Times they are a-changin’ when it comes to the traditional standardized test. Months after the SAT announced changes to the vocabulary section of the exam, their rival test, the ACT, is making a few adjustments of their own. All you need to know as you prepare TXGU students to take the new version next year is that the writing prompts will be more complex and there will be a college-readiness indicator included. (Simple enough!)
To get more specific, instead of having students write from one side or another, they’ll be required to communicate from many perspectives on a topic—with support for each angle. Then they’ll be scored in four categories: ideas and analysis, development and support, organization, and language use.
As far as the college-and-career-readiness indicators are concerned, test results will include a STEM score and an English Language Arts Score, as well as predictors of whether or not a student will be able to understand the kinds of texts they’ll be exposed to in college. The highest level of assessment will be a student’s career readiness, which is measured by gauging their overall mastery of information and job skills that employers value.
So as you prepare your students for this new-ish test, coach them into considering multiple perspectives on an issue, and encourage them to just do their best. The difficulty won’t change in the general assessment, but it’ll simply reveal more about where the student is academically. Of course, as always, just remind them that it’s only a test!
