Washington State Students Continue to Do Well on ACT

From OSPI:
For the 13th straight year, Washington students scored above the national average on the ACT exam, according to results released today.
Washington’s average composite score for the graduating class of 2016 was 23.1. The number includes both public and private school students.  (Editor's note: the national average is 18.6.)

A “composite score” consists of four content areas: English, reading, math and science. Scores are scaled from 1 (lowest) to 36 (highest). This year’s national average composite score is 20.8.

“As they do every year, our students performed well on the ACT,” said State Superintendent Randy Dorn.

Dorn was particularly pleased about college readiness benchmarks. ACT defines the benchmarks as “the minimum score needed on an ACT subject-area test to indicate a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding credit-bearing college courses.” In Washington, 43 percent of students taking the ACT met the benchmarks in all four content areas; nationwide, the figure was only 26 percent.

“Our students who want to go to college are proving that they are ready,” Dorn said. “Credit goes to them and to their teachers for getting the students ready.”

But Dorn said he was concerned about continued achievement gaps. He cited Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander students, whose average composite score was 17.7, nearly a full point below the national average (18.6).

“We still need to do a better job of intensifying and focusing our efforts to help all students so they can have success in college and in life,” he said. One out of every four 12th graders (16,652 students in 2016) took the ACT. Participation was down 2.1 percent from 2015 (16,994 students). Since 2012 (13,929 students), participation in the ACT has increased 19.5 percent

Comments

Anonymous said…
That statistic is close to meaningless. Only 25% of WA 12th graders took the ACT. The national average is 64%; in many states it's 100%. See pages 14-15 here: http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/CCCR_National_2016.pdf

Scores go up as participation goes down, for obvious reasons.

-SDD

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