Research
In the current US context, where less than half of the students meet proficiency criteria, improving universally provided instruction (as opposed to providing small groups or individual students with targeted or intensive intervention) is paramount for not only promoting academic achievement among teachers’ current students and its downstream public health benefits but also to prevent academic failure among future cohorts of students.
Students need to know what to expect on test day. They need to become accustomed to the pace. The test has specific characteristics that, when students don’t recognize them, can lead to scores that underrepresent their true academic abilities and potential. The tragedy is that this lack of familiarity with the specifics of the test means students are often shut out of their dreams of a free college or university education. When our group shows up for a Professional Development/instructional session, staff and students will have the opportunity to receive intensive, targeted whole group instruction that aims to introduce both staff and students to our program, so that when their own teachers take over, they can hit the ground running. The real goal of this 1-year program is to reset instruction based upon targeted ACT scores for teachers who are ready to unlock their students’ doors of opportunity. Our methods are modeled, and the structure is defined for onsite teachers to pick up and carry on through a multi-test/multi-year program for students.
Research
In order for students to learn more, teachers must change what and how they teach. Though typical professional development has had little impact on teacher practice or student performance, effective professional development is considered by most a critical strategy for accomplishing today’s ambitious student achievement goals.
Content focus means that effective professional development focuses largely on subject matter knowledge, what is known about how students learn that subject, and related curriculum strategies. Collective participation implies that the best professional development includes groups of teachers from a school, who then work together to implement the new strategies, and in the process, help build a professional school community.
There may be several reasons for disappointing averages but the remedy to achieve across the board results of scores that reflect your student body is College and Career Ready is intentional practice. Regular classroom teaching strategies are aimed at meeting particular sets of standards in core subjects and allowing students to explore and apply their core skills in diverse subjects. This approach does not work on the ACT or other standardized tests. The ACT is wildly different from the state tests we have been training teachers to prepare their students for. A strategy needs to be appropriate for its goals. ACT UP’s instructors have taught extensively throughout Memphis, which has a perennially low average ACT score among public high school graduates, with the norm hovering between 14 and 16. Our team has cracked the code though. When our program is introduced and followed by local, low performing, and low resource schools, College and Career Readiness scores of 21+ become the norm. The secret is to study the test itself.
Research
Karen Hawley Miles of Education Resource Strategies, (says) “You get lots of departments trying to do little pieces of professional development, but most of them are too shallow and spread apart to make a big difference.”
What’s more, few professional-development activities are linked to outcome measures of whether a teacher has increased his or her capacity to instruct students(.)
Source: Source: Full Cost of Professional Development Hidden
ACT UP is a mission driven professional development contractor that trains teachers how to raise the average ACT composite for student populations in chronically underperforming communities. There are countless tutoring programs for ambitious ACT test takers and their teachers aiming to achieve ever higher scores and boost access to elite universities. ACT UP has a different promise. Our target audience is a school or district that is frustrated with year after year of low scores, where despite the best efforts of educators to prepare their students for the ACT, acceptance and/or admittance into state colleges and universities is beyond the grasp for too many of their students.