About the Data | Cautions | Limitations | Definitions | Scoring | Dashboards | Data Availability | Data Exchange | Resources
About the Data
ACT Aspire™ Early High School (grades 9 and 10) assessed student readiness in English, mathematics, reading, science, and writing. ACT Aspire was an online assessment in Wisconsin except for students who required accommodations through Braille, Large Print or American Sign Language who took ACT Aspire™ in a paper and pencil format.
ACT Aspire™ was linked to ACT® College Readiness Benchmarks. ACT Aspire™ consisted of multiple question types: constructed response, selected response and technology-enhanced.
In 2014-15 the ACT Aspire™ assessment was administered to 9th grade students in both the fall and the spring and to 10th grade students in the spring. Beginning with the 2015-16 school year, the ACT Aspire™ was administered to 9th and 10th grade students in spring only. The last administration of ACT Aspire™ in Wisconsin was during the 2021-22 school year.
The Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM™) assessment measures the academic progress of students with the most significant cognitive disabilities in the subject areas of ELA and Mathematics at grades 3-11, Science at grades 4 and 8-11, and in Social Studies at grades 4, 8, and 10. The ACT Aspire™ Dashboards only provide DLM™ results for students in grades 9 and 10 for ELA and Math.
Cautions
-
Note that no single test can tell us whether students have learned everything that is important for students to learn. Additional local evidence should be reviewed for a more complete picture of student learning.
-
Test participation for 2020-21 may be lower than in other years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When making comparisons to the state or across years, use caution when participation rates are lower than 95%, especially when the group of tested students is not representative of the overall population of students.
Limitations with ACT Aspire™ Data
- The Progress Toward Career Readiness indicator is only a prediction of a student’s ACT National Career Readiness (NCR) Certificate™ achievement level. A student may actually receive an achievement level other than the level predicted.
Definitions
-
Close: Students in the Close category scored below but near the ACT® Readiness Benchmark, considering the measurement error.
-
Exceeding: Students in the Exceeding category scored substantially above the benchmark and have a much higher chance to be college and career ready.
-
In Need of Support: Students in the In Need of Support category performed substantially below the ACT® Readiness Benchmark.
-
Ready: Students in the Ready category have met the ACT® Readiness Benchmark and are on target for 50% or higher likelihood of college course success by grade 11.
Scoring
Subject Scores
-
ACT Aspire™ results were reported on a 3-digit score scale for English, reading, mathematics and science.
Composite Scores
-
3-digit scores were also reported for an overall composite score (average of the English, reading, mathematics and science scores), an English language arts (ELA) score (average of the English, reading and writing scores) and a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) score (average of the mathematics and science scores).
-
There were no ACT® Readiness Benchmarks for the overall composite score.
Subject Skill Scores
-
A number of 2-digit subject skill scores were also reported for each subject. For example, three subject skill scores were reported for English in 9th grade: 1) conventions of standard, 2) knowledge of language and 3) production of writing.
-
2-digit subject skill scores were compared to ACT® Readiness Benchmarks. Students that were reported as Within ACT® Readiness Range met the ACT® Readiness Benchmark while students that were reported as Below ACT® Readiness Range had not met the ACT® Readiness Benchmark.
Predicted ACT Score
-
The Predicted ACT Score Range reported the predicted score range for the ACT® English, mathematics, reading and science tests. If all four ACT Aspire™ subject tests were taken then a predicted ACT® composite score range was also provided.
Dashboards
Four separate ACT Aspire™ dashboards are available in WISEdash for Districts. Each dashboard allows users to compare the performance of students from their school/district against performance from all students across the state. The following information is available on each dashboard:
ACT Aspire and DLM – DPI Performance Levels Dashboard
This dashboard provides performance level information (below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced) for 9th and 10th grade performance on ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ for the subject areas of English Language Arts (English, reading, and writing scores) and Mathematics. Scores required to achieve basic, proficient and advanced performance levels on ACT Aspire™ are:
Content Area | Basic | Proficient | Advanced |
---|---|---|---|
ELA | 420 | 428 | 436 |
Mathematics | 420 | 428 | 439 |
Content Area | Basic | Proficient | Advanced |
---|---|---|---|
ELA | 422 | 430 | 437 |
Mathematics | 423 | 432 | 442 |
Scores required to achieve proficiency on DLM™ can be found at: DLM Performance Level Scores
ACT Aspire Achievement and Progress Dashboard
The ACT Aspire Achievement and Progress dashboard includes three metrics. These include Progress with Text Complexity, Average Score by Subject Area, and Predicted WorkKeys NCR Certificate.
- The Progress with Text Complexity indicator reports whether or not students are making sufficient progress toward reading the complex texts that they will encounter as they further their education and work toward college and career. Results are reported as “Making Progress” and “Not Making Progress.”
- The Average Score by Subject Area indicator provides the average score for each ACT Aspire subject area. Information is available for English, Reading, Math, Science, ELA, STEM and Composite scores. Writing Score information is available for school year 2014-15 to school year 2016-17. No Writing score information is available after the 2016-17 school year.
- The Predicted WorkKeys NCR Certificate indicator predicts each student’s future ACT National Career Readiness Certificate™ achievement level. Achievement levels are reported as “Gold”, “Silver”, “Bronze” or “No Certificate.” Although students may receive a “Platinum” ACT National Career Readiness Certificate™ this result is rare enough that it is not predicted by the ACT Aspire™ assessment.
ACT Aspire Readiness Dashboard
The ACT Aspire Readiness dashboard includes metrics that identify the number and percent of students that are on track to meet the college-ready benchmarks on the ACT®
-
3-digit scores are compared to ACT® Readiness Benchmarks for English, reading, mathematics and science to determine whether or not students are on track to meet college-ready benchmarks on the ACT®. Students that are reported as “Exceeding” or “Ready” have met the ACT® Readiness Benchmark for a subject while students that are reported as “Close” or “In Need of Support” have not met the ACT® Readiness Benchmark for a subject.
-
The ACT subject score readiness benchmark values are shown in the table below. Students who score at this level or above are considered “ready.” Note that these values were obtained using spring performance, meaning that scores for students who test in the fall are compared to a spring benchmark. Therefore, performance relative to the benchmark is an indication of what a student still needs to learn in order to be “ready” by the end of the year. Values for all categories can be found in Table 2 in the ACT Aspire™ Interpretive Guide for ACT Aspire Summative Reports.
Tested Grade | English | Reading | Mathematics | Science | ELA* (beginning fall 2017) | STEM* (beginning fall 2017) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
9 | 426 | 425 | 428 | 430 | 428 | 435 |
10 | 428 | 428 | 432 | 432 | 430 | 437 |
* Prior to the fall of 2017, the benchmarks were ELA 426, 428 and STEM 429, 432.
ACT Aspire Skills Dashboard
The ACT Aspire Skills dashboard includes two metrics. These are Aspire Skills Percent Ready and Aspire Skills Average Score.
- The percent of students identified as ready in each skill compared with the state percentage based on ACT Aspire performance benchmarks. This chart is not available for writing after 2016-17.
- The average skills score in each skill compared with the state average.
ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ Data Availability
ACT Aspire™ results are provided in WISEdash for Districts beginning with the results from the 2014-15 school year fall administration for students in grade 9 and expanded to include the 2014-15 school year spring administration for students in grades 9 and 10. ACT Aspire™ results are published annually as they become available.
DLM™ results are provided in WISEdash for Districts beginning with the results from the 2014-15 school year spring administration for students in grades 9 and 10. DLM™ results are published annually as they become available.
ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ were not administered during the 2019-20 school year due to COVID-19 pandemic-related school closures.
ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ Data Exchange
Districts are required to administer ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ in the spring of each school year to students in grades 9 and 10. After the conclusion of an administration window for all districts across the state, ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ results from those administrations are provided to DPI. DPI loads those results into the data warehouse for presentation in WISEdash for Districts. WISEdash for Districts also displays each student’s ACT Aspire™ and DLM™ results in the Student Profile.
Part of the data loading process involves matching the assessment with the appropriate student in the data warehouse. That process uses the WISEid, student name, and date of birth and allows some degree of variation or inaccuracy. Even so, some records cannot be matched and will be loaded and reported as unknown. A very small percentage of records may be misidentified with an incorrect student.
- Planned Load Schedule
- Annually in the summer