ACT Newsroom & Blog

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Two leaders in business and education – Jules W. Muis, retired international accounting executive, and Eduardo Padrón, president of Miami Dade College – have been named to the ACT Board of Directors. Chad Wick, a current member of the board, has been selected by his peers as Board Chair.

New ACT Board Members

Jules W. Muis
Throughout his distinguished international career in accounting, Jules W. Muis has led the development and implementation of a broad range of accounting principles and regulations across both the public and private sectors.

Muis, a Dutch national with dual American citizenship, began his career with Philips Electronics and Time Life. In the 1970s he served as Secretary-General of Union Eur-Audit based in Brussels, and became a partner at Ernst & Young and its predecessor firms, where he had leadership roles in the Netherlands, Africa, and across Europe.

Muis was later named president of the Dutch Institute of Registered Accountants, Vice President and Controller at the World Bank, and Director General and Chief Internal Auditor at the European Commission.

Since formally retiring in 2004, Muis has continued to serve in accounting leadership roles, including on a Select Committee of the United Kingdom House of Lords, as Chair of the Audit Committee of the International Baccalaureate Organization, and as a member of the Audit Committee of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

Muis also serves, at the recommendation of the World Bank, on the Public Interest Oversight Board overseeing standard setting for the global audit profession.
 
Eduardo J. Padrón
Since 1995 Eduardo J. Padrón has served as president of Miami Dade College (MDC), the largest institution of higher education in the United States with more than 165,000 students.

MDC enrolls and graduates more minorities than any other institution in America. Padrón is credited with engineering a culture of success that has produced impressive results in student access, retention, graduation, and overall achievement.

In addition to his MDC leadership duties, Padrón serves on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Association of University Presidents, and Achieving the Dream, among others. Previously, he served as board chair for the American Council on Education, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and the Business Higher Education Forum.

Since arriving in the United States as a teenage refugee in 1961, Padrón has also been selected to serve on posts of national prominence by five American presidents. Internationally, he has been awarded the Commandeur in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques by France, the Order of San Martin by Argentina, and the Order of Queen Isabella and the Juan Ponce de Leon 500th Anniversary award by Spain.

An economist by training, Padrón earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
New ACT Board Chair

Chad P. Wick
Chad P. Wick’s tenure as ACT Board Chair began September 1, 2017. Wick joined the ACT Board of Directors in 2012, and was named vice chair of the board in 2015.

Prior to joining the ACT Board, Wick founded the KnowledgeWorks Foundation, serving as its president and CEO from 1998 to 2013. The Foundation, headquartered in Cincinnati, seeks to advance economic opportunity in order to prepare students for college, work, and citizenship.

Wick has long worked to achieve equity and respect for diversity inside and outside education. Wick led the development of the Ohio College Access Network, which supports the college aspirations of more than 165,000 students each year, and assists in turning neighborhood schools into community learning centers. Wick, a veteran of the US Air Force, has also served as president and CEO of RISE Learning Solutions, president of Mayerson Company, and CEO of Southern Ohio Bank.

In addition to his ACT board service and leadership, Wick currently serves as University Ambassador for Texas Woman’s University.

About ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

IOWA CITY, Iowa—The Ministry of Education in Jordan has given its official approval and recognition of the ACT® test as an acceptable academic measure to be administered and used in the country as an equivalency to the Jordanian Tawjihi exam.

Tawjihi is Jordan’s general secondary national exam. It is a mandatory educational requirement for all students who plan to attend a Jordanian university or expect to work in Jordan’s public or private sector after graduation from university abroad.

This approval of the ACT test as an equivalency to Tawjihi will open more doors for students in Jordan seeking admission to universities both at home and abroad, giving them additional options to find their ideal future educational or vocational path.

“It’s a great honor for the ACT test to be approved and recognized in this way in Jordan,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “This decision speaks to the quality, reliability and validity of the ACT as measure of student academic achievement. We are thrilled that Jordanian students will have more options to pursue their educational and career goals through the ACT.”

ConnecME Education, the ACT exclusive partner for the Middle East and North Africa region, administers all the tests in the region and has been instrumental in bringing the ACT to higher visibility there. ConnecME continues its objective of assisting governments and students in increasing opportunities, and allowing students to find their best pathway to further education and employment.

“We are so proud of this endeavor,” said ConnecME Chief Executive Officer Mohammad Shadid. “Education is about options, expanding horizons and attaining global leadership skills. The ACT will now facilitate more options for a new generation of students. Moreover, it opens the very exciting door of more students returning home with elite skills and qualifications. We are grateful for the support and vision from the Ministry of Education, who continues to express an exceptionally supportive view of students in Jordan. This exhibits the Ministry’s continuing commitment toward the Jordanian education sector and to its never-ending commitment to increase opportunities for students in Jordan.”

About ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

About ConnecME

ConnecME is an international educational company that understands the importance of empowerment and global citizenship. With its strong partnerships, it aims to provide tailored educational solutions to meet the unique needs of schools, universities, and government departments. With ACT, ConnecME’s goal is to provide students with opportunities to help them become globally competitive and to attain excellence and recognition in the global domain. They view their role as one of continuous support to the student, in helping them open more doors to opportunities both home and abroad. To know more about ConnecME’s services, please visit their website www.connecme.com or email info.jordan@connecme.com

Suppose you created your own, unique profile based on your interests, goals, experiences, and cultural background, etc. Now, suppose your educational experience—including the tests you take—were individualized to align with your specific profile.

ACT will utilize the capabilities of automatic item generation (AIG) to help address these very challenges.

What is AIG? Essentially it is using a computer program to create test questions (or “items”) for an exam. Traditionally, items used by ACT and other testing organizations are created by people. Then, they are edited and revised and pretested (and revised again) and put through a rigorous review process (and perhaps revised again) before they make it to an actual test.

AIG replaces the first part of this model—the initial creation of test questions by people—with item creation by a computer program.

How does it work? It’s technical, but it involves a structured template— a cognitive model—that represents the way the humans identify and associate variables related to a variety of topics. That cognitive model is then used by a computer to generate test questions of various types. While the technology and terminology may be unfamiliar to most people, AIG is a proven operational technique that has been rigorously tested over the past decade.

Why would we use AIG? There are many reasons, the first being efficiency. AIG can generate many, many more test questions in much less time than can a person. It can help make test development less time-consuming and prevent costs from increasing as much in the future.

AIG can be used to generate open-ended and multiple choice questions. It can generate math questions, science questions, questions on grammar, questions based on text passages… The possibilities are vast and promising.

You might think test development professionals would see AIG as a threat, but in my experience they actually see it as an opportunity. Typically, once they begin creating cognitive models they soon enjoy capturing how individuals identify and assemble variables to create meaningful questions. Content specialists quickly learn that diversity (even just a small variation) within a single variable can distinguish students who have strong understanding of content from those who do not. This helps educators diagnose learning gaps—and ultimately helps students learn.

AIG enhances the value of content specialists, extracting their knowledge and putting it to use in a much more efficient way. Engaging content experts upfront in the modeling process results in work that is not only more scalable but also more stimulating, more impactful and, in the words of our content specialists—more fun!

Bottom line: Can a computer create good test questions? I have placed questions generated by AIG next to human-generated questions and asked people to tell me which were which. They couldn’t do it. It’s impossible to tell the difference. The items are indistinguishable. The answer is: YES.

As I mentioned at the start of this piece, AIG may someday help us create personalized tests that are aligned with each examinee’s specific interests, goals, experiences, and cultural backgrounds. Someday, test questions could be created while a test is being taken, tailored to each individual’s unique academic needs.

We aren’t there yet, but we are clearly on our way. The possibilities are endless—and exciting!

Read the Press Release

Agreement Will Allow ACT to Speed Up Test Development Process

IOWA CITY, Iowa—ACT today announced an agreement to join forces with MGHL Consulting to use automated item generation (AIG) to accelerate its own test development process and help other organizations do the same.

AIG is a technology that uses human-created item models to generate test questions using a series of computer programs. MGHL is headed by Drs. Mark J. Gierl and Hollis Lai, professors at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who are pioneers in AIG.

“We believe this advancement will revolutionize the assessment industry,” said Marten Roorda, ACT chief executive officer. “This technology will allow us to speed up the development of our assessments for all subjects and at all levels, making our content development scalable. Through AIG, we can significantly increase the number of test forms available to us. And we will offer this service to other testing organizations and associations to help them develop their own assessments much more efficiently.”

ACT and MGHL Consulting each bring their own unique capabilities to this new relationship, combining their respective strengths. ACT has nearly six decades of experience in test development and research, making it a leader in college and career readiness assessment, while the leaders of MGHL have spent more than 10 years developing and implementing the AIG process.

AIG is a proven operational technique that has been thoroughly assessed and verified through rigorous research by ACT and others.

“For the past hundred years, our industry has approached test development in roughly the same way,” said Donna Matovinovic, ACT senior vice president of test development. “Now, we’re about to shift paradigms, transforming question development to fully utilize human intelligence combined with computing ‘intelligence.’ AIG gives test developers the power to do so much more with the same investment in time. And the test questions generated by the program are indistinguishable from those written by a person.”

Redefining the Test Item Process

MGHL Consulting calls its AIG computer program “IGOR,” short for “Item GeneratOR.” IGOR represents the latest computer technology designed to accelerate the process to generate test questions.

Instead of the standard process of crafting one test question at a time, ACT test developers will now develop “item models” which serve as inputs to IGOR to generate thousands of valid and individually unique test questions.

Developing one item model can take test developers about the same amount of time as it does to develop a single test question under the current process. A well-constructed item model can generate items for use across several grades and even multiple languages and cultures.

Test questions generated by AIG will still go through the same review, research, and quality control processes as do current questions before making it onto an actual test.

In addition to generating items for its own assessments, ACT expects to offer AIG as a service to other organizations in need of high-quality test items at affordable prices as they move to computer-adaptive testing and ”anytime, anywhere” delivery models.

ACT, which has tested AIG over the past three years, will scale up the use of the new AIG program immediately.

ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

MGHL Consulting

MGHL Consulting is a University of Alberta technology spin-off company that was incorporated in 2013. The company works closely with government agencies, testing companies, and academic publishers to implement item generation principles into test development practices.

Under the agreement, ICD Pakistan will administer the ACT test to students across Pakistan, as well as provide students with access to ACT-produced programs and materials that will help them better prepare for the exam. The move will expand the number of ACT test centers available to Pakistani students

“We are thrilled to be joining forces with ICD Pakistan to provide Pakistani students with greater access to the ACT test and to US universities,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “American colleges and universities rely on ACT scores to help them see which applicants are best prepared to succeed on their campuses, so doing well on the ACT test can be extremely helpful to international students who wish to study in the US.”

“ACT exams are becoming increasingly popular among students in the US and abroad,” said Dr. Osamah Qureshi, director of ICD. “Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of Fulbright scholarships, so the ACT test and its allied products will be in high demand in the Pakistani market. ICD will be a one-stop shop for North American-bound student traffic offering the ACT and its allied products such as ACT® Online Prep, The Official ACT Prep Guide and PreACT®.”

ICD is expected to begin administering the ACT exam at its centers based in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad in early 2018.

About ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

About ICD

The Institute of Career Development (ICD) is involved in English language assessment exams of Cambridge English UK, ETS TOEFL iBT USA, Pearson Test of English and HSK exams as an Authorized Test Centre in Pakistan. ICD has three test centers in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. ICD is also an accredited center for NCC UK for offering its BSc and Diploma awards. ICD is also offering study abroad services for USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and UK. The company was established in 2008 and earned a reputation in fair testing since then. ICD also offers the world’s most respected Teaching Qualifications of Cambridge and Pearson. ICD became ETS preferred partner in Pakistan to sell ETS digital products in 2016. ICD is now ACT’s preferred partner in Pakistan to offer ACT® exams and allied products such as ACT® Online Prep, PreACT® and The Official ACT Prep Guide. More is at www.icd.org.pk.

Under the agreement, TÜV SÜD Bangladesh will administer the ACT test to students across Bangladesh, as well as provide students with access to ACT-produced programs and materials that will help them better prepare for the exam. The move will expand the number of ACT test centers available to Bangladesh students.

“We are very excited to be joining forces with TÜV SÜD to provide Bangladesh students with greater access to the ACT test and to US universities,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer, Suzana Delanghe. “American universities rely on ACT scores to help them see which applicants are best prepared to succeed on their campuses, so doing well on the ACT test can be extremely helpful to international students who wish to study in the US.”

“The ACT test sets international students up for success during their stint on campuses across the United States of America,” said Ezhilan N., Country Head, TÜV SÜD Bangladesh. “Bangladesh has great potential in terms of the number of students accepted by American universities. The country ranks 11th globally for graduate students and 26th for undergraduate students studying in the United States. We are thrilled to partner with ACT to help them expand their test centers and be a catalyst in helping students from Bangladesh realise their American dream.”

TÜV SÜD is expected to begin administering the ACT exam in Bangladesh later this year.

About ACT

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

About TÜV SÜD

TÜV SÜD is a premium quality safety and sustainability solutions provider that specializes in testing, inspection, auditing, certification, training and knowledge services. Since 1866, the company has remained committed to its founding principle of protecting people, property and the environment from technology-related risks. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, TÜV SÜD is represented in more than 1,000 locations worldwide. TÜV SÜD operates globally with a team of more than 24,000 multi-disciplinary experts recognised as specialists in their respective fields. By combining impartial expertise with invaluable insights, the company adds tangible value to businesses, consumers and the environment. The aim of TÜV SÜD is to support customers with a comprehensive suite of services worldwide to increase efficiency, reduce costs and manage risk. Learn more about TÜV SÜD.

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Beginning this September, ACT® WorkKeys® Assessments will be offered to Mexican students of the Inter-American Development University (UNID) who are obtaining a Dual Industrial Engineering Degree under the German Dual Training Model (DHBW), an educational training method that will be implemented for the first time in Mexico, with the automotive industry.

FUNDAMEE, the exclusive representative of ACT in Mexico, in collaboration with UNID, will incorporate the WorkKeys Assessments into the curriculum of the Dual Training Model, allowing students to obtain both an ACT® WorkKeys® Career Readiness Certificate and the CONOCER certification of Basic, Universal and Transversal Competences.

“We’re thrilled to be working with UNID through our partnership with FUNDAMEE to further promote access to WorkKeys Assessments in Mexico,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “This is a unique opportunity for UNID students within the Dual Industrial Engineering Degree program to demonstrate their work readiness to future employers, while gaining hands-on experience with the processes and technologies they will encounter in their future workplaces.”

UNID is a university system with 50 campuses in 24 states of Mexico. It enrolls 33,000 students and more than 50,000 graduates in various fields. It is certified by the Duale Hochschule Baden Wurttemberg Latin America (DHLA).

Classes within the degree program began September 4 and will last 10 semesters. UNID will use the FUNDAMEE-affiliated Mexican Training Complex as the classroom setting for the Dual Training Model, and the Dual Industrial Engineering Degree will be taught in the city of Puebla.

An event with Volkswagen Group Academy Mexico, Audi Mexico and UNID, presenting the first generation of students of the Dual Industrial Engineering Degree program took place Monday, September 4. Volkswagen and Audi senior executives from Germany and Mexico, directors of the DHLA, and executives from ACT and FUNDAMEE were in attendance to welcome students and celebrate the new program.

“Today, ACT is present in Mexico at UNID, and we want it to be present in the industry and in the universities of Mexico,” said Alberto Ortiz, president of FUNDAMEE, while delivering certificates to first generation students of the campus.

About ACT

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Underserved students lag far behind their peers when it comes to college and career readiness, and the more underserved characteristics that students possess, the less likely they are to be ready. These findings are reported in The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2017, ACT’s annual score report, which was released today.

Underserved students, who represent nearly half (46 percent) of ACT-tested 2017 U.S. high school graduates, are defined as students who would be the first generation in their family to attend college, come from low-income families and/or self-identify their race/ethnicity as minority. Research suggests students with any of these three characteristics are less likely than others to have access to high-quality educational and career planning opportunities and resources.

Only 9 percent of ACT-tested graduates who possessed all three underserved characteristics showed strong readiness for college coursework, meeting three or four of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks (English, mathematics, reading and science). Even among students who met only one of the underserved criteria, just 26 percent showed strong readiness. In comparison, the majority (54 percent) of graduates who were not underserved showed strong readiness for college.

Conversely, the majority of underserved students—including 81 percent of those with all three underserved characteristics—achieved only one or none of the four ACT benchmarks. Those students are likely to struggle in college-level coursework.

“While it’s no surprise that underserved students fall behind their peers due to the inequities that exist, it is extremely alarming and concerning to see how large this achievement gap really is,” said ACT Chief Executive Officer Marten Roorda. “This gap presents a major risk to our nation’s goals for postsecondary completion and economic competitiveness. We must work harder to ensure these students have access to quality coursework and information to assist them in planning for the future. We launched the ACT Center for Equity in Learning last year to help do just that.”

The results are based on the more than 2 million 2017 graduates—60 percent of the national graduating class—who took the ACT® test.

Overall Readiness Levels Remain Steady

Readiness levels have remained fairly steady over the past several years among ACT-tested graduates overall.

Thirty-nine percent of the 2017 graduates met three or four of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, up from 38 percent in 2016, but down from 40 percent the year before.

The proportion of graduates showing virtually no readiness for college coursework remained sizable. Among 2017 graduates, 33 percent met none of the four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks, suggesting they are likely to struggle in first-year college coursework in all four core subject areas. That compares to 34 percent last year and 31 percent in each of the three previous years.

“What our education system is doing now is not working well enough for far too many of the country’s young people,” said Roorda. “ACT has invested significant money and resources to explore innovative ways to improve learning and assessment. Our goal is to positively impact student outcomes, not only in terms of their academic skills but also in terms of their social and emotional learning skills. ACT urges schools, districts and states to take a holistic approach to college and career readiness.”

Other Findings

The following are among the other key findings in this year’s ACT report:

 Achievement/Readiness

• The national average ACT composite score for the 2017 graduating class rose to 21.0 on a 1 to 36 scale, returning to 2014 and 2015 levels after dropping to 20.8 last year.
• Since 2013, the percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks has increased in reading, stayed relatively steady in science, and declined in both English and mathematics.
• Two in 10 graduates (21%) met or surpassed the ACT STEM Benchmark, which represents readiness for first-year courses typically required for a STEM major.

 Greater Diversity

• The number and percent of Hispanic students taking the ACT continued to rise in 2017, adding to the diversity and representativeness of the tested population. Average scores and readiness levels among Hispanic students improved slightly this year even as their numbers increased.
• Nevertheless, Hispanic and African American students continue to lag behind their white and Asian American counterparts in terms of academic achievement and college readiness.
• During the 2016-2017 academic year, more than 650,000 fee waivers were awarded to prospective ACT examinees. Unfortunately, more than one-fourth (28%) of those fee waivers were not used, suggesting that over 180,000 eligible students missed out on an opportunity to take the ACT for free—and their eligibility for free access to ACT test prep resources—during the past year alone.

 Popular Majors, Career Preparedness

• Health sciences and technologies continues to be the most popular college major choice among ACT-tested U.S. high school graduates, beating the next highest named major (business) by a nearly two-to-one margin.
• Only 4 percent of graduates (80,873 students) expressed interest in an education major, unchanged from last year, suggesting that more needs to be done to positively impact the education pipeline.
• Fewer than three in 10 graduates were likely, based on their ACT composite score, to attain an ACT WorkKeys® National Career Readiness Certificate® (NCRC®) at the gold level or higher, which represents the foundational work readiness skills needed for 93 percent of the jobs recently profiled in the ACT JobPro® database.

About the Report

The report includes ACT score results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, including 16 states that required all students to take the ACT as part of their statewide testing programs and another four states that funded ACT testing on an optional basis. It also includes the results from more than 1,100 individual school districts across the country that administered the ACT to all students.

NOTE: National and state ACT Condition of College & Career Readiness 2017 reports are available on the ACT website at: www.act.org/condition2017

For district- or school-specific score results, please contact the local district/district office or your state department of education. ACT releases only national and state reports.

About the ACT

The ACT is a curriculum-based achievement test that measures the skills taught in schools and deemed important for success in first-year college courses. The content of the ACT is informed by results of the ACT National Curriculum Survey®, conducted every three to four years among thousands of elementary, middle and high school teachers and instructors of first-year college courses across the United States. The data obtained in the survey allow ACT to ensure that its assessments measure the skills most important for success after high school.

ACT research shows that students who meet the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are more likely to persist in college and earn a degree than those who don’t. The benchmarks specify the minimum score students must earn on each of the four ACT subject tests to have about a 75 percent chance of earning a grade of C or higher and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or higher in a typical credit-bearing first-year college course in that subject area.

The ACT Center for Equity in Learning is dedicated to helping underserved learners and working learners achieve education and career success. Through purposeful investments, employee engagement and thoughtful advocacy efforts, the Center supports research, innovative partnerships, initiatives, campaigns and programs that work to close gaps in equity and achievement and help young people succeed in education and the workplace.

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Headquartered in Iowa City, Iowa, ACT is trusted as a national leader in college and career readiness, providing high-quality assessments grounded in nearly 60 years of research. ACT offers a uniquely integrated set of solutions designed to provide personalized insights that help individuals succeed from elementary school through career.

Last week, ACT was invited to be a co-signer on several letters to President Trump urging his administration to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program alive. ACT quickly and enthusiastically signed those letters. That’s because our mission always has been to help individuals achieve education and workplace success, and providing immigrant students with new and expanded access to education and workforce opportunities certainly helps fulfill that mission.

While the attention has been on the White House and how the Trump administration would deal with the DACA issue (and as of 10 a.m. today how Congress will engage on the issue), the real question that I hear few asking is: Why are attorneys general in 10 states motivated to pressure the administration into reversing the current DACA initiative? The short answer seems to be: politics.

Enacted under President Obama, DACA allows immigrants who came to the US before turning 16 years old to apply for temporary but renewable protection from deportation, provided they pass a background check and meet certain requirements. To qualify, they must be enrolled in, or graduated from, a US High School; have earned a GED; or be an honorably discharged veteran of the US Armed Forces.

So far, nearly 800,000 young people have done just that—and many of them have thrived, as Miriam Jordan’s August 27 New York Times article points out. Many have put on the uniform of the United States Military. Many have gone to college or technical training programs and are actively serving their communities and this country in ways they likely never dreamed possible.

At the same time, DACA has become a lightning rod for immigration hawks, who view Obama’s enactment of DACA as executive overreach. As Attorney General Sessions said this morning, “The Department of Justice cannot defend this overreach," and then went on to say, “enforcing the (immigration) law saves lives, protects communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering.” Really? The numbers don’t seem to support the Attorney General's assertion.

According to a 2014 report of the American Immigration Council, DACA has resulted in countless students obtaining educational benefits that have led to better jobs and higher earnings. What’s wrong with 60% of DACA beneficiaries obtaining a new job and 45% of them increasing their earnings? What’s wrong with 57% obtaining a driver’s license and, thus, widening their education and employment opportunities? What’s the problem with 49% opening their first bank account or 21% obtaining employer health care benefits? How does reversing the program—and potentially deporting young people who’ve only known the United States as their home— “protect communities and taxpayers” when by all indications DACA recipients have bettered their lives and become productive, tax-paying residents?

If the answer to all those ‘why’ questions is simply “politics as usual”—or, worse, if the administration and the 10 attorneys general who pressured them in the first place are simply seeking payback to a president whose policies they disagreed with—then we are hopelessly misguided in our priorities as a nation. Moreover, I would argue that we’ve lost our moral compass in this country we once called the land of opportunity.

The vast majority of us are the descendants of immigrants. Today we still benefit from our ancestors sacrifices, their desires to start new lives, and their efforts to better the odds for their families and future generations. Given our collective histories, as descendants of immigrants, we should stand up and protect those same opportunities with which we’ve all been blessed and extend them to those who, in most cases, were brought to America by their parents for the exact same reasons.

I am proud to work at an organization such as ACT that works to improve the lives of students—all students—through expanded educational opportunities. I’m heartened that we have signed on to multiple letters of support for DACA.

And, finally, I am resolute in the conviction that my organization will continue to urge this administration, and now Congress, to find ways to maintain and support the DACA program that has benefited 800,000 students and, ultimately, the United States of America.