英语学习者英语语言能力与ACT考试成绩的关系：来自两个国家的结果

Joann L. Moore, PhD, and Joyce Z. Schnieders, PhD Two recent research reports investigated relationships between English language proficiencyand the performance of English learners (ELs) taking the ACT®test (Moore & Schnieders, 2026;Moore et al., 2026). This data byte summarizes the main findings from both reports related tothe relationships between ELs’ language proficiency and ACT performance. Consult the fullreports for additional details. Two U.S. states agreed to participate in this study. Both states have been administering theACT to virtually all Grade 11 students since before the 2017–2018 school year and are part ofWIDA (https://wida.wisc.edu/), a consortium of states led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison. WIDA develops resources for supporting ELs and their teachers, including ACCESS,a set of summative English proficiency assessments administered annually to K–12 students inmore than 40 states. The ACCESS assessments include the four domains of Reading, Writing,Listening, and Speaking and four composite scores: Oral Language (50% Listening + 50%Speaking), Literacy (50% Reading + 50% Writing), Comprehension (70% Reading + 30%Listening), and Overall (35% Reading + 35% Writing + 15% Listening + 15% Speaking). Eachdomain score and composite score is reported both as a level on a 1.0–6.0 scale and as a scoreon a 100–600 scale. Both states provided data files containing demographic information about their students—including EL status—and granted permission for WIDA to share student-level data from theACCESS English language proficiency assessments with ACT. State 1 provided data from the2017–2018 through 2023–2024 school years (except for 2020–2021 because of the COVID-19pandemic); State 2 provided data from the 2018–2019 through 2022–2023 school years. State 1is smaller with approximately 2% ELs in the study sample (N= 642 ELs and 35,234 non-ELs);State 2 is larger with approximately 10% ELs in the study sample (N= 15,788 ELs and 143,461non-ELs). Approximately 7% of Grade 11 students (11% across K–12) in public schools in theUnited States are ELs (NCES, 2024). Table 1andTable 2contain correlations between ACT scores and ACCESS English proficiencyassessment scores for Grade 11 ELs taking the ACT in State 1 and State 2, respectively. Forboth states, correlations between ACT performance and ACCESS performance were moderateand positive, with higher correlations seen between ACCESS Reading and ACT scores as wellas between ACCESS Comprehension (a composite of Reading and Listening scores) and ACTscores. The remainder of this data byte focuses on the ACCESS Reading assessment for severalreasons: First, the ACCESS Reading and Overall scores for the two states in this study werehighly correlated (0.83–0.84), meaning that the results would be similar no matter which scorewas used. Second, students are reclassified as English proficient at an ACCESS Overall levelscore between 4.0 and 5.0 in both states, meaning that few ELs in the sample had an Overallscore above Level 4, whereas ELs scored across the full distribution of Levels 1–6 on ACCESSReading. Additionally, accessing content on the ACT (not including the optional writing test)relies more heavily on reading skills than on listening, speaking, and writing, so reading is ahighly relevant domain of English proficiency for ACT performance. Table 3andTable 4contain the average ACT scores by ACCESS Reading level for Grade 11ELs taking the ACT in State 1 and State 2, respectively. In both states, for each ACT testsection and Composite score, there is a clear pattern of ACT scores increasing as ACCESSReading level increases. State 2 provided student-levelGrade 11 course grade information, whichweused to calculateoverall and subject-specificGrade 11 GPA.Table 5contains the averageGrade 11 GPA byACCESSReading level for State 2. Similar to thepatternrevealedinTables3and4,Grade 11GPA increases as ACCESSReading level increases. Table 6contains correlations between ACT scores and Grade 11 GPA by ACCESS Readinglevels for State 2. For ELs at Levels 1 and 2, the correlations between ACT scores and GPA aresmall; however, the correlations increase as ACCESS Reading levels increase, indicating astronger relationship between Grade 11 GPA and ACT scores for students with higher levels ofEnglish proficiency. For comparison, the correlations between ACT scores and Grade 11 GPAfor non-ELs are higher than those for ELs, ranging from 0.42 for ACT reading–social studies to0.55 for ACT Composite–overall GPA. These results show that there is a positive relationship between English proficiency asmeasured by ACCESS Reading scores and performance on the ACT. In particular, the averageACT scores and correlations between ACT scores and Grade 11 GPAs of ELs at ACCESSReading Levels 1 and 2 are very low, suggesting that ELs with low English proficiency maystruggle to adequately demonstrate their knowledge and skills on the ACT. Although furtherresearch is needed to help disentangle