Quick Takeaways

• New ACT results show decays in the preparation of Kentucky students for college.

• Kentucky’s decline has been more pronounced than the overall national trends.

• COVID isn’t the only explanation for the decline.

Details

In mid-October ACT, Inc. released some information about how all recent Kentucky high school graduates, private, public and homeschool combined, performed on its recent assessments. The data is being made available with the interactive, online ACT Data Visualization Tool.

I pulled up the graphs shown below using this tool (details on how at the end of the blog). These graphs relate to high school graduates’ performances each year in meeting what ACT calls its College Readiness Benchmark Scores, which show those students were prepared to survive a college-level course in the related subject area with a good chance (75%) of achieving at least a “C” grade. There are separate Benchmark Score thresholds for each of the four ACT academic areas: English, math, reading and science.

In the graphs, ACT reports the percentage of graduates each year that met the college readiness Benchmark Scores in either none, one, two, three or all four academic areas tested.

The graph on the left covers performance for all of Kentucky’s graduates from public, private and homeschools combined. The graph on the right is for all graduates from each year from all types of schools combined across the entire nation.

Look at the graph on the left, which is for Kentucky. The top line, shaded light blue and marked with stars, shows the percentage of graduates in each year that could not meet even one college readiness Benchmark Score in any academic area. I used the interactive features on the ACT web page to access the actual percentage numbers for the last four graduating classes and added them to the graph for you.

So, for Kentucky’s graduates from the most recent graduation year, 2021, 44% were unable to reach the college readiness benchmark score in even one of the four academic areas tested. This astonishingly unsatisfactory performance level has steadily increased since 2018. That indicates the decay in performance started before COVID hit because high school graduates from 2018 and 2019 took their ACT tests well before COVID started to impact schools in early 2020.

Now consider the next line down, shown in dark blue and marked with circle symbols. This line shows the percentages of Kentucky high school graduates by year that met all four ACT Benchmark Scores for college readiness. We certainly would like this line to show larger percentages each year, but it is clear that since 2018 it has also trended in an undesirable direction. Sadly, the percentage of Kentucky high school graduates meeting all four ACT Benchmark Scores declined from 22% in 2018 to only 18% most recently.

Thus, as of 2021, the K-12 Kentucky education scene is not enabling even one out of five graduates to be fully ready for a liberal college education.

The national situation also shows unfavorable trends that started before COVID, as well. However, the gaps between Kentucky’s performance and the national trends have increased.

For example, in 2018 Kentucky had 36% of its graduates failing to meet even one Benchmark Score while nationally, the percentage was almost identical at 35% -- just a one-point gap. By 2021, however, the Kentucky percentage unable to meet muster in any ACT academic area rose to 44% while nationally the number only increased to 38%, changing the gap from one to six percentage points.

At the other end of the spectrum, 22% of Kentucky’s 2018 graduates met all four ACT Benchmarks while nationally 27% did, a gap of five percentage points. By 2021, only 18% of Kentucky’s graduates met full muster on all four Benchmarks while nationally 25% did, for a gap increase from five to seven percentage points.

By the way, the ACT performance isn’t just an indicator of college readiness anymore. In 2015 ACT reported a study of how the scores relate to preparation for non-college track careers.

They said:

“…whether planning to enter college or workforce training programs after graduation, high school students need to be educated to a comparable level of readiness in reading and mathematics. Graduates need this level of readiness if they are to succeed in college-level courses without remediation and to enter workforce training programs ready to learn job-specific skills.”

So, the recent ACT trends impact a lot more than just the hopes of college bound students. They go to the heart of preparation every child needs to succeed in a living wage career regardless of what that career might be.

Summing up, any way you look at the ACT data, it isn’t positive for Kentucky. Fewer students are being prepared well for college – and careers, too – and the state is falling further behind the rest of the nation, as well. Also, the reasons why seem to include more than just COVID impacts, as well.

Which just adds more ammunition for parents who want to have more choices on where to send their child to school.

 How to see for yourself with the ACT’s online data tool:

1. Go to the ACT Data Visualization Tool.

2. Scroll down to the “Tableau Data View” section.

3. Click on the “Class Composition/Makeup” tab above the map.

4. In the “Group 1 State Selection(s)” pull down menu, deselect the “all” states box and select the “Kentucky” box only.