Research shows what parents and teachers already know, and that is that critical thinking skills can be learned from a very early age. While the content being learned may be elementary, the student's ability to reason about that material, to analyze it, to draw inferences about it and to evaluate claims in the light of that knowledge are vital parts of the child's education. Now there are tools to measure these core critical thinking skills in children and adolescents. Form M-20 of the California Critical Thinking Skills Test has been designed specifically for use with children and adolescents in the sixth through ninth grades, or with adults who have comparable reading skills. As with all the members of the CCTST Family of Tests, Form M-20 measures an individual's or group's basic reasoning skills. The CCTST M-20 scales describe one's inductive and deductive reasoning skills as well as one's analytical, inferential and evaluative skills.

The CCTST M-20 uses a familiar multiple-choice format. It includes 20 questions that use comfortable, everyday, common sense topics to engage the test-taker in applying his or her critical thinking skills. Items present needed information for test takers using both diagrammatic and text-based contexts. The items range from those requiring an analysis of the meaning of a given sentence to those requiring much more complex integration of critical thinking skills. Some items require that the correct inference be drawn from a set of assumptions. Some require that an inference which is provided be properly evaluated. Some require that the proper evaluation not only be determined, but also justified by the most cogent reason. Others require that objections to stated inferences be evaluated, and that the evaluation of these objections then be justified. Additional items are quantitative in nature and some require students to analyze charts and graphs. The test can be administered on-line or in paper-and-pencil form in 45 minutes.

The core critical thinking skills measured by the CCTST M-20 were identified and described in useful detail for educational purposes by an expert panel in a process described in the APA Delphi Report. Explore this powerful, widely endorsed and readily applicable conceptualization of critical thinking by downloading a complimentary copy of the essay "Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts." Critical thinking is about being both willing and able to think. The CCTST M-20 measures the "able" dimension. The companion tool which measures the "willing" dimension is the California Measure of Mental Motivation Level II+.

Scores are reported using a 100 point scale. A total score of 85 or higher indicates strong overall critical thinking skills. A total score of 70 or lower indicates poorly developed critical thinking skills. At the discretion of the client, each test-taker's scores can be made available to that test-taker as she or he completes the CCTST-M20 if testing using our on-line system. In addition to using this tool to describe and evaluate the critical thinking of students, the CCTST M-20 can be used for educational learning outcomes assessment, program evaluation, and to gather thinking skills research data.