Average ACT Composite Score is 20.8 for Class of 2002

This drop is not a surprise. This year’s examinees were a more heterogeneous group than ever before. Through bold initiatives in Colorado and Illinois, all eleventh graders in both states took the ACT last year as part of statewide achievement testing programs. As a result, this year’s report includes 30,000 more students who were not planning to attend college when they tested and were not taking the rigorous core courses that would prepare them for college.

Colorado and Illinois officials chose to administer the ACT Assessment to all eleventh graders because it is a curriculum-based achievement test that matched up closely with their state learning standards. They also wanted to encourage students who had not previously considered college an option.

“The end result was very positive,” said ACT Chief Executive Officer Richard L. Ferguson. “Thousands of students in Illinois and Colorado who had not indicated an interest in attending college were identified as ready for college coursework. As a result, many of those students were encouraged to enter college this fall. Taking the ACT opened doors of opportunity for them.”

Core Coursework is Important

This year’s expanded pool of ACT-tested seniors included a smaller percentage who reported taking core coursework—fewer than 62 percent this year compared with nearly 64 percent last year.

ACT defines a core college-preparatory curriculum as four or more years of English and three or more years each of math (algebra and above), social sciences, and natural sciences. Because the content of the ACT Assessment is based on the subject-matter skills that are taught in America’s schools and are deemed important to success in the first year of college, students who take the recommended core curriculum tend to earn higher scores on the ACT—and are better prepared for college—than those who don’t. Seniors in the class of 2002 who took at least the core curriculum earned an average Composite score of 21.8 this year, while those who took less than the core curriculum earned an average of 19.2. “This year’s results point out the importance of taking rigorous college-prep coursework in high school,” said Ferguson. “Students who don’t will find themselves academically underprepared when they arrive at college.”

Results of a one-of-a-kind national curriculum survey ACT staff conduct every three years are used to ensure that the ACT Assessment reflects what high schools are teaching and what students are expected to know when they begin their first year in college.

Some Gender Differences Remain

There was only a slight difference in average ACT scores of male students and female students. The average Composite score for males (20.9) was two-tenths of a point higher than that for females (20.7). However, when scores of all public high school graduates are compared, as in Colorado and Illinois, this difference is not observed. In Illinois, males and females earned identical average Composite scores; in Colorado, females outperformed males by one-tenth of a point.

Males and females continue to show strengths in different subject areas. Males again earned higher average scores than females on the mathematics and science tests, while females earned higher average scores on the English and reading tests. This was true in Illinois and Colorado and nationally.

Small Score Declines Among All Racial/Ethnic Groups

Caucasians in the graduating class of 2002 earned the highest average ACT Composite score at 21.7, followed by Asian Americans at 21.6, Puerto Rican/Hispanic students at 18.8, American Indians/Alaska Natives at 18.6, Mexican American/Chicano students at 18.2, and African American students at 16.8. In all racial/ethnic groups, students who took core curriculum earned higher average scores than those who did not.

Average ACT scores were down slightly among students in all racial/ethnic groups compared to last year, most by 0.1 to 0.3 points, a result of the expanded pool of test-takers and the larger numbers who were not preparing for college. Composite scores for Hispanic students dropped by 0.6. This decline can be attributed to the 21 percent increase in the number of Hispanic students tested this year, and to the fact that a large number of them did not take core coursework. The average Composite score for Hispanic students not taking core was 17.4; for Hispanic students who took core, it was 20.0.

“Research recently conducted by ACT suggests that urban Hispanic and African American high school students don’t always get the information they need, when they need it, to adequately prepare for college,” said Ferguson. “The challenge facing school districts is to provide all students and their parents with the expertise and resources they need to get ready for college-level coursework.”

Preparation is clearly a factor in the scores earned by racial/ethnic minority students on the ACT Assessment. Seventy percent of Asian American test-takers reported they took core; their average Composite was well above the national average. Sixty-three percent of reporting Caucasian students took the core curriculum. No more than 60 percent of the reporting students in any other racial/ethnic minority group took the core curriculum—and the mean Composites for each of these groups fell below the national average.

Many Students Are Ready for Selective or Highly Selective Colleges . . .

Among the students in the class of 2002 who took the ACT Assessment:

• 13 percent earned a Composite score of 27 or higher, within the range of scores typically preferred by highly selective colleges
• 42 percent earned Composite scores of 22 or higher, within the range typically preferred by selective colleges

. . . But Many Are Not

In contrast, 27 percent earned Composite scores of 17 or lower, suggesting they are marginally prepared or not ready to perform at the college level. These students are likely to be struggling with such fundamental academic skills as:

• Identifying the purpose of a particular sentence in a paragraph
• Solving routine one-step arithmetic problems
• Reading tables and graphs
• Drawing simple conclusions about the main idea of a paragraph
• Understanding basic terms in science
• Identifying direct relationships between variables in a simple experiment