Read the sentence. we could've made this error. what does the bolded contraction mean?

The contraction "could've" means "could have".

Explanation:

closer examination, however, finds the mcdonald's kind of job highly uneducational in several ways. far from providing opportunities for entrepreneurship (the lemonade stand) or self- discipline, self-supervision, and self-scheduling (the paper route), most teen jobs these days are highly structured — what social scientists call “highly routinized.”  

true, you still have to have the gumption to get yourself over to the hamburger stand, but once you don the prescribed uniform, your task is spelled out in minute detail.  

i took this test im trying to remember i think it is the first one im super sorry if i remembered wrong!