College Entrance Exam Results Tops Washington Students Lead Nation On Act, And National Average Climbs Again

Scores on the ACT rose again slightly this year, with students in Washington state posting the highest average, officials at the college entrance exam said Wednesday. They attributed the increase to high schoolers taking more and tougher academic courses.

The average score for incoming college freshmen was 21, up from 20.9 in 1996. It was the fourth year in five that scores have inched upward. For a record eight years in a row, the national average has either risen or held its own. The 1990 score was 20.6.

Washington students taking the test, 16 percent, had the highest average score, 22.4. Oregon tied New Hampshire and Wisconsin for second highest at 22.3. Idaho scores average 20.7 “The year-to-year change may be slight, but viewed as a long-term trend it’s good news for U.S. education,” said Richard L. Ferguson, president of the testing service, ACT Inc., based in Iowa City, Iowa.

Close to 1 million of the nation’s high school graduates took the test, accounting for 60 percent of college freshmen this fall. Scores from the other major college entrance exam, the Scholastic Assessment Test or SAT, come out later this month.

Greater numbers of high school students are taking college preparatory courses of study, Ferguson said: four years or more of English, three years or more each of math, social studies and natural sciences.

The Education Department’s figures back what students self-report to the ACT. In 1994, 59 percent of high school graduates had taken Algebra II, compared with 32 percent in 1982. More than 21 percent had taken biology, chemistry and physics, compared with about 11 percent in 1982.

Women and minority groups, particularly Native Americans, were among those taking more advanced courses.

Not everyone shared in the results. More black students took advanced courses, but their overall score has held at 17 or 17.1 for the past five years. Results were lower still for those who took core courses.

Officials suggest, moreover, that scores for all test-takers could peak soon because the number of students taking advanced courses is leveling off. Sixty-one percent of those tested for 1997 had taken the core curriculum.

Education Department data also point to some leveling off, said Christopher Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education, a Washington group that advocates a rigorous liberal arts education.

For example, the share of students taking Algebra I has barely risen since 1987 and the share taking trigonometry has dipped.

“We still have a problem with the beliefs of many of the faculty of many schools and students, too, that they are not capable of achieving at higher levels,” Cross said. “That is a myth that has to be overcome.”

The ACT is taken in the junior or senior year and has four parts: English, math, reading and science. The highest possible score is 36 on any section and the test overall.

It is given in all 50 states, but most students who take it live in the Midwest, South and West. The SAT dominates in the East and Northwest.

Math scores rose for just about everyone who took the ACT in 1997, in part because students could use calculators for the first time. Calculators have been allowed for the SAT since 1994.

Not everyone is happy with that change.

“I do believe we have calculators being used in many cases to think through the logic of how to do something as a substitute for your own mental processes,” Cross said.

But Ferguson said calculators can’t help students who come to the test academically prepared.

Besides permitting calculators, the ACT has undergone no recent changes. The SAT recently made other changes that raised average scores.

Nearly 2,000 home-schooled students took the ACT and averaged a score of 22.5 - the first time their results were given.

Steady increases in girls’ scores over the years have helped push up the national average and brought their scores closer to those of boys. But the boys’ score, at 21.1, was up slightly while the girls’ held at 20.8, causing a minuscule widening of the gap.

As before, income was a strong factor. The more money a family had, the higher the student scored.

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This sidebar appeared with the story: ABOVE AVERAGE RESULTS Students in the Northwest scored well on the ACT college entrance test, with Washington posting the nation’s highest average. Washington 22.4. Oregon 22.3. Idaho 20.7 The highest possible score is 36.