The transition from high school to college can be a nerve-wracking process for any student, but some students may face more obstacles than other students along their journey. Hispanic students currently make up roughly 18 percent of all college students and are one of the largest minority groups at universities nationwide. However, based on…

Serious attention has been directed in recent years towards the need for increasing the number of high school graduates in the United States who are prepared for postsecondary education, training and careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The number of jobs in U.S. STEM occupations grew by 10.5 percent…

States and districts have expressed interest in administering the ACT® to 10th-grade students. Given that the ACT was designed to be administered in the spring of 11th grade or fall of 12th grade, the appropriateness of this use should be evaluated. As such, the focus of this paper is to summarize empirical evidence evaluating the use of the ACT…

Employment status in high school has been shown to have a negative relationship with measures of academic achievement which some researchers have attributed to student characteristics such as demographics and socioeconomic status. The current study investigated differences in the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of "working…

Many students graduate from high school under-prepared for college-level coursework, leading to a large number of students entering college who require remediation in English and mathematics. This study looked at the effectiveness of using EdReady--now offered through ACT as CollegeReady™--as a system for delivering remediation prior to college to…

The ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are the ACT scores associated with a 50% chance of earning a B or higher grade in selected first-year credit-bearing courses at a typical postsecondary institution. The Benchmarks were established by linking ACT test scores with grades in first-year college courses from the same subject area. Benchmarks were…

Colleges have long recognized the importance of multiple domains. Admissions officers look to high school grades as indicators of persistence and achievement; student statements and letters of recommendation as indicators of character, behavior, and adaptability; the rigor of courses completed in high school as evidence of effort, motivation, and…

This report looks at student achievement levels in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's performance relative to other districts. We estimated district performance statistics by subject and grade level (4, 8, and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for district…

Although about 77% of ACT-tested high school graduates express an intention of earning a bachelor's degree or higher (ACT, 2016a), the percentage of students who achieve academic success in their first-year courses, persist in college, and ultimately earn a bachelor's degree within six years is substantially lower. Approximately 60% of students…

This manual contains technical information about the ACT® college readiness assessment. The principal purpose of this manual is to document the technical characteristics of the ACT in light of its intended purposes. ACT regularly conducts research as part of the ongoing formative evaluation of its programs. The research is intended to ensure that…

One outcome of the implementation of No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and its call for better accountability in public schools across the nation has been the use of student assessment data in measuring schools' effectiveness. In general, inferences about schools' effectiveness depend on the type of statistical model used to link student assessment…

Annually, ACT provides each state with "The Condition of College & Career Readiness," a report that details the college readiness of students who took the ACT® test. Based on extensive empirical research, ACT has defined "college and career readiness" as the acquisition of knowledge and skills a student needs to enroll and…

This report describes ACT's multiyear commitment to increasing the number of eligible high school students enrolled in dual enrollment programs across the nation. The report also offers four policy recommendations to expand dual enrollment programs, as well as examples of each from selected states. [The following organizations collaborated with…

Although about 40% of high school graduates who take the ACT® test express interest in pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field, the percentage of first-year students in college who declare a STEM major is substantially lower. The pool of prospective STEM workers shrinks further as the majority of STEM…

Since 2011, "Excelencia" in Education and ACT have collaborated to report on the academic readiness of Latino students. This year's report provides a national snapshot of academic performance among Hispanic students in the high school graduating class of 2015 who took the ACT® test. While it benchmarks Hispanic students' college and…