South Carolina High School Class of 2018 ACT Performance Slips in ACT Report
Staff Report From South Carolina CEO
Thursday, October 18th, 2018
The ACT released assessment data for 2018 South Carolina high school graduates who took the ACT test. Following the national trend, South Carolina graduates' average composite score slipped from 18.7 in 2017 to 18.3 in 2018. Additionally, 14 percent of graduates met all four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks down from 15 percent in 2017.
South Carolina is one of seventeen states that, until the 2017-2018 school year, by law required every 11th grade student, regardless of college ambition or academic readiness, to take the ACT college readiness exam. The ACT report represents a total of 53,743 South Carolina graduates who took the ACT test, the majority of them taking it as juniors when ACT's state test administration was plagued with technical difficulties causing the company to issue a statement acknowledging some student scores may not be valid. Act 94 took effect last school year and provides that all eleventh graders must now be offered the option of taking either the ACT or the SAT college readiness assessments.
"I am disappointed to see that fewer of our graduates are meeting the benchmarks for college readiness set by ACT," said State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman. "While we now offer students and parents additional college and career readiness measurements, it is clear that the disparity gap between our high performing schools and districts and our low performing, continues to widen. I believe that by shining a light on our problem areas and focusing on high quality classroom instruction and student achievement, we will begin to see improvements across our state."
Nationally, Math readiness dropped to a 14 year low. Readiness in English is at the lowest level since ACT began using its College Readiness Benchmarks in 2002. Science remains the subject area in which students are least likely to be prepared for college coursework. These national trends hold true in South Carolina where readiness scores in every subject area dropped from the previous year.
According to ACT, the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks are scores that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing courses.
Additional Trends and Observations
- Data shows that in South Carolina, 14,179 of the 2018 graduates (26.4%) taking the ACT two or more times had an average composite score of 21.1, compared to an average of 17.2 for 39,564 of the 2018 graduates (73.6%) who took the ACT only once.
- 52 percent of the 109,176 score reports sent to colleges by 2018 South Carolina ACT-tested graduates were sent to in-state public colleges.
- In the South Carolina graduating class of 2018, 2,168 (4 percent) indicated they planned on majoring in education. They had an average composite score of 18.7.
- Data shows that historically undeserved learners' college readiness levels greatly lag behind their peers. Only 2 percent of African American students met all four of ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks.