States’ ACT Scores Beat Nation’s

Aug. 17–Missouri and Kansas high school graduates, already performing above the national average, inched their states’ ACT scores upward for the second straight year in 2005.

Don’t think high school reformers aren’t noticing.

Other benchmarks of student performance have produced spottier results at the high school level. Schools, for instance, have struggled to get more students into rigorous courses. Consistent growth on the states’ student performance tests also has been difficult.

Yet here come the ACT scores, with Kansas improving from 21.6 to 21.7, and Missouri rising from 21.5 to 21.6, both above the national average, which remained 20.9. A perfect score is 36.

Education reformers sense an attitude in students’ approach to college preparatory exams that many think could help fuel better high schools.

Missouri and Kansas are exploring the idea — already in place in Illinois and Colorado — of making the ACT or another national standardized test the primary statewide measurement of high school student performance.

“It’s about motivation,” said Liberty High School Principal Marty Jacobs. “We want students thinking about life after high school.”

Educators suspect that many students have other things on their mind when they sit down to the Kansas Assessment tests or the Missouri Assessment Program — or MAP — tests.

They’re right, said Grandview High School senior Peyton Bratton.

“A lot see the MAP as a blowoff test that doesn’t matter,” he said. “They see the ACT as important to college.”

Bratton said he took both tests seriously, and so did classmate Leigha Shaw. But she agreed she saw a noticeable difference in the two testing crowds.

More students studied for the ACT. More made sure they had a good night’s rest. More rose early and headed for the test site with a good breakfast in their stomachs.

“The ACT is a permanent score,” she said. “It’s what colleges look at.”

Educators are looking at greater use of the ACT, said Kansas Deputy Education Commissioner Alexa Posny, because schools, like their students, worry about what colleges see in graduates.

Public schools want their standards for graduates to match the expectations of colleges and universities, she said.

“And the ACT could be a common measure of that.”

She expects that a new Secondary/Post-Secondary Transition Council of the Kansas Department of Education and the Kansas Board of Regents will contemplate such a change in high school testing.

Earlier this summer, Missouri’s High School Task Force suggested the state should explore using the ACT or another national test as the primary measure of student performance.

One scenario would have the state keeping some of its current MAP test as a supplement.

Test debates and the steepening graduation requirements in both states fit into a common theme, said Missouri Education Commissioner Kent King.

“High schools need to create higher expectations for kids,” King said. “And they need to be relevant.”

Students need to be taking the more rigorous classes that give them career options, whether they’re going to a four-year university, community college or trade school or into the work force, he said.

For several years, school counselors have been urging students to take at least four years of English and at least three years each of math, science and social studies. The ACT has echoed the same pitch, showing in its scores that students who take the rigorous core classes perform significantly better on average on the test.

Yet the percentage of ACT test takers in Kansas who took the full core of college prep classes has remained unchanged at 66 percent for at least five years.

Missouri, with 57 percent taking the core classes, has slipped from 59 percent over the past five years.

The average score for Kansas test takers who took the core curriculum was 22.6, compared with 19.8 for those who took less than the core.

In Missouri, the comparable scores were 22.7 and 19.8.

The Missouri task force said high school reforms would nudge more students into higher-level classes and ultimately send out more graduates prepared for college and the work world. Jacobs pointed to results Illinois has reported since the ACT became a prime part of its state testing in 2001. College enrollment is up, especially among families with lower incomes.

“You’ve got more kids thinking, ‘Maybe I can do this.’”

Schools in particular are looking at closing performance gaps among students from poorer families and minorities.

At the Hickman Mills School District’s Ruskin High School, where more than half the students qualify for free or reduced lunch, confidence in post-high school opportunities has to start with high expectations in the classroom, Principal Jim Tinsley said.

The urban school saw its average composite score rise to 17.5 from 16.7, even as it increased the number of test takers to 96 from 66.

“When you raise the rigor in the classes,” Tinsley said, “that’s when you really notice the difference.”

Often, increasing the number of test takers will accompany a drop in scores as schools try to encourage students who otherwise might not have been giving college serious thought.

It’s a tradeoff schools must be willing to make, said Kansas City School District Superintendent Bernard Taylor.

Kansas City’s overall district average fell from 17.5 to 16.9, but the number of students taking the ACT rose 15 percent, from 465 to 536.

“It gives me hope we are headed in the right direction,” Taylor said. “We need to encourage more students to take the test, then see what we have to do to perform better.”

Extra focus on ACT preparation may have played a part in Mill Valley High School in De Soto boosting its score to 22.7 from 21.8, said Bret Church, De Soto’s director of learning services.

ACT motivation comes easily for a district where 94 percent of the graduates continued on to some sort of higher education, he said.

“The ACT affects a lot of their futures,” he said. “The usefulness of doing well on the ACT carries a lot of weight.”

FIRST GLANCE:

— The average ACT scores for graduating seniors in Missouri and Kansas increased slightly for the second straight year in 2005, keeping ahead of the national average.

— Both states are exploring the idea of using a national test — potentially the ACT — in their statewide measures of student performance.

The Star’s Melodee Hall Blobaum contributed to this report.

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