The exam will be evolving to “meet the challenges students and educators face” – and that will include shortening the core test and making the science section optional, chief executive Janet Godwin said in a post on the non-profit’s website.
The changes will begin with national online tests in spring 2025 and be rolled out for school-day testing in spring 2026, Godwin said in the post.
The decision to alter the ACT follows changes made to the SAT earlier this year by the College Board, the non-profit organization that develops and administers that test. The SAT was shortened by a third and went fully digital.
Science is being removed from the ACT’s core sections, leaving English, reading and math as the portions that will result in a college-reportable composite score ranging from 1 to 36, Godwin wrote. The science section, like the ACT’s writing section already was, will be optional.
Maybe we should have stuck with leaving the standardized tests out of the college equation…
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We’ve reached the very nebulous time in the school year when end-of-year testing begins, my own doctoral courses have been completed, and I’m left as an instructional coach with a few days of, “What the heck am I supposed to be doing?” while I stay out of the way of testing.
Sure, I’m here to support however I can, but that usually just means giving someone a restroom break or contacting vendors for quotes on new tools for next school year.
It’s a very weird time of the year when I feel like I can be the very opposite of productive.
So, I spend my time as best as I can. I’m writing daily blog posts, catching up on some reading—OMG, Dan Simmons’s Hyperion is flippin’ incredible—and listening to a bunch of new music. I’m also searching for deals on physical media as I continue my war on the streaming gods.
If I sound a bit manic, it’s because I am. My usual frantic pace of writing papers and visiting classrooms has calmed down for the moment and will soon be completely stopped with summer break. But there’s still much to do, and I’ll keep sharing with you here.
And, if it all gets to be too much, you can always unfollow, unlike, and generally exercise your right as a human to tell me to go jump off a cliff.
Quote of the Day
“When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.” (Gary Keller, Jay Papasan, The ONE Thing)
Indeed, being busy doesn’t necessarily equate to being productive. Filling your day with tasks may not get you any closer to achieving your objectives. Teachers confront this truth daily as they juggle multiple responsibilities. Many tasks, like grading student work and providing feedback, are indeed important, but do they always drive student learning forward?
Students genuinely desire feedback. However, could its impact be amplified if delivered in real time? Could teachers lighten their workload by completing feedback sessions before leaving school?
Consider altering the workflow. By providing more frequent feedback on smaller task segments and setting multiple “deadlines”, teachers can manage their tasks more efficiently. This approach, central to project-based learning, not only encourages active student participation but also facilitates quick formative assessments, which can be automatically scored with modern tech tools.
As students work on their projects, the teacher transitions into a supporting role as a coach. The need to grade work daily becomes redundant. This may contradict the expectations of some administrators and parents who believe regular grading is proof of teaching. However, it’s an opportunity to redefine teaching’s true essence, shifting the emphasis from grading to facilitating learning.
Musical Interlude
Sharing a bit of her creative process, Sara from Teagan & Sara shares this acoustic version of ‘Back in Your Head’ and talks about her guitar avoidance.
Long Read of the Day
In December 2020, as the pandemic kept demonstrating the “digital divide” that exists between socioeconomic classes and the availability of high-speed internet, the US Government created the Affordable Connectivity Program. While the program brought about many worthwhile societal benefits, it’s now running out of money.
Video of the Day
Here’s a collection of Phil Hartman’s host segments when the “Grinch” TV cartoon was screened in December 1994, including interviews with Dr. Seuss’ wife Audrey Geisel, animator Chuck Jones, songwriter Albert Hague, voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft, and superfans like Danny Elfman and Tim Burton.
I vividly remember watching this when it aired and thinking, “holy crap, this guy is hilarious.”
Final Thoughts
OK, my brain is pretty fried right now. Not much here for final thoughts. Keep creating new things, even if they suck, because they will get better. This newsletter is a prime example 🙂
The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!
There, I said it. That’s my hot take. We need to get rid of AP courses.
Why? Because they’ve been pushed down the throat of our education system for the past twenty years, pitched as an equity solution because we should be offering the best content to everyone.
I agree 100% with that statement. Every student needs access to the same high-quality, highly relevant, highly personalized content and pedagogy. We need our teachers to be the very best, to create authentic, engaging learning environments that not only teach our students how to learn and grow but also how to be good people and participate in society.
That’s not what AP tests or courses do. They certainly don’t do it for most students.
I know the argument for having AP courses is that they are more rigorous and require more from students. But the reason they do those things is because of the AP test students take at the end of the course.
And they take that test to earn college credit. And that is the only reason. No one takes an AP course because it sounds exciting or they want to be a professional AP course taker.
They take them so they can pass the test and get college credit. Which doesn’t happen for most of them.
Getting college credit after taking an AP course is a crap shoot, at best. At worst, it’s a waste of time. This isn’t a new argument, and I’m sure it will continue to be argued long into the future. Students hate it, and some professionals have noted the need for improvement in the system or even other companies entering the arena to give the College Board some competition.
I don’t want competition. I want the AP system gone. It isn’t serving the purpose we need, which is rethinking and redesigning Tier 1 instruction in ALL classrooms for EVERY student.
That’s the goal.
The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!
It’s testing season as another school year comes to a close. The time when students get to demonstrate just how well we’ve trained them to be little machines.
We’ve covered the content, given the testing tips, and passed out the booklets or the Chromebooks.
We’ve done everything we can to prepare them for the relentless battery of standardized tests they must endure, all because someone who knows nothing about learning needs evidence that teachers have done their jobs.
They want to know how well we’ve trained our little machines.
There’s just one problem: we don’t train machines. We teach human beings.
I won’t spend my time here griping about the overuse of technology for standardized testing and other “necessary” tests. That fight is for another day.
Today, let’s talk about how frustrating it is to use many testing services. I’ve spent most of the past two weeks getting two grade levels into two different online testing systems.
One system required an SFTP upload of a CSV file. I kept getting errors even using the company’s template and data tool. After trying a few dozen times, I gave up and sent the file to the company. The next day, the data was uploaded and corrected. I still have no clue what was wrong.
The second company uses Clever to sync students and teachers. But not to log students in for the test. No, no, they require a lockdown browser for their exam. Conveniently, they autogenerate usernames and passwords for the students.
Did I mention these elements are 11 characters or so each? And the students using them are in kindergarten?
Yep. Smiles all around.
Mind you, I have a decent amount of experience with all the tools I used to make these data uploads happen. I would venture to say that the person at most schools responsible for this process is NOT as experienced. Just a hunch.
