Issue No. 12
March 2006

COMPASS/ESL From ACT

Frederick L. Mickle, Jr.

Part I: COMPASS/ESL Internet Version Enabling Accurate Student Placement

COMPASS®/ESL is a comprehensive, computer-adaptive testing system that helps place students into appropriate courses and maximizes the information postsecondary schools need to ensure student success. It measures the students’ skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and English as Second Language (ESL) and diagnoses specific skill deficiencies for remedial work. Then, it provides fast, accurate results to help colleges make the right course placement decisions. The system also includes e-Write, an electronically scored direct writing assessment that provides results in seconds, and 26 diagnostic tests in the areas of math, reading, and writing skills. Last year, more than 1,000 colleges used it to assess 1.3 million students. Upgrades in the system are greatly enhancing the flexibility and capabilities of colleges and universities to provide an outstanding academic start point for students of various abilities.

Using the Internet

COMPASS/ESL® is key to college success. COMPASS helps students find their way, and colleges succeed when individual students succeed.

The newest version of COMPASS/ESL brings the power of the Internet to local and distance testing programs. In addition to its long-standing features, COMPASS/ESL for the Internet allows colleges to:

• Test students in remote locations,
• Customize the messages that students see on their score reports,
• Conduct outreach programs in feeder high schools to help prepare students appropriately for college-level work,
• Test students at multiple sites,
• Use data more effectively through improved database and reporting capabilities, and
• Automatically direct students whose writing scores fall into specified ranges to the e-Write evaluation for further assessment.

Additionally, administrative tasks are simplified because the system:

• Delivers immediate student score reports,
• Allows online ordering of testing units,
• Provides automatic data collection,
• Includes state-of-the art security features, such as a locked-down browser to prevent unauthorized exits from the tests, and
• Allows data to be viewed across testing centers and campus systems so student information is accessible.

The Internet version also lowers on-campus technical support requirements, as ACT provides technical support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

COMPASS/ESL has more capabilities at the same price.

The two versions of COMPASS/ESL—one for the Internet and one for Microsoft Windows®-based networks—test students comparably. Schools may choose to use both versions. The Windows version might still be used in a computer lab or testing center, for example, while the Internet version would allow a college to test a newly accepted student three states away before they arrive on campus. The data from any Windows-version administration of COMPASS/ESL can be imported to the Internet-version database to maintain one complete data set for the college.

COMPASS/ESL makes everybody happy. The college can enroll the new student in appropriate classes in a timely manner, and the student can go to a location near home to test rather than spend a lot of money and time traveling to the campus just for placement purposes.

No matter where students physically take the test, they log into the version that has been customized by their own schools, so they see the messages pertinent to their campuses and their programs.

Supporting Outreach

The score report is vital! That is where you get the very best messages in front of the students.

Customizable score reports are particularly useful in colleges’ outreach efforts. Eighty percent of the schools that use COMPASS/ESL are community colleges. Because they almost invariably draw most of their students from their own areas, they are able to develop customized outreach programs to their local high schools. With COMPASS/ESL for the Internet, they can establish a remote testing center in the local high school and tailor the messages that students see on their score reports to help them make wise course selections while they are still in high school.

Basically the outreach programs help the high school students prepare for college level coursework and can eliminate a need for remedial work, which, again, makes for a more successful student and a more successful college.

Outreach programs are made possible by the new feature that allows a college to establish any number of test centers. No longer constrained by the reach of a local area network or limited computer lab capacity, any site with Internet access can become a testing center.

Protecting Data

All of a school’s data is stored on ACT’s secure servers, so the data set for a college’s test-takers is always complete and available for research or outreach efforts, no matter how many separate testing locations a school operates. The software offers several standard reports, or colleges may export data to another database program for further manipulation. In this way, schools can target specific students with opportunities that they might not otherwise be informed of.

In some cases, COMPASS/ESL scores indicate skill deficiencies that require further diagnostic investigation. COMPASS/ESL diagnostic assessments help educators and students zero in on specific skills that need more work. The subsequent student report will then direct the student to specific resources on campus to build that skill.

Colleges have always had the option of requiring students to take the e-Write COMPASS/ESL test.  E-Write was an either/or proposition—either all of their students took the directed writing assessment or none of them did. The new Internet version of COMPASS/ESL allows schools to designate a range of scores within which test-takers are automatically directed to the e-Write assessment for further evaluation of their skills.

Part II: ACT and the Foundation for California Community Colleges

In 2003, ACT and the Foundation for California Community Colleges entered into an agreement that provides outstanding cost savings for California Community Colleges. The consortium agreement allows California Community Colleges to purchase ASSET and COMPASS/ESL materials at a volume price discount. An Example of 2005 discounts:

Current ordering deadlines and pricing will be posted in April 2006 on the Foundation for California Community Colleges web site at: http://msca.foundationccc.org/compass-order.asp. 

For more information about the COMPASS/ESL Internet version, simply go to www.act.org/compass and, of course, feel free to contact the ACT West Region office in Rancho Cordova, CA at (916) 631-9200.

ACT has a proud history of providing professional expertise and service to colleges. Founded in 1959, it is an independent, not-for-profit organization that provides more than a hundred assessment, research, information, and program management services in the broad areas of education and workforce development. Though designed to meet a wide array of needs, all ACT programs and services have one guiding purpose: to help people achieve education and career goals by providing information for life's transitions.