<p>Here's a link to an article in the Chicago Tribune showing how few Illinois juniors in high school are likely to be prepared for college, even from the most highly regarded high schools. Frightening stats! However, no stats are given that specifically correlate ACT scores with college performance. Is this a valid way to check for college readiness and a valid way to evaluate a high school?</p>
<p>ACT:</a> Most high school juniors not college-ready in Illinois - chicagotribune.com</p>
<p>I work at a university so have access to a lot of student statistics (grades, test scores, etc.). From my personal experience I’d say that hs gpa was more an indicator of readiness than test score. Student with high GPA and low ACT have done better than those with high ACT and low gpa. What I’ve seen is those who couldn’t or didn’t do the work in hs don’t make the adjustment to the college workload.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, NCLB looks at the test for deciding who meets/exceeds standards, not GPA.</p>
<p>It’s slightly misleading, because in IL every public high school student takes the ACT (usually in Jr. year) as part of the NCLB-mandated Prairie Stat exam (PSAE). So more IL students are taking the exam than would in other states. Certainly fewer than 100% of IL high school students are college-bound. Thus the numbers get very skewed. It also means that vastly fewer students take the SAT in IL, and those tend to be the best students in the state.</p>
<p>I recall that ACT makes a claim that certain minimal scores mean college readiness, and they have some research to back it up. I wouldn’t swear by that, though.</p>
<p>The HS gpa also depends on what classes are taken. A couple of years ago, our valadictorian had taken the basic stuff with lots of pud classes and made a 4.0 - vs. kids who came in slightly under taking all the upper level stuff. She went off to school, and 6 years later , she’s still there - doing something that should have taken 3 yrs.</p>
<p>Yes, it does. Just not perfectly.</p>
<p>It’s like a weather report. Sometimes they predict storms and it ends up sunny. But it’s smart to look at the prediction before heading out.</p>
<p>My D’s GPA and ACT are completely in line with each other. But if they weren’t, I would be more concerned about a high ACT/low GPA misalignment.</p>
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<p>Absolutely true, according to studies of thousands of students at the Univ of California.</p>
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<p>Not so fast. The same UC study also demonstrated a high correlation of SAT/ACT scores in college success (aka “readiness”). It was just that the stand-alone SAT/ACT scores have a slighly lower predictive value than did gpa alone (based on college prep courses required for admission to UC). The point is that test scores do add value, but they are just slighly less of a predictor than gpa (across thousands of UC students).</p>
<p>More importantly, UC also found that Subject Tests scores (and AP) had even more value than SAT/ACT alone. (I don’t recall if they compared ST’s to gpa.)</p>
<p>I read that article and it looks like for many Illinois schools (especially the usual high performers on the north shore), the 24 science score is what was causing the problem. I was very surprised to see that the science score for college readiness was 24 while the English score was only 18. IMO, English (and Math and Reading) are much more important than science, which many kids don’t even take in college. From what I’ve seen, the science test doesn’t really measure one’s science knowledge or aptitude. According to my D (and science is her worst ACT subscore by far, although higher than the readiness number), it’s a race against the clock. </p>
<p>If I’m reading the ACT website correctly, 71% of students who take the ACT nationally score below a 24 on science. I find it difficult to believe that 71% of the students who take the ACT are not ready for college.</p>
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I think what you’re seeing is an increase in non-college bound hs students taking the ACT. I don’t know how many states now require all hs students to take the ACT, but I’m aware of several that now do.</p>
<p>What Post #8 says. GPA alone is a slightly better predictor of college success than ACT alone. I guess I don’t find that at all surprising. Why wouldn’t 4 years of data be a better predictor than data produced by a single morning’s test?</p>
<p>However, together, GPA and ACT are a better predictor of success than either by itself.</p>
<p>What the ACT says about its readiness benchmarks is:</p>
<p>ACT has identified the minimum score needed on each ACT test to indicate a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding first-year college course. Each of your scores that is at or above the benchmark for that subject area is marked with an asterisk (*) on your score report.</p>
<p>ACT Test ACT Benchmark Score College Course</p>
<p>English 18 English Composition
Math 22 Algebra
Reading 21 Social Sciences/Humanities
Science 24 Biology</p>
<p>So, 50% of the students below a 24 have not earned a B in first year biology. I don’t see that as the same thing as “not ready”</p>
<p>^^Good point. The vast majority of students attend their instate public where science courses tend to be strictly curved to a C+/B-. Thus, by definition, most college Frosh will earn below a B in Frosh Chem/Bio. Even if they all took AP Chem/Bio in HS and scored a 5 on the test, when they get to Public U, only xx% will receive an A or B if they retake the course.</p>
<p>Only in Lake Woebegone can everyone attend grade-inflated schools in grade-inflated majors. :D</p>
<p>*So, 50% of the students below a 24 have not earned a B in first year biology. I don’t see that as the same thing as “not ready” *</p>
<p>This makes more sense. I find the Tribune article to be a bit misleading. My D attends one of the schools mentioned in the article, and according to the test results, less than 60% of the seniors at her school were “ready” for college. I thought that was laughable, since about 98% of the kids go to college and the overwhelming majority of those do just fine.</p>
<p>The ACT predicts standard first year course success, not success in developmental courses into which many students are placed. One can take a bio 100, for example, before taking the regular bio 101. Many of the developmental courses count toward graduation, but are typically not transferable. Just because a student is not prepared for the regular college curriculum does not mean the student cannot find eventual college success. There are many academic support programs for underprepared students who are willing to put in the effort.</p>
<p>I’ll ask this. Do you think it’s fair that ELL students take the test?</p>
<p>Do you think it’s fair for Special Education students?</p>
<p>Well, if either of those groups has more than 45 in #, they are counted as a subgroup in IL for purposes of NCLB. </p>
<p>ELL students get no accommodation, and the Special Education students are not timed, and may even request a reader. How can either of these groups be expected to “pass” a nationally normed test for college bound students?</p>
<p>However finely we might choose to slice and dice the numbers and their predictive power, I found this statement in the article to be startling:</p>
<p>But at nearly four dozen high schools, not one student met all four benchmarks.</p>
<p>IJustDrive–last year the Chicago Tribune published a bit of an expose on the notion that every Illinois student takes the ACT. The story reported that many schools, especially in lower income areas, identified their worst performing students as being less than juniors (when in fact they were in their junior year) so as to avoid having them take the test and bring the school’s average scores down. The next year, the students were identified as seniors and were therefore able to avoid taking the test altogether. So assuming the bottom-performing students in IL high schools are not always being counted in this assessment, the state of education in IL’s high schools is woeful.</p>
<p>What I have noticed is how differently social studies/history classes are taught. Back in my prehistoric day, history class involved learning facts, people, places, events and even some dates. My teenage kids are somehow just expected to sort of know this material, while now being tested extensively on written analysis of the events and people of a given time and place. I think I would have died under the pressure of analyzing history instead of just learning about it! Is this “new” way any better? I’m not sure yet, but I bet a lot of kids are being expected to perform at a level traditionally beyond the development expected for their age. I don’t think my kids “know” history any better than I did, and maybe they don’t know as many details as I learned back in the day. Does anyone else notice this trend in teaching?</p>
<p>You are correct catpb,</p>
<p>The schools were outed. They didn’t do well when they cheated, they aren’t doing well now. There is no defense for this, but still, having the ACT is a cop out on the part of IL, rather than make a test.</p>
<p>gloworm:</p>
<p>I guess I would disagree with you, at least for HS students. My home state (Calif) spent millions in developing a test, and for what? Another test that kids have to take. And its really only normed to other California kids. And state testing can dumbed-down. For example, many thousands of Frosh pass the HS Exit Exam their first time. Thus, the state is telling those kids that they have already acquired the knowledge needed to graduate from HS when they just have started high school. Huh?</p>
<p>Adopting a modified ACT or SAT would have saved tax dollars and been a whole lot faster. (I suggest modified ACT/SAT bcos California could have asked the test maker to eliminate the ‘difficult’ questions, shorten the total time, and recalibrate the test to a ‘passing’ level.) I have nothing to do with standardized testing, but it just seems to me that the Companies that have been at that task for 40+ years can/should do a better job at test design than a few state Educators who get drafted…</p>
<p>An obvious side benefit would be some real-live test ‘practice’ for those kids who are college-bound.</p>
<p>I also respectfully disagree with gloworm. I think having standardized national tests offers some meaningful basis for comparison. Whether the existing test are sufficient is certainly open to debate, but I think having 50 different state tests would be a mess.</p>