IOWA CITY, Iowa—ACT today announced it has updated the ACT® WorkKeys® Curriculum with new courses on a modernized interactive platform, powered by BenchPrep™.
The Curriculum aligns with the recently updated WorkKeys® National Career Readiness Certificate® assessments and credential.
It now includes new courses, such as Applied Math, Graphic Literacy, and Workplace Documents, to help individuals build the essential career-relevant skills needed for learning, personal development, and effective job performance.
“By placing our newly aligned WorkKeys Curriculum on BenchPrep’s modernized user interface, we can offer more dynamic content to help improve the experience for job seekers and employers using the WorkKeys Assessments,” said Chief Commercial Officer, Suzana Delanghe. “Our ongoing investment in WorkKeys demonstrates our commitment to improve job readiness and skills development as communities build robust workforces.”
BenchPrep, an e-learning innovator that accelerates success by putting the learning experience first, offers the only comprehensive learner success platform and brings its technological expertise in personalized learning programs to the newly refreshed WorkKeys Curriculum. By leveraging data, usability engineering, and instructional design principles, BenchPrep makes learning engaging, efficient, and effective.
The platform showcases several new features and tools that include a modernized user interface and increased responsiveness on mobile devices.
Each course begins with a placement screener to ensure users start at the lesson best suited for their skill level.
Each course contains end-of-level quizzes to check for mastery of the content and simulate the testing environment.
A customizable, automatically adjusting study schedule and dynamic user-centered dashboards allow users to own their learning experience.
The Game Center application engages users in a fun-filled way and makes learning more enjoyable with friendly competitions and self-assessments.
“We are thrilled to continue our partnership with ACT by bringing personalized learning to life in WorkKeys,” said BenchPrep Co-Founder & CEO Ashish Rangnekar. “We expect students to have increased engagement with our gamified, bite-sized learning approach, while also feeling empowered to take ownership of their learning experience with the featured interactive study tools offered in the platform.”
All current KeyTrain® and Career Ready 101® customers can access the new WorkKeys Curriculum at no additional cost. Learn more about the changes here.
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 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. To learn more about ACT, go to www.act.org.
About BenchPrep
Based in Chicago, BenchPrep is the only comprehensive learner success platform on the market and is recognized as an expert in learner success globally. The company’s innovative enterprise SaaS solutions are disrupting the exam prep and continuing education market by providing an unmatched learning experience. Many of the largest assessment companies in the world are customers of BenchPrep, including ACT, HR Certification Institute, Hobsons, McGraw Hill Education, CFA Institute, OnCourse Learning, GMAC, Infusion Nursing Society, Academy of Nutritionists & Dietetics, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. More than 3 million learners have used BenchPrep’s platform to attain academic and professional success. To discover more about BenchPrep, please visit www.benchprep.com.
State Signs New Contract with ACT to Continue Providing ACT Test and Other Programs Designed to Help Students Prepare for Success
IOWA CITY, Iowa—Alabama has continued its commitment to helping its students become college and career ready by signing a new contract with ACT to continue providing multiple assessments and programs, including the ACT® test, to the state’s public school students.
The two-year contract begins this school year and includes the following ACT assessments and programs:
The ACT test with writing for public school 11th graders
ACT WorkKeys® assessments for public school 11th and 12th graders
ACT® Online Prep for public school 11th graders
ACT® Career Curriculum and KeyTrain® available to all public high schools
“We value our longstanding partnership with the state of Alabama in helping young people prepare for college and career success, and we are excited to continue this mission in the years ahead,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe.
This school year will be the fifth that all Alabama high school juniors will take the ACT test to measure their academic skills and college and career readiness. The state’s average ACT composite score rose slightly for the 2017 graduating class compared to the year before.
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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 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.
New policy reinforces ACT’s commitment to expanding access and opportunities for underserved students
IOWA CITY, Iowa—Starting in September 2018, students from low-income families who take the ACT with fee waivers will be allowed to send ACT score reports for free to colleges and/or scholarship agencies at any time during their college search process.
Currently, students may elect to send their scores to up to four colleges or scholarship agencies for free during the registration process and up to five days after they take the test. After that point, the fee for each additional score report they send is $13.
ACT’s new policy will waive that fee for students who register for the test with a fee waiver. The free score reports—up to 20 for each test students take with a fee waiver—will never expire, so students may use them whenever they wish.
“ACT is committed to helping all students succeed in their educational journey,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “Students from low-income families face a series of unique challenges and barriers that can reduce their access to higher education, and sending ACT scores to the colleges they aspire to attend should not be one of them.”
Last school year, ACT provided fee waivers to more than 650,000 students from lower-income families.
To be eligible for a fee waiver, a student must meet one or more indicators of economic need, such as being enrolled in a free or reduced-price lunch program. Eligible students may receive fee waivers for up to two ACT tests. Students may apply for a fee waiver through their high school counselor.
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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 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.
By Scott Montgomery, Senior Vice President, ACT Public Affairs
ACT has become aware of Tennessee Lt. Governor Randy McNally’s letter to the Tennessee Comptroller requesting an investigation of ACT and our business practices. While we have not received an official notification from either the Lt. Governor or the Comptroller at this time, ACT welcomes any discussion with our state partners about the importance of college readiness testing and the integrity of ACT and our practices. It is essential that students, educators, colleges and scholarship agencies can trust ACT scores to make the best decisions affecting students’ futures. We look forward to working with the Comptroller.
A recent situation in which ACT scores were invalidated due to misadministrations at two high schools during state testing in Tennessee led to the spreading of a great deal of incorrect information. To help clarify the situation, ACT leaders met with Lt. Gov. McNally, elected state representatives, and local officials to present detailed evidence about the specific incidents and ACT’s resulting actions. The Lt. Governor’s response was disappointing, as he asked that we disregard our rules and policies—the ones that we follow to ensure the validity of ACT scores and keep standardized testing fair for all students.
In response, ACT delivered an open letter to Lt. Gov. McNally on November 30. We also posted a statement from ACT CEO Marten Roorda about the importance of integrity in standardized testing.
In regard to the Lt. Governor’s recent request of the Tennessee Comptroller, ACT can assure all concerned that our organization is fully compliant with our not-for-profit status and that we will cooperate with any inquiries made in this regard.
The Lt. Governor’s letter also asserts: “ACT is selling information about students taking the ACT.” It is no secret that ACT provides student information to colleges, universities and scholarship agencies through our Educational Opportunity Service, a voluntary program to which students must opt in to participate. The program is designed to benefit students by linking them to college and scholarship opportunities.
ACT is committed to the appropriate use, retention and distribution of information obtained through our assessments. We share the public’s concern that assessment data be used properly, and we encourage the appropriate use of assessment information in decision making. ACT’s policy is to provide individually identifiable information to a third party only at the direction of the individual. When authorized by the individual student, ACT provides only selected student information and only to organizations that provide educational, scholarship, career, or financial aid opportunities -- mostly colleges.
ACT operates within a framework of policies and procedures designed to ensure delivery of high-quality programs and services and protect the privacy of the data we collect. We review our programs and services to confirm that they are consistent with the standards expressed in the current versions of the Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education prepared by the Joint Committee on Testing Practices, the Code of Professional Responsibilities in Educational Measurement prepared by the National Council on Measurement in Education, and the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing prepared by the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement and Education.
We look forward to future discussions with the State Comptroller’s Office on these issues. At the present time, however, ACT is focused on the students we serve in Tennessee and around the globe. We are currently working to expedite the scores of impacted Tennessee 12th graders who retook the ACT for free on Dec. 9, so that we may quickly send them to their selected colleges and universities to successfully meet extended deadlines such as those of the University of Tennessee.
ACT is truly broadening its international work and presence in ways that many of our customers and constituents are likely unaware.
We recently traveled to Cairo, Egypt to join Egyptian Ministry officials, secretary generals, and heads of industry along with delegations from Jordan, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman in attending the Empowering Youth through Education Summit. ConnecME Education—our partner in the Middle East region—organized this summit as part of an initiative to foster conversation on pressing issues regarding education, training, certification & licensure, unemployment, and higher education.
My ACT colleagues and I were honored to present ACT’s breadth and depth of knowledge to such an esteemed crowd of regional and global policymakers and thought leaders. We presented on a host of educational assessment topics: social and emotional learning, assessment technology, computer-based testing, high school capstone equivalency, postsecondary recruitment and retention services, and updates on our innovation arm, ACTNext.
Dr. Maisa Shawki, the Deputy Minister for Health and Population of Egypt, said, “We are meeting today to put the best scientific methods that will confirm the achievement of the goals of Egypt’s 2030 strategy.” It was a thrill and honor to be a part of this summit.
It has been my primary goal since arriving at ACT to expand our mission of helping people achieve education and workplace success to reach a global stage. I truly believe that our solutions are, as Deputy Minister Shawki said, “the best scientific methods” out there to help all learners capitalize on education and workplace opportunities. By growing our network of in-country regional expert partners such as ConnecME, we have seen tremendous international growth, while ensuring that we stay attuned to the needs of our customers and the market in which they reside.
While we understand the importance of recognizing differences and particulars of one country compared to another, what strikes me as we speak to dignitaries, business professionals, and students from different cultures is that we are more alike than we are different. Not only that, but in many cases, our different challenges can be addressed by similar solutions.
This summit in Cairo put on full display the collaborative nature of its participants and fostered the sharing of ideas across departments, institutions, and even countries. I look forward to the next iteration of the Empowering Youth through Education Summit, which will be held this month in the UAE, where FUNDAMEE, our respected partner in Mexico, will share with our Middle Eastern stakeholders the important work they have done in their country regarding workforce certification & training.
This is really just the beginning for ACT’s expansion across the globe. I am excited for what the future holds and know that, together with our partners, we can improve outcomes for individuals, educational institutions, employers, and governments around the world.
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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 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.
Fast-rising global interest in the importance and benefits of SEL continues. ACT researchers are advising a national assessment program in Chile and presenting on SEL measurement this fall in the Netherlands, Istanbul, and Egypt.
In addition, ACT Tessera™—a comprehensive next-generation SEL assessment system—was piloted this fall in New Zealand, the first international implementation of this innovative new assessment system. At 12 middle and secondary schools in Auckland and Wellington, nearly 4,000 students sat for ACT Tessera, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Students said that ACT Tessera felt very different from a typical test and they were eager for their results to come quickly because they wanted to understand themselves better.
The New Zealand pilot was conducted in a creative partnership with a startup organization based in Auckland, the 21C Skills Lab. The Lab, which is headed by its co-founders Faye Langdon and Justine Munro, holds as its guiding force the question: “Are the skills we’re teaching young New Zealanders the skills that the 21st century needs?” In Langdon and Munro’s eyes, the answer is, at present, no.
The urgency behind the 21C Skills Lab lies in the founders’ understanding of the fast-changing world of work. The students in school today, as they explain, “will come of age during the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a period where automation, globalization and collaboration will make most manual, non-cognitive and impersonal jobs redundant, but people who have high creative and intrapersonal skills will be significantly in-demand. Constant and accelerating change will mean that learning becomes much more important than knowing, with the focus on agile talent—workers who are constantly adapting and re-learning.”
Of particular importance to the work of the 21C Skills Lab is a 2016 report from New Zealand’s neighbor, Australia, entitled THE NEW BASICS: Big data reveals the skills young people need for the New Work Order, published by the Foundation for Young Australians. This report was informed by a “Big Data” analysis to, as the report states, “understand what employers want from young people: The data was collected from more than 6,000 websites, from which 4.2 million unique job advertisements were retrieved over the past three years.”
The Need for Enterprise Skills
The report found a dramatic uptick in the demand for so-called “enterprise skills,” which the report says includes problem solving, communication skills, teamwork, presentation skills, and critical thinking. In its analysis, the report explains, that “the jobs of the future, or those jobs that are least likely to be automated, demand enterprise skills 70% more frequently than the jobs of the past.”
There are many other studies coming to similar conclusions. A recent survey of over 1,000 employers in the United Kingdom, which created much buzz, found that when comparing the relative importance of “life skills” and “academic results,” 94% of respondents said life skills were equally or more important. For teachers, it was 97%, and for young people themselves, it was 88%.
Source: LIFE LESSONS: Improving essential life skills for young people Carl Cullinane and Rebecca Montacute, October 2017
New Zealand’s 21C Skills Lab, upon its founding earlier this year, set three major agenda items for itself, the first of which was: “Assessing 21C skills: For our education system to focus meaningfully on developing student 21C skills, we must have both a clear idea of what these skills are and how to measure them.”
To do this, co-founders Langdon and Munro conducted a global search for the best leading-edge assessment system available for their skills and selected researcher-scientist Rich Roberts, PhD, and his team of Social Emotional and Academic Learning researchers (yes, the “SEAL Team”) who were just then joining ACT. Langdon and Munro determined ACT Tessera was the ideal measurement system for them to advance their “priority number 1.”
In developing their 21C skills framework—organized around four quadrants they’ve labeled as “Use, Be, Know, Grow”—the co-founders placed the six skills measured by ACT Tessera in the “Be” section: tenacity, organization, teamwork, resilience, curiosity, leadership.”
In October, ACT researcher Cristina Anguiano-Carrasco, PhD, and I visited New Zealand for a week of meetings, presentations, and trainings regarding the ACT Tessera system.
It was remarkable to see the wide diversity of schools participating in the pilot: public and private, large and small, co-ed and single sex, urban and suburban, “decile 10” (high income) and “decile 1” (low income).
In all cases, these school leaders and educators recognized the critical importance of developing these skills in their students, and, in nearly all cases, they expressed a need for more support—better assessments, strong systems, richer curriculum—to meet this critical need.
In a day-long educator workshop, the conversation was highly energetic. In the morning, New Zealand teachers, counselors, and school administrators considered carefully how they might best use ACT Tessera reports to counsel students, monitor student progress, and measure success of their SEL initiatives and interventions.
At one table, a group of teachers discussed how to present ACT Tessera reports to their students in a growth-mindset manner, so as to ensure students took this information as motivating for effort and improvement.
At another table, an assistant principal displayed to his colleagues the color-coded dashboard he had created for student performance in each of the six ACT Tessera skills, allowing any teacher or counselor to perceive at a glance which students need most help and where they might focus improvement efforts with their class as a whole.
Moving the Pilot Forward
This New Zealand pilot is just the beginning of a much longer campaign by the 21C Skills Lab to advance the development of these types of skills throughout the country. They are rapidly moving ahead with programs to support empowered and informed teacher leadership in each of their partner schools (Priority 2: Building Educator Capability) and transform career pathways for youth (Priority 3: Transforming careers support for young people).
Similarly, the New Zealand pilot schools are still early in their journey. Among their next steps are embedding SEL instruction into their core curriculum; building out supplemental curricular pieces to further bolster SEL skills; and, for school leaders, implementing a systematic strategy for ongoing SEL educational improvements.
We are excited to see how so many nations are embracing SEL as a critical step to ensure success in school and in the workplace of the future. We believe their enthusiasm is well-placed and their early adoption of such measures will reap great rewards for their students, schools, and communities.
Read more about the OECD report here and about the WEF report here.
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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 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—Joining CEOs from more than 300 of the world’s largest companies, ACT CEO Marten Roorda has committed the nonprofit learning and assessment organization he leads to take specific actions to increase diversity and inclusion—not only at ACT, but in society as a whole.
CEOs signing the CEO ACTion for Diversity and Inclusion pledge commit their organizations to holding difficult conversations about diversity and inclusion, implementing unconscious bias education programs and sharing best practices with peer firms.
“These kinds of efforts are not just a business imperative, but critical to leveling the playing field so everyone has the chance to succeed,” said Roorda. “From ACT’s perspective, the effort to enhance diversity and inclusion should not only take place in our current workplaces, but be reflected in our efforts to educate and train the next generation of employees and business leaders.”
ACT is the first major assessment organization to take the CEO pledge. More than half its most senior leaders are women and 16 percent of its employees are members of minority groups.
Externally, 46 percent of the students who take the ACT, the organization’s flagship assessment, meet at least one of the three definitions ACT uses for being “underserved”: being from a low-income family, a member of an underrepresented minority group, or a potential first-generation college student.
This past school year, more than 650,000 low-income students nationwide were offered fee waivers—the opportunity to test at no cost to the student—in ACT’s efforts to ensure all students have the chance to apply for college admissions and scholarships with ACT scores and program support. Students who qualify for fee waivers are also offered free online test preparation services.
“The effort to increase diversity and inclusion must begin in childhood, be sustained as students enter college or the workforce, and then be reinforced once again in the workplace,” said Roorda. “Our work will not end in our lifetimes, but diversity and inclusion must be a top priority. I’m pleased to see so many of my peers pledging to take on this essential effort.”
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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 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.
It’s a strong word and one that most of us take very seriously. It’s a word that connotes honesty, ethics, fairness and trustworthiness. When we think about people of integrity, we usually think of people such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. And when we question the integrity of someone or something, it usually casts doubt or concern. No one wants to cross a bridge that lacks structural integrity. And when we lose confidence in the integrity of a family member or friend, we are usually quick to want to address it. Integrity is a weighty word and one that my organization and I take seriously.
This is why I feel the need to respond when the integrity of our organization is questioned.
ACT is trusted by millions of students, parents, educators and institutions to provide fair, accurate, and trustworthy assessment results. We strive to do that every day we come to work.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we live in an imperfect world and despite ACT’s and our industry’s desire for precision and accuracy, mistakes sometime occur. When this happens, it results in what we call a misadministration of the test, and when there is a misadministration, ACT cannot stand behind the scores and must cancel them.
Such a misadministration occurred this past month in a few Tennessee schools during the statewide Senior Retake Opportunity. Despite procedures, instructions and protocols carefully designed to ensure the accurate ordering, delivery and administration of the test, mistakes were made by a small number of schools. One such misadministration resulted in the cancelling of scores of approximately 400 students at Bearden High School in Knox County.
ACT deeply regrets that the students of Bearden High School have been impacted by this situation. It wasn’t the students’ fault. It is especially difficult during a time when many seniors are making final admissions decisions and scholarship applications. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that a misadministration occurred.
ACT has made efforts to support students by providing a free retake opportunity during an upcoming national test, verifying that the University of Tennessee at Knoxville would accept December ACT test scores in admissions and scholarship opportunities, and offering to work with students and other universities to verify the misadministration. Nevertheless, our integrity has been questioned because of our decision to cancel the scores.
Since the misadministration and canceling of scores was announced, there has been a great deal of incorrect information passed along regarding the situation. The misinformation about the flawed testing experience has continued to grow to the point where local and state policymakers requested a meeting with ACT to clarify what happened on that October test date.
This past week senior leaders from ACT traveled to Nashville to meet with Tennessee’s Lt. Governor and other state policymakers to provide them with accurate information on the misadministration and to answer questions they had related to the event. We provided detailed evidence on the mistakes that occurred, which were outside of ACT’s control. Nevertheless, our integrity has subsequently been questioned, and political posturing has ensued.
ACT recently delivered a letter to Lt. Governor McNally that again outlines the facts of the situation as well as other pertinent information that he has requested about the misadministration. We are happy to engage with the Lt. Governor and others on this issue; however, the insinuation that we have acted unethically or without integrity demands a response.
ACT takes seriously our duty to ensure every student—and university and scholarship agency—receives an ACT score they can trust as valid. It’s what we’ve done for almost 60 years for millions upon millions of students across the country and around the globe. Releasing scores from a test that occurred under a flawed testing administration would compromise that public trust. It would also be unfair to students who tested under a proper administration and who are competing with those students for admission and scholarship opportunities. We must be fair to ALL students. Imagine the outcry from other students (or their parents or local officials) who tested under standardized administrations if we released scores from a misadministration that resulted in them missing out on scholarships or admissions slots to a student with a compromised score? Admissions and scholarships are generally a zero sum game – the positions are finite. Releasing invalid results from a misadministration may satisfy some but at what expense to others?
It is extremely unfortunate that students and their families have been negatively impacted by the misadministration at Bearden High School. We regret any time a student is hurt by circumstances beyond their control. We hope that such incidents will never happen again, and we will continue our hard work to ensure that it doesn’t. But if and when it does, we will stand behind our policies and do what we can to help impacted students work through the situation. We are heartened by the nearly 300 students impacted by the misadministration who have thus far accepted our free retake offer, and we will continue to support them and other similarly impacted students as best we can while protecting the validity and reliability of the ACT test for all students.
