Best and worst ACT performers in science

I wrote yesterday about the percentages of students in our public high schools that were adequately prepared for math in college based on newly released testing of Kentucky 11th grade students from the ACT.

Now, here are the top and bottom 20 schools for ACT science. The tables show the percentage of students who reached the ACT Benchmark score in science (24) that indicates a student should have good odds of passing a freshman course in biology.

The findings here are consistent with the math results.




First, just as we saw for math, it is painfully evident that where a child goes to school can have an enormous impact on learning. Some schools get far more students ready for college science than others do, and sometimes that vast difference can be found within a single school district.

Second, promises in KERA have not been kept. Twenty years later, too many students remain trapped in schools where few, if any, children are being adequately prepared for college.

Third, as was true for math, these science ACT results provide compelling evidence that Louisville’s school busing plans have been a failure. Louisville schools are liberally located in both the top 20 and bottom 20 lists above. If busing worked, the performance of schools in Louisville would be roughly equal. It most definitely isn’t.

The ACT results show something is terribly wrong with our schools, and parents badly need more options on where they can have their children educated.