ACT’s College and Career Readiness Standards
On February 11, 2016, the Fordham Institute published its idea of a report on how well a number of assessments align with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Here is a bit of what Fordham Institute wrote about ACT:
- ACT Aspire and MCAS both did well regarding the quality of their items and the depth of knowledge they assessed.
- Still, panelists found that ACT Aspire and MCAS did not adequately assess—or may not assess at all—some of the priority content reflected in the Common Core standards in both ELA/Literacy and mathematics.
That same day, ACT responded with a statement to the effect that ACT aligns “with college and career readiness standards”:
The finding that ACT Aspire assessments adequately assess many but not all of the priority content reflected in the Common Core standards is not surprising. Unlike other assessments included in the study, ACT Aspire is not and was never intended to measure all of the CCSS. Rather, ACT Aspire is designed to measure the skills and knowledge most important in preparing students for college and career readiness. This is a significant philosophical and design difference between ACT Aspire and other next generation assessments. ACT has made the choices we have to align with college and career readiness standards, rather than specifically to the Common Core, and we intend to keep it that way. [Emphasis added.]
According to the above, ACT states that “college and career readiness standards” are not one and the same as CCSS. In fact, based upon the statement above, ACT snubs both CCSS and those who consider CCSS the center of the standards universe by implying that to be aligned with CCSS is a narrow alternative to “college ACT’s College and Career Readiness Standards | deutsch29: