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ACT: 25% are ready for college

May 17, 2013 by 5 Comments

Twenty-five percent of ACT test takers in 2012 were prepared for college, according to ACT’s 2012 Condition of College and Career Readiness report. Sixty-seven percent were ready to pass a college writing course, 52 percent were prepared to read a social science textbook, 46 percent were ready for college algebra and 31 were likely to pass biology.

Forty percent of ACT test takers reached the readiness benchmark in three areas. Twenty-eight percent didn’t qualify in any subject.

Passing an ACT benchmark means a student has a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better and a 75 percent chance of earning at least a C.

Thirty-seven percent of test takers want to earn a professional or graduate degree, 45 percent will settle or a bachelor’s and 5 percent are aiming at an associate degree.

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ACT: Once ‘far off track,’ few catch up

December 8, 2012 by

Fourth and eighth graders who are “far off track” academically — more than a standard deviation behind — rarely catch up over four year, reports ACT.

Start early to close gaps in academic preparation, the report recommends. Some approaches, such as providing a “content-and vocabulary-rich curriculum,” will benefit all students in the early years. In middle and high school, however, educators should acknowledge that programs that work for on-track students may not work for those who are off track and vice versa.

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Ohio: Exit exam will test college readiness

November 28, 2012 by

Ohio will replace its high-school graduation test with a tougher college-readiness exam and end-of-course tests, reports the Columbus Dispatch.

The current graduation test asks for 10th-grade skills. Forty-two percent of first-year college students in the state require remedial coursework.

The new college- and career-readiness test has not been developed. There’s “talk of using the ACT,” which would be provided free of charge, reports the Dispatch. End-of-course exams will be required in English I, II and III, algebra I, geometry, algebra II, biology, physical science, American history and American government. Test grades will count as a portion of the grade for the course.

So what happens when the failure rate soars? And what about Ohio students who aren’t prepping for college but want a high school diploma to qualify for an apprenticeship or the military?

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College for free in 10 years?

October 18, 2012 by

Will college be free in 10 years? Time looks at a future in which a four-year residential college is a luxury item for the few, while most learners pursue higher education online.

As learning goes online, most universities “will be in the accreditation business,” predicts author and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa.

(Universities) will monitor and sanction coursework; teachers will become mentors and guides, not deliver lectures and administer tests. This model has the potential to dramatically cut the cost of an education and virtually eliminate the need to borrow for one, he says.

Private companies are getting into skills assessment, writes Paul Fain on Inside Higher Ed. “The big enchilada of potential disruptions to higher education is if employers go outside of the academy to size up job seekers.”

Smarterer, a Boston-based start-up “offers 800 free online tests for people to prove their chops in areas ranging from C++ programming to speaking English for business or understanding Gothic architecture.”

Jennifer Fremont-Smith, Smarterer’s CEO, describes the company as a “third-party, super powerful assessment and credentialing tool.” Its goal is not to replace the college degree, which Fremont-Smith acknowledges is currently the gold standard of credentials, but to give employers an additional way to sort through job applicants.

More than 400 employers have used the service to help evaluate job candidates’ skills, she says.

Rival companies like Skills.to and Degreed attempt to assess skills and learning. And the ACT’s National Career Readiness Certificate measures employability with tests on applied mathematics, locating information and reading for information. The certificate is geared for entry-level jobs, even for applicants who lack a college credential.

On the other side of the spectrum, Bloomberg in 2010 introduced an assessment aimed at students who want to bulk up their C.V.s to land jobs in finance. The test covers 11 fairly narrow categories, like investment banking and analyzing financial statements.

Mozilla’s Open Badges project lets people “issue, earn or display badges that display their earners’ skills or achievements,” writes Fain. But digital badges aren’t backed by independent testing, so they’re likely to lack credibility.

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ACT: 60% aren’t ready for college

August 22, 2012 by

Sixty percent of college-bound high school graduates aren’t prepared for college success, according to ACT’s Condition of College & Career Readiness 2012 report. Fifty-two percent of graduating seniors took the ACT exam, which claims to measure both college and career readiness: Only 25 percent met the benchmarks in all four subject areas, English, reading, math and science. Twenty-eight percent did not meet any benchmark; another 15 percent met only one and 17 percent met just two.

A student who meets the benchmark has a 75 percent chance of earning a C or higher in that subject area in a first-year college class and a 50 percent chance of earning a B. The benchmarks are based on the college grades earned by ACT-tested students.

Test takers are improving in mathematics and science, while English and reading scores have been flat for several years.

Forty-six percent of ACT-tested graduates are prepared in math, 31 percent in science, 67 percent in English and 52 percent in reading.

The sample test questions in writing, reading and math were very easy. The science question required reading and logic skills, but no actual knowledge of science.

What grade level is this math question?

Near a large city, planes take off from two airfields. One of the fields is capable of sending up a plane every 3 minutes. The other field is capable of sending up 2 planes every 7 minutes. At these rates, which of the following is the most reasonable estimate of the total number of planes the two airfields could send up in 90 minutes?


A. 18
B. 27
C. 36
D. 44
E. 55

A majority of ACT-taking 12th graders can’t solve questions like this? Some states are requiring all graduating seniors to take the ACT, regardless of their college plans, so there are more marginal students taking the exam. But still.

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Kindergarten demographics

July 28, 2012 by

Of 3.5 million kindergartners in 2010-11, 25 percent came from families living below the poverty level, according to a demographic snapshot from a U.S. Education Department study.

Fifty-three percent were white, 24 percent were Hispanic, 13 percent were African-American, 4 percent were Asian, 4 percent were two or more races, 1 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native, and less than 0.5 percent were Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

. . . Eighty-four percent lived in homes where English is the primary language.

Economic, racial and ethnic achievement gaps are evident even at the start of kindergarten, researchers say. They’ll track a cohort of children through 2016, when they should be finishing fifth grade.

In a few years, kindergartners could be taking ACT’s “next generation” career and college readiness tests, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. The tests are supposed to help teachers identify students’ learning needs, not identify future doctors, lawyers, butchers and bakers.

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D.C. may require college application for all

January 15, 2012 by

All Washington D.C. students would have to take the SAT or ACT and apply to college, proposes Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown. Even students who don’t plan to go to college would have to go through the motions, reports the Washington Post.

Brown said it’s imperative that D.C. public schools, with a drop-out rate of 43 percent, standardize how students view post-secondary education. . . . ”I’m not saying everyone should go to college, but my goodness, we have to get more young folks prepared to go to college if they want to go to college,” Brown said in an interview. “A lot of them don’t even know how to prepare and apply to college.”

Eleven states now require high school students to take  the SAT or ACT, Brown said.

It’s a win for the college-industrial complex, writes Jonathan Robe.

Come to think of it, perhaps the way Brown could improve the idea is to force all colleges and universities to be open-enrollment and then mandate all persons apply to college and finally require all colleges to graduate any and all students who enroll. Voilà! Completion problem solved! It all reminds me of the joke that the best way to cure unemployment is to make it illegal to be unemployed.

D.C. hasn’t persuaded all students that it’s important to finish high school.

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‘Skills gap’ includes college graduates

August 30, 2011 by

Education doesn’t guarantee job readiness, according to ACT’s new report on workforce skills gaps.

For manufacturing, healthcare, construction and energy-related target occupations requiring a middle or high level of education, a majority of test takers were unable to  “locate, synthesize, and use information from workplace graphics such as charts, graphs, tables, forms, flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, maps and instrument gauges.”

The gap between job seekers’ skills and the skills employers want “widens as the level of education increases.”

 

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ACT: 25% of grads are ready for college

August 17, 2011 by

College readiness inched up for this year’s graduates, ACT reports. Twenty-five percent who took the ACT are ready to succeed in first-year, college-level writing, algebra, social science and biology classes. That compares to 24 percent in 2010.

On the down side, 28 percent of test takers were unprepared in all subjects.

Linking test scores with actual college grades, ACT defines college readiness as a 50 percent chance of earning a grade of B or higher or about a 75 percent chance of earning a C or higher in a typical first-year college course.

Students are doing better in math and science, the weakest subjects:

This year, 45 percent of test takers (compared to 43 percent last year) met or exceeded the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math, while 30 percent (compared to 29 percent last year) met or exceeded the benchmark in science. In comparison, 66 percent and 52 percent met or surpassed the benchmarks in English and reading, respectively, both unchanged from last year.

More students are taking the ACT, which puts downward pressure on scores. Nearly half the 2011 graduating class took the exam.  Black and Latino test takers, only 19 percent of the total in 2007, now make up 26 percent of test takers.

Update:  Thanks to commenters for noting the pass rates (low) in states that require all high school students to take the ACT, regardless of their college plans.  (The idea is to motivate students to consider college.)

RiShawn Biddle highlights the dismal college readiness rates for black and Hispanic students who took the ACT: four percent of blacks and 11 percent of Hispanics were college ready in all subjects compared to 31 percent of whites and 41 percent of Asian-Americans.

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Longhorns 17, Badgers 1

March 6, 2011 by

In “low-tax, low-spending Texas, graduation rates are low, writes New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. SAT scores are low in the five states without collective bargaining for teachers, reports The Economist. Texas ranks 47th, while Wisconsin is second.

“The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas,” writes Iowahawk. Actually, Texas is out-educating Wisconsin, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress, which breaks down test scores by grade, state, subject and ethnicity.

“A state’s ‘average ACT/SAT’ is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there,” writes Iowahawk, who attributes the test gap to differences in socioeconomic status, racism and family structure. Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) will have higher average scores than Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic). When scores are disaggregated by race and ethnicity, “brokeass, dumbass, redneck Texas” does better than “progressive unionized Wisconsin” for whites and blacks and Hispanics.

2009 4th Grade Math

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)

Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)

Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

2009 8th Grade Math

White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)

Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)

Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)

2009 4th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)

Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)

Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)

2009 8th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)

Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)

Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)

2009 4th Grade Science

White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)

Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)

Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)

2009 8th Grade Science

White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)

Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)

Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)

Whites, blacks and Hispanics do better in Texas than in Wisconsin in 17 comparisons; Hispanics score insignificantly higher in science in Wisconsin in fourth grade.

Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

In addition, the racial achievement gap is much wider in Wisconsin than in Texas.

Non-union Georgia also does well in comparison to Wisconsin, though not as well as Texas, writes Kyle Wingfield.

The Economist’s SAT scores are both out of date and meaningless, writes Angus Johnston. Using current data, Wisconsin ties for 17th on the ACT. Very few Wisconsin students take the SAT. Texas ranks “45th on the SAT with 53% participation, 33rd on the ACT with 33% participation.”

In a follow-up post that serves as a statistics primer, Iowahawk breaks out ACT scores by race and ethnicity for Wisconsin and Texas and explains Simpson’s Paradox.

He also links to Michael Pollard’s NAEP analysis: “After controlling for ethnicity, compared to the running-dog Gang of Five non-collective bargaining states (TX, VA, SC, NC, GA), Wisconsin is a (1) middling performer for white students; (2) below middling for Hispanic students, and (3) an absolute disaster for black students.”

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