001Good morning everyone. Happy Tuesday. Hope everyone is well. Welcome to GT Tuesday. We got people still rolling in. Hopefully your uh return to school has gone well. Wait. All right. And we are recording. All right. My chat up. Happy new year. Happy new year everyone. Glad y'all could make it. All right. And as people still trickle in, we're going to go ahead get started. So, uh hopefully everyone is well. Uh we got some guests today. I'm excited for uh to hear what they have to say. We have uh Keith Hurdle with National Math Stars, Atlanta um with College Board, and Jennifer and K. Oliver with um ACT. And then I got all of you, my friends, that are here with me today. Uh so I hopefully everyone is well, everyone is doing good. Uh hopefully
002it's a new year. Uh I had a birthday in the midst of all of this. Uh hopefully everyone has some good holiday time and we are excited and uh hopefully it's going well. Um as you know I always start out with our definition. Who are we looking for? those students that we are serving and we are looking we're working with those children or youth who perform at or shows the potential for performing at a remarkably high level of uh accomplishment when compared to others of the same age, experience or environment who exhibit the per high performance capability in an intellectual, creative or artistic way. uh possess an unusual capacity for leadership and excels in specific academic fields. So as we move forward, those are the students we're looking at. And then we think about our
003state goal and how are we how are those students demonstrating their participation in these services on your campuses in your districts by looking by self-directed learning thinking research and communication as evidenced by the development of innovative products and performances that reflect their individuality, creativity and are advanced in relation to students of what once again similar age experience or environment. And hopefully our high school students are have participated in your services and have produced those products or performances that can be considered professional quality as as a reflection of the work that they have done with you. All right. So I know my friend is on. I just saw her pop in. Kristen, how are you today? Happy New Year. Hey, happy new year everyone. Um, and belated happy birthday, Monica. Um, >> thank you. >> Yeah,
004this year's a big birthday year for me, too. I mean, not, you know, it is what you put on it. But, um, but yeah, I saw something on Instagram last night that was like, all the 1986 people, it's a big year for you. And I was like, all right. Well, you know, every year is a gift. So, um, hope this year is great for you, too. Um, hi everyone. Uh, I'm uh I'm Kristen Graham. I'm the deputy director of the Texas Association for the Gifted and Talented. Um, I hope that everyone on here has made some kind of connection with us, but in case you haven't and you're not sure who we are or what we do, um, really we're we're all of you. We are the professional home for all of you that work
005to serve gifted and talented students, uh, work with staff, develop programs and services. I love all the people putting their birthday uh birthdays in the chat. Um, uh, but anyway, we're here. We exist. uh with you and for you um uh to serve you all as a community. I'm a former GT coordinator, former teacher. Um when I found out about TAGT, it was when I didn't know about it when I was a teacher, but I did find out about TAGT the first year I became a GT coordinator. Um and that was when I was in a smaller rural district in East Texas and I was a department of one. Um, literally everything from uh board presentations to doing pullouts with the kids, testing, like you know, everything maintaining the physical file folders that we had
006at the time, you know, like all of that stuff. Um, so I'm sure some of you are sitting here like, "Yep, that's me." And then I've also got 504. I've got other stuff, too. So, we know that a lot of us uh in the gift and talented world wear uh many hats. Um, we get volunttoled for all kinds of other duties as assigned. like that's who we are as people. Um uh but TGT is here as a a community for you. Um uh we're a membership-based uh 50c3 uh assoc professional association. Um uh we offer lots of different programming throughout the year both in person and virtual. We have benefits and space uh specifically curated for our members. Um uh in about a week you'll actually be uh seeing and hearing more from us on
007a new membership structure that we're rolling out uh that we're really excited to better serve um all of you better serve your teachers um our ESC folks uh university professionals all of those that are in this uh universe that that help us um ultimately serve students. Um I'm going to put in the chat just a little bit of information about some things I'm going to mention. So, if you want to read or click along uh as I uh go through a couple of things, um one, this Friday, uh we have a free webinar, whether you're a member or not, free webinar uh that you can sign up for. Um last fall, uh we talked about it, I think, here on a GT Tuesday and TGT sent out um uh emails. Um we're really excited to
008find out that after some years of pushing um the tapper report now includes it's disagregated further to include and show uh your GT uh specific data. So it's already uh other special uh populations are already uh kind of extrapolated out and uh but it never had GT as a column on there and now it does in several places. So you can look at uh outcomes, you can look at star data uh and some other things and see that GT column. Um and this Friday we have uh Luke Hurst who's kind of our resident expert in all things data um uh who's going to be doing um a webinar for us uh to talk about okay this data is now available to me in this report and it's a big deal but why is it a
009big deal and how do I use it? What do I do with it? Um, and so, um, you know, we're in a time where accountability and funding is is everything. That's the name of the game. Um, and until this data was available, it was that much harder to really tell the story of why your work matters, why you need funding, how to justify staff. Um, and, uh, Luke has done some awesome work and, um, is just a real I don't know if Luke's even on the call right now, but he's a real geek when it comes to this stuff. and I think he'd say the same thing. Uh and so he's really excited to uh share about this um uh on Friday. Um we'll record it as well. Um but you can just register uh
010via Zoom uh right there uh through the link in the chat um uh for that webinar. So I know all of us are are in positions where we're needing to tell a better story uh about um uh gifted services, why they matter, what we're doing. Uh, and so data is how you tell the story. Um, that's what the people who make decisions understand. That's what they care about. And so that's what you have to use. Uh, and so this is um a really important um, uh, development. We're we're also pushing um, believe it or not, we have to push not with TEA, not with Monica, but with uh, at the legislative level to get this data just extrapolated out. And so, uh, we're also pushing for, uh, in the CCMR, uh, reports as well to
011get that GT data present there, uh, like broken out. Um, so we're we're still working on that over here at TAGT as well. Um, it's, you know, I don't know why it's so difficult, but it is. Uh so anyway, um I hope you'll be able to join us this Friday um and hear Luke talk about um the ways that you can interpret and use that data uh to your benefit, to your district's benefit um uh and ultimately better better serve students. Um also want to talk about some programming coming up uh for all of you on this call. Um probably the most relevant event of the year for you is our leadership conference coming up in March. Um the leadership conference is designed for if you're sitting on this call um and you're interested in
012in um you know what's going on at the state level, what you need to know to do your job well um you know new ideas connecting with all of your peers from across the state. The leadership conference is the best opportunity where that can happen. Um when I was a GT coordinator that was um probably my favorite event of the year. It's it's a lot smaller than uh gifted if you attended gifted, but everyone that you're sitting next to in a session uh is in a similar role as you. They're facing the same challenges. They're trying to solve the same issues. Uh and so it's such a great professional learning opportunity, but also an opportunity to connect with others, exchange some cell phone numbers, some email addresses. Um you know, that's where I uh made
013friends that I would call on my way home from work and be like, "Hey, here's what I'm dealing with. how you know what are you doing or are you seeing the same thing or shoot an email to and be like hey do you have like a template or something that you can share with me that I can so I'm not having to recreate or start from scratch. Um we hope that you're also using our TGT resources uh for that as well. But um you know it's where you make those those uh colleagues who turn into friends um you know to help you be able to do your job well. Um so we'll be in RoundRock uh same location as last year's leadership conference. uh we'll be at the Kalahari Resort March 22nd through 24th. Um
014the links there in the chat so you can learn uh a little bit more um about that opportunity. Uh and we really hope um that you'll join us. If that's at the tail end of your spring break, I mean, maybe you want to make it a little long weekend and bring bring your kids and have fun at the water park, you know? Um uh just putting that out there. Um, I also this time of year, um, maybe there might be a couple of you on this call that you just found out that you're taking on GT or you, um, just came into the GT coordinator position recently. Um, we have a new coordinator boot camp that we do. It's a live virtual event every August, but we record it and develop it into an online
015course each year, so the content is um, relevant and up todate. And so you can purchase that course um that happened in August um if you're needing to kind of get level set, get a compass for what matters right now, like if you're kind of just hitting the ground running um and you might feel a little overwhelmed about gosh, what what what's the top priority or what should I be most concerned about? the new coordinator boot camp um uh divides up uh content into really kind of like the five most important things you need to be paying attention to to make sure that you're doing everything else well. Uh and so um that information is available and I just wanted to do one last or maybe not last but one plug for a series that
016we had last fall that you can still engage with uh on your own time anywhere. Um we had an amazing uh series, four-part series on acceleration um where we brought in um really kind of our experts from across the country on what this means not just on a theory level but what that means uh for you working in your district. uh one of the sessions, the last session is all about providing you tons of templates and information to actually get started like if you need to develop some campus and district policy. Um you know, wherever you are in the process of I don't really know much about acceleration or how it benefits kids. I know we have CBE, but maybe you don't know much beyond that. This is a great place for you. if you
017already have options in place and you're wanting to uh listen and hear about maybe some other considerations and things that um uh could help out uh in your district and um maybe how to address some common challenges. It's a great course for you too. Um thanks Monica for giving us some time. Um our general website's there at the top of the um chat too. So um uh feel free to check us out if you're not a member. We hope that you'll uh consider joining and again in about a week or so you're going to start seeing uh some more information about our new uh membership categories. We have one specifically for uh leaders. Um so that'll be coming out soon as well. Um yeah, thanks everyone. I hope you have a have a great week.
018Right. Thank you Kristen. Great information. All right. I know I'll be seeing some of you some of these events upcoming. I've already registered for uh Friday. And um as we move forward, we're going to hear from our uh part our friends from National Math Stars, uh Keith Hurdle. And I'm going to stop sharing so he can start. And thank you so much, Monica. Um and it's it's great to see uh so many familiar faces on the call as well. as I just look through the names and pictures, it's like, "Oh, I know them." Or, "Oh, I saw them at at TAGT uh uh gifted or or leadership last year." But um uh yeah, thank you for the space, Monica. Excited to share with y'all who haven't heard of us about National Masters. Um uh for
019myself, I'm a just a little background on myself. I'm a former admin um at a school in Austin, Texas called Austin Achieve Public Schools. was there for uh taught for 5 years and then admin for 5 years but now have the uh great opportunity of just spreading the word about national mastars and getting more schools involved. Uh I want to try to make this a little bit interactive just just going to test it out. Zoom is a little bit interesting. I'm curious uh show me on the emoji part where you can react on on here on the Zoom call. Show me the thumbs up emoji if uh you've heard of National Math Stars before already. I see Monica's. Yeah, bunch of them going off as I scroll through. Wonderful. So many familiar faces. Cool. Uh,
020also now next step, show me that thumbs up if you partnered as a district last year or as an ESC last year. So ESC, maybe we came and presented for your region uh or as a district who nominated students and got gold medals in their hands. Okay, cool. Love it. Love it. Love it. All right. Well, this will be new information for some um but uh a lot of uh information we may be heard for others, but there are definitely some updates within the STARS programs as well, and I want to be here for all questions. So, yeah, National Masters, um let me switch the slides here. Boom. So, uh what we do at National Masters, we're a nonprofit organization. Everything uh we provide to schools and families is uh is free of cost. Um
021we are simply uh fully funded by some generous funders. Um our goal is so I heard kind of Kristen say at the start of her her session or her uh TAGT um information that funding is the name of the game in the GT space. Absolutely it is. What we do is free. So you don't ever have to worry about funding for the GT space with National Masters. that um we looking to um ensure that mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to be to reach the frontiers of math and science. So what we do is we run a free support program from second and third grade all the way through 12th grade for students that get into the program um over it's over 10 years of support that we provide for
022that student. We're looking for one in a thousand math ability students that would maybe otherwise slip through the cracks in terms of what they're needing for that brilliant brain. And we provide everything outside of the school day for students um that can help support that and make sure they're on the frontiers of math and science when they're reaching 12th grade. So, um, we provide up to $100,000 in resources for each student in the program, but for those students in most need, uh, that number gets closer to like 150,000, um, uh, per that student and family. Uh, this is a fun updated picture. This is Houston, Texas. Uh, of course, these students are more than numbers. They're we get to see them in person. Um, and 50 70 of these kiddos you see in this picture
023are from the state of Texas. So, I'm a Texas guy. This makes me proud that out of the 102 across Texas and Midwest, 57 of them from our state. Um, and some of you may see some of the students in your district here on in this picture. It's hard to see individual faces, but there's some that are there. Um, so what we do at National Math Stars, we provide support. It's comprehensive support for students that are in the program and it's support in four buckets. The first buck is academic development. So, every student that gets uh that gets selected for the program and becomes a National Math Star gets access to advanced coursework um and it's fully funded as well. And our math mentors help them keep up with that advanced coursework. Most of our
024students start with art of the problem solving courses um through Beast Academy. Um and this is a picture of Joseph starting his Beast Academy classes as well. other courses are offered, but um yeah, every student that's in there is getting advanced coursework and making sure that they're progressing through the advanced coursework. Every student that's a part of the program also is getting math mentoring sessions. So, these are weekly sessions where they're hopping on with other students in the program um and also their math mentor. And these students that they meet, uh these are the same students they're seeing on every call every week. So they're building friendships, but they're also building math community within it, and they're working together and learning together. So that mentoring session is a huge part of what we do weekly.
025Also, every student in the program gets a STEM summer camp every year um that we fund for them and sometimes their families to attend as well, uh depending on what what camp it is. So some camps in the past that our students have attended and really enjoyed our Math in the Mountains, um John's Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and Epsilon Summer Camp as well. Um once again fully funded. Um we have two kind of pathways once students are in the program. Voy you'll see Voyager and Pathfinder terminology. Voyager is our program that's dedicated to the most at need students or those that are furthest from opportunity either financially or ge or STEM opportunity geographically. Um so Voyager Stars receive $3,000 annual budget their family to spend on really anything in that STEM world. So Xavier
026here in the picture spent theirs last year on a 3D printer and he's taking 3D printing courses. Um some of our families like to use that on math competitions, Rubik's cubes competitions, we've seen uh hackpacks and robotics kits are popular. Um but Voyager stars get $3,000 annual budget to spend on anything in that STEM interest world. Um and then Pathfinder Stars also get a budget, but it's financially aid-based. Um, I showed you the picture of Welcome Weekend and the 57 stars at the beginning. This is just more of the fun and silliness we had we have at Welcome Weekend. It's just time to get together, students meet each other from across the country and build friendships and community in the math and GT space. Um, along with welcome weekend, we'll do regional events in Austin,
027in Houston, in Texas, in Dallas, in uh Laredo. Um, regional events um where the students that are around that area can come meet each other in person. Um, sometimes there's a math component involved. Sometimes it's just getting together for some rock climbing and and and meeting and seeing each other again. Uh, one of the most crucial areas of support that we provide is a family advising for the student. So, we provide family advisors. Um, these are the go-to resources for questions for families uh in terms of what do I spend my STEM budget on? Uh, what summer camps are good for my kiddos? How do I sign up for those? Our adviserss basically take care of all those questions and signups and things like that for the families. So, it's very low lift for the
028families and we're making sure to help them along the way. Um these are two of our wonderful advisers, Zach um and be um with two of their students that they um help advise and families. Uh most of you kind of already know this like I said on the call, but we never um we don't interfere with what's happening in school. Our goal is to build on what's hot uh already happening and we build outside of the school day and on top of that. Um so I think of it as like if you're having if you got a soccer if you kid a kiddo that has a dream of being uh you know professional soccer player. Um probably not enough just to go to his practices every day with his team. He needs outside coaching one
029to one strength and conditioning if he's going to be division one scholarship and then go on and play pro. We think of that in these one and a half thousand math ability students like yes the school day is amazing and absolutely essential but what can we provide outside of the school day that's helping uh keep them on the pathways to the frontiers of math and science when they leave 12th grade. So that's advanced courses, small groupoup math coaching, family advising we've hit on the community. Um they'll start coding sometimes getting to robotics teams and competitions. Our competitions we like to make sure they're always getting um just that competitive feel in the math community as well. Math Kangaroo AMC 810 and 12. They spend the STEM budget. So, it's really everything outside of the scope
030of what's happening at school. Everything else we can provide essentially for the student. So, um and my favorite part about this, uh like I've mentioned before, we have generous funders that help us provide this free of charge to students and families. Um there's no contracts to ever needed to get involved with us and there's no data sharing ever needed. Um, it's meant to be extremely low lift so we can celebrate and recognize as many students um and then ultimately get some wonderful candidates to be a part of our program. Uh, Texas in general, uh, this is I'm I'm very excited about this one cuz I'm I'm a proud Texan. So, um, the vast majority of our largest presence of any state in the country is absolutely Texas and it's by far it's not even close.
031Um, as of 2025, as you see, partnering with districts serving over 50% of students in the state of Texas. Um, and many of you on this call are the reason why. Uh, so really appreciative of you of just, uh, getting involved and and and celebrating, recognizing top talent at your schools. Um, once again, uh, I want to keep the love going. Uh, if you see your name, uh, or your district's name, uh, on this list, and there's two pages, so it's in alphabetical order. So, if you're past the eyes of International Leadership of Texas, maybe you don't see it yet. I'll show you in a second, but uh let's hit the love emoji. If you see your name, that means you partnered with us by nominating students um and getting them gold medals. So, we
032sent out over 8,4 or 8,442 student nominations last year. That means over 8,000 students got gold medals in hand for being recognized as top mass students um in their in their district. And then of those, we had over 4,000 applications completed. Um here's another spot. Thank you again. This is the list continuing um for those 137 district partnerships last year. So these are the eyes all the way to Witchah Falls ISD at the bottom. So hit that heart emoji if you see yourself on this list. Again, um just thank you so much. Um that means you looked at the data, you got the gold medals in hand, and you distributed them to your kiddos. So we really appreciate it. Uh our work doesn't take place without the help of the GT coordinators on this call.
033This is an exciting slide too. Um you saw the 57 stars from welcome weekend on that very first picture I showed you. We also have a I've mentioned our Pathfinder program that's a little bit lighter touch model. So over the 57 stars plus 188 Pathfinder stars, we were able to have this year in 2025 245 stars in the Taran program from the state of Texas. Um if you see your district name here, that means you've got a star either in the Voyager or the Pathfinder program as of 2025. Um and just it's a lot of fun to celebrate them. Um, and we speaking of the celebrations, uh, I'll pass along the slide deck here in the chat in a moment so you have access to all these links and whatnot. But it's really fun. I
034scoured the internet yesterday looking for like just National Math Stars uh, announcements and the news and stuff from different schools. So, all of these districts just different announcement and whatnot. Um, of some of the amazing things taking place um, and excitement when their students nominated as a national master. It's really fun to see. I want to just show you a quick little my favorite one of my favorite clips of John Cantou from Amarillo ISD. Um, in this announcement, it's just a it's a very cute one if you haven't seen it. >> National math stars. and Mavi Molina at Windsor Elementary School where a fourth grader was the only one selected from the Texas panhandle to be part of a national math program because of his extraordinary math skills. Among 6,000 students who qualify for the
035program, only 102 made it. John Canu is one of them. When my parents first told me that I made it in, like I was part of the 102, I didn't believe them. Like I was like, "No, I'm no I'm not. I I did not make it. I don't believe you." So I was like, I started crying. Like I was so happy and like I was speechless. The program provides support valued at more than $100,000 for each selected student for the next 10 years. This includes weekly one- on-one math mentoring, math summer camps. >> I want to make sure to respect the time of everyone on this call, but the link is there if you want to watch the rest of it. Uh I got the opportunity to meet John at welcome weekend. Great kiddo. Um
036and uh yeah, so many fun uh celebrations shared across the internet. My final question really is if you're not already involved uh with National Masters, we would love to get uh student gold medals in your students hands and ultimately the opportunity for this program. Um it's pretty easy and low lift to get involved. Uh really what you do is first focus, we want to recognize and celebrate your top students at first. So uh you look at your data. Uh right now is a great time to where you have your middle of the year data probably from uh before winter break. It's probably coming out now or it's already available. Look at your second and third grade students uh and you look at the top 2% across your district of second and third grade students. You
037identify the number of students and you let us know that number. Once again, no data sharing's needed because you just tell us the number and then we send you uh for each student a gold medal to celebrate them. It says National Masters nominee on it. It's uh it's a heavy metal like it's it's solid quality. Um and students love to wear those, celebrate them. But then we've really encouraged like school celebrations, honor them at lunch or district some of we've seen a lot of board uh meetings uh take place where they start with their national master celebrations and things like that. So it's really cool um fun way to celebrate them. Like I said, when you get involved um you get an envelope for each student. Each one has a gold medal and then also
038just a letter in Spanish and English on who we are and how to apply if you would like to. So when the family gets it, they have the choice to apply if they would like to or not. Of course, we would love to see them apply. Um but really it's low lift on your end. Once you get the medals in student hands and the letters to families, it's kind of like uh if they apply, great. If not, well, you got a gold medal. It's win-win. Um so same eligibility criteria as last year. They live in Texas currently a second or third grade student or seven and nine years old and they're either in the 98th percentile or above on MAP, KGAT, I Ready, you name it, whatever you're using at your district. Um or top
0392% in second and third grade. So looking at that second and third grade data, identify 98th percentile and above, you just let us know the number of students. Uh all you do if you want to get involved and I'll also click uh you can scan the QR code. I'll also put in the chat here our National Masters. Uh let me see how to put in the chat. National Masters partner interest form. It's there in the chat now. Um or you can do QR code or email me. But really all it takes is you look at your data, you let us know the number of students that you want to nominate, and we send you that number of gold medals uh straight to you. Or if you're a larger district like uh I want to say
040United ISD is the is one that I think of that had I think we had over 300 nominations from them and multiple campuses. So we can also send uh a specific number of nomination packets to each different campus within the district as well. And we have a pretty smooth process on how to do that. The dates this year are pretty much the same as last year. Uh this is exciting because two days from now, nominations and applications open and uh families have all the way into June 15th to f to uh apply. Um if there's questions, you can email me. Uh oh, one thing I forgot to note, and a bunch of you all already did this last year, was any school that nominates students, uh you get access to brilliant.org, not only for the
041students that you nominated, but every student across your district. Uh it's a partnership we have going with them. There's been a lot of love for these courses in brilliant.org. So um just another bonus about just signing on and nominating students. And then also you get a 4 month free trial access to Beast Academy as well by partnering. So a great program for some of your gifted students as well. But I'll come back to this slide timeline. Um is there any immediate questions right now? And you can go ahead and unmute yourself. If not, like I said, I'll put the chat I'll put the uh I'll put the slides in the chat as well so you have access to the links and whatnot, but any questions that come up. Bridget, thank you. Yes, it is super
042I agree. It's super easy. That's the goal. We know uh educators are the busiest folks out there. Uh I come from that world, so uh we can make it as low lift as possible. That's our goal. Any questions? I'm gonna be in teacher mode. I'll practice wait time for about 10 seconds and then I'll just kick it back to you, Monica. Um, I really appreciate the space. Monica, >> Jimmy Chrome came off mute. Tammy, >> yes. I I just had a quick question. Are you sharing that slide deck with us as well? >> Yeah, I'll put it in the chat right after this. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Thank you. >> Of course. Good to see you, Tammy. >> Good to see you, too. Thank you. >> And and Cheryl, appreciate it. I agree. Everyone
043should do it. It's a it's a win-win for this kiddo. So, uh thank you all so much. Um really appreciate it. And I'll stay on the call for a little bit. I'll put the slides in the chat. Um but appreciate the space, Monica. Thank you. Can't thank you enough. >> Thank you. Right. So that was Keith and thank you once again and we're going to keep moving. We're going to keep moving. Uh next we got College Board Atlanta and I'm >> I just sent a request to share my screen. >> Yes. >> Okay. Let's see. >> Okay. Can you see my screen? >> Not yet. >> Yeah. No, >> there we go. >> Okay, great. Well, hello everyone. Good morning. Welcome back. I hope everyone had a really good um holiday break. I know I
044did. I am going to share just some quick updates for the spring for college board. My name is Lana Sevita. I am located in Austin. If you haven't met me, we need to meet. Uh remember we have 10 people in the state of Texas who support um schools and in districts. If you don't know who your person is, please reach out to me afterwards and let's get you connected. I'm going to start with advanced placement. So as we all know advanced placement exams are around the corner. Uh the exams will take place the first two full weeks of May and then there is that late admin. The other update I wanted to share is that the 2025 AP art and design exhibit is now available. So every year after AP exams are done, the uh
045leaders who uh read the uh or grade or score the art from our art students curate a collection of the what they deem some of the best pieces and they create an exhibit each year. And I'm super proud that this year we actually have two students from the state of Texas who are part of the exhibit. Um so the link is um I can put the link in the chat. It's also here on this slide before but I want to make sure you see that. The other big update for the fall is AP business with personal finance and AP cyber security are launching this fall. We expect the AP business personal finance to meet the new personal finance graduation requirement that was passed this past legislative session. A good resource to share with your students
046and families are the AP credit policy search. This is a website where students can start to explore what kind of credit they can get in college for their advanced placement exams. So, there's two ways they can do it. they can start with the college or university they're interested in and see what kind of credit they can get or they can start with the AP course they're considering and see which colleges and universities grant credit. So, it's a really great resource for students as they um a lot of students right now are starting to plan um their coursework for the next year. So, this is a good resource to share with them. If you are an AP coordinator or if you are a friend of our AP coordinator, these are the two big action items in
047January. Make sure all SSD requests for accommodations for AP exams are submitted by January 16th. And by January 31st, it is uh the deadline for all teachers to submit AP course audit materials. I'm going to now uh provide some updates on the SAT suite of assessments. Um, so the SAT, uh, the spring SAT season is a big one here in Texas. This is where a majority of juniors from across the state will take the inschool SAT. Uh, in the class of 2025, 75% of students who uh, graduated in that class took the SAT at least once while in high school. So, the whole state's gearing up for SAT season. Before we do that, I wanted to go ahead and share with you a new publication that we just released. It's called a success spotlight. And
048what this success spotlight does is it highlights Amarillo ISD and how they are supporting every student in their district with the SAT suite. Um really it just got published just before the holiday break. So that's worth downloading and looking at. The spring testing window is just around the corner. students. Uh the testing window for spring is March 2nd through April 30th. The big action item right now if you are an SAT suite test coordinator is to make sure you have accessed the inschool testing resource center which will provide you with everything you need to administer the tests. Get your orders placed. Make sure everyone's getting the training. Make sure you request accommodations. And then we have also updated some of our technology requirements specifically for Chromebooks. So if you are a district that tests on
049Chromebook, make sure you are reviewing the updated technology information. This is a slide that has nothing but PDF resources for educators to use with students and families and colleagues. There's posters you can print. I just put it all in one place so it's easy for you to access. So, while I just talked about what educators should be doing this spring to get ready for testing, we also want to make sure our students are getting ready for testing. And the way students can get ready for testing is by practicing. So, students come can go into Blue Book, the app where they will take the test and they can do a test preview, which allows them to kind of tinker around, play with the calculator, play with the highlighting tools, just kind of get familiar with the
050look and feel of the app. And then they can also hop in there and take fulllength practice tests. If they want to take a full length practice test that's timed to recreate the setting of a test day, they can do that. Or if they want to take some of the test, pause, and come back, they can do that, too. When students take a practice test, we will automatically score it for them. We will provide free feedback for them about what they did well and feedback for them on where they can improve. Every single student gets a my practice dashboard so they can actually view all of their past practice tests and how they've done and if they've taken over time they can go back into old ones and see if they've improved where they want
051to. You will also see on there that there is a link where it says practice on Khan Academy. College Board has an exclusive partnership with Khan Academy that once a student takes a full-length practice test and it's scored. That information we will it will go to Khan Academy where they will create a customized practice plan for your students. So they get feedback on where they need to improve and then they get support, instructional support to um improve those skills. It's great that we have seven to eight fulllength practice tests for all of our suite of assessments available. It's great that we have the partnership with con, but the one question we always want to make sure that we're asking ourselves is, is this good practice? is the are the resources College Board's providing for free
052doing what we needed to do. And we have now had enough time with Blue Book and our free practice within Blue Book to do some research. And what our research shows is students who complete fulllength SAT practice tests in Blue Book um get higher SAT scores than students who don't. We saw larger score gains for students with lower PSAT scores and regardless of where the student lived, parental level of education, socioeconomic status, all of them, we saw those gains across all groups. So, it's free practice, it's good practice, and it's helping our students improve those scores. Another way for students to prepare for the SAT is the SAT question of the day. Uh students can log into their Collegeboard account and access access their personalized dashboard where they can take one question versus the day
053uh for the day. They will get the answers to that question, answer explanations. But what students are really enjoying are some of the fun things that we've incorporated such as their ability to earn buttons and badges. They can see how they did compared to any other students who attempted the question. there's a straight calendar and so students are reporting that it's real fun and interactive and a nice quick way to just touch in on some SAT practice every single day. >> So we all we know that the SAT is highly valued by colleges and universities whether it's for admissions placement or scholarship but there's so much more to the SAT and what's available to students than just their score. So, what I want to talk to you about now is our big future schools app.
054If you have students who are preparing to test in the spring when they are getting set up for testing, they can opt into our Big Future School app. It is a free app where students can actually access their scores in the palm of their hand. Students don't like logging into websites. They don't like checking email, but they've always asked us, can you just text us our scores? And this is the next closest thing. But in addition to getting their scores and seeing how they did, they also get a bunch of resources and tools and information available to them. So, the first thing they'll get are career insights. And these are recommended careers based on where the student lives. These are all careers that are high growth. And these are careers that could potentially be a
055good match based on how the student performed on the test. So using data to provide some guidance for students. Students can also take interactive uh career quizzes or college quizzes to search for careers in college. They can also explore scholarships. And then the other thing that's available in the app is we will regularly ping students with um timely updates and messages that are relevant to where they are in high school. So for example, a sophomore will get a different message this spring than maybe a senior would. Within Big Future, there is a feature called connections. Um, students can opt into connections and this is where students can start connecting directly with nonprofit colleges and scholarship providers. What's really neat about this is the students choose who they hear from. So, they're not bombarded with a
056whole range of different schools that they might not be interested in or scholarships that they might not be eligible for. A new feature within connections is now the college match option. So once a student tells the College Board some of the things that they're interested in or what they're looking for in a college or university, if there's a college or university out there that's a good fit for them and that student has shown that they would that they're shown traits or interests of that the college would want to see in a student, we will actually match them and we will actually give them a little yellow bar that says college match, which means this is one you were looking for and you might not realize it and you're a student. They're looking for the way
057students get access to big future schools and connections. This is very important because they have to do it during mobile or during their exam setup prior to taking the test. So they opt in um after they opt in they will receive a text to securely download the app and then when scores are available they will be notified. One thing to note, all text messages are sent outside of school hours. We know that students in Texas can't have those phones, so we text after school. This is my contact information. Please feel free to write it down. And like I said, if you don't know who supports you in your school or district from the College Board, let's change that and make sure you do. Um, I will be sharing this presentation uh with Monica and if
058anyone has any questions, you're welcome to reach out directly or pop them in the chat and I will stop sharing now >> and thank you for having me. >> We only have one question and you've answered that already. You will be sharing your presentation. So uh we will make sure that uh I will also make sure that these also get put on the website uh so that you can get those links from there also. So I will uh make sure I will ADA and u meet all those qualifications and get them out for you. Uh and next uh we have K Oliver and Jennifer Pit from ACT. Good morning, Monica. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share. I know earlier when I jumped on a call, my uh audio wasn't uh allowing me
059to be great. So, I'm hoping that the audio has uh worked itself out for uh this presentation. I sure hope it's coming across. >> You're sounding clear. You're sounding clear. >> Fantastic. So, >> uh now you're not in presentation mode. I just want to say that if you're depending on how you want >> Let me go ahead and do that. right click. Thank you. So, uh concerned about making sure that I came through clearly. All right. So, uh thank you again for the opportunity. So excited to be on the call with everyone uh today. Uh as Monica mentioned, uh my name is Kay Oliver. I'm actually a former advanced academics coordinator. So many of you on the call have probably met you or seen you in some capacity, but this is your Texas uh ACT
060Texas team. We have the entire state of Texas covered uh from east to west, north and south, south. And on the call with me today is my uh uh colleague Jennifer Pitts. You're going to hear from her pretty shortly. Since we are uh pulling up the rear part of the uh our time, we're going to try to go through as quickly as possible, but definitely want to share our information towards the end. So, if you need to speak with any of us regarding your ACT needs, uh feel free. So, our mission is really clear at ACT. We want to help people achieve workplace uh and education success. And that is so true when it comes to our suite of assessments. I feel I I don't know if we've been on a call in the last
061uh maybe year or so, Monica. So, I wanted to make sure that I we reintroduced ourselves to uh your callers. Um the folks who are here today that act >> one thing, Kate, uh you might want to change your screen sharing because you're sharing your uh make sure you're on the right screen. >> Am I not on the right? I'm looking at it right now. >> We don't see the presentation. I mean, we see it, but in the the your slide format, like >> Okay, let me go ahead and stop sharing right quick and make sure I get this in the right format. >> All right. Thank you for for letting me know that. So, >> let's see. And Jennifer, if something doesn't work right, maybe I'm going to need you to jump in and
062and share it. >> Oh, good. >> Or is it better? >> We don't see it yet. It's the same. It's like your slides like what you would be editing. >> Okay. So, let me let me stop one more time. We love technology when it works. Let's see if I can get it working. >> If not, we can just click through it. >> Yeah. So, let me see where I should be. I think I should be here. All right. Is that better? >> Um, yes. >> All right. Perfect. So then now let me see how I can go back. All right. All right. So when talking about the ACT, we always just want to level set and make sure that uh our audience, our participating school districts and the state of Texas just knows that the
063ACT is a trusted researchbased assessment uh with career planning tools, analytics, and technology. Um the ACT assesses students understanding of their high school curriculum. Um, we're not an adaptive test uh that changes based on the first couple of questions that students answer. We're a line linear standardsbased assessment and we are backmapped to our college and career readiness standards. And um and so here is just a little snippet. These are the essential uh skills that students need to have to be prepared for college and career. um uh uh offset from the college and career readiness standards, we have our um benchmarks which are highly predictive of first year p uh first uh year postsecary success in those first year college creditbearing courses because we do things differently in Texas. ACT has a alignment guide to the
064Texas assessments of knowledge and skills. And so this guide um has a crosswalk between our college and career readiness standards and the TEICSS that uh align with the the curriculum here in Texas. Many of you probably are already aware that our ACT was streamlined uh last year and so because of that we have a um test that is has fewer questions um which provided more time for students. We have um various uh formats to where the uh length of our test went from 195 minutes to 125 minutes. Uh science became an optional uh choice for students in school districts, but we still maintain the ability to be able to provide the test via uh online as well as pencor paper, pencil and paper. And because of that uh changed the streamline to the ACT, our
065composite score changed last fall which now includes English, math, and reading for the composite. Uh and then if a student or our district chooses for science or writing, they students will have a STEM score as well as an ELA score on their college reportable um process. And so ACT school day still maintains uh a big push here in Texas. A lot of Texas schools choose us for school day and it is uh clearly because of the multiple uh different uh spring test options. Students obviously have the opportunity to test in their own classroom. We do offer online and paper and uh the many different formats with science being optional as well as writing. This allows for more more students to have access to uh the ACT. We offer tons of free resources for our students
066here in Texas beginning with full length practice tests on their my ACT. There is options for free test prep materials as well as full length test within the preparing for the ACT. And this year, one of our new updates is we offer a um gamified version called QuizMe that provides oodles and oodles of um quizzes for each one of our subject tests. This is free and you it is available at quizme.acct.org. In addition to that, ACT provides several webinars throughout the year for students and for families as they continue to on their college journeys. One of our uh uh upcoming webinars will be February 10th, but you can see the full schedule there. And and we're going to we're going to also include our uh presentation uh make it available for Monica for uh anyone
067who would like to uh share this with your community. And you know, just to kind of reiterate why so many Texas school districts choose the ACT, more scholarship opportunities via the ACT. We are the only uh test assessment company that provides a STEM score right there that sits on their uh college reportable score. We also supercore, which allows for school uh students to be able to choose their best uh average of their four best subject scores. uh we have uh English language supports for emerging bilingual as well as testing flexibility with multiple options for testing uh online as well as on paper as well as multiple test windows. So I want to stop there. I want to uh kick it over to my colleague Jennifer Pittz who's going to share with you for the last
068part of our time regarding free act. >> Absolutely. Thank you Kane. Thank you everybody for being here and just all I can say is buckle up. I'm going to talk really fast, but you will have a copy of this slide, so you can always go back. So, with that said, okay, you can go to the next slide. So, we do have um a solution. So, while she's getting that up, um it does build on itself. So, we do have preac. Some people know we have preac, some people don't know we have preac, but I'm here to tell you we do have preac. We have preac 89. Obviously for eighth grade and 9th grade we have preACT which is best fit for our 10th graders and then it leans into our ACT the secure version the
069easiest way to explain that is it's going to mimic the ACT more so it's only given one time a year it is only online currently uh you don't get to keep the item books you don't get the item responses back but with the preac 89 and the preac you do which I love as a former educator I love that students can actually get those test books back see the items see how you can practice just you know individually as students but also you can see as a classroom how do we better teach on certain areas or we can go back to some of those areas all of these except for the secure. So hear me on that. Except for the secure all of them are paper or online. So if you still have kiddos I'm
070an old school person so I love paper but if you have people that love online you still have those options. All right next one. So, PARATT assessments provide accountability needs. If you're needing some kind of practice test, that's for accountability. That secure test administration will actually fill those needs for you. Obviously, it's an early indication of progress and ideas for improvement. You can see where are our kids doing really well? Where do we need to maybe practice a little bit more? So, you're going to get all of that. Obviously, we have the career navigation, the interest inventory. There are a ton of questions there so that you can start to plan early on what um post-secary professions your students are wanting to go and how what their interests are so you can actually fill in
071some gaps of what are some professions they didn't even know existed. Next, um the ICT also we have a lot of data. Obviously, we are here to support you. You've met K, you're hearing me. We also have another person that does um ES the East Texas Reie. You need us, call us, text us. We will immediately answer and try to get to you as much as we can and try to fill in those gaps of what we know. Obviously, rich data. We have non-C customers call us every October. Hey, where's that grant report? because we have some rich data that we always provide to our customers and non-C customers. So, we're here, let's talk about your data. We're also here as re as resources to go and talk about your data as well. And of
072course, this is a great predictor for the ACT test as well. All right, next. So, obviously easy, flexible, affordable, it's pretty cheap. You can do two preaccts for the price of an ACT test. So, if you're looking at that practice, hey, you can get two of those in for the price of one ACT test and get those books back, have really rich conversations. The non-secure version allows you to administer this during the classroom if you want. So, during the subject level, it's very non, you know, non-invasive to your day. Again, we have a lot of great reporting. You have that online component. If you like to do the online test, that's available for you, too. Next, um, obviously we have the work seat. I'm going to go ahead and skip through that because it's we're
073at our time. So, obviously practice makes perfect. Practice with the pre-CT, you're obviously going to have a higher ACT score. Next, um, reporting consistency. If your kids are familiar already with the ACT, look at our score reports. They're very much in line. So, if you get familiar with the preac, that ACT score report go hand inand in tandem with one another. Next, um this is a free ACT89 that you would give to your eighth and 9th grade students versus your 10th grade. You can see on the eighth and 9th, we do have the benchmarks. We do have that composite score range um to predict for the ACT preac and then the pre the ACT also predictor. The national career is for our kids that want to go into a career ready for us. We have
074that predictor for them as well. Next, we do have our benchmarks. I love table two on this. I want to highlight this really, really, really fast. If you have advanced kiddos that are not going to take uh regular level classes their freshman year of college, then they need to bump that up if they're going to take a higher level course. So, these are really a more accurate scoring for their benchmarks that they're going to need for some of those high level freshman level college courses. Next, on the back of that, we also have, hey, this is how you test on the preac. We're going to tell you if you need some intervention close to target or on target if they went to take that ACT. Great piece of information. So you can always go and
075see what year did they take it? What part of the year did they take that AC pretext? So well, how do you use that? For instance, 19 and math. Well, a benchmark is 22. They fill in the on target. Keep doing what you're doing. When they take that ACT, they should be on target. Science, they're wanting to go into science field. They have a 17. They need a 23. that falls in the in need range. So you're going to need to supplement a little bit more for those students before they go take that ACT score. So that's how you read that. Next, so obviously using your pret scores for high school, you can class selection exploration for careers create that college readiness plan with that preac. what are some different ways that we can start
076intervening now versus um their junior or senior level class when they take those tests which we already know is a little bit too late. We do have research on how your preac and at ACT score can um help with AP exam prediction. So we do have a whole research paper on that and how that lends and a table for that and of course ACT prediction next. And I think yeah and so obviously simple setup time saving records flexibility that you get with the preac administration next. And I'm just really going to just stop right there because pretition we do have recognition. So much like what Keith was talking with the national math. Love that. That sounds so great. We have an opt out program, meaning you're already in it if you take preac that your
077kids can be a part of the rising stars program and actually earn medals when they are taking the PRAT because they're nationally competing across the nation. So, we will automatically send your kiddos um award medals if they get to a certain level and are scoring in like the top 5% in the nation with their free ACT. And so we have a lot of other guides there, but I know we're at time, so I'm going to go ahead and stop right there. But thank you all so much. And please reach out because I know we just had to cut that off. So thank y'all. All right. Thank you ladies and thank you for the great information. And we're about ready to wrap this up. Um, you know, I always like to if you got questions or
078something you want for maybe not today but upcoming, uh, please drop it in the chat. Um, make sure that we'll have an answer for you uh, for our next meeting. uh do want to share uh you everyone remember you can get the recordings uh off of our gifted and talented uh education resources page or go to tea uh go to YouTube and go to tea's playlist and look for gifted and talented all of our videos are there and uh my contact information and then our next meeting is February 10th at 2 pm am. Um, please uh just let us know how we're doing. Uh, so if you that's our uh evaluation, our internal evaluation. But I want to say once again, thank you to Keith, Lana, and Kate, and Jennifer. Great information, everyone. Uh, uh,
079as you see, we've done our whole spectrum here. We talked about our our our elementary babies all the way to our high school babies. Uh, so we're, you know, here to help you, support you, what you need. Um, if you need anything, uh, we have their contact information. If you did not grab it, uh, reach out to me. I'll get provided. Uh, I know that Keith and Lana has already dropped their deck links into the chat. Uh, we'll make sure that you get ACT. And, um, I want to say thank you. Have a great rest of your day. If you got questions, feel free to ask. Uh, you know, we're not rushing you to get out. I know some of you do have other meetings to get to. Uh but thank you, thank you, thank
080you. Appreciate you. Have a great day. Bye everyone. >> Thank y'all. Bye.