For example, the life skills reading competency might require a learner to use reading skills to answer questions related to instructions for a telephone answering machine. For the employment skills competency, learners might answer questions related to an office supply catalogue. These competencies drive curriculum, instruction and assessment. They help learners see the link between the basic skills they are learning and the real life tasks to which they will apply these skills outside of the classroom. Each program measured progress differently, and we had little sense of whether we were showing results as a system.
Teachers can clearly demonstrate to themselves and their learners when skills gains have been made.
The result is that Oregon's ABE classrooms have become more vital and exciting as learners collaborate on meaningful projects, using workbooks for practice rather than as the core of instruction. Needless to say this, shift required a lot of training. TOPS is a computerized information management system we use to document individual learner progress. TOPS has replaced past approaches to accountability that relied entirely on program self-reports and a fair amount of guesswork at the end of each year. Using TOPS, we collect demographic information and learner gains for state and federal ABE reporting.