OLSAT and BSRA

The Department of education (DOE) utilizes the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test (OLSAT) and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) to provide a look into each child's intellectual abilities.

OLSAT

The OLSAT is designed to measure verbal, quantitative and figural reasoning skills that are most closely related to scholastic achievement. Tasks such as detecting likenesses and differences, recalling words and numbers, defining words, following directions, classifying, establishing sequence, solving arithmetic problems and completing analogies are included, because they have been shown to be valid measures of an individual's ability to reason logically.

The OLSAT measures cognitive abilities related to a child's aptitude. This test assesses a child's thinking skills, specifically abstract thinking and reasoning.

On the OLSAT, children will be tested in four clusters: Verbal Comprehension, Verbal Reasoning, Pictorial Reasoning and Figural Reasoning. Verbal reasoning does not correspond to speaking ability. All questions are presented in a multiple-choice format. Verbal items assess a student's receptive language skills (their ability to listen carefully, follow directions and understand the vocabulary spoken by the test administrator). Non-verbal items assess a student's visual, spatial and arithmetic understandings.

BSRA

The BSRA is designed to assess a child's concept knowledge and receptive language skills for school readiness. There are 6 sections, defined below:

1. Colors: Measures a child's knowledge and recognition of colors.
2. Letters: Measures a child's knowledge of upper and lowercase letters.
3. Numbers/Counting: Measures a child's recognition of single and double digit numerals, and samples the child's ability to assign a number value to a set of objects.
4. Sizes: Measures a child's knowledge and recognition of terms such as tall, long, short, big, small and thick.
5. Comparisons: Measures a child's ability to match and/or differentiate objects based on one or more of their characteristics.
6. Shapes: Measures a child's understanding of one, two and three-dimensional shapes.

Timeline: Best times to prepare are fall and early winter as the last day to take the OLSAT is typically in March.

Please look at the timeline from the DOE for the 2008-09 academic year.