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Recently, there has been debate over whether states can appropriately use an assessment such as the ACT test, which was originally designed as a college admissions test, as their high school accountability measure under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While ACT acknowledges that college entrance examinations were not initially designed for purposes of federal accountability, The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (2014) recognize that additional appropriate uses of test scores often emerge after a test has been developed (see, e.g., pp. 13, 14). As the developers of the ACT, we approve of its use for federal accountability purposes on the basis of validity evidence that supports such use.

The ACT is designed and has been empirically validated to assess student progress toward postsecondary readiness. Research by ACT and others has consistently established the validity of scores on the ACT—the most widely used college entrance examination in the United States—in predicting student success in credit-bearing first-year college coursework and a variety of college outcomes such as persistence to a second year of college at the same institution and ultimate degree attainment.

This is precisely consistent with ESSA’s requirement that state academic standards be aligned to “the entrance requirements for credit-bearing coursework in the system of higher education in the State” (Sec. 1111(b)(1)(D)(i)); this was also the intent of the lawmakers during the ESSA conference negotiations (H.Rept. 114-354, p. 426–427) when they stated: “It is the intent of the Conferees that existing assessments already widely recognized as validly measuring student performance, such as ACT or SAT exams, may, subject to approval described in this subparagraph, be selected and used.” ACT is currently working with states administering the ACT for accountability purposes to meet the approvals referenced by the conferees. It is clear that ESSA requires that 1) college readiness and 2) mastery of high school academic standards should be one and the same; this is not a binary choice.

For their part, most states had already revised or replaced their state standards before enactment of ESSA to reflect the knowledge and skills students need to be ready for college by the time they graduate from high school. Thus, there is generally alignment between state academic standards and those measured by the ACT to provide valid and comparable results.

The ACT has advantages over other types of state assessments beyond that of predictive validity: nationally representative empirical data tying results to college readiness, longitudinal trend data, and consequential validity (e.g., increased motivation and effort of test takers, increased college-going rates in states administering the ACT for census testing), to name just three.

Further, use of the ACT is consistent with language in ESSA that seeks to minimize the time that students spend taking assessments. The ACT generally requires less than half of the time of existing state assessments, because it focuses only on critical and representative skills that students must demonstrate to be academically ready for college—the same knowledge and skills that are evident in the preponderance of state high school standards.

It is both right and proper—and consistent with the framework of ESSA—that states and districts should determine their own needs and priorities and choose an assessment that best suits those needs and priorities. ACT supports the right of states to augment the ACT with content-based questions focusing on unique aspects of its own academic standards. We contend, however, that such augmentation only supplements, rather than establishes, the validity of ACT scores for federal accountability purposes.

The ACT is one of the best available methods by which states and districts can determine the strengths and weaknesses of their educational programs so that they can steadily make progress under ESSA at the work of helping more students to graduate from and succeed after high school.

ICYMI: Here are some of our social media highlights from April to easily share with your networks. Together, we can help people achieve education and workplace success.

ACT Selects ASU for Partnership to Change the Game in Educational Technology

• Click to tweet: Excited to hear about the new partnership between @ACT and @ASU to change the game in #edtech by turning their research into products, programs and solutions. Every student deserves the opportunity to receive an outstanding education. http://bit.ly/2EX4obv
• Share on LinkedIn: ACT selected Arizona State University (ASU) for a partnership to change the game in educational technology, with plans to establish an institute for research and product development initiatives that will enhance the future of learning for all individuals. Learn more: http://bit.ly/2HJcS9c

Congratulations to the 2018 ACT College and Career Readiness Champions

• Click to tweet: .@ACT announced their 2018 #ACTChampions today. See if someone you know made the list! bit.ly/2pZ5tLs
• Click to tweet: Take a look at this! The 2018 #ACTChampions representing exemplary individuals from #highschool #K12 #postsecondary and the #workforce are making great strides to advance college and career readiness for ALL in their communities: bit.ly/2pZ5tLs 
• Click to tweet: Congratulations to this year's #ACTChampions! These individuals are making exemplary contributions in support of #college and #career readiness in their communities: bit.ly/2pZ5tLs  
• Share on LinkedIn: Congratulations to the 2018 ACT Champions! Learn what it takes to be one of these exemplary individuals and take a look at the list of champions from all 50 states and the District of Columbia: bit.ly/2pYHsUv

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Tony Miller, education industry senior executive, investor and most recently, senior partner and chief operating officer of the Vistria Group, a private equity firm focused on education, healthcare and financial services, has been named to the Board of Directors for ACT, the nonprofit organization that produces the ACT® test, ACT® Aspire®, and ACT® WorkKeys® system, among other programs.

Prior to co-founding Vistria, Miller served as Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the US Department of Education, where he oversaw management, policy, and program functions for initiatives spanning early childhood through postsecondary education. Miller was responsible for overseeing approximately $100 billion in funding as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

During Miller’s tenure there, the Education Department undertook reform efforts including Race to the Top, Investing in Innovation, and School Improvement Grant/School Turnaround Programs. Miller also oversaw implementation of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act. Mr. Miller responsibilities also included representing the U.S. Government on education and workforce development missions to China, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Ecuador, Brazil and Russia.

Previously, Mr. Miller was a Director with Silver Lake, a global leader in technology investing, and a Partner with McKinsey & Company.

Miller holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he completed his studies at Stanford’s Japan Center for Technology and Innovation, and a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. He also serves on the boards of the Chicago Public Education Fund, Chicago’s Academy of Urban School Leadership, and the Hope Street Group, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding economic opportunity for all Americans.

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Research and Product Development Initiatives
Will Enhance the Future of Learning

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Having ACT researchers find that nationally normed data are important to district administrators, school principals, and classroom teachers is hardly “stop the presses” news – but dig into several recent ACT research reports and there’s a deeper truth to be found [Link to study].

• For district administrators (e.g., superintendents and curriculum coordinators), 91 percent of respondents found that nationally normed assessments were “useful” or “very useful.” 
• For principals, 85 percent found them useful or very useful. 
• For teachers, about 65 percent said they were useful or very useful. 

You don’t need to be a data scientist to detect a pattern: the more elevated your perspective the more you appreciated the data, and the closer you are to students the less useful the data were perceived to be. Teachers still found the data useful by a 2:1 majority, but not by the 9:1 of administrative users.

Why is that? Here’s how teachers most often used data:

• To reflect on their own teaching practices 
• To keep parents informed 
• To determine which students need test-taking practice 
• To assess equity 
• To identify areas for professional development 

Interestingly, when teachers reflected on their own teaching practices — the most common use – they also used data in the same way a superintendent might: to answer the question, am I being successful?

That’s an important question, and its answer provides an essential external perspective for teachers who spend the vast majority of their time with a single group of a students.

Unfortunately, as teachers’ needs become more student-specific the normed data are perceived as less useful. That needs to change – and the resolution doesn’t rest solely with the teachers.

For example, whenever there’s a lag between when an assessment is given and its results are returned, the data become less useful. If a test is given on March 1 and teachers receive the results days, weeks, or months later, that’s less useful than giving a test at 9 a.m. and receiving the results at noon.

At ACT, we understand that, and are moving more of our assessments online so that rapid feedback is possible. Already, assessments such as ACT Aspire and ACT WorkKeys are available online, and the ACT test will be delivered online at our international test centers starting this fall.

Ultimately, the goal is for valid, reliable data to inform teaching and enhance understanding. Already, 65 percent of teachers find nationally normed data useful, but if data were consistently used hand-in-glove with real-time instruction, data use by teachers could eclipse the 91 percent of administrators who rely on data to do their jobs.

Thinking back to the original question posed in this piece – are nationally normed data useful? – using sound data to enhance great teaching is an outcome every educator at every level should find “useful” or “very useful” for years to come.

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While community colleges are no stranger to the national spotlight, recent attention has brought with it questions about the very definition of a community college.

A uniquely American concept, community colleges were started as a way to train women to enter the workforce as teachers. You could say that early community colleges were the first vocational schools.

Today’s community colleges are as diverse as the students they serve. More than 1,100 community colleges across the nation serve more than 12-million students annually. By design, community colleges are local and reflect the needs of the community in which they reside. Nearly every congressional district in the United States has a community college.

The students who attend are the most diverse within the higher education sector and many are the first in their family to attend college. Community college students on average are older, are working, are attending school part-time, and are saving thousands of dollars in tuition and fees while increasing their lifetime earning potential and employability.

Traditional and cutting-edge, community colleges represent the best of American higher education. They are unapologetically accessible and provide a critical pathway for students to reach their educational goals. For many students, that means they complete their first two years of college without a mountain of debt, with a solid foundation taught by many of the same professors that teach students in the university setting, and with a guaranteed transfer to a university. For the community college, they do this with less money and far less alumni support than their university counterparts.

The beauty of the community college is its ability to evolve in support of its community. As the country and world evolved, so did the needs of its citizens. Many vocational programs that were traditionally taught in high schools some 40 years ago, are now taught at community colleges. These programs offer sophisticated, relevant, and accredited workforce education.

“Vocational schools” are now generally called career and technical education or workforce development programs and are structured to develop needed skills for the diverse, modern workforce. The necessity of the evolution of these programs was dictated by the advancement of technology. Classes that were offered in support of learning the skills to be an automotive technician in the 1980s would certainly be lacking in today’s technologically advanced vehicles that are largely run by computers. The technology evolved. So did the education.

Like the thousands of general education programs offered at community colleges, these career and technical programs are a good investment for the community. Many of these programs are a partnership between industry and the community college and are designed to address the regional economic needs of employers and employees. These partnerships go beyond vocational training and instead are designed to create a pipeline that serves the community and its citizens with a viable job market.

The first choice for many students, community colleges have been the start of amazing things for millions of Americans. So, is a community college a vocational school? Yes. And many other things. To the nurses, firefighters, police officers, dental hygienists, chefs, fashion designers, business owners, transfer students, welders, plumbers, marine biologists and the many millions of community college students served in the past century, we remain committed to evolving and supporting your success in achieving your educational goals – no matter what you call us.

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“Life Skills is an important educational priority for our middle school students, and we’ve been looking carefully over the past few years at how to enhance our programming in this area. Before employing a robust assessment system and evidence-based curriculum, we just didn’t have the data or the resources we needed to plan professional development, prioritize our interventions, and, perhaps most importantly, personalize our discussions and structure our lessons when guiding students for growth in these critical areas.” - Monisha Gupta, Senior Director of Curriculum and Innovation, Stratford School, Saratoga, CA

Recently, Stratford implemented the ACT Tessera™ assessment for nearly 1,000 middle school students, along with the evidence-based Tessera Teacher Playbook curriculum, to help introduce social and emotional programming.


Gupta’s SEL experience aligns to the recommendations provided in the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development (SEAD)’s new report, “The Practice Base for How We Learn.” The report is authored by the Commission’s “Council of Distinguished Educators;” under lead author Sheldon Berman, superintendent of schools in Andover, MA.

The short but powerful report articulates five pillars of SEL programming, called “Consensus Statements on Practice.” We can examine aspects of each statement from the practitioner perspective, in this case the Stratford School.

1. SEL is “for ALL students.”

The Commission leads with a statement of universality: this learning and growth is critical not just for at-risk, behaviorally challenged, or otherwise needy students, but for each and every child in our schools. Students and their problematic behaviors are not to be the target, but rather, we need to focus upon “the broader environmental and social context in which students learn.”

At Stratford School, the life skills curriculum is for all students. After careful consideration, the weekly time allocated for advisory meetings between teachers and students has been expanded, with teachers using the ACT Tessera teacher playbook as their go-to resource for lessons on teamwork, tenacity, and resilience.

2. SEL “starts with the adults.”

The Council explains that few teachers have received much SEL preparation, so “teachers and adults need support…in ongoing dialogue and interactions with colleagues and coaches/consultants.” It’s also valuable for all the adults to get on the same page about SEL by using a common language and approach.

Stratford carefully rolled out SEL programming for their teachers, beginning with summertime staff meetings and trainings. Teachers receive the curriculum with frequent administrator guidance on how to implement particular lessons from the playbook. SEL assessment results are reviewed in faculty meetings, with teachers using time to discuss and strategize how to share reports with students and support growth. Employing an SEL assessment and instructional system has helped with consistency. As Gupta explains, “it’s so useful to have a common language about the skills we are cultivating; now teachers, students, and parents are on the same page.”

3. Strong Leadership is Central.

It’s not enough to have good intentions. For students to successfully grow in these key domains, schools must have a plan, allocate resources, assign responsibilities and monitor progress.

As a fast-growing network of schools in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, Stratford does nothing haphazardly. Their SEL program is a priority of their Board of Directors and is prominently articulated in plans and budgets. Gupta explains that she meets regularly with school principals to review progress on the “life skills” program and to ensure the SEL curriculum is being effectively deployed. At most Stratford middle schools, there is a vice principal assigned to provide guidance and ensure effective SEL implementation.

Because the SEL assessment is administered twice annually, Stratford is being prudent to ensure that students aren’t labeled by their assessment results. In fact, they are finding the use of the data highly valuable for student and school-level continuous improvement.

4. Explicit and Embedded Instruction, and a Caring Classroom and School Climate.

This statement of practice is perhaps the most important, and appropriately has the longest discussion of any in this report. There is widespread conversation among SEL thought leaders about the competing approaches of teaching SEL skills in targeted lessons or as fully integrated into academic learning. The Aspen Institute takes the “both/and” stance:

“As with traditional subject areas, social and emotional abilities can be taught with a scope and sequence and with dedicated time and space in the curriculum…[and] through the planning of daily instructional processes, the very content students are studying in [every academic subject area] can offer seamless ways of fostering social and emotional development.”

Stratford, as we noted, is rapidly expanding its program of direct instruction in SEL competencies, prioritizing the areas that their assessments indicated as needing greater support. Stratford Principal Becky Turner adds that her teachers are also working hard to design project-based learning experiences that deliberately cultivate persistence and resilience, such as in extended writing projects and in STEAM “maker” experiences.

5. Home School Community Partnerships Matter.

In this practice, the commission’s educator panel implores engaging parents in ways inclusive of - but not limited to - parent education. It also argues that students ought to have more field experiences in learning, using service learning opportunities to “enable young people to exhibit and strengthen their social, emotional, and academic competencies.”

To this end, Stratford prioritized parent communications as they’ve launched and managed their new SEL assessments and curriculum. They feel pleased with their progress, despite a few bumps in the road, and are committed to enhancing their work in this area in the future.

Principals sent out letters and held on-campus meetings prior to administering the measurement, and then sent cover letters accompanying the student reports on these assessments giving parents guidance on how to discuss and debrief these results with their kids.

They are now striving to update parents with regular reports about the SEL curriculum in biweekly newsletters. Next year, they are intending to add an extended discussion of this work to their Parent Back-to-School Night, when they have, by far, the greatest parent attendance and attention.

In examining Stratford's implementation of ACT Tessera in the context of the Aspen Institute's SEAD report, we can see that SEL programming does not happen in a vacuum. It is an all-hands-on-deck approach to benefit all students, with careful planning, leadership and integration into classroom experiences and parent and community partnerships necessary for success.

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