back to what I mentioned briefly in a previous not: BHS is a Key Train school. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity be a part of this project!

BHS has been selected to be a Key Train school for our community, which are Milledgeville and the surrounding Lake Counties. By becoming a Key Train School, BHS has worked with the local, primary employers to determine what skills are most needed in workers employed by these businesses. Businesses include Flint Electric, Oconee Regional Hospital, and other large employers. Three (3) Work Keys areas have been identified, and these are: Reading for Information, Locating Information, and Mathematics. We have a computer program that will allow kids to take a pretest and this pretest will place them at their current level of competence, and through testing which will be tracked throughout their high school careers, the test scores will show how the education at BHS has helped to progress their abilities in the “key” areas.

I am excited to see how advanced the computer program is. The kids take a pretest and from this they will take harder testing, using numerous computer-generated questions, to objectively verify how their skills are advancing! From the data generated, we can detect at an early stage, where lay the individual child’s weaknesses and focus additional or remedial education. What I think is so awesome is how individual needs can be addressed, how objective it is with complete automation and how we are developing the skills our community needs the most!

To begin, the actually had instructors go in the Key Train Labs and take the test; in this way we could experience what our students would be experiencing. I am pumped up on this because I completed pre-testing for all 3 of my blocks! We only progress from here…so if anyone has questions about Key Train coming to their school, now I have learned!