Our students know how to think. As they learn new material or skills, they assimilate it based on the way that they have learned to understand the world. Sometimes this is to their advantage and sometimes it is to their detriment. For example, if students have memorized a definition to a literary term or a seven step algebraic solution without understanding, they will continue to apply this approach to learning because someone (often the student) is reinforcing the behavior. Other students, who have learned to understand instead of memorize, are often better test-takers because they can recognize and mentally manipulate prior learning. These students can often correctly answer prompts that they have never seen before. These students are also the ones who you know are smart, but their test scores are below what are expected- they're just not good test-takers.

When psychometricians develop assessments, they are confined by both the eligible content and measures such as validity and reliability.  This makes the questions that are asked, in some ways, to be predictable. At Keys Test Prep, we help you teach students alter their schema, their mental tool kit, to see standardized tests  in a different way. When they "Think Like a Test Maker," not a test-taker, they will have new tools to increase the probability that they will test to their potential on the Keystone Exam.

In our Algebra and Literature courses around the state, we teach all of the important skills or content that allow students to understand our whole course so that they can continue in the Mathematics and ELA coursework required by our districts. However, standardized tests, the Keystone Exams included, require the mastery of a limited list of content or skills. Because, as any good teacher knows, not everything is easy assessable using a multiple choice or brief open-ended question.

In each of our Keys we help you teach students to "Train Your Brain" the tricks- really, the skills and content- that will give them a better chance to test at their potential - to make them better test-takers.

Standardized Tests are much maligned by the media, teachers' unions and parent groups. At best, these tests demonstrate a valid measure of learning and quality teaching. At worst, a necessary (or unnecessary) evil. Either way, they are here and not going away anytime soon. Given this reality, the best that we as educators and parents can do is to help students test to their potential and demonstrate a valid measure of their learning. Some students, teachers and parents might consider this "selling out" by teaching to the test. We, at Keys Test Prep, humbly disagree. If time is spent helping students to better understand how they are measured (right or wrong) and what content and skills for which they will be measured, they are more likely to feel, when they put their pencils down and close the exam book, like they performed as well as they possibly could have done. By Unlocking the Keystone Exams in this way, they will have become a better and more prepared test-taker.

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