The College Readiness Standards™ statements are intended to help you understand the meaning of the scores earned in EXPLORE®, PLAN®, and the ACT® (ACT's three curriculum-based assessment programs).
Whether you're a parent, teacher, counselor, or student, these sets of statements can help you:
- communicate widely shared learning goals and educational expectations
- relate the test scores to the types of skills needed for success in high school and beyond
- understand the increasing complexity of skills across the score ranges in English, mathematics, reading, and science
EXPLORE, PLAN, and the ACT measure students' progressive development of knowledge and skills in the same academic areas from grades 8 through 12. Therefore, the scores from these three programs can help educators monitor students' academic growth over time.
The College Readiness Standards are complemented by suggested learning experiences for students wishing to further develop their knowledge and skills.
The College Readiness Standards serve as a direct link between what students have learned and what they are ready to learn next. The suggested learning experiences, in turn, provide links between the Standards in one score range and those in the next higher score range. The ideas for progressing to the next score range demonstrate ways that information learned from standardized test results can be used to inform classroom instruction.
The College Readiness Standards are also linked to college instruction. More than 40 years of research has shown that performance on the ACT is directly related to first-year college grade point average.
College Readiness Standards Reports
The College Readiness Standards Reports allow you to compare students' performance with others' nationwide and to make decisions about students' future academic growth. The reports, along with their interpretive guides and worksheets, help you to interpret and use students' test scores and connect the test results to classroom practice.