The Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century created a three-part assessment system. The three tools of this system are:

• State knowledge and skills tests
• State performance assessments
• Classroom work samples

The content standards define student skills and knowledge standards.
They spell out these expectations at grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, at the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM, grades 9 - 12) level for mathematics and language arts, and at benchmarks 1, 2, 3 and CIM for science and social science.

During the 2004-05 school year, students in grades 4 and 7 and those at the CIM level are required to participate in the writing assessment.

Merit’s language arts and math software programs correlate to the Oregon’s content and performance standards and can help students prepare for the State assessments. The content and format of Merit’s programs can help students develop and strengthen their test-taking skills as well as their reading, writing and math skills.

Merit reading software has been proven -- through rigorous, scientifically based research -- to increase both student reading comprehension and standardized test scores. Merit research study findings reveal that education software is an effective tool to improve test scores and academic performance.



Published: May 2005