Steve Tapp of ACT on Bridging Academic Assessment and Workforce Readiness

Steve Tapp is the CEO of ACT, a leading nonprofit assessment organization best known for the ACT college admissions test. With over 30 years of experience in assessments across education, professional certification, and workforce testing, he previously led PSI Services and Lifelong Learner Holdings, helping scale global assessment platforms.

💡 5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode

1. How AI is transforming the assessment lifecycle—from test creation to scoring.
2. Why fairness, validity, and human oversight still matter in AI-powered testing.
3. How ACT is expanding beyond college admissions into career readiness.
4. The potential of adaptive and personalized assessments.
5. Why bridging academic testing and workforce skills is the future of assessment.

✨ Episode Highlights
[00:00:00] Steve Tapp on his 30-year career in assessments and joining ACT as CEO.
[00:03:00] AI as a “force multiplier” across the testing lifecycle.
[00:07:27] The opportunity for adaptive and personalized assessments.
[00:10:28] ACT’s broader mission beyond the college admissions test.
[00:15:46] The growing importance of measuring workforce-ready skills.
[00:18:30] How ACT’s WorkKeys connects education to real-world jobs.
[00:22:45] Tapp’s vision for the future of ACT in the AI era.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve Tapp: I've spent the last 30 years in assessment and really seeing how, you know, assessments, change lives. I've worked in, in assessments from the education space with up through the professional space into the talent. I'm really seen how the importance of tests and assessments as part of an overall.

Evaluation of students and individuals for whatever the, you know, outcome they're trying to approve or the next step that they're trying to make in their career. And, you know, it's been a pleasure in the last, uh, few months to kind of join ACT as the CEO and really help dig into that sort of evolving strategy.

AI is completely reshaping. The entire test in life cycle.

[00:00:47] Alex Sarlin: Welcome to EdTech Insiders, the top podcast covering the education technology industry from funding rounds to impact to AI developments across early childhood K 12 higher ed and work. You'll find it all here at EdTech Insiders. 

[00:01:03] Ben Kornell: Remember to subscribe to the pod. Check out our newsletter and also our event calendar.

And to go deeper, check out EdTech Insiders Plus where you can get premium content access to our WhatsApp channel, early access to events and back channel insights from Alex and 

Ben. Hope you enjoyed today's pod.

Hello, EdTech Insider listeners. We have a very special guest today, Steve Tapp, CEO of ACT. I can't really start anywhere with Steve. He's had such an illustrious career, but just for the highlights, he joined the ACT Board in June, 2024. Previously, he was CEO of Lifelong Learner Holdings, overseeing PSI Services and pgy.

Under his leadership PSI grew from a small test publisher to a global leader in assessments. Steve has held senior roles at Mifflin Harcourt, and he holds a degree in economics from the University of South Hampton. Welcome to the Pod Steve. 

[00:02:06] Steve Tapp: Thank you. Thank you so much for that intro. That was great.

Thank you very much. 

[00:02:10] Ben Kornell: This is my, this assessments are my favorite topic, and anybody who listens to the podcast, 

[00:02:14] Steve Tapp: me too, 

[00:02:15] Ben Kornell: knows that I love kicking out on assessments. And this is not your first merry-go-round on the assessment side. You've really, really gone deep. And so we're gonna talk today about AI in the future of assessment.

We're gonna talk a little bit about assessment and turning that data into action. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about skills workforce and the evolving role of assessment as we think about from K 12 to career. So let's dive in with the media's topic. I think everyone's kind of trying to figure out where does AI fit in this education ecosystem?

And of course, me being an assessment geek, unlike assessment, this is gonna be awesome. How do you see it reshaping the way assessments are designed while ensuring fairness and validity remain intact? 

[00:03:00] Steve Tapp: Yeah, great question. As you mentioned, I've spent the last 30 years in assessment and really seeing how, you know, assessments, change, likes I've worked in, in assessments from the education space with up through the professional space into the talent.

I'm really seen how the importance of tests and assessments as part of an overall. Evaluation of students and individuals for whatever the, you know, outcome they're trying to approve or the next step that they're trying to make in their career. And, you know, it's been a pleasure in the last, uh, few months to kind of join a t as the CEO and really help dig into that sort of evolving strategy.

AI is completely reshaping. The entire testing lifecycle, including assessment design, you know, the way that tests are scored, the way that tests are built, you know how we can evaluate the data for outcomes and sort of evaluating student performance, and it is. Becoming all encompassing, I think, in the sort of strategy for test publishers like ourselves and educators and employers and sort of regulators who are thinking about how to use assessments in that sort of evaluation process.

I would say AI is sort of a force multiplier. It's not necessarily. Sort of replacement for sort of more traditional testing methodologies. It sort of creates value when it adds sufficiency and scale, but obviously also needs to be used responsibly. And I think the importance for test publishers like ourselves is really maintaining human oversight to ensure that the use of AI.

It's ethical and that the human oversight still exists to ensure the tests are fair, valid, reliable, those sort of traditional pillars that assessment methodology is built on. But it certainly, the world has evolved. 

[00:05:01] Ben Kornell: Yeah. Which phases of the assessment cycle do you see it being most valid? Is it in the production of assessment questions?

Is it in the efficiency of scoring? Is it in the data and insights afterwards? Are there other use cases that you're excited about? 

[00:05:19] Steve Tapp: I think it's all of the above then, right? You just mentioned the three areas. I certainly think, I would say that early gains have been in the production and the efficiency around production of test content, the ability to generate and evaluate items and then sort of use that to

scoring. Performance assessments or writing and sort of language assessments. You'll see in the use of AI there really expedite the ability to test not only use more complicated performance-based items, but also score those in a more timely and efficient manner based on models built by human that, you know, beated at much efficient speed evaluation.

You know, really being able to give tools to the individuals that are using the scores to make decisions, whether that's teachers, you know, in a formative basis, whether that's, you know, college admissions in sort of more outcome, summative basis, it, they're just able to access the data more efficiently, more quickly, get more insights.

So I think it's all the above. I think it's moving sort of left to right that. Efficiency of creating to how do we actually build new and new tools, new capabilities, how do take that insights sort the next.

[00:06:56] Ben Kornell: Yeah, one of the holy grails in assessment is adaptive assessment. And you know, this is actually something that's been around before ai, but it was quite limited and this idea of it being fair and uh, comprehensive assessment was also really challenging. With ai, where do you see the opportunity with AI or without ai?

Where do you see the opportunities for more adaptive assessment given how high stakes often these standardized tests can become? How do you imagine that evolving? 

[00:07:27] Steve Tapp: Well, I think the ability of AI to create more content, which obviously creates the ability, have larger banks, but I think also the ability to create personalized learning journeys.

You know, you're seeing the, the sort of real use of adaptive learning, you know, and kind of create individuals.

To kind of feel on their own personal journey. And I think then how you build that into assessments. Industry approach in terms of how you then think about the item types that you can create. Think about how you can develop forms that measure individual sort of, you know, a set towards individual methods.

Whether the form is a psychometric called adaptive form, it's a linear form, but you know, the way you can personalize the questions is pretty powerful. I read an example once of like, you know, wouldn't it be pretty cool if you could. I'm a huge sports fan, right? So if you could build my test to measure skills, either reading comprehension, writing, math, whatever the background is that would sort of had a sports flavor to them and deliver that to me, that would make it more personalized for me.

I'd sort of be able to interpret that maybe somebody else is a gardener or an outdoor advocate and you know, you could sort of, so. You could look at it in the way of personalizing the item types so somebody could interpret that. 

[00:09:00] Ben Kornell: So it's both like engagement in the content as well as the actual content itself in the schema that maps your tree, right.

Um, in your adaptive tree. 

[00:09:11] Steve Tapp: Yeah. Yeah. I think, 

[00:09:12] Ben Kornell: um, you know, a classic example was like, you know, I don't know, it must have been like 20 years ago, students were taking a test, not the ACT, A different one. And they were talking about a sailboat was going along this angle and tacking this path. A bunch of kids got the problem wrong 'cause they didn't know what attacking was.

[00:09:31] Steve Tapp: Right? 

[00:09:32] Ben Kornell: Right. And so, you know, you're actually not assessing their core knowledge of whatever the standard or concept is. You're actually injecting a bunch of context that can be really, really challenging. I think, uh, for our listeners who know ACT just as the big test that you take ahead of going to undergraduate, I think there's also quite a few implications across.

All of your other product lines in your spectrum, when you describe the vast number of things ACT does, how do you describe it? How do you bucket it? Because I think people might only think about the summative component here for undergrads, but you've got, I think, work keys, which is workforce one. You've got tools for middle school students that are early stage schools for.

High schools and school districts. So how do you talk about that full portfolio of assessments and supports that you offer? 

[00:10:28] Steve Tapp: Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, ACT, our goal is to make sure that as a trusted. Of measurements that we are really empowering learners, educators, employers, to make sort of confident decisions across their, you know, high school, college, career, and lifetime decisions.

So. It's kind interesting. I've joined the organization and I talk to people outside of the business and I mentioned to them that I've become CE of ACT. The first reaction is exactly what just described, oh, the college admission test that I had to take in high school, but it truly is our goal to really be across the full sort of lifecycle of readiness.

So providing. Sort of our pre CT tools in earlier grades to sort of allow individuals to decide the journey they wanna be on are work keys, products, and sort of curriculum that allows those individuals to sort of identify early on the skills and readiness that they have for potentially different types of career path.

The, and then working with Communities

High. So it's a organization and our goal is. Expand those offerings and sort of really ensure that wherever the individual is in their lifecycle, that they can see ACT as a trusted provider of guidance for whatever that next step, you know, needs to be in their educational career pathway. So much more than just college admissions testing.

[00:12:13] Ben Kornell: Yeah, and related to that, there's a big focus on turning that data into actionable insight, either in a workforce product, it might be an action insight for the kind of cut in customer, whoever takes the assessment, but also with institutions and organizations that you're working with. What's been the biggest challenge because it does seem to me that there's been real leaps forward, informative and summative assessment DI dynamic and adaptive testing, insight analysis and generation.

But so many times the assessment is only as good as the what you do with that information, and that can be super hard. 

[00:12:54] Steve Tapp: Yeah, and I think early insights into like a student's strengths really can change the entire conversation that they have about life, you know, in and out of high school. So, you know, a lot of our focus is on really providing counselors with the right tools that provide sort of actionable items for students so they can build those pathways.

I think data. And you know, we spend a lot of time looking at kind of how can we improve the data that we're providing? And obviously AI is a sort of big, how do you sort of pass and use that data in a much more effective manner, but making sure that we're informing and following benchmarks that inform college career readiness standards.

I. Assessment. A test is just one part of a decision making process or a communication process for an individual, and I think as it relates to like how do you make sure that you are getting insightful feedback and insightful next steps from an assessment. There's also that human. Approach. So, you know, there's an area where the assessments and that sort of human interaction really need to work together to make sure that the system is really delivering thoughtful, you know, action orientated conversations that the sort of the teacher, the student, the parent.

Useful, insightful data plus human connections and providing the tools to the humans that are making those connections is sort of an area where we're focused. 

[00:14:39] Ben Kornell: Mm-hmm. So let's talk a little bit about skills and the evolving role of assessment, both for college and also for career. Ryan Craig just recently had a article about how kind of the skills revolution hasn't been as successful as hoped in hiring.

In part because it's very hard to assess skills absent a career trajectory, and so early in career employees are getting penalized because, you know, whatever AI or screener is looking at their resume, it's very hard to impute or infer skills. And also when people are trying to pivot or career change or apply skills from one segment to another, it's very hard for folks to piece those things together.

So there needs to be an in assessment infrastructure that allows skill-based assessments. How are assessments, like you mentioned, work keys, how are they helping bridge the gap between educational credentials and real world job requirements? 

[00:15:46] Steve Tapp: You just said that the conversation readiness been there.

The assessment systems at the particular point of being delivered are not necessarily connected, you know, so, you know, I'm now in the educational space and was previously, so you're trying to measure, you know, sort of more academic curriculum based outputs, you know? Then my professional testing world, we were seeing how people for selection tests were tending to use competencies and personalities.

For hiring and then trained for skills that turned into licensure and certification exams or skills-based exams that were sort of taken once on the job. So I think the sort of key question is, in today's world, how do you measure for sort of employability skills, you know, whether they are softer skills, critical thinking, you know, time management, or whether they have like hard skills around sort of use of tools, ai, digital skills, you know, particular traits.

So. As it to the sort of work keys assessment. You know, what we're trying to provide with that is a sort of complete picture of student readiness that reflects both that academic preparation for college, but also the foundational workplace competencies. Most in demand role, jobs and skills related to those, those sort of business application, if you like, of some of those skills that they've learned in school.

So work is a, is a work centered assessment. You are gonna have questions that are framed in experiences that people would value as part of a sort of workforce encounter more than an academic encounter. It measures specific foundational skills. It's aligned to skill levels for specific jobs. You know, it is benchmarked against sort of career readiness standards, has the national career readiness certificate that kind of, you know, uh, at measures various levels of sort of employability and is, you know, linked to both academic success and sort of foundational work skills for students.

But it needs to continue to evolve. Both the work east and the industry as a whole evolve in, how do you blend that sort of combination of work ready skills with academic skills as we sort of educate and measure the sort of students, the new students ready for the, you know, the new ways of work in and how, you know, things like AI and other technologies are, are driving different types of workforce.

[00:18:24] Ben Kornell: It's an exciting space, but it seems like this academic over here and this workforce over here. 

[00:18:30] Steve Tapp: Yep. 

[00:18:30] Ben Kornell: There needs to be more of a blending of those one. I will just say on the workforce side, I think there's a lot more concern about the employability of our young people coming out of high school and college and finding and aligning their skill sets to what the jobs of the future are, but also on the academic side in workforce.

When you hire somebody for a job, their job today that you're hiring for versus four or five years from now is fundamentally different. And so can you measure their motor to like learn new things and constantly re I'm sure that continuous learning is one of your, you know, one of those workforce skills.

[00:19:09] Steve Tapp: Yeah. So 

[00:19:09] Ben Kornell: in a weird way, there is this blend across the two. That I would say institutions are struggling to reconcile. 

[00:19:17] Steve Tapp: Yeah, no, completely agree. And like I said, you know, for many years with the organizations I was leading in the talent management space, you know, being able to, you know, again, looking at.

Modern competencies around things like, you know, adaptability, learning, potential flexibility. They were sort of personality measures and traits that you could sort of measure. So that sort of, how do we blend those down in, historically those are not being used in a sort of more junior level or in the academic field.

So, you know, we're taking a very hard look at, at sort of how do we reimagine work keys. More foundational sort of skills that we have that are sort of in a workplace environment around, you know, sort of the academic curriculum that you've, but actually bring in more workforce ready skills, the 21st century.

And what does that look like and how do you then provide. Learning path, path students, which gets back to the ability with AI to create then adaptive learning path based on S are partnering with the right organizations to actually provide those hard skills, soft skills would be successful. In the next step.

And that, again, definitely part of the workforce sort of work-ready career readiness assessments, but why not apply those to academic assessments too and into like, you know, how you be successful at college, not just around your academic basic skills, but your, you know, ability to, you know, resiliency and adaptability and growth potential within the sort of more higher education space too.

So, yeah, it's exciting. To be in the assessment field and that sort of traditional importance of, you know, again, back to fairness, validity, reliability. Right? They have to measure what we wanted to measure. They've gotta be fair no matter who your, uh, you know, whoever's taking that test, it has to be fair for them and it has to continue to be reliable and, you know, consistent in the way it approaches that.

So. Core pillars as you adapt to the use of AI and sort of new skill measurement is gonna be a, a really, uh, big role for the psychometricians and the psychologists who are working organizations like ACT and test publishers around the world. 

[00:21:37] Ben Kornell: Yeah. It's so interesting. ACT has been around for 65 plus years.

And there's some of these things that you're talking about, our age, old things from the very early days, and then it's intersecting with our modern world, which, you know, this idea that it's continuous assessment and it's skills based and it's ongoing in some interesting ways. It's actually. A throwback to the OR origins of ACT.

Right. And it's founded on the business side. It's also interesting, you know, you are A CEO successor and the ACT has typically been in Iowa. You're located in Utah. We were talking before the pod. It's amazing the like innovation and education and technology focus in Utah and you mentioned it's becoming kind of a hub and ACT is now a global organization.

As you're thinking about, you know, taking the reins as CEO and charting the next generation of ACT students and prep scores, what does the future look like for the ACT? What is the long-term vision? 

[00:22:45] Steve Tapp: Well, I think that's a really big question, Ben, so I appreciate you asking. I would say that, you know, ACT is, organizations been going through a tremendous transformation in the last few years.

The power of. Working remote employee basis has really allowed organizations to sort of expand its sort of field of influence and its ability to kind of really hire and promote organ teams across multiple geographies. You know, so the ability for an organization to leverage a location that may not traditionally have been, you know, somewhere close to the now.

Challenge for any CEO, whether you are in an educational technology company like ACT or a software organization or professional services organization is, you know, you're now managing remote employees, so you have to sort of work out how to continue to embrace those traditional spends that were. And mission organization and very mission driven business.

And how do you then bring in the sort of influences you get by having teams? So we have virtual working, we still have our. Group in the Iowa City space, the sort of connections to the Iowa community is really important to us. But you know, our ability to kind of leverage experts around the world in ai, in psychometrics and psychology, in, you know, developing software and sort of, you know, experiences for our candidates is gonna be critical.

And I think that it's consistent with a lot of organizations who continue to embrace that. And I think that provides us.

Conservative assessment organization that was, you know, very, very driven around that sort of academic base in Iowa, which, which was amazing to actually like start to think outside the box and like not, you know, the box. You know, I would say traditionally a lot of assessment test publishers, you know, we were in the box because the test had to.

And I think now the opportunity for us to think outside the box and how do we take that expertise and really expand not only access to assessments, types of assessments, how do we measure the outcomes, how do we provide much more insightful data and really ability of assessments to really, like I said before, change lives.

[00:25:27] Ben Kornell: Yeah, I mean the constraints have fundamentally changed in the ecosystem. Yes. So there is really an opportunity to not just think out of the box, but I think lead with many of the principles that have been core to the founding of ACT. Yep. So it is really, it's an exciting time and you know, the EdTech Insider community will be following every bit of it.

Steve, if people wanna find out more about ACT and specifically some of your things that go beyond. Just your college entrance exam, what's the best way for them to find out more? 

[00:26:02] Steve Tapp: Website. You know, as we continue evolve, exciting updates and innovations going through that, you know, obviously we'll reach out to our team.

We have an amazing team. Lot of work going on, working closely with. District, state, district, you know, federal organizations around how the future of assessment looks and work ready communities. So, you know, please feel free to reach out to me, to our team and we'll connect folks. But, you know, it's been a, I'm excited about my role.

I'm excited about the future of ACT as you just described, the ability to take that foundation and really transform the assessment world. It's exciting and pleasure, Ben, to join you today and have an opportunity to talk to you about something I have a real passion for assessments. 

[00:26:47] Ben Kornell: Well, thanks so much, Steve Tapp, CEO of ACT for joining EdTech Insiders today.

We look forward to having you on in the future, talk about all these developments. Thanks so much. 

[00:26:57] Steve Tapp: Thanks, Ben. 

[00:26:58] Alex Sarlin: Thanks for listening to this episode of EdTech Insiders. If you like the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more, EdTech Insider, subscribe to the Free EdTech Insiders Newsletter on Substack.