Ripped from the Headlines: ACT Announces Big Changes to Their Testing and Reporting Policies

The world of standardized testing has been under real scrutiny for the past few months, culminating in the UC system coming under pressure to abandon the SAT and ACT as part of their admission selection process (no, nothing has come of this as of the release of the January CKQ – please stay tuned!). However, the ACT did make a big announcement back in October that I think you should know about.

As reported by Compass Test Prep, ACT disclosed substantial changes to superscore reporting, online testing on national test dates, and the opportunity for students to retest individual sections of the ACT, and not the whole exam exclusively. These changes are slated to go into effect beginning September of 2020. Let’s walk through each of these changes for clarity.

Item one is superscoring. First, what is superscoring? For the purposes of the ACT, superscoring represents the ability to capture the highest individual section score in each of the four main parts of the test (math, reading, English, science reasoning) and averaging only those four scores to make the overall, or composite, ACT result. For instance, a student takes the ACT twice, once in September and again in October. The September scores are: Math (29) – of a possible 36 -, Reading (29), English (27) and Science Reasoning (27). This provides the student with an averaged score of 28, which represents the composite score (the one most schools use as part of the admission decision). The same student takes the ACT again, approximately one month later in October and receives the following scores: Math (27), Reading (27), English (29) and Science Reasoning (29), for an identical composite score of 28. However, a school that takes (or receives) a superscore would see the following scores: Math (29), Reading (29), English (29) and Science Reasoning (29), for a superscored composite result of 29. In a nutshell, ACT would automatically produce this superscored value for the colleges that received score reports from them (as ordered by the student/applicant). But does this really change anything?

My inclination is to say, not really. Students who currently report all of their scores are essentially giving the schools they have applied to the ability to superscore for themselves. While the hope is that this easily accessible superscore figure will encourage more U.S. colleges and universities to consider a superscored figure, many schools currently do not.

The next big change is online testing. This is a big step in a long line of what-ifs and whens. ACT first reported testing the online platform nearly five years ago, and has used it internationally since 2018, but the change for 2020 is a landmark move for several reasons. The test itself is identical in nature to the current ACT, except that it will be provided in an online format. Testing will be offered exclusively on secure, school-administered computers at testing centers.

For the handful of schools that are prepared to make this technological jump on behalf of the ACT (and the students who take the exam), here are the benefits:

1- Students get to take the test in a mode that has become quite comfortable for them.

2- The multiple-choice portion of the test can be returned in as few as two days, and not two or three weeks (this really is a big deal).

3- Section retesting will ONLY be made available in an online format (which could cause serious shortages and disadvantages for schools that lack the necessary resources).

Which brings us to the topic of individual section retesting. This seems like a situation fraught with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” A student who has completed a full-length ACT test, regardless of whether it was done online or via a traditional pencil and paper sitting will now be permitted to select individual exam sections for retest – again, only in an online format. The cost is still unknown, the ability to use vouchers is still unknown, the effect on overall scoring and use of superscoring is unknown. Will all colleges accept individual section scoring…you guessed it, still unknown. The heavy shadow of the unknown is really what I am left with after reading the article from Compass. The goal of the ACT is three-fold, to make the testing experience better for students, to make the scores more relevant for the colleges who use them as part of their decision-making processes, and to make more money as part of their work (remember, ACT and the Collegeboard are technically non-profits, but between them, their gross incomes combined are roughly 1.5 billion dollars each year).

Changes are a comin’, but to what extent they will level the playing field, exacerbate it, make it more focused, easier, etc. is still difficult to ascertain. What we know at this early juncture is that the confusion is as present and heightened as ever. Fortunately, we still have nine months to get some answers…

For a review of the entire article, please follow this link: https://www.compassprep.com/act-section-retesting/