One Way to Improve ACT Scores
Most of my students are juniors and seniors who take the ACT college admissions test. In 2019, I sat for the ACT for the first time since 1984, the only time I'd ever taken it before. I did so because our school is partly judged on our students' ACT scores. I'd been tasked over the years several times to teach ACT prep classes, but I was taking for granted the materials I was handed really prepared them. I sat for the exam to see for myself what it was really like. When I sat in 2019, I saw just how different the ACT questions are written from the way they are on a typical high school math exam. That summer, I rewrote all my assessments and my assignments for my College Algebra and Pre-Calculus classes as ACT-style questions. My philosophy is test them on the material they are learning, but get them used to the way they're tested on this high-stakes exam while you're doing it. I don't have access to the data for a rigorous analysis, but anecdotal evidence sugg...