Education Week - August 27, 2014 - 8

ACT Scores Virtually Unchanged; Participation Up
By Caralee J. Adams
Student performance on the ACT
remains virtually unchanged this
year compared with last, new data
show, although more students than
ever are taking the college-entrance
exam-a record 57 percent of the
2014 high school graduating class,
up from 54 percent in 2013.
The average composite ACT score for
the class of 2014 was 21 (on a scale
of 1 to 36), a slight bump from 20.9
for 2013 graduates, according to the
Iowa City, Iowa-based ACT Inc.'s annual
"Condition of College and Career
Readiness" report, issued last week.
For 2012 graduates, the average
score was 21.1. Scores have hovered
right around 21 over the past decade;
in 2004 the figure was 20.9.
In addition, little movement was
seen this year on ACT's college-readiness
benchmarks, which seek to predict
students' probability of success in
credit-bearing college courses. About
26 percent of ACT-tested graduates
in 2014 met the benchmarks in all
subject areas (English, mathematics,
reading, and science), while 31 percent
met none-the same as last year.
Large gaps in readiness levels
among racial and ethnic groups also
persist, the data show.
"High school performance has been
flat for more than a decade," said
Robert Rothman, a senior fellow at
the Alliance for Excellent Education,
a Washington-based research
and advocacy group. "We've seen it
on NAEP, we've seen it on [the global]
PISA [exam], and now we see it again
on the ACT."
He added: "The good news is that
graduation rates have gone up. Students
are staying in school, but they
are not achieving any more. Young
people are not going to succeed in college
or the workplace at the current
levels of performance."
This is the 10th consecutive year
that ACT participation has expanded,
with nearly 1.85 million students taking
the exam. That represents a 17.7
percent increase since 2010, even as
the estimated number of high school
graduates has decreased slightly over
that time period.
This is also the third consecutive
year that test participation on the
ACT has surpassed that of the SAT. The
New York City-based College Board
recently announced a redesign of the
SAT to be completed in 2016. The College
Board reported 1.66 million testtakers
for the SAT in 2013, a slight
decline from 2012. The SAT report for
this year's graduating class will be
out in early fall.
Aside from the composite-score
. . . a masterful synthesis
. . . a powerful plea for educators
. . . his call to battle is almost irresistible."
-W. James Popham, professor emeritus, UCLA
changes, ACT reported mixed results
with performance on its college-readiness
benchmarks.
Achievement Gaps
For the class of 2014, readiness in
science rose 1 percent and dropped
1 percent in math, while readiness
scores for English and reading were
the same as last year. (The English
section of the ACT focuses on skills
such as punctuation, grammar, and
rhetoric; the reading portion measures
comprehension.)
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While 49 percent of whites and 57
percent of Asian-Americans met three
of the four ACT benchmarks (the same
as in 2013), just 11 percent of AfricanAmerican
students did so, up from 10
percent last year. Among Hispanic
students, 23 percent achieved readiness
scores in at least three subjects
in 2014, down from 24 percent the
previous year.
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A growing number of states have
contracts with ACT to administer the
test to all high school juniors, a trend
that has helped it become the most
widely used college-entrance exam in
recent years.
In 11 states, the ACT was offered
during the school day to all juniors
in public high schools in the class
of 2014. Three other states began
testing statewide in spring 2013.
Five more states will test all juniors
in the coming school year. In some
states, the ACT has replaced high
school exit exams as a threshold for
graduation.
Also, in some states with multiple
years of ACT testing of nearly all eligible
students, achievement is rising
slightly. Three states in which all
juniors took the test experienced an
increase of 0.2 points in their average
ACT scores (Colorado, Michigan, and
North Carolina) and another three
(Kentucky, Tennessee, and Wyoming)
saw average scores improve by 0.3
points, according to ACT. Scores rose
0.1 points between the graduating
classes of 2013 and 2014 in Illinois
and North Dakota, where all students
also are offered the exam.
Deb Lindsey, the assessment director
for the Wyoming education
department, said the state's improvement
is not trivial.
"
Young people are not
going to succeed in
college or the
workplace at the
current levels of
performance."
ROBERT ROTHMAN
Alliance for Excellent Education
"It represents an additional emphasis
that schools place on assessment
and a shift in responsibility to the
school, not just the student," she said.
Postsecondary Outcomes
Jim Hull, the senior policy analyst
at the National School Boards
Association, in Alexandria, Va., said
a 0.2 change is "fairly significant" in
one year, and a 0.3 improvement is
"pretty impressive."
Still, what that means for postsecondary
outcomes is not as clear. Mr.
Hull's research shows that a 0.3 point
increase in ACT scores improves the
chances of the average high school
graduate getting admitted into a competitive
college by about 1 percentage
point.
Katy Murphy, a high school counselor
in San Jose, Calif., and the president
of the National Association for
College Admission Counseling, said
she has mixed feelings about the implications
of ACT's statewide contracts
that provide testing for all students
during the school day.
For students who wouldn't otherwise
have access to the exam, statewide
testing can be good, she said.
But Ms. Murphy is concerned there is
not enough being done to explain to
students what the scores mean. She
also worries about the time testing
takes away from instruction.
Meanwhile, the new ACT report reveals
something of a disconnect between
students' college aspirations
and reality. For the class of 2013,
87 percent of test-takers said they
intended to go to college, yet only
69 percent enrolled in the fall after
graduation. Of test-takers in the
class of 2014, 86 percent said they
aspire to college, but Jon Erickson,
ACT's president of education and career
services, anticipates about the
same drop-off in eventual college
enrollment.
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Education Week - August 27, 2014

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