Exclusive Test Data: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills: “Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging. At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table, The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.”

• Listen to the interview with the author this article, WSJ’s Doug Belkin.
• Also via WSJ.com – “A Closer Look at CLA+ Test Results Search the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment Plus, or CLA+, test of critical-thinking skills from a sampling of public colleges and universities that administer it. Each school’s value-added score is based on the change between the average test scores of the school’s freshmen and seniors.”