IOWA CITY, Iowa—The number of ACT Aspire online assessments administered to U.S. students since January 2016 has surpassed the 5 million mark, a major milestone for the program. That number is up by more than 130 percent compared to last year.
Those online summative and periodic assessments were administered to more than 2 million students in grades 3 through 10 in states and districts across the country. More than 200,000 online ACT Aspire assessments were administered on one day in April.
“We’re very excited to see the growth in numbers this year, but the important thing is that more students, parents and educators are gaining insights that will help them improve their learning and readiness,” said ACT Aspire, LLC President Darice Keating. “It’s a great honor to have the trust of so many students, educators, school districts and states who are participating in the program.”
ACT Aspire assessments were administered for the first time in the spring of 2014. Two years later, they are being administered statewide in six states and in more than 900 individual schools, diocese, charters and districts in 47 states and U.S. territories. ACT Aspire is also offered in a paper-and-pencil mode and will continue to be as districts and states make the digital transition.
“ACT Aspire is designed to help students get and stay on track for college and career readiness early in their educational careers,” said ACT Chief Executive Officer Marten Roorda. “We are gratified to see so many students, teachers and schools benefiting from and empowered by ACT Aspire results.”
ACT Aspire provides evidence-based results designed to help students in grades 3 through early high school identify areas for improvement and enrichment. The results give educators greater visibility into specific areas of academic risk for individual students so that they may apply earlier intervention to support learning. ACT Aspire assessments focus only on the skills empirically proven to be important to readiness for college and careers. This results in efficient use of testing time, keeping lost instructional time to a minimum.
In addition, links from ACT Aspire scores to ACT College Readiness Benchmarks ensure that a student’s path to college and career readiness is on target. The results leverage ACT’s more than 50 years of educational and career readiness research.
Learn more about ACT Aspire.