Florida ged plus college Preparation Program Curriculum and Resource Guide


College Placement Remedial Cutoff Scores



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College Placement Remedial Cutoff Scores


Entry-level placement assessments are required for all students entering Florida’s community colleges and state universities. Performance on these assessments is one of many indicators of a student’s preparedness for college-level coursework. The CPT, SAT-I, and ACT are the assessments used to place students in English and math courses at colleges and universities in Florida. Students who test below the cutoff score for an area are required to enroll in remedial/developmental coursework.

Remedial Cutoff Scores

CPT




Elementary Algebra

72

Reading

83

Sentence Skills

83







SAT-I




Verbal

440

Math

440







ACT




Reading

18

English

17

Math

19

Florida Department of Education. Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 03/06/06 at: http://info.doe.state.fl.us/perfCPT/.

Building Critical Thinking Skills


“The purpose of critical thinking is to achieve understanding, evaluate viewpoints, and solve problems. Since all three areas involve the asking of questions, we can say that critical thinking is the questioning or inquiry we engage in when we seek to understand, evaluate, or resolve.”

Victor Maiorana, Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum

Overview of Critical Thinking Skills


A student’s success on the GED, CPT, ACT, or SAT depends on his/her ability to use higher-order critical thinking skills. While these tests do not include the foundation level of Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive skills, knowledge serves as the foundation for the background knowledge that students need. The following is a brief review of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Education Objectives from his Handbook 1: Cognitive Domain, 1956.

Knowledge questions require students to observe and recall information including major ideas or concepts. Students use knowledge of ideas and concepts is used to answer other higher-order questions.



Comprehension questions assess the ability to understand the meaning and intent of the material. They measure the ability to:

    • Understand and restate information

    • Summarize ideas

    • Identify implications and make inferences

    • Translate knowledge into new contexts

    • Draw conclusions

Application questions assess the ability to use information and ideas in a situation different from that provided. Analysis and synthesis questions also require the use of application as a part of the thinking process. Application questions measure the ability to:

    • Identify an example of a generalization, principle, or strategy

    • Apply the appropriate abstraction to a new problem

Analysis questions assess the student’s ability to break down information and to explore the relationship among the various ideas. They measure the ability to:

  • Distinguish facts from opinions and conclusions from supporting statements

  • Recognize information designed to persuade an audience

  • Recognize unstated assumptions

  • Identify cause and effect relationships

  • Recognize the point of view of a writer

  • Recognize the historical context of the text to avoid “present-mindedness”

  • Identify comparisons and contrasts among points of view and interpretations of issues

Synthesis questions require students to produce information in the form of hypotheses, theories, stories, or compositions. They require students to bring together pieces of information to create new ideas or thoughts. They measure the ability to:

  • Use old ideas to generate new ones

  • Make generalizations based on given facts

  • Relate knowledge from a variety of areas or sources

  • Make predictions based on the information that is provided

Evaluation questions assess the ability to use provided criteria to make judgments about the validity or accuracy of information. They measure the ability to:

  • Assess the appropriateness of information to substantiate conclusions

  • Assess the accuracy of facts

  • Compare and contrast different accounts of an event and discriminate among ideas

  • Recognize the role that values and beliefs play in decision making

  • Recognize logical fallacies in arguments or conclusions

  • Make choices based on reasoned arguments

Most Common Thinking Errors


If students are to be successful on the high-stakes tests, such as the GED, CPT, ACT, or SAT, they must avoid the most common thinking errors that are generally found among students in adult education programs. Students often:

  • Reach a conclusion without ever looking for much less at the available evidence. Students need to first review the facts and then draw conclusions based on the facts, not their own personal feelings.

  • Disagree with a logical conclusion. Rather than accept that they may be wrong, some students will disagree with a specific conclusion even though there is no logic to their line of reasoning.

  • Choose the most familiar answer. If faced with a series of multiple-choice answers, students will sometimes select the one that looks the most familiar, rather than reviewing all of the answers and reading the text for an appropriate answer. Students will look often look for a key word they know and then assume that it is the correct answer, even though it may be unrelated to the topic.

  • Disregard information that would disprove their theory. As with disagreeing with a logical conclusion, some students refuse to change their own opinion or theory about a specific concept or idea because it is counter to their own preconceived notions.

  • Fail to notice details. Students overlook the details, especially if they are confronted with both prose and visual information. These details can prove useful to students, but are often overlooked because the correct response is embedded in the graphics.

  • Refuse to consider other points of view. For these students, it is a case of “my way or the highway.” They cannot conceive of a different point-of-view and may have difficulty moving from “present-mindedness” to look at a more historical point-of-view.

  • Guess rather than think. For some students, it appears more expedient to guess if the answer is not immediately recognizable.

  • Make general assumptions about a specific outcome rather than basing their decisions on the evidence.

  • Base opinions of credibility on the speaker, not the evidence. One need look no further than advertising to see the impact of an authority figure on how students develop their opinions about a specific topic. Nike has sold millions of shoes based on the credibility of Michael Jordan, as opposed to how well the shoes are made and will perform.


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