NTPA 2026 Recap: What the SAT & ACT Told a Room Full of Tutors in Chicago
At the National Test Prep Association's annual conference, the College Board and ACT each took the stage to walk through updates. The slides were about features and release dates. But the most useful information was in the room's reaction to them, and in the questions the presenters couldn't quite answer yet. For anyone who advises families through testing, here are the key takeaways.
Both Orgs are Iterating in Public & Listening Harder Than They Used to
The throughline across both sessions was unmistakable: the test makers are moving fast, and they're moving in response to practitioners. Alaina Santos of the College Board repeatedly framed updates as direct answers to feedback from this exact group. The folder-selection and PDF-export upgrade to the SAT educator question bank? A top request they "heard loudly." The roughly 300 new question-bank items coming in late summer, deliberately skewed hard, with about 57% of the new Reading and Writing items landing in the top difficulty band? Also a response to feedback that the existing pool wasn't challenging enough for high scorers.
ACT told the same story in a different key. Its product team is rushing three new practice forms out by year's end, in digital and PDF, with scoring keys bundled at release rather than dripped out over months, because the association asked for exactly that.
The takeaway for advisors: the feedback loop between practitioners and test makers is shorter than it has been in years. If you have a structured complaint about these products, this is a moment when it might actually move the roadmap.
Score Reports Still Don't Tell Students What to do Next
Here is the gap worth paying attention to, because it's the one neither organization has closed.
Both exams now generate detailed, personalized score data. The SAT's "My Practice" can build tailored quizzes from a student's actual test-day results. ACT's "My Answer Key" shows what a student got right and wrong, broken down by skill area. Impressive on paper. But in practice, both still leave students staring at a screen, unsure what the data means for their next study session.
ACT's team was refreshingly honest about this. "My Answer Key" marks items right or wrong with carets, no question numbers, no clear next step. A tutor in the room described the digital score report bluntly: a student sees "35 out of 45 on math," then has to manually number questions and cross-reference an answer key to figure out which items even counted, because field-test questions aren't flagged. Some of her students have gone back to hand-bubbling paper tests because the digital post-test process eats too much of the session. ACT's response was candid: they want the experience to feel "delightful and seamless," and they know it isn't there yet.
The SAT has a parallel limitation that surfaced sharply in Q&A. Its score report fills just seven subdomain bars. A student scoring 720 and 730 lights up all seven, which tells you almost nothing about what they actually missed. When an attendee asked whether the new tailored quizzes draw on finer-grained data than those seven bars, Santos couldn't confirm and took it as a follow-up.
This is the part advisors should sit with. The tools are getting better at measuring. They remain weak at translating a result into a plan. That translation, turning a score report into a sequence of next moves a teenager will actually follow, is exactly the work a knowledgeable human does. The data confirms the value of the guide rather than replacing it.
ACT's Own Numbers Make the Case for Human Support
ACT shared engagement data from its affiliate tutor program that, read closely, says something the slide didn't intend to. Its general test-prep pages drew 3.7 million visits over the past year, but the average visitor left in under 30 seconds. Its "find a tutor" page drew far fewer visits, about 38,000, but held visitors for 57 seconds, nearly double the engagement.
Andy Thompson read this as evidence the tutor program is working. The sharper read: students linger when there's a human on the other end of the resource. A directory of tutors held attention that a wall of free practice material couldn't. For school and district leaders weighing where to point limited support dollars, that contrast is worth keeping.
The affiliate program itself turned one year old, with 73 association member organizations signed up, supporting an estimated 600-plus tutors and 9,000-plus students. ACT also reduced pricing for solo practitioners and small companies this year.
The Equity Framing is Becoming Explicit
One shift in tone stood out. ACT's video explanation library has been relaunched as the "ACT Tutor series," featuring association member tutors walking through problems one at a time, posting weekly on YouTube with plans for TikTok and Instagram. The team framed it directly around access: not every student can afford a tutor, so they want to test whether free video instruction helps close that gap.
It's a reminder that an the test-optional era, the conversation around testing is no longer only about scores. It's increasingly about who can reach quality support and who can't, and the test makers are positioning themselves inside that conversation.
The Quieter Signals Worth Tracking
A few developments didn't make headlines but will matter to the families you advise:
A possible test-optional reversal is shaping decisions behind the scenes. Santos was direct that the College Board is watching the same news everyone else is, including Columbia's recent announcement and the University of California system convening working groups to re-examine testing policy. Her stated response: expand the test-center network aggressively, especially in rural areas and regions with fewer than three centers, so capacity is ready if demand snaps back. Read that as an institution preparing for requirements to return.
SAT logistics have some sharp edges this fall. September's Sunday testing is off the usual schedule. The Sunday date is the 20th, not the 13th, which is Rosh Hashanah, selected in partnership with the Jewish Education Project. August makeup testing has been folded into September's to avoid Labor Day. And spring SAT registration won't open until late September or early October, a backend scheduling change, not a shift in test dates.
Accommodations are getting easier to access. Embedded text-to-speech on the SAT is moving from school-based to center-based delivery, so students who need it can test on a weekend alongside everyone else instead of arranging a weekday proctor at their school. A genuine improvement for the students who rely on it.
The ACT scaling question remains open. An attendee pressed on why paper and digital ACT forms scale differently, citing 2020 research. The same correct answers can yield different scores depending on modality. ACT committed to ongoing validity research but deferred to its psychometricians on the specifics. If you advise students choosing between paper and digital, this is a live question without a settled public answer.
What We're Telling Families & Partners We Work With
Strip away the feature announcements and the picture is clear. The exams are generating richer data than ever, the organizations behind them are genuinely responsive right now, and the gap between a score report and a study plan is as wide as it's ever been.
That gap is where good advising lives. The most valuable thing you can offer a family this year isn't access to the tools, which are increasingly free and abundant. It's the judgment to read what the tools produce and turn it into a plan a student will actually follow.
If you partner with families navigating this landscape, we're always glad to compare notes. That's the kind of conversation the conference was built for, and it's the one we keep having long after everyone leaves Chicago.
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