High school students’ scores on the ACT college admissions test have dropped to their lowest in more than three decades, showing a lack of student preparedness for college-level coursework, according to the nonprofit organization that administers the test.
Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students in the class of 2023 whose scores were reported Wednesday were in their first year of high school when the virus reached the U.S.
“The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career,” said Janet Godwin, chief executive officer for the nonprofit ACT.
The average ACT composite score for U.S. students was 19.5 out of 36. Last year, the average score was 19.8.
It doesn’t matter what units the ruler is in, how large it is, or even if the marks are uniform. If we’re using the same ruler and the values are getting smaller, we’re regressing in whatever metric that ruler is measuring.
The ACT specifically does not indicate work ethic or grades, but simply a measure of how much in certain subjects you retained. And at a national scale it’s statistical rather than anecdotal. Claiming it’s meaningless is like saying global warming isn’t happening because it was cooler today than in was in 2022 on October 11th.
Standardized testing is nothing but a ruler. Lots of people use rulers incorrectly, but they are still valuable tools. And a year on year decline, presuming their scoring method is statistically uniform (as implied by the article) is significant and concerning.