Between The ACTs

The Iowa-based ACT is trumpeting its latest college entrance examination scores as improved but a closer examination of the test results reveals them to be pretty pathetic. “National ACT scores rose significantly in 2006,” the organization claims. “The average ACT composite score for the U. S. high school graduating class of 2006 was 21.1, up from 20.9 last year.”

“Scores were higher for both males and females and for students across virtually all racial/ethnic groups.” This year, 1.2 million students took the test, on which 32 was the highest score they could possibly attain. Few did.

It gets worse. “For example, approximately 47 % of the cohort fall into the lowest three Mathematics score ranges,” according to the ACT. The ACT helpfully calculates “benchmarks” from its annual test results or “the minimum score needed on an ACT subject-area test to indicate a 50 % chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75 % chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding credit-bearing courses, which include English Composition, Algebra, Social Science and Biology.”

Here are the percentages of ACT test takers who hit those benchmarks in 2006:

English 69

Math— 42

Reading 53

Science 27

An interesting side note is the degree to which the scores vindicate deposed Harvard president Larry Summers. Low as the marks may be, they do show that more men post higher grades on math and science than women.

The ladies do have more of an edge in English and Reading. Still, the male advantage in the quantitative fields is 9-10 points while the female gain in English and Reading is 4-5 points.

Here are those benchmarks:

male/female

English

66/ 71

Math

47/ 37

Reading

51/ 55

Science

32/ 23

Perhaps most troubling are the skills attached to the scores no one gets. It’s bad enough knowing that only about half of the test takers can read on the college level.

Thus, by looking at the standards for the scores rarely attained, we can see the epidemic lack of these abilities in college-bound seniors. In English, for example, few potential college freshmen can:

• “Revise sentences to correct inconsistencies in verb tense and pronoun person.”

• “Check to be sure pronouns agree with antecedents in increasingly complex sentences” and

• “Recognize inappropriate use of commas.”

Similarly, in math, few can “solve routine arithmetic problems that involve rates, proportions, and percents.” Likewise, in Reading, most test-takers cannot “investigate the meanings of words and their possible effect(s) on the perceptions and behavior of people.”

Ed Colby of ACT tried to clear up the mystery of how two-thirds of test-takers can be adequate in English Composition but only half in Reading. “You are talking about two different tests that measure two different (albeit related) groups of skills,” Colby explained. “ACT’s English Test measures skills in the conventions of standard written English (punctuation, grammar and usage, sentence structure) and rhetorical skills (strategy, organization, style).”

“ACT’s Reading Test, on the other hand, measures reading comprehension skills (referring to explicit statements, determining implicit meanings, drawing conclusions, making comparisons and generalizations) in the social and natural sciences, humanities, and prose literature. Correspondingly, students who meet or surpass our College Readiness Benchmark score on the ACT English Test have a high likelihood of succeeding (earning a ‘C’ or higher) in a college English composition course, while students who meet or surpass the benchmark score on the ACT Reading Test have a high likelihood of succeeding in a college social science course.”

But that does not necessarily mean that they will be more knowledgeable. “A recent poll of Americans shows that 77 percent can identify at least two of Walt Disney’s Seven Dwarfs, but only 24 percent can name two members of the U. S. Supreme Court,” Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council reports. “The Three Stooges topped the three branches of the federal government in public awareness by 74 percent to 42 percent.”

“Homer Simpson—bratty Bart’s dad—was identified by 60 percent, nearly three times as many as could name a work written by the Greek poet Homer.” Syracuse University commissioned this poll but the study’s conclusions complement the results of another recent survey.

“This poll comes on the heels of a May survey by the National Geographic Society that found that 88 percent of young adults could not locate Afghanistan on a map of the world,” Perkins reports.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.