ACT Aspire Fall Testing Options for the New School Year

Using ACT Aspire Summative, students can be tested at the grade level from the previous academic year. This option may be preferred for schools that wish to keep longitudinal score histories intact and maintain their uses of ACT Aspire scores to:

• Identify students in need of additional instructional support for the coming academic year
• Report progress toward college and career readiness, including predicted ACT scores
• Monitor school and district performance from year to year
• Measure growth from spring 2019 to fall 2020 (moved from spring 2020), and from fall 2020 (moved from spring 2020), and to spring 2021. The sample report below shows how scores from three test administrations would appear on a student’s spring 2021 report, keeping a student’s longitudinal score history intact for grades 5-7.

Under this option, the fall 2020 test scores would be treated like spring 2020 test scores. This may be a good approach if the number of instructional days (from the beginning of the 2019–2020 academic year to the fall 2020 test) is similar to the number of instructional days that would have happened prior to the spring 2020 test had it not been canceled. This option also supports schools that attempt to complete their grade/course objectives from 2019–2020 (through online, summer, and early fall instruction) before embarking on new objectives (and new courses) for 2020–2021. 

ACT provides lookup tables for Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) that can be applied to students who test approximately one year apart and one grade level apart. The SGP lookup tables could be used under this option to measure growth from spring 2019 to fall 2020, and again from fall 2020 to spring 2021, treating the fall 2020 score as a spring 2020 score.

Another option is to use ACT Aspire Summative to test students in the fall of 2020 at their current grade level. Like Option 1, this allows schools that normally test in the spring to identify students in need of additional instructional support for the coming academic year, and to report progress toward college and career readiness. Because the test would normally be administered at the end of the school year, it may cover some content that has not yet been introduced or reinforced through instruction that occurs during the school year.

Unlike Option 1, this option does not keep students’ longitudinal score histories intact because it results in a missing grade level. Further, this option makes it more challenging to monitor performance from year to year and to maintain continuity with growth measurements over time. Assuming students test again in spring 2021, the spring 2021 test score would replace the fall 2020 test score on student progress reports. 

To support schools with this option, ACT plans to provide SGP lookup tables for students who test spring-to-fall two grade levels apart (e.g, 5th grade spring 2019 to 7th grade fall 2020) and for students who test in fall and spring of the same academic year (e.g., 7th grade fall 2020 to 7th grade spring 2021).

Under this option, ACT Aspire Summative assessments are not administered in fall 2020.  Instead, schools use the ACT Aspire Interim assessments as the baseline measure of academic achievement.  Schools can use the Interim assessments to identify students in need of additional instructional support for the coming academic year, and to monitor progress throughout the academic year.  Students could take the ACT Aspire Interim assessments at their 2019-2020 grade level early in the year (e.g., September) while they are trying to catch up or complete objectives from spring 2020, and then test at their 2020-2021 grade level later in the year.  Or, schools could test students entirely at their 2020-2021 grade level.  Students would then resume summative testing in spring 2021.

For schools that normally use the Interim assessments, this option may not entail anything new, other than possibly testing students off-grade level early in the year.  For schools that do not normally use the Interim assessments, this option would fill some of the void left by missing the summative assessment, and those schools could realize additional benefits of using the Interim assessments.  Under this option, schools lose a year of data from ACT Aspire Summative, causing a disruption in progress monitoring and growth measurements made year to year.