Numerous studies have demonstrated that social and emotional skills (SE skills) can predict academic achievement, including grades and test scores, and prior research at ACT has shown that stronger SE skills are associated with higher ACT scores. However, despite the abundant evidence that SE skills are beneficial for students in general, less is…

The evolving educational landscape of our students' needs post-Covid has highlighted that student response to intervention must be of concern to all educators. Our student population has experienced an event that is like no other in our shared educational histories and our response to the aftermath of this event and how we assist students who are…

Many schools, districts, and states administer the PreACT® and/or the ACT® test to measure readiness for college and careers. A recent study suggests that these test scores can also be used to help identify students who are academically prepared and may benefit from some of the more rigorous courses offered in high schools across the nation,…

To examine differences between sequences of secondary science courses on achievement on science high stakes exams, a purposive quantitative research design was utilized in this study. A short survey was sent out to public high schools in the state of Missouri that asked to identify their main science course sequence. In addition, participants were…

Standardized tests like the ACT® provide a common basis for comparison of students across schools and states and have been a key point of consideration in postsecondary admissions for over 60 years. Research has shown that, in general, test preparation has a small but positive effect on standardized test scores. In this study, we focused on how…

Background/Context: Impact evaluations of schooling reforms in developing countries typically focus on tests of student achievement that are designed and implemented by researchers. Are these tests any good? What practical and principled guidance should researchers in the field follow? We aim to answer these questions. Test scores have, of course,…

Mateo was like many students, neither fluent in English nor in American Sign Language (ASL) and significantly delayed in literacy skills. At Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), he was provided with emerging signers services to develop his expressive and receptive ASL skills. He was also provided with speech and language services by a…

What is it like to be a gifted adolescent girl in today's world? Situated in the context of a five-session group activity, called Gifted+Grounded, the purpose of this qualitative inquiry study was to better understand how two groups of gifted adolescent girls (Group 1 = 11, Group 2 = 14; Ages 13-16) made meaning of being "gifted." The…

This causal-comparative study analyzed the college readiness of Latino ELLs educated in two different bilingual education programs, Transitional Bilingual (TB) and Dual Language (DL), by examining science and mathematics scores on the nationally recognized college entrance exam, the ACT. A statistically significant difference was found in the…

Many academically-advanced youth take the ACT® test in 7th grade for academic talent searches and again in 11th or 12th grade for college admissions. We leveraged this sample of 460,033 students, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine trends in academic growth from 1996 to 2016. We examined potential predictors of academic growth,…

This article examines college readiness indicators among Latina/o/x student and Native American students in New Mexico public schools. This analysis, used in the successful Martínez v. New Mexico (2018) case, highlights the disparate levels of access to curricular resources across 15 school districts in New Mexico. Utilizing secondary data from…

This report examines the implementation of Summer 305, an enhanced summer program which operated from June 14 through August 5 during the summer of 2021 at 179 sites in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). Eighteen program offerings were provided in a variety of physical and virtual delivery modes. Summer 305 was comprised of a suite of…

There are concerns about the increasing demands placed on students not only within the classroom but outside it as well. Parents and educators alike are faced with the daunting challenge of balancing the educational and extracurricular pressures that students face. In light of student needs and limited time educational leaders along with parents…

This study provides a first look at how student college- and career-readiness have progressed in the early years of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation. It is motivated by concern that changes triggered by the standards transition might be disruptive to student learning in the short run, even when those changes may become…

We examined 482,418 students who took the ACT in the seventh grade and again in high school, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine academic growth trends from 1996 to 2017. Predictors included sociodemographics, interests, high school (HS) characteristics, HS coursework and GPA, and extracurriculars, which explained 25% of the…