Schools Often Have All the Data They Need; Workshops Teach Them How to Use It

“All this data is coming back from the ACT tests, and it’s not getting to the people who need it,” said Bill Linville, the coordinator of the Office of Partnership Development and High Schools That Work in the West Virginia Department of Education. Linville provides technical assistance to the state’s schools; lately he has provided a lot of ACT evangelism, too. He’s been spreading the good news about how the information available in every report from an ACT testing program can help them improve their students’ achievement.

“Anywhere I attend a conference or talk to people—even if it’s not ACT-oriented—I’m telling them how to use this information.”

He is amazed at what has long been available.

“I’m really excited. The more I read, the more I search, the more I look at things, the more I learn about all the great tools ACT has to help us,” Linville said.

The reports, which include the student’s score report and the school’s profile summary report as well as Standards for Transition reports, can help educators pinpoint strengths and weaknesses for an individual student or a group, refine curriculum, and create programs that get more students ready to succeed in postsecondary programs and the workforce.

“When I was a principal, I didn’t even know we got the school profile. Principals don’t have time to look at everything,” he said. When he tells the principals and teachers he visits in schools about what they can do with ACT reports, they share his amazement. “They’re in shock. They say, ‘We didn’t know that this is available.’ You know that deer-in-the-headlights look? That’s what we get.”

Linville is one of many educators to benefit from a series of workshops offered by ACT’s Classroom Connections program since February 2003. The first, titled “Meeting the Challenge of Transitions: Middle Grades to High School—High School to College,” was presented at the national conference of the Southern Regional Education Board’s (SREB) High Schools That Work program. Additional requests for workshops on similar topics followed. At one point, SREB suggested a title, “Saving Our Seniors,” and asked ACT to create a workshop to fit it.

“Waiting until the senior year to intervene is risky. Interventions must start much earlier. Curriculum and assessment must be coordinated over time, so that corrections can be made throughout a student’s middle and high school years,” said ACT consultant Gloria Corbin.

ACT recently entered into a partnership with SREB to create a college-preparatory English 12 and a senior-level math course, based on the Standards for Transition, that high schools can use with seniors who are not ready for college.

Those early SREB workshops sparked a demand that has kept ACT’s Classroom Connections staff busy crisscrossing the country to connect the dots between data and student achievement.

ACT’s approach appeals to a lot of educators because of its versatility.

“Our model can be used at multiple levels—a single teacher can use it, or a school, or a department within a school, or an entire district. And the components can be used together or separately. It’s just really, really, versatile,” Corbin said. “And it’s not rocket science. It asks focused questions that can get educators moving in the right direction, toward a target that they set.”

The goal of all the Classroom Connections work is to teach teachers, counselors, and administrators how to coordinate curriculum and instruction with the data from ACT’s EPAS/Educational Planning and Assessment System to reach higher levels of student achievement.

EPAS includes three assessments that serve students from eighth grade through the transition to postsecondary programs or the workplace. Components are coordinated so achievement can be measured and monitored over time. Assessment results, reported on a common score scale, inform students, parents, and educators about individual student strengths and weaknesses while there is still time to address them. The supporting Standards for Transition describe what students are likely to know and be able to do when they score in different ranges on the assessments.

EPAS information can be powerful, especially when educators know how to integrate it with the curriculum. For students at Northwest Rankin High School in Brandon, Mississippi, that integration is considered critical.

When students enter Northwest Rankin, they map a four-year academic plan for themselves based on EXPLORE scores. They are asked to choose a college they might want to attend, and to research its enrollment requirements. Their academic plan must meet those requirements. All students are required to take EXPLORE, the test for eighth and ninth graders, and PLAN, the test for tenth graders, as well as the ACT Assessment, the college entrance exam that is taken in eleventh or twelfth grade.

“We want our kids to be successful or to have the chance to succeed,” said teacher Montgomery Hinton. “We help them develop a four-year plan to be sure they have covered the curriculum they need to do that.”

Staff use assessment results to fine-tune the plan along the way.

“We focus on students’ weaknesses, as shown in their scores, and work on those in the next semester. Our goal is to take those test results and restructure students’ academic plans for them,” Hinton said.

And Hinton sees improvement.

“We’re able to better structure their academics now. We’re learning how best to help students succeed,” said Hinton. “We might do some overkill, but that’s OK with me, because in the past it has been definite underkill.” For more information on ACT programs, services, and workshops, please contact EPAS personnel in the regional office serving your state. Go to www.act.org/contacts/field.html for a directory.