ACT Will Move to 2-t0-12 Score
Range for ACT Writing Test Results
IOWA CITY,
Iowa—Beginning this fall with the September national test date, ACT will no
longer report ACT writing test scores on a 1-to-36 scale. To reduce confusion
among users, the writing score will instead be reported on a range of 2-to12,
with 12 being the highest possible score. The new reported score will be the
average of the four 2-to-12 domain scores on the essay.
The writing test itself, which was revised
last year, will remain unchanged. The essays will still be scored using the
same rubric, on four domains (ideas and analysis, development and support,
organization, and language use and conventions) by two independent readers.
Scores on the four individual domains on the ACT writing test will continue to
be reported on 
a 2-to-12 range as they are now.
a 2-to-12 range as they are now.
Last year, ACT revised the optional
writing test and began converting results to a 140-36 score scale to be
consistent with the multiple-choice ACT test scores. This change, however,
caused confusion among students who attempted to interpret their writing score
in comparison to their multiple choice test scores. Each ACT subject test
measures different skills, and many students earn higher scores on some tests
than on others.
"Our customers have spoken, and we
have listened," said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe.
"Converting the writing results to a 140-36 scale made sense conceptually,
but in practice it created confusion among some students. We clearly understand
that now, and we are making this change to eliminate the confusion."
"Our research indicates that scores
on the revised ACT writing test are performing no differently in comparison
with scores on the other four ACT subject tests than they did on the previous
writing test," said Wayne Camara, ACT senior vice president of research.
"Converting the writing scores to the 140-36 scale may have made the
differences in scores seem larger or more obvious. This is really a perceptual
problem that we are addressing."
ACT advises that students can best
interpret how well they scored on an individual subject test by looking at the
percentile rank, rather than comparing the score on one subject test to the
score on another.
