One of the most confusing things for the Kentucky public to understand about results from the ACT college entrance test is what do the scores really mean.

So, in this blog we will first look at how the scores are reported and then take a look at how Kentucky’s public school students are doing with the college readiness challenge.

The news isn't good, but the story needs telling.

ACT Scale Scores, which run from 1 to 36, have been around for decades. But for many people these are just numbers on a scale.

What does it mean if a student scores a 19? A 25? It used to be that outside of checking with a specific college’s admissions office or a high school guidance counselor, it was hard to tell.

To overcome this problem, several years ago the ACT, Inc., which administers the ACT, developed its “College Readiness Benchmarks” based on actual student performances in colleges that use ACT for admissions.

If a student reaches the ACT Benchmark Score for a subject, the ACT has determined that student has a 75 percent chance of earning a “C” or higher and a 50 percent chance of getting a “B” or higher in the related college freshman course area in a typical US college. In other words, the student has a decent chance of succeeding in college, where a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) of 2.0, generally equivalent to a “C” grade, is usually a graduation requirement.

So, the ACT Benchmark Scores provide some pretty useful information for both students and parents.

Another set of Benchmark Scores are used with the ACT in Kentucky. These are set by the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE) – which governs all state public postsecondary institutions – rather than the ACT.

CPE uses its Benchmarks to determine if students in one of the state’s public postsecondary institutions must take a remedial course in the related college subject area. So the CPE Benchmark Scores also provide important information to students and parents, provided the CPE has set them properly.

Unfortunately, the ACT and CPE Benchmarks are not the same, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1

In fact, while the ACT, Inc. says students need to score at least 22 on the ACT to have a reasonable chance of passing a freshman algebra course, the CPE is willing to let students into its least demanding credit-bearing math course with a considerably lower score of only 19.ACT, Inc. also wants to see more ability in reading than the CPE requires.

Not only are the definitions behind the Benchmarks different, but the actual Benchmark Scores aren't the same for math or reading, either.

The obvious differences between the math and reading benchmarks are problematic for Kentucky’s students and parents, and not just because the numbers are different.

While only meeting CPE Benchmarks will get students into a regular credit-bearing courses in Kentucky’s college system, research released in December 2014 by the Kentucky Office of Education Accountability (OEA)  shows that only meeting this lower standard is no guarantee students will end their freshman college year with a minimally acceptable 2.0 Grade Point Average (GPA). The OEA discovered that even among students who qualified with the CPE’s ACT Benchmarks as college ready in all three subject areas, end-of-year GPAs for about one in five freshman college students were below 2.0.

It appears that actual college performance in Kentucky is more consistent with the ACT’s Benchmarks, not the CPE’s lower targets.

Still, college readiness, even using the rather undemanding criteria of the CPE Benchmarks, is flattening in English and Reading. Worse still, it actually notably declined for math this year, as Figure 2, which shows how the CPE Benchmarks scores have trended during the past four ACT test cycles:

Figure 2 

Furthermore, a news article about the new ACT results from Henderson County schools provides some clues that Common Core State Standards could share some responsibility for this math decline.

Because Common Core doesn’t cover any math beyond Algebra II, most Henderson County students don’t take this subject until the 12th grade, which is too late to get fully prepared for the demands of college math or even perform decently on the ACT test, which is targeted towards what students should master by the latter half of their 11th-grade year to be on track for college.

Common Core as implemented in Kentucky’s assessment program won’t highlight this excessive delay in math subject delivery and districts are under no pressure with Kentucky’s current KPREP testing system to accelerate math course delivery, either.

In fact, under Common Core districts are under no pressure to even offer courses beyond Algebra II such as trigonometry, pre-calculus and even calculus itself. Students who don’t master at least trigonometry and pre-calculus aren't going to be competitive for more selective colleges and are all but locked out of future science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) careers.

The drop in CPE Benchmark performance in math isn’t good news for either Kentucky or supporters of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Kentucky became the lead state for implementing Common Core when it began CCSS-aligned testing during the 2011-12 school term, a year ahead of the next Common Core state, New York (Tech Note: we can’t compare ACT scores back to 2012 because ACT changed its score reporting in 2013).The flattening English language arts ACT scores and the notable decay in the math scores require close attention.

Our students deserve no less.

General Tech Notes: ACT reports for 2016 are available here.

ACT reports from earlier years are available here.

The CPE Benchmark scores used in this report come from Kentucky Department of Education News Release 16-092 and 15-091 and have been rounded to the nearest point.