“That group of new states showed up in this year’s grad class report so we would have expected it to have an impact” on scores, Weeks said.
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The percentage of Oklahoma graduating high school seniors in 2016 who demonstrated college and career readiness in all four core subjects on the ACT college entrance exam decreased slightly since previous year, according to ACT’s annual Condition of College and Career Readiness report, released early Wednesday.
“Our graduates continue to show progress”, State Superintendent of Education Tony Smith said in a written statement. That could make the difference on whether students have to take remedial coursework in college, or will be eligible for the state’s lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship, he said.
Nye said the ACT benchmark is one of several indicators that a student is on track for higher education. That’s a key component of Common Core standards that emphasize students need to think critically and analyze problems.
ACT spokesman Ed Colby said the dip in the average national score is primarily due to the addition of seven full-census states and an increase of more than 165,000 test takers compared with 2015.
The results for individual schools and districts are not part of Wednesday’s release of big-picture state and national results. Minnesota was the highest in the group at 21.1.
A score of 20.2, Nye said, is enough for the average Utah graduate to enroll at most institutions of higher education.
Tennessee students increased their average ACT scores by a tenth of a point this year to 19.9 out of 36, but only a fifth of those who took the test were deemed ready for college in all four subject areas.
Beginning in 2013, the test-taking group has included students with disabilities who need extra time, and 10 percent of IL students tested under those conditions in the class of 2016, the data show.
Nationally, 26 percent of ACT-tested 2016 graduating students met all four benchmarks, the report said.
-Massachusetts had the highest average composite score, at 24.8.
When the change took place, IL dropped from a composite of 20.9 in 2012 to 20.6 in 2013.
Those increases are considered significant, according to Steve Cordogan, chairman of a state testing committee and the former director of research and evaluation in Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214. Nationwide, 64 percent of juniors took the ACT.
The number of IL students tested has decreased from 160,066 in 2013 to 156,403 in 2016, which could influence scores, depending on circumstances. The composite is the average of the four scores. That is a drop of 2 percentage points from a year ago. Act 200, which was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Nikki Haley in 2014, requires all juniors to take the test as an accountability measure, regardless of whether they’ve taken college prep courses or plan to attend college. “So, that drop in the national average does not represent a decline in achievement”.
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Scores for both school districts and the state as a whole dropped precipitously from scores a year ago as the number of juniors who took the test jumped.
