As part of a larger research study entitled "Where Do Test Scores Fit in a Test-Optional Environment," the authors surveyed students who took the ACT on June 11, 2022, in order to better understand why high school students would take a standardized test like the ACT when they knew they were applying to test-optional institutions. Among…

When do students start the college planning process? How many plan to take the SAT or ACT? How much do they value a college degree? RNL and Halda surveyed more than 2,200 high school students to answer these and many other key questions. Read our 32-page college planning report and discover a wealth of findings on: (1) when students start to…

From the first cases of COVID-19 emerging in early February 2020 to the wave of school closings across the country in mid-March, the effects of the pandemic have been felt across the United States. In light of unprecedented changes, ACT's researchers sought to understand how high school students, specifically rising seniors, were being impacted.…

Across demographic groups, incoming seniors (class of 2021) have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and some have altered their college plans accordingly. Most seniors are planning to attend the same type of institution they were planning on before the pandemic, but about half are planning on a different institution, one closer to home, or…

This Study Snapshot highlights key findings from a study on the associations between high school students' self-reported social-emotional competencies and students' high school and college academic and behavioral outcomes in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). In May 2019 grade 11 and 12 students in public high schools in the…

ACT is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help people achieve education and workplace success. To help fulfill that mission, ACT offers school-day testing programs that provide all students with state- or district-funded access to its college readiness and admissions assessment, removing barriers to testing and opening doors to…

Focusing on a cohort of high school students from a Midwest metropolitan region, this study combines multiple sources of data and uses a multinomial logistic regression to model student postsecondary choices with respect to whether and where to attend college. Specifically, we examined the enrollment patterns by proximity to the home region and…

In the United States, the American College Test (ACT) is a standardized test that is used primarily as an indicator of college readiness and as a gauge for college admission. The governing bodies for Louisiana's public schools--The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE)--made the ACT a…

This article reports the findings of the 2011 results of 'very rural' Kentucky high schools on the Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) Survey to determine whether differences existed between high and low performing rural schools across specific survey items. Schools with ACT scores one standard deviation (or more) above their…

This study gathered, analyzed, and compared perspectives of students who were honors-eligible but never began the program, students who began in honors and discontinued their enrollment, and those who were persisting in honors. Broadly speaking (and not surprisingly), the responses of students persisting in honors reflected the most positive…

This research study explored the critical nature of the connection between student achievement and superintendent leadership. A great deal of scholarship has addressed either student achievement or leadership and previous evidence has suggested the impact of both parental education and racioethnicity on student achievement, but few studies have…

Do parents play a significant role in the academic achievement and career decision making process of African American children? Studies have confirmed the importance of the role of parents and have even identified preferred parenting styles as having the best academic achievement (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987;…

ACT has been measuring college readiness trends for several years. "The Condition of College & Career Readiness" is ACT's annual report on the progress of the graduating class relative to college readiness. This year, 54.3% of the graduating class took the ACT® college readiness assessment. This report is designed to help inform the…

Objective: To identify those factors that influence freshmen application to Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Education Programs (CAAHEP)-accredited undergraduate ATEPs having a secondary admissions process. (All undergraduate ATEPs are now accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE)). Design and…

This report summarizes evaluation results on the costs and benefits of administering ACT's EXPLORE assessment in AISD during its pilot year in 2000-2001.