By Tyler Clark, Ed.D.
Assistant Director of Operations at The Center for Gifted Studies
thomas.clark@wku.edu
Recently, the Kentucky Department of Education (2025) announced that it awarded the statewide college admissions exam contract to the College Board, switching from the ACT to the SAT. With this change comes the question, will TIP-KY also change to using the SAT? The answer, for now, is no. There are several reasons for this decision.
- Different Reasons for Assessing
There are different reasons for administering the statewide college admissions exam and the TIP-KY assessment. The statewide college admissions examination is just what the name suggests, an exam for admission to college. When taking an exam through TIP-KY, the goal is to take an assessment intended for older students to understand what a 7th or 8th grade student is ready to learn. TIP-KY is not intended for college admission nor for preparing for college admissions examinations. Rather, TIP-KY is intended to provide current information to educators and families to help them match learning opportunities to student readiness. - Subsection Information
We see the science section of the ACT as a major benefit. SAT does not have a science section. While ACT has gone to science optional for their testing (ACT, 2025), TIP-KY requests that students still take the science section. Many districts have very limited science assessment data, particularly above level. Maintaining access to these data helps schools understand student potential in science when they may not have access to other information to use. - School Day Testing
Since TIP-KY started in 2021, ACT school day testing was never an option for the younger students that TIP-KY serves. It was restricted (contractually) to students in high school. The contract with SAT will still be for juniors in high school. While this is an excellent opportunity to provide college admission examinations universally to students in high school, it is very different from TIP-KY. We work with younger students who would not have access during the school day. Our students participate on Saturday national testing dates. - Who We Serve
The recent switch to the SAT is a change in Kentucky. We serve students from multiple states, not just Kentucky. Those states may still have contracts with ACT. We also previously served students in states that had contracts with SAT. These contracts are not the driving force behind the assessment tool we use for our program
For these reasons, we plan to continue using the ACT for students in grades 7-8 participating in TIP-KY. For us, talent search is about getting additional data to share with families and schools to inform service options designed to meet the needs of students. We explain our motivation and perspective of talent search more in a preprint that has been accepted for publication in Gifted Child Today (Lupkowski-Shoplik et. al, 2025).
References
ACT. (2025). ACT changes & enhancements. ACT. https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/test-changes/enhancements.html
Kentucky Department of Education. (2025, September 14). KDE awards contract for statewide college admissions exam to College Board for the SAT. Kentucky Teacher. https://www.kentuckyteacher.org/news/2025/09/kde-awards-contract-for-statewide-college-admissions-exam-to-college-board-for-the-sat/
Lupkowski-Shoplik, A., Hinshaw, M., Clark, T., & Roberts, J. L. (2025). Above-level testing in K–12 schools: Lessons learned from talent search [Manuscript accepted for publication]. University of Iowa Institutional Repository. https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/acceptedManuscript/Above-Level-Testing-in-K-12-Schools-Lessons/9984791678202771