IS THE ACT CHANGING?
Starting in late 2015, the ACT will be changing. Many of the changes to the test won’t impact how
students test or the types of questions they’ll need to answer, but rather how their scores are reported and
the kind of information they’ll be able to gather from their results. (See the Scoring section on this page.)
One section that will be affected by the changes is the Writing test. As of the publication of this book, we
know that the ACT Writing test will be changing at some point during “fall 2015” (that’s a pretty big
window). Here is what we do know about this revised Writing test.
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Writing Test
The ACT Writing test will have one essay prompt, and you’ll have time to craft a response (As of this
writing, ACT, Inc. has not yet revealed how much time you will have). The prompt will define an issue
and present three points of view on the issue; you will be asked to respond to a question by analyzing the
three positions, coming up with your own view on the issue, and explaining how your position relates to
the other three. While the topics in the past have related directly to high school life, the present topics
cover a diverse range of issues. One prompt asked students to assess the growing presence of technology
in our lives. Does our reliance on machines take away part of our humanity? Are automatons a good
solution for tackling mindless, repetitive jobs? Do intelligent machines force us to broaden what we
consider human? What is your position on the rising sub-class of increasingly intelligent robots? The
strange thing about the Writing test is that it isn’t a mandatory part of the ACT. When you register for the
test, you’ll have to decide whether you need to take this part of the exam. We’ll talk more about that later.
Scoring Changes
As we mentioned in the Scoring section, starting in fall 2015 you’ll also be receiving readiness scores
and indicators. These include:
- STEM score. This score will show you how well you did on the Math and Science portions of the
test.
- Progress Toward Career Readiness indicator. The ACT would have you believe this indicator
measures how prepared you are for a career, but really it just measures how prepared you are to
take yet another test: the ACT National Career Readiness Certificate™.
- English Language Arts score. If you take the Writing test, this score will give you a combined
score for the English, Reading, and Writing section.
- Text Complexity Progress indicator—This score will tell you how well you fared on those hard
passages throughout the test.
So as we said before, these changes to the test won’t impact how students test or the types of questions
