New ACT data show many Kentucky high school graduates not well-prepared for college

Along with its ACT scores, the ACT college entrance test now reports on the percentages of high school graduates who meet minimum score benchmarks that show they are on track to earn either a “C” (75% likely) or a “B” (50% likely) in their first related college coursework for the subject areas of English, math, reading and science. As with the scores I reported earlier, the ACT Readiness Benchmark Score information for Kentucky shows plenty of decay in performance that leaves lots of room just to get back to where the state was before COVID hit.

Here are the results for Kentucky’s white graduates, by graduation year.

Overall, the changes from 2022 are all but flat, and the percentage of students meeting all four benchmarks didn’t budge at all.

Next, here are the results for Kentucky’s Black graduates.

Except for English, the individual subject benchmarks are totally flat. Even worse, the percentages meeting math and science readiness benchmarks are just single digit quantities.

The surprise here is for Hispanic students.

Hispanics improved their ACT Readiness Benchmark scores by several percentage points in English, math and reading. Even science nudged up a point.

Still, the numbers are very low. We are graduating a lot of kids, but they are not ready for college, or a working wage career, either (ACT has reported that the skill levels required by college freshman are now what employers hiring for living wage jobs want to see, too).

Data from the ACT Data Visualization Tool, online here.