ACT announced a series of enhancements designed to modernize the ACT test and offer students more choice and flexibility in demonstrating their readiness for life after high school. The enhancements provide students more flexibility by allowing them to choose whether to take the science assessment, thereby reducing the test length by up to…

This report describes the process of developing and validating the enhanced ACT. The report describes the changes made to the test content and the processes by which these design decisions were implemented. The authors describe how they shared the overall scope of the enhancements, including the initial blueprints, with external expert panels,…

Starting in April 2025, ACT will introduce enhanced forms of the ACT® test for national online testing, with a full rollout to all paper and online test takers in national, state and district, and international test administrations by Spring 2026. ACT introduced major updates by changing the test lengths and testing times, providing more time per…

This report summarizes some of the evidence supporting interpretations of scores from the enhanced ACT, focusing on reliability, concurrent validity, predictive validity, and score comparability. The authors argue that the evidence presented in this report supports the interpretation of scores from the enhanced ACT as measures of high school…

This study highlights the relationship between high school grade point average (GPA), ACT Composite score, and the likelihood of developmental course placement in college. Higher high school grade point averages (HSGPA) and ACT Composite scores were associated with lower probabilities of developmental course placement. This study also highlights…

This article uses quasi-experimental techniques to assess the relationship between test-optional policy implementation and the proportion of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White students among the 510 selective institutions in Barron's Ranking from 2006 to 2019. The findings could provide empirical evidence about the connections between test-optional…