The Latest News About Standardized Test Scores

The big news this week was the drop in ACT scores:

“This year, the average ACT score was the lowest it’s been since 1991, the organization said in a news release.

And it’s the fifth year in a row that average scores have been going down, ACT CEO Janet Godwin said in a statement.”

Approximately 1.3 million students in the U.S. high school graduating class of 2022 took the ACT test, an estimated 36 percent of graduates nationwide.
The national average Composite score for the graduating class of 2022 is 19.8, down from 20.3 for the graduating class of 2021, the lowest average score since 1991.
Thirty-five percent of the ACT-tested graduating class took the ACT more than once, as compared to 32% for the 2021 cohort.
Thirty-two percent of ACT-tested graduates in the class of 2022 met at least three out of four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks (English, reading, math, and science), while, 42% of students met none ACT College Readiness Benchmarks and 22% met all four ACT College Readiness Benchmarks.
A record number of students in this cohort took the ACT as part of state and district school-day testing—16 states tested more than 75% of their students—providing students the opportunity to earn college-reportable ACT scores by taking the test in their own classrooms during regular school hours on a weekday and allowing states to receive a more clear understanding of how their school districts are performing.

What about the SAT?

The average SAT score also declined for this year’s class, to 1050, out of a maximum 1600. The average for the previous class was 1060. The SAT takes three hours and covers two sections, math and evidence-based reading and writing. Most questions are in a multiple-choice format.

Major changes are coming to the SAT as it is scheduled to move to a shorter, digital format, ditching the paper-and-pencil version at U.S. sites by spring 2024.

The discussion of why scores have dropped is broad…I’ll share some reasons from experts in next week’s blogpost.