First look at new assessment/accountability data – ACT scores

Drop is notable

Is this fallout from Common Core?

I am just starting to decode the rather different Excel spreadsheets that show the Kentucky assessment and accountability results for 2017-18, but something just jumped off the pages of an Excel about ACT scores that needs a quick note.

One of the new Excels contains the ACT scores for all students for each year since 2007-08 that Kentucky has tested all the 11th graders with this college entrance test. The table shows how the statewide data has trended over time.

KY G11 Scores by Year 2008 to 2018

There is a real issue here. The newest scores show notable drops across the board for all areas tested. The 2017-18 ACT Composite has dropped back to where we were before 2014, wiping out four years of slow progress.

Another Excel spreadsheet shows that now only 38.9 percent of Kentucky’s 11th graders met the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education’s (CPE) fairly undemanding Benchmark Score to be able to avoid some sort of remediation/extra work in math in college and less than half the graduates, 47.1 percent, met the CPE muster for reading.

For sure, drops in these ACT numbers aren’t good news, and the situation adds to concerns that the state’s continued infatuation with Common Core-like standards might be having detrimental impacts on students.