Frequently Asked Questions

No, CERT is entirely cloud based, so it takes a minimal toll on existing district or school infrastructure.

All of the above! CERT is designed to be compatible with virtually any user-level device that has reliable access to the Internet.

No, CERT offers assessment and remedial tools for students in 5th through 12th grade. CERT accommodates all educators who believe that Career and College Readiness Standard performance cannot be measured too early or too often. The most successful schools are those that measure student performance frequently and early to provide intervention services as appropriate.

CERT is designed to provide data for ALL students based on the Career and College Readiness Standards, as ALL students will ultimately take the ACT® and pursue postsecondary career and educational opportunities.

CERT is an assessment program with remediation functionality, not a test-prep program. While CERT is embedded with test-preparation functionality (i.e., video answer explanations for every test question and subject-matter and test-strategy remedial lessons), its primary function is to provide teachers and administrators with detailed reports that are easy to understand.

Yes, every CERT test question is "tagged" against the Career and College Readiness Standards and the Common Core State Standards.

No, the ACT® did not create CERT and it does not endorse CERT. That being said, all of CERT's content is age-appropriate and designed to match real ACT® assessments, providing students with valuable practice opportunities and teachers and administrators with valuable insights into student performance.

This answer is two-fold:

CERT offers three levels of analytics, from the most granular standards included in the Career and College Readiness Standards to the most general. This means that teachers who use CERT have unprecedented access to the data they need to offer differentiated instruction that is tailored to group and/or individual strengths and weaknesses.

CERT offers a high-level view of CRS performance to help teachers diagnose curricular gaps and discrepancies, allowing schools to make meaningful, real-time modifications to curriculum and instruction.

No. Because colleges and universities prefer ACT® assessment data for admission and scholarship purposes, CERT is designed to provide schools and students with performance indicators that are tied to national benchmarks. CERT eliminates the misrepresentation of grade-level reporting to ensure that every student, regardless of age or grade, has the same opportunity for ACT® and postsecondary career and educational success.

Both. CERT allows schools to choose the mode of assessment.

Yes to the first question; No to the second. CERT's administrative functionality allows administrators to unlock CERT, making it available to students from home. As long as they refrain from unlocking student access until after the assessment, students have no opportunity for a sneak peek.

Yes, with administrative permission. As mentioned above, students can view remedial video lessons from nearly any device with Internet access, but only after permission has been granted.

This is left to the discretion of each school, but CERT offers 3 assessments for 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, 3 assessments for grades 9-11, and 2 assessments for grade 12. For the best longitudinal data, schools are encouraged to take full advantage of the assessment opportunities included in each program package. (The Middle School packages covers grades 5-8 and the High School package covers grades 9-12.)

Schools generally have two options:

• Schools can offer structured or supervised time during the school day.
• Schools can permit students to access remedial lessons from home.

Absolutely. CERT's individualized remedial lessons ensure that struggling students get the support they need either during the school day or during after-school hours.

Please see our "Pricing" page for more details.