CERTIFICATE OF ACADEMIC PROFICIENCIES

The certificate of Academic Proficiencies, or CAP, is designed to function as a supplement or alternative to the traditional high school or college diploma to validate academic achievement. It provides a program whereby people can take charge of their lifelong education and have that education certified.

FEATURES:

1. The Certificate of Academic Proficiencies will be used like a diploma and also as transcript listing the classes in which one has shown proficiency.
2. Unlike a diploma, the certificate is not static. It can be upgraded at any time, at any age. The implication of the old diploma was that people's education stopped at around age 18 or 22, when they received their high school or college degree.
3. The certificate lists the subjects in which the person has been tested and the grade. If a grade is too low, you would choose to not have it listed.
4. You can retest in a subject as many times as you wish, to improve your grade or to show your current level of knowledge.
5. A particular test comes only from a particular book or books.
6. All possible questions will be available to study. In the case of a math test, it would be all the types of problems.
7. The actual test will be a computer generated random sample from each category of all the possible questions.
8. The selling of text books, study guides, and testing fees will pay for the program.
   

ADVANTAGES:

1. The Certificate of Academic Proficiencies is user oriented unlike the traditional diploma process which is institution oriented. The CAP puts the student in charge.
2. People can get their certified education by self study, working in a study group or club, with a tutor, in a classroom, or any combination of these.
3. The CAP facilitates continuing education.
4. The CAP is a tool that can be used for evaluating and rewarding good teaching. Teachers can be given a bonus indexed to their success in raising their students' knowledge level. Student's test score at the end of the current learning period can be compared to their score at the end of the last period. In this way, teachers, as well as students, can be evaluated. This outcome-based approach will reform education.
5. Jobs can be advertised as requiring certain proficiencies. Prospective employers will be more interested in seeing CAPs than they are in seeing diplomas.
6. The academic portion of professional licenses can be tied to the required proficiencies.
7. The CAP program provides an objective, national standard for students, teachers, parents and educational institutions.
8. By being clear about what is to be covered on a test, by providing study guides that list all the possible test questions, by there being no record of poor test scores, and by allowing students to retake a test as many times as they wish, the unnecessary anxiety will have been removed from the education process.
   

NOTE: There are some subjects that lend themselves to being tested on a written test better than others and some things cannot be tested by a written test at all. A math test is usually a straight-forward, objective test but the evaluation of an essay is not purely objective. Different evaluators may give a different grade. Judging something like a musical performance is even more subjective. Those areas, where subjectively is involved in the evaluation, would not be covered by the CAP program.

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