Dive Brief:

• ACT Inc. will offer a new multiple-choice examination, the PreACT, for 10th graders starting in Fall 2016 in an attempt to better prepare them for the ACT.
• The new PreACT exam will test students in English, mathematics, reading, and science, but will not contain a written portion.
• The PreACT is a traditional paper test, and is scored on a 1-to-36 scale.

Dive Insight:

ACT Inc. is the company that owns the ACT test, and its rival the College Board owns the SAT. Both exams are largely used to test for college admission, and both are also popular options for use as high school accountability exams, as a growing number of states opt to use the SAT or ACT for standardized exams and federal accountability. Colorado, Connecticut, Maine and New Hampshire can use the SAT, and Arkansas, Wisconsin and Wyoming can use the ACT, with 10 more states having expressed interest in using either test. Yet this move concerns some testing experts, who say the SAT and ACT weren't created to measure accountability and therefore shouldn't be used that way.

In Florida, the Florida Standards Assessment, which is Common Core-aligned, seems to be on its way out following a Senate panel's vote to give districts more choice over their annual testing protocols. Choice includes being able to use the ACT or SAT in lieu of the Florida Standards Assessment. Senate Bill 1360 calls for the ACT test to be used to test students in grades 3-8, starting in the 2016-17 school year, and would give districts three options: the ACT, PSAT or NMSQT, or SAT for high school testing; under ESSA one single test is supposed to be used statewide.