Free Prep Resources for the ACT® Are Great. They’re Just Not Built for What Districts Need.

Free test prep resources for the ACT® test can be valuable for individual students. But when a district is responsible for preparing an entire junior class, the challenge becomes much bigger than helping one motivated learner. District leaders also need visibility into student progress, standards mastery, and where additional support is needed.

For a motivated student with reliable internet access, a quiet place to study, and the self-discipline to follow a study plan independently, free prep resources for the ACT® can be incredibly helpful. We encourage students to take advantage of them.

But if you’re a curriculum or instruction leader, assessment coordinator, or district administrator in a state that requires the ACT®, you’re preparing far more than one motivated student. You’re responsible for helping every junior succeed. That’s a different challenge, and it’s one that free resources weren’t designed to solve. This is where districts need a comprehensive preparation program for the ACT® test like Progress Learning to better prepare their students.

The Question Free Tools Can’t Answer

Picture a typical March in a high school in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Utah, Wisconsin, or Wyoming. The state-required ACT® is six weeks away. The principal walks into the assistant principal’s office and asks a simple question:

“Where are our 312 juniors right now? Which ones are college-ready in math but not in reading? Which standards are holding the whole cohort back? What should we focus on over the next six weeks to help the most students reach college readiness?”

If students have been using a mix of free resources it’s difficult to answer those questions. Each platform has its own login, reporting, and snapshot of individual student activity. None provide a districtwide view of performance. None identify which standards need the most attention across the cohort. None highlight the students who haven’t engaged with practice at all.

That last point is often overlooked. The biggest challenge with free resources isn’t quality. It’s that they rely entirely on student self-direction. Students balancing work, family responsibilities, or other commitments, as well as those who may be the first in their family considering college, are often the least likely to consistently log in on their own.

A districtwide platform helps ensure every student has access to the same practice, assignments, and support during the school day.

What Aggregate Reporting Unlocks

One of the biggest differences between free resources and a districtwide platform is visibility.

Free prep tools for the ACT® test are designed to help individual students. Progress Learning is designed to help schools and districts monitor readiness across an entire cohort.

When Progress Learning is implemented across a high school, every junior’s practice for the ACT® contributes to reports educators can use to guide instruction. Administrators can review performance by standard, class, campus, and subgroup, along with time on task and mastery trends over time.

As a Preferred Test Prep Provider for the ACT® test, Progress Learning’s reporting aligns with the official score categories of the ACT®. When counselors compare Progress Learning reports with official score reports from the ACT®, they’ll see familiar reporting categories like Production of Writing, Knowledge of Language, Algebra, Functions, Craft and Structure, and Interpretation of Data. That alignment helps educators connect classroom performance to readiness for the ACT® without translating between different reporting systems.

District leaders can:

• Identify the standards where the greatest number of students need additional support.
• Review performance by subgroup to monitor opportunity gaps and guide interventions.
• Assign targeted remediation to individual students, classes, or groups based on data rather than voluntary participation.
• Monitor growth over time to determine whether interventions are making an impact before testing begins.
• Share clear evidence of student progress with district leadership and school boards.

Free resources provide valuable practice for individual students. District leaders also need the visibility to monitor progress across the entire cohort.

Six Other Things Free Resources Can’t Do at the District Level

Reporting is one important difference. But districts also need tools that support instruction, intervention, and long-term planning.

• Teacher workflow: Teachers can assign targeted practice for the ACT®, monitor completion, review results, and adjust instruction using a single platform rather than managing multiple disconnected resources.
• Equitable access: Free resources require students to discover the tool, create an account, and stay motivated enough to use it consistently. A districtwide implementation provides every student with access during the school day. When every student’s performance on the ACT® contributes to district accountability, consistent participation matters.
• Earlier readiness: Most free prep resources for the ACT® test focus on juniors and seniors. By then, many foundational skills have already been established. Progress Learning supports readiness from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Students using Liftoff adaptive intervention begin addressing learning gaps years before high school, helping build the reading, math, and science skills that support long-term college readiness.
• Integration with state standards: Teachers in states that require the ACT® continue teaching their state’s academic standards, whether that’s the Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS), Tennessee Academic Standards, Wisconsin Standards, Alabama Course of Study, or others. Progress Learning supports both state standards instruction and readiness for the ACT® within the same platform, helping classroom instruction and test preparation reinforce one another.
• Funding alignment: District leaders using Title I, Title IV, or other state and federal funding often need evidence of implementation and measurable outcomes. Progress Learning is supported by multiple ESSA Tier 2 Moderate Evidence studies and provides reporting that helps document student progress and instructional impact.
• Teacher time savings: Rather than curating resources from multiple websites and manually tracking student progress, educators have access to prebuilt assessments aligned with the ACT®, reporting, assignment tools, and intervention resources in one platform.

Where Free Resources Fit

Free prep resources for the ACT® test still have an important place.

Encourage students to use the daily question on ACT.org. These resources work well as supplements, but districts also need infrastructure that supports every student. That includes districtwide reporting, teacher workflows, standards-level insights, targeted intervention, and consistent implementation across classrooms.

Progress Learning brings those pieces together in one platform. As a Preferred Test Prep Provider for the ACT® test, schools have access to official content from the ACT®, including 33 released forms of the ACT® and more than 7,000 official items from the ACT®, alongside Progress Learning’s library of more than 200,000 state standards-aligned assessment items. The result is a single platform that supports instruction, intervention, progress monitoring, and readiness for the ACT® across the district.

A Simple Test

Before your next testing window for the ACT®, consider this question: If your superintendent emailed tomorrow asking, “How are our juniors trending on readiness for the ACT® compared to last year, broken out by school, subgroup, and standard?” how long would it take to answer? If the answer is, “I can pull that report in a click,” you likely have the visibility you need. If the answer is, “Let me piece that together from several different systems,” there may be an opportunity to simplify the process.

If you’re exploring ways to strengthen readiness for the ACT® across your district, we’d be happy to show you how Progress Learning helps educators monitor progress, target instruction, and prepare students with greater confidence.

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