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When a Diploma Isn’t Enough: How Coyne Uses the SLE to Match Students to Programs

The Client

Coyne American Institute is one of the nation’s oldest accredited technical training schools, offering training in electrical maintenance, air conditioning, refrigeration, heating, construction, computer repair, office and medical administration. It is accredited by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges of Technology, in Arlington, VA and licensed and approved for training by the Illinois State Board of Education. It has two campuses in the Chicagoland area. For more information go to www.coyneamerican.com

The Product

Scholastic Level Exam: The SLE is a short-form measure of cognitive ability or “ability to learn” - the most powerful predictor of training and job success. As a school aptitude test, it has been approved by the American Council on Education as a valid predictor of vocational training outcomes and accepted by all accrediting associations.

The SLE is the educational testing version of the well-known Wonderlic Personnel Test that has been used in employee selection since 1937. This connection provides the ability to directly compare student admissions testing scores to those of applicants for jobs, providing a reliable estimate of the likelihood of employment and successful performance within that particular career.

Used in Career School testing, the SLE is also the best single predictor of student academic success. Previous grade point average is simply not an adequate predictor of an individual’s capacity for learning and applying knowledge on the job. The SLE is a post-secondary test that is used by thousands of schools in their general admissions testing or educational testing programs.

For years Russell Freeman has relied on the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT) to help him evaluate job applicants at Coyne American Institute, one of the nation’s oldest accredited technical training schools. The WPT is a 12-minute test that quickly measures a candidate’s cognitive ability, or their ability to learn the job. “The WPT score is one of several factors we consider before hiring anyone at Coyne,” says Freeman, who is president of the Institute. He likes the test for several reasons – it delivers results in minutes, it takes very little time or effort to administer, and most importantly, it is a good overall measure of a potential employee’s ability, he says.

“A person’s ability to learn will determine whether they will be able to do these programs,” says Russell Freeman, President of Coyne American Institute. “The Wonderlic test is a good indicator of that.”

So when the school started re-evaluating its selection criteria for students a few years ago, Freeman quickly realized the value Wonderlic’s test could have in determining whether applicants had the skills to be successful in the school’s programs. “All of our candidates are either fresh from high school and have never worked, or they are in a career change situation,” he says. “And a high school diploma is not a guarantee that a student has what it takes to succeed.”

In certain programs, students with lower skills or limited education may be able to catch up, but for the more highly technical courses, such as those taken by students in Coyne’s medical administrative assistant and network technology programs, higher cognitive ability is required for success. Students in the medical assistant program take courses in topics such as medical terminology, math fundamentals, and the specifics of medical office administration. The network technician students study client/server operating systems and scripting for network administration, and spend more than half of their class time working on real world network problems.

The school realized it needed more objective proof that candidates were qualified for these courses. “We want people to take our courses who are going to benefit from the training and who will be able to complete it,” says Pat Hunter, Branch Director for Coyne American Institute, noting that Coyne administrators needed greater assurances that new students could complete the work. The school needed a tool that would help it make better selection decisions, but it had to be sure that the tool was legal and acceptable as a basis for admissions by its accrediting board.

“For any career college, the third client is always the company that hires the graduate,” Freeman says. “You have to deliver employees who will do well in their jobs long term, otherwise companies will lose faith in the program and the next batch
of new grads won't get hired.”

Fortunately, the same Wonderlic test Freeman had used to select employees fit that criterion. The Wonderlic’s Scholastic Level Exam (SLE), the academic version of the WPT, is a measure of cognitive ability, and has been approved by the American Council on Education as a valid predictor of vocational training outcomes and accepted by all accrediting associations. Freeman knew immediately that it would be a good fit. “The SLE is a good indicator of a person’s ability to learn,” he says.

The school implemented the SLE as a mandatory test for admission into the two programs, along with requiring a diploma or GED and an essay on why the applicant wants to join the program. “The essay gives administrators an idea of candidates’ writing skills,” Hunter says. Since implementing the SLE, Freeman estimates that about 75 percent of applicants achieve the required score to be accepted, and retention has been very good for those programs.

Administrators are confident that students who were not accepted wouldn’t have done well in those courses, and they advise students regarding other programs more suited to their abilities. “If you score miserably on the Wonderlic test, you are likely to have a difficult experience in the program and you will possibly even drop out,” Hunter says. “We’re not here to simply fill seats with warm bodies. It is our goal to enroll only those students who will benefit. The Wonderlic test tells us that.”

This mission doesn’t just benefit the school or the students, it clearly benefits employers, Freeman says. At a time when many career colleges are being highly scrutinized, using a test like the Wonderlic SLE gives Coyne greater confidence that their candidates are fairly and justly placed in their programs. “For any career college, the third client is always the company that hires the graduate,” Freeman says. “You have to deliver employees who will do well in their jobs long term, otherwise companies will lose faith in the program which impacts future grads.”

 

Last Updated: 1/1/08

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