Free Brochure for Teachers Aims to Boost Student Achievement

March 21, 2002

IOWA CITY, Iowa—A free public service guide, offering information that can help teachers guide students to higher levels of achievement, is available online. ACT, producer of the ACT Assessment, and the Assessment Training Institute (ATI) of Portland, Oregon, jointly announced the publication and are distributing it through their websites. Entitled Promoting Student Success, this guide is designed to help teachers understand the academic and achievement standards reflected in ACT tests.

"The whole idea of our guide," says co-author Cyndie Schmeiser, ACT vice president, "is to help more middle and high school students to succeed academically. If we can help them understand the keys to their own success, then they can feel in control of that success. This will help them make smooth transitions through high school and into the workplace or higher education."

"This guide shows teachers how to turn ACT achievement targets into high-quality day-to-day classroom assessments—something teachers typically are not trained to do," Rick Stiggins, President of ATI explained. "Then both teachers and their students can use these ongoing assessments to guide students on their journey through the ascending levels of proficiency that lead up to high performance on ACT tests."

The guide contends that the key to the success of this program is to increase student involvement in the ongoing classroom assessment process according to strategies pioneered by ATI. It is essential to make achievement expectations clear to students in terms that they can understand, show them where they are now in relation to those targets, and engage them in repeated self assessments over time so they can watch themselves improve. The authors cite compelling research from around the world showing how implementation of these procedures leads to unprecedented jumps in student motivation and achievement, with evidence of greatest impact on perennial low achievers.