ACT scores are out – Kentucky’s public school gaps also are problem
As I wrote earlier today, new ACT reports for the high school graduating class of 2017 are now publicly released. There should be a lot of interest because this is the seventh year after Kentucky adopted the Common Core State Standards, which were supposed to dramatically improve college preparation.
Certainly, progress towards college readiness seems to have gone flat in Kentucky. Even the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE) News Release about the new ACT scores says:
“(Kentucky Commissioner of Education Steven) Pruitt said this year’s flat ACT scores reinforce that the timing is right for Kentucky to take a serious look at its graduation requirements and move forward with a new accountability system that is designed to promote and hold schools and districts accountable for student achievement and significantly reduce achievement gaps (Underline for emphasis added).”
My earlier post looked at the white minus black achievement gaps for all Kentucky 2017 high school graduates combined: public, private and home school. Because there are not a lot of non-public school graduates in Kentucky, those overall scores pretty closely, but not perfectly, mirror what is happening in the public schools.
Unfortunately, public school only ACT results don’t come directly from the ACT, Inc. Public school only data is only found in the KDE’s News Release and that release does not include nearly as much information as can be found in the ACT, Inc.’s materials.
Still, we can look at the public school only white minus black achievement gap for the ACT Composite Score, which is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1
ACT Composite Gaps in Kentucky to 2017 Public School Only
For comparison, the graph of the ACT Composite Scores for all students is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
ACT Composite Gaps in Kentucky to 2017
As you can see, since ACT changed its reporting system in 2013 (more on that is in the first blog), the gaps are somewhat smaller when we only look at the public school results, but this is mostly because the whites in public schools score notably lower than the whites in Kentucky’s non-public schools.
For example, in 2017 Figure 1 shows that whites in the state’s public schools scored only 20.3 on the ACT Composite but Figure 2 shows the overall white average was higher at 20.7.
Thus, the score for the non-public whites had to be higher, probably several points higher, than 20.7.
Unfortunately, counts of white and black graduates are not listed in KDE’s News Release 17-114 (ACT’s report does list that information for the overall student group); so, I can’t accurately calculate the actual non-public white scores for you.
Also note that the scores for the black public school graduates are slightly lower than the state’s overall ACT Composite Scores for blacks. Thus, for example, the score for black non-public school graduates in 2017 has to be higher than the overall average score of 17.0 for blacks shown in Figure 2.Do notice that whether we look at Figure 1 or Figure 2, the trend in the white minus black ACT Composite Score achievement gap is pretty much the same. In both cases, the gap in 2017 is no better than in 2014.
So, while I can’t show you any breakouts of public school only gaps for the specific ACT academic areas of English, math, reading and science, I am pretty confident that the all student results shown in my earlier blog give a pretty good idea about what is happening in Kentucky’s public schools.
Also, note that the public school white ACT Composite scores have flat lined for three years now. That is a real problem, too.
By the way, we get questions all the time at the Bluegrass Institute about how non-public schools are doing. So, I suspect the discussion above about the scores for Kentucky’s non-public school students has piqued some interest. If so, stay tuned, because we’ll look at more non-public ACT information in our next blog.
Data Sources: