A record-high 78% of 2024 high school graduates took the ACT during school hours through state- and district-sponsored programs, according to new data released by ACT earlier this week. This marks a record participation rate for the ACT School-Day Testing program, which allows students to take the college entrance exam at no cost.
“We are really pleased that we saw a record number of students testing through school-day testing, which means they tested and received a college reportable score at no cost to the students,” said Rose Babington, senior director of strategic initiatives at ACT. “We feel that this is significant because it opens opportunities for students who might not have been considering college as a viable option.”
ACT officials said that initiatives like the School-Day Testing program helps to reduce barriers, especially for students from low-income backgrounds and students of color. “We think especially for the states and districts who offer these programs, it means that they're really showing their commitment for every single student to understand their readiness for life after high school," Babington added.
The spike in ACT participation reflects the increasing influence of state and district efforts to open up testing to students, said Janet Godwin, the chief executive officer of ACT, who added that the program promotes college and career readiness by making it easier for students to take the exam.
“Every high school student deserves to know his or her readiness for life after high school,” said Godwin. “When all students have the opportunity to test at school without a fee, it provides opportunities for postsecondary, scholarship and career success.”
Alabama has pioneered this effort. More than any other state, it has administered the ACT college-entrance exam to every public-school 11th-grader at least once, beginning in 2014.
“We have really watched kids make educational attainment decisions and career attainment decisions that work for them,” said Eric Mackey, Alabama’s state superintendent. “We're not done, and we have a responsibility for those students that don’t get a lot of attention but still need a pathway out of high school. That’s where the work needs to be.”
Despite the increase in participation, average ACT scores remained steady. The national average for the class of 2024 was 19.4, only slightly below the 19.5 average for the previous year. Many of these students were freshmen during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period marked by disruptions to education.
Still, some experts remain skeptical of the reliance on standardized tests as a measure of college readiness. Harry Feder, executive director of FairTest, an organization that advocates ending the misuse of standardized testing, told Diverse that “many places are starting to work backwards from the idea of a portrait graduate.”
“I think it’s also about having durable skills. In addition to academic skills, we want them to be able to persist. We want them to be good listeners. It’s about critical thinking and problem-solving,” he said. “We should be assessing whether students can apply the skills they've learned to real-world situations. I think these are more effective demonstrations of what we want a graduate of a K-12 system to be able to do in the modern world.”
Feder said that he thinks standardized tests can be reductionist and rooted in historical bias and added that too often “they tend to oversimplify learning, with scores correlating more closely to family income than to actual student potential.”
On college readiness measures, 30% of the class of 2024 met three or more of the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in English, math, reading, and science. These benchmarks predict how well students are likely to perform in first-year college courses. Data shows that students who meet all four benchmarks are more likely to graduate with a postsecondary degree within six years.
Additional findings from ACT’s data reveal that 1.4 million seniors took the ACT, maintaining the same level of participation as last year. The average ACT Superscore, which takes the highest section scores across multiple attempts, was 19.9. Additionally, more than a quarter of students who took the PreACT and indicated they did not plan to attend college ended up enrolling, signaling a shift in postsecondary plans.
“The Superscore really gives the opportunity for students who are retesting to show what they really know,” said Babington who added that the ACT Composite Score shows what a student knows at that moment in time and very often is taken during a student's junior year in high school. “That means that a student who takes the ACT a second time in the fall of their senior year, maybe even in the winter or the spring of their senior year, gets to demonstrate what else they've learned in high school through their senior year coursework, which really contains some of the key components that we know are essential for success in college and career,” Babington told Diverse.
Of students who graduated, 58% who earned the ACT WorkKeys assessment qualified for the ACT WorkKeys National Career Readiness Certificate, demonstrating the skills necessary to be hired for most jobs in the U.S. at the Silver level or above.
