For decades, ACT has been testing students’ postsecondary readiness via two separate assessments: one aimed at measuring college readiness and a second that focuses on career-related skills and abilities. A new working paper from the nonprofit that produces both assessments compares the college-based ACT with the WorkKeys test to find out if there is some overlap among their measures. In other words, how well do the scores on a career-readiness test align with those of a college-readiness test?
Analysts from ACT’s internal research department examined a sample of almost 359,000 students nationwide who took both the ACT and WorkKeys assessments between fall 2022 and summer 2025. Data focused on each student’s most recent attempt on each, which for 68 percent of those in the sample occurred in their junior year of high school. The analysts were interested in students who took the two tests within the same academic year, wanting to limit additional learning taking place in between.
The sample group was 54 percent female and 46 percent male. Forty-nine percent were White, 30 percent Black, and 11 percent Hispanic. Students hailed from 30 states, but the majority came from just six (North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Kansas). The analysts compared their sample test takers to a reference population—specifically, all 11th grade students assessed during the school day under ACT state contracts across 22 states in spring 2025. In comparison, the two-test sample students had a larger percentage of students who are female or Black and a lower percentage of those who are male or Hispanic. Otherwise, the two were demographically similar.
The researchers began by examining correlations between ACT scores and WorkKeys scale scores. The ACT data for this analysis comprised the four section test scores (English, math, reading, and science), the English-plus-reading score (representing ELA performance), and the composite score for all students in the sample. The WorkKeys data comprised the scale scores for applied math, graphic literacy, and workplace documents tests, as well as a summed total score. All WorkKeys scale scores were compared to all ACT section scores, regardless of academic subject (thus, applied math is compared to English, graphic literacy to science, and workplace documents to reading, etc., as well as the more direct applied math to math comparison).
They found the correlations with WorkKeys scores were generally high and consistent across ACT sections, ranging from 0.59 to 0.69 for applied math, 0.62 to 0.65 for graphic literacy, and 0.55 to 0.62 for workplace documents.[1] That’s not surprising, given that both tests largely assess reading and math skills. Correlations of this magnitude suggest that students who perform well on the ACT are also likely to perform well on the WorkKeys assessments, but the two assessments also provide some unique information on student readiness.
Next, they investigated how performance benchmark outcomes—ACT’s college readiness levels and the National Career Readiness Certificate (NCRC) performance levels of WorkKeys—compared among dual test-takers. Only one in three sample students met ACT’s college-ready threshold, with another 37 percent nearly college ready. By comparison, 65 percent of sample students earned at the Silver or higher NCRC level, which means that nearly two out of every three students had the foundational skills needed for most entry-level, career-ladder jobs. The bottom line: Thirty-one percent of sample students were prepared for both college and career, while 34 percent were career ready only. And although a miniscule 2 percent were college ready only, a worrying 33 percent tested ready for neither college nor career.
About 26 percent of students in the sample performed better on the ACT than on WorkKeys, and a similar percentage better on WorkKeys than the ACT. About 47 percent performed similarly (within 9 percentage points) on the two assessments. These relative scores were compared with students’ stated postsecondary plans (derived from answers provided on additional questions asked during ACT administration), with some interesting findings. For example, students with occupation plans in skilled trades performed relatively better on WorkKeys than the ACT, while students with occupation plans in the social sciences, arts, communications, and languages performed relatively better on the ACT. Students who did not plan to go to college or who expected to earn less than a bachelor’s degree performed relatively better on WorkKeys, while those who expected to earn at least a bachelor’s degree performed relatively better on the ACT.
It is unsurprising that the folks who produce the ACT and WorkKeys exams conclude from all this that “there are potential benefits to having separate assessments and separate performance standards for college and career readiness,” and such a finding would seem to support the idea of most students taking both tests as a matter of course. But the analysis here could also indicate that there are lots of jobs out there—which are not dead ends—that are attainable for a swath of students who test ready for them via WorkKeys and who are indeed interested in pursuing them. For them, career training should be the prescription in their upper high school years, rather than enforced college prep courses and an ACT arms race.
SOURCE: ACT Research, “Multiple Measures of College and Career Readiness: What Does the Evidence Suggest?” Draft Working Paper (October 2025).
[1] The report also lists correlations between ACT scores and other readiness indicators, based on outside research. These include a 0.40 correlation between ACT scores and first-year college GPA, a 0.55 correlation with high school GPA, and a 0.89–0.93 correlation with SAT total scores.
