18 August 2010

National ACT scores released

New data show that fewer than 25% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level courses, despite modest gains in college-readiness among U.S high-school students in the last few years...

In the recent results, only 24% of the graduating class of 2010 scored high enough on the ACT in math, reading, English and science to ensure they would pass entry-level college courses. This is a slight uptick from last year, when 23% were ready for college, and from 2008, when 22% were ready.  Still, 28% of students didn't score high enough on even one subject-matter exam to ensure college readiness...

ACT officials say a more diverse test-taking population partly explains the less-than-stellar results. African-American and Hispanic students made up 24% of the test-taking pool this year, compared with about 19% four years ago. African-American and Hispanic students generally post lower scores than their white and Asian counterparts.

But ACT officials and national experts say a weakened high-school curriculum is also at fault. The testing data show that even when students take a core curriculum—defined as four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies—they aren't likely to be college-ready.

About 70% of students who sat for the ACT took a core curriculum in high school, but only 29% met college-readiness standards on all four subject exams...

Joseph Harris, director of the National High School Center at the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization, said high schools, traditionally, were good at preparing a select group of students for college. But as low-skill jobs disappeared in the global economy, more students migrated from shop and home economics to the core curriculum.
More at the Wall Street Journal.

5 comments:

  1. Wonderful! Plus, we now have the Texas School Board of Education taking a huge chunk of factual learning out of our children's education nationwide.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Minnesota's answer: the 4 -day week...

    ReplyDelete
  3. large number of states show "too few to compare". Texas, Calif,and New York are about 26% of the total population. If they were counted, which way would the numbers skew?

    Kerry S

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anon, in some states only students expecting to go to college take the exam, so their scores tend to be considerably higher than in states where broad participation is mandated.

    ReplyDelete
  5. nice how they leave two whole states out of the graphic. most of the kids in hawaii take the sat for college entrance.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...