First-Ever ACT Awards Winners Announced

July 18, 2001

IOWA CITY, Iowa—ACT, Inc., has announced the four recipients of the first-ever ACT Awards Program.

The ACT Awards Program is designed to benefit projects, studies and programs that aim to increase empowerment of individuals whose life circumstances and environments could hinder their educational and career quests.

The Weld County High School Diploma Program, based at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, assists individuals whose life circumstances have prevented them from attaining a high school diploma. Officials with the program requested and will receive free WorkKeys assessments. WorkKeys is an assessment system developed by ACT to pinpoint workplace skills required by employers, assess individuals' proficiencies in those skills, and provide assistance and direction in building those skills.

The diploma program will use WorkKeys as part of its competency, assessment, and achievement program to award high school diplomas.

Linking Instruction and Assessment through the Curriculum, a program at North Lawndale College Preparatory Charter High School in Chicago, links instruction with assessment. The program helps the school's teachers and administrators to develop a curriculum design. Through the program, North Lawndale teachers are led through a process to analyze their current curriculum and determine their learning objectives. Officials of the program will receive ACT's help in training teachers and developing a college and career library, as well as copies of ACT's pre-assessment programs EXPLORE and PLAN.

The Career Connection, which operates out of the Columbia-Montour Area Vocational-Technical School in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, gives students help in career exploration, planning and self-knowledge.

Officials with the group have requested and will receive copies of EXPLORE, a program designed to help prepare eighth- and ninth-graders for their high school coursework and post-high school choices, and licenses for DISCOVER, a program that helps people make important career and educational decisions. Both awards are designed to help Career Connection students to foster career exploration and assessment.

Quality Education New Jersey, a Trenton, N.J.-based focus group that helps at-risk students, is part of Quality New Jersey, a volunteer-driven, nonprofit group which is committed to advancing the state of excellence among students and employees in New Jersey. Quality Education New Jersey's mission is to transform education in New Jersey to achieve performance excellence through the partnership of business, education and government.

Officials at the program requested and will receive the help of an ACT researcher, who will review ways for school districts to improve their teaching methods. The research-review award will be directly applied to Asbury Park High School to help officials there benchmark their efforts and more quickly benefit from the application of new teaching methods, according to Joe Tomaselli, executive director of school initiatives for Quality Education New Jersey.

These awards reflect ACT's mission to help people achieve education and career goals by providing information for life's transitions.