Fountain Hills district outlines spring testing calendar as state moves juniors to ACT

District assessment staff presented an overview of local assessments and the state’s adoption of the ACT as the statewide assessment for 11th graders, then reviewed logistics for administering the tests and how schools will use the results.

Mr. Alexander told the board the ACT will be administered to all 11th graders on April 5 with a testing window beginning at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 11:45 a.m.; students will have lunch afterward and the district will treat the rest of the day as asynchronous learning for non-testing students so teachers can assign PLP work for attendance. He said the ACT scores can be used for college applications once students create a myACT account and that the state — not the district — is funding the administration. The district will also administer AASA (the new name for AZMerit/AZM2) and AZ Science tests in the April windows for the elementary and middle grades, and the district expects to meet the 95% participation standard for statewide testing.

Alexander said local formative tools (IXL, STAR, Beyond Textbooks, Performance Matters) are used to create personalized learning plans and to provide teachers with actionable skill-level breakdowns. He acknowledged that details of the ACT reporting beyond top-line and sub-area results were not yet fully known, saying administrators are awaiting the first districtwide reports and that the district will work to make data useful for instruction once it receives official reports.