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 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,…

Student data is an invaluable asset for driving educational success, yet it comes with significant responsibility. As states explore ways to enhance data privacy protections, they must strike a balance between safeguarding sensitive information and leveraging data for student success. This brief examines the best practices in student data privacy…

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 brief explores how the growth of school-day testing has changed the overall population of annual ACT testers to be more representative of all students; it also highlights key insights from school-day testing programs nationwide.

As access to higher education increases, it is important to monitor students with special needs to facilitate the provision of appropriate resources and support. Although metrics such as the "reading readiness" ACT (formerly American College Testing) of provide insight into how many students may need such resources, they do not specify…

Speeded tests set time limits so that few examinees can reach all items, and power tests allow most test-takers sufficient time to attempt all items. Educational achievement tests are sometimes described as "timed power tests" because the amount of time provided is intended to allow nearly all students to complete the test, yet this…

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…

As access to higher education increases, it is important to monitor students with special needs to facilitate the provision of appropriate resources and support. Although metrics such as ACT's (formerly American College Testing) "reading readiness" provide insight into how many students may need such resources, they do not specify…

In recent years, schools and large-scale assessment developers across the United States have been providing English learners with language supports when they take tests to reduce construct-irrelevant variance, or errors in test scores due to factors that are extraneous to the construct being assessed (Thorndike et al., 1991). Some of these…

As testing programs transition from paper to online testing, they must study mode comparability to support the exchangeability of scores from different testing modes. To that end, a series of three mode comparability studies was conducted during the 2019-2020 academic year with examinees randomly assigned to take the ACT college admissions exam on…

This study examined differences in participation or nonparticipation in an ACT preparation course, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on ACT scores. Practice ACT scores were used as a covariate to control for individual differences in student scores. Participants consisted of 264 students from one graduating class at a large high school in…

Standardized reading assessments are often used as an admissions criterion for college admittance, however, the relationship and predictive validity of reading assessments to academic achievement remains in question. Through a quantitative review of the literature, we conducted a meta-analysis to examine how well performance on college reading…

Reading comprehension assessments are used for postsecondary course placement and advising, and they are components of college entrance exams. Therefore, a quantitative understanding of the relationship between reading comprehension assessments and postsecondary academic achievement is needed. To address this need, we conducted a meta-analysis to…

This study investigated the value of ACT Composite scores and high school GPA (HSGPA) in predicting first-year college GPA (FYGPA) and degree completion of students with disabilities who took the ACT with accommodations and enrolled at a two-year or four-year public institution in a single state in the southern US. Descriptive analyses found that…