Fewer students are hitting ACT benchmarks – Spectrum News 1

OHIO — A recent ACT report shows that nearly a million and a half high school seniors took the test, but only 21% of them hit all the benchmarks, triggering a historic 30-year low. 

What You Need To Know

• The decline started before the pandemic, but the pandemic accelerated it
• The average ACT score for the Class of 2023 was 19.5
• More students took the ACT this time around than those from the Class of 2022 

“We’re seeing less of a focus on some of these core competencies in school and you’re seeing that even going into college. So a lot of these schools for years have been really broadening their curriculum. They’ve been focusing on other things. And so now you just see lower scores on some of the sub scores on the ACT, like math and English,” said Matt Dearden, associate vice president for enrollment at Cedarville University.

Dearden said there are a couple of different ways to look at it.

“So one theory is that because colleges are focusing less on the test, and they’re looking at things like just generally transcripts, one theory is to say that these students are really not being taught to take the test,” he said.

This is different from the last couple of decades, where there was a greater emphasis on learning about the test and how to take it inside and outside of school. It’s something he said teachers aren’t focused on as much anymore.

“The other theory is students just aren’t getting as good of education in general and math and science and those kinds of things,” Dearden explained.  

He said that since schools are recognizing that the ACT and the SATs are not the be all, end all, they’re not teaching as much towards them.

Knowing this, he said the hope is that students are getting the life skills and college preparation skills needed besides test preparation skills.