Ky ACT News is ....mixed

...but ACT's Ed Colby is exactly right.

This from the Herald-Leader:

State's ACT news is good

More Kentucky high school seniors are taking the ACT exam and their average score has consistently increased over the last five years, even as scores dipped slightly nationally this year, according to data released Wednesday.

Kentucky students posted an average composite score of 20.9 out of a possible 36 on the college entrance exam. The average Kentucky score is up from 20.7 last year and 20.3 five years ago.

This year, 31,728 Kentucky students took the test, a jump of nearly 800 students from last year.

”That kind of gradual incremental growth is what you want to see, particularly when we have more students in the state taking the exam; that's progress,“ said Ed Colby, an ACT Inc. spokesman. ”What we're seeing is increased learning among Kentucky's
graduates across the state over the past several years.“

Nationally, the average composite score was 21.1 this year, down slightly from 21.2 a year ago. The number of students taking the exam jumped by 9 percent compared with last year...

And from the Enquirer:

...In Kentucky, 6 percent of black graduates were prepared for science, compared with 20 percent of Hispanics, 27 percent of whites and 35 percent of Asians.

Although some testing opponents have claimed the tests are culturally or racially biased, Schmeiser denied that ethnicity or race had anything to do with the lower college preparedness.

[Cynthia B. Schmeiser, president of the ACT's Education Division said, Instead,] the schools that have high minority enrollment typically have fewer resources, teachers and advanced classes to produce high-scoring test-takers.

"All too often our low-quality schools run along racial lines," she said. "We need to focus on raising the quality of courses, so all students ... get the same opportunity to
quality education." ...