Between 2015 and 2019, an increasing number and percentage of Alabama students earned high marks on the ACT’s WorkKeys, a standardized test designed to measure skills in workplace applications of reading, math, and graphical literacy. Results for the Class of 2020 can’t be compared to those prior years for two reasons:
- The test is now optional, and a much smaller percentage of 2020 seniors students took it.
- The Covid-19 pandemic canceled the spring window for retesting, an opportunity that usually led to higher scores.
So, within the senior class that graduated in 2020, 80% of high school seniors took WorkKeys compared to 93% of seniors the previous year. Those that take WorkKeys are awarded a National Career Readiness Certificate, the highest scoring earn a Platinum, with Gold, Silver, and Bronze level following down the scale. Of those who did take the test in 2020, 59% scored at the Silver level or above, compared to 66% for the Class of 2020.
Earning a Silver certificate or above on WorkKeys is one of the six ways an Alabama high school senior can prove that they are college and career-ready. Some systems made the test optional for students who had already demonstrated college and career readiness through qualifying ACT or AP scores, students who would have likely performed well on WorkKeys.
WorkKeys, as it is administered to high school seniors, consists of three tests: Applied Math, Workplace Documents, and Graphic Literacy. ACT works with employers to evaluate jobs and determine the level of reading, math, and comprehension skills each job requires. Research from ACT finds that someone earning a Silver-level WorkKeys certificate would have the basic skills necessary to function in 69% of the jobs they have profiled.
In West and Southwest Alabama, where economic development organizations have worked to familiarize businesses with WorkKeys, the credential is valuable. Employers, particularly in manufacturing, regard the scores as an indicator of a candidate’s ability to effectively function in the workplace. A student can use the credential when applying for a job with those employers that recognize what the credential means. The map depicts the counties that have worked with ACT to document the WorkReady credentials of their workforce and to educated local employers about the test.
However, in other areas of the state, where fewer employers are familiar with WorkKeys, and in school systems where almost all of the students are going to a four-year college, the WorkKeys assessment can be viewed as extraneous. In 2020, in Mountain Brook and Vestavia Hills, for instance, only 25% of the students opted to take the test in 2020.
Because the pool of students taking the test was significantly altered, the results shouldn’t be considered as part of a trend or a statewide indicator of performance. However, in schools and systems where almost all students take it, the information can be useful for communities evaluating the level of preparation the students are receiving.
The different nature of the WorkKeys test has tended to allow a slightly different set of schools and systems to show up as top performers in the state. In 2020, the top-performing system was Arab City Schools, where 90% of students scored earned a Silver or better. Hartselle City Schools placed second, with 84% of students scoring Silver or above. The default listing in the visualization shows only systems in which 90% of students took WorkKeys. The slide allows the viewer to adjust that percentage. Other controls allow exploration of other views of the data, changing the year, or looking at the results for a particular demographic subgroup.
Looking at the performance of individual schools, a familiar pattern is apparent. Magnet schools from the Montgomery, Huntsville, and Birmingham school systems top the list. But joining them in the Top 10 are Arab High School, Marengo County’s Sweet Water High School, Autauga County’s Billingsley High School, Fairhope High School, and Hoover’s Spain Park.
For a more fine-grained look at performance, the chart below breaks down the percentage of students scoring at each level on WorkKeys, ranging from the percentage earning a Platinum-level certificate to the percentage of students who took the test but failed to earn a certificate. Other views of the data are also available through the tabs at the top of the visualization.
