ACT recently announced changes to its exam that, in their words, enhance the test-taking experience, adapt to evolving needs, and offer greater choice and flexibility to students, schools, and districts. These changes, or as ACT calls them “enhancements,” will start in April 2025, and families need to know what to expect.
Optional Science Section
The current ACT requires that students take the English, Math, Reading, and Science sections to compute a “composite” score for the exam, and a Writing section is optional. The new ACT format will require that students take English, Math, and Reading sections, making Science an optional section and keeping Writing an optional section.
- When a student chooses to take Science, it will appear as a separate score (no longer calculated in the composite) and be used to calculate the STEM score, an average of Science and Math scores.
- When a student chooses to take optional Writing, it will appear as a separate score (not used in the composite) and be used to calculate an ELA score, an average of English, Reading, and Writing.
- When a student chooses to take the optional Science and Writing sections, he or she will receive an ACT composite score plus STEM and ELA scores.
States and school districts can offer science and/or writing for exam administrations.
Linear Assessment without Adaptive Scoring
Notably, the new ACT online format remains a linear assessment, not a computer adaptive test. This is in contrast to the latest digital SAT launched by the College Board in March 2024 that uses adaptive scoring between modules to update questions to be easier or harder based on performance. Unlike SAT, ACT is committed to not using adaptive scoring.
More Time Per Question (AKA “Item”)
Students will now have an average of approximately 10 seconds more per item, allowing them to better demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. This change aims to reduce time pressure and enable students to focus on the content rather than rushing through the exam.
Shorter Exam Length
The overall testing time has been reduced, with students receiving their composite score after 125 minutes (2 hours, 5 minutes) of testing in both the national and school day testing dates. If students take the optional Science section, they will test for 165 minutes (2 hours, 45 minutes). If students take the optional Writing section, they will test for 165 minutes (2 hours, 45 minutes). If students take both the optional Science and the optional Writing section, they will test for 205 minutes (3 hours, 25 minutes).
Fewer Questions and Different Questions
The reduction in testing time is driven by the decrease in the number of items (ACT’s word for “questions”) per section, resulting in 44 fewer items across English, Math, and Reading sections. ACT maintains that this reduction was carefully implemented to minimize the impact on reporting categories, ensuring that the test remains a valid and reliable measure of student knowledge and skills.
Online and Paper-and-Pencil Format and Timeline
While ACT will offer its new format online starting this April 2025, the new format won’t be available until September 2025 for pencil-and-paper format and not until Spring 2026 for school-day administrations. ACT hopes to give flexibility to create a more streamlined and efficient testing experience for students while maintaining the validity and reliability of the ACT as a measure of college readiness.
April, June, and July 2025 online National (Saturday) tests will have Composite scores calculated from English, Math, and Reading.
Starting in September 2025, online and pencil-and-paper exam administrations will use the new composite calculation using only English, Math, and Reading. Individual section scores for Science and Writing (along with STEM and ELA score calculations) will be reported for students who choose to take those optional sections.
Starting in Spring 2026, ACT administrations for state and district testing (whether online or pencil-and-paper) will use the new composite calculation using only English, Math, and Reading.
Embedded Field Items
What are field items? Field items are questions students answer during the testing experience that don’t count towards their score. Student performance on field items is then considered by ACT to use those questions in later testing administrations when those questions will count.
When will field items occur? Instead of having separate sections with field items, field items will now be embedded within the national and school-day ACT administrations. Students will not know which items are field items. Student performance on field items will not count towards the students’ composite scores.
- Of the 50 questions in the English section, 10 will be field items that don’t count toward the score
- Of the 45 items in the Math section, 4 will be field items that don’t count toward the score
- Of the 36 items in the Reading section, 9 will be field items that don’t count toward the score
- Of the 40 items in the Science section, 6 will be field items that don’t count toward the score
Why is ACT going to embed field items now? ACT wants to ensure a broad range of student data contribute to the research samples on field item performance.
What Will Be the Same?
Despite all these changes, several aspects of the ACT remain unchanged:
- The ACT scoring scale will remain 1-36. This will allow for continuity in how the ACT is used for decision-making by all stakeholders.
- ACT will continue to offer its exam with an option for pencil-and-paper or online format.
- Scores from tests taken prior to the new format will not change.
- ACT score benchmarks to predict success in first-year college courses will not change.
ACT Superscores
Starting in April 2025, students taking the online ACT will have their superscores calculated using the new method with only English, Math, and Reading.
Starting in September 2025, all students taking either the online or pencil-and-paper ACT will have their superscores calculated using the new method with only English, Math, and Reading.
To compute superscores, ACT will continue to report the highest score for each subject along with the date the test was taken, but the superscore composite will now only use English, Math, and Reading and no longer use Science.
Conclusion
Our team of educators at Winward Academy is keenly aware of the stress families are feeling as they try to keep up with the changes for the ACT and SAT. If you are a parent, teacher, or school leader looking for a family presentation to help elucidate these changes, please contact us at help@winwardacademy.com.
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