ACT Scores – Educator flunks the test

Test results for Kentucky’s 11th grade students on the ACT college entrance test have only been out a short time, but Harlan County Schools Superintendent Tim Saylor may have already won the worst-excuse-for-bad-scores contest.

Saylor takes a prize for his excuses for the extremely low ACT Composite Score of only 16.4 that his 11th grade students posted.

Click the “Read more” link below to find out why Harlan Co. needs to stop making excuses and start making some progress.



The Harlan Daily Enterprise reports in “ACT scores discussed during meeting of county board:”


Superintendent Tim Saylor spoke about the recent report issued about ACT scores.

“I want to just mention, as briefly as I can, about the ACT scores that had been announced in the paper, and I'll be totally honest with you I got a little bit aggravated the way it came out,” said Saylor. “Number one, our system could have done better. Certainly, no questions about that, and we will do better and we will improve.”

Saylor said it was a mistake to compare larger schools like Harlan County High School with smaller schools.

“You can’t do it, and you shouldn't do it, because the components of the large school and the small school are completely different, academically and athletically” said Saylor. “We have a little less than 1,200 students and some of our small schools have 300. We ACT test every junior... small schools test 50, 60. We test 250, 260, 270. Some high schools test as many as 300 or more. It causes the percentages to change.”


Assuming the newspaper captured the superintendent’s comments accurately and in context, it’s important to know that EVERY public high school in Kentucky tests all of its students with the ACT. Harlan County High School is not unique here. The superintendent’s comments make it sound like he is claiming that small schools don’t test all their weak kids. That’s not right.

I find it curious that athletics somehow crept into a discussion about an academic test, but there it is. The funny thing is, in athletics a smaller school is generally at a disadvantage because the coach has fewer team prospects. Thus, Mr. Saylor gets this argument backwards.

The comment about percentages is nonsense. When you calculate percentages instead of numbers, it evens the playing field for all schools.

Finally, if the superintendent’s ‘logic’ about big schools versus small schools on the ACT were really true, then high schools with even larger enrollments than Hardin County should look pretty bad compared to Mr. Saylor’s lone high school. Let’s explore that one a bit deeper.

I analyzed the Kentucky Department of Education’s Excel spreadsheet for the 2010 scores (ACT Average 2009-2010) for all the high schools in the state. I sifted out the district summary lines and the data for earlier school years. Then, I sorted the 2009-2010 school year data according to the number of students in each school that took the ACT. Finally, I only ranked schools that tested more students than Harlan High tested.

The results showed that every single high school in the state with higher 11th grade enrollment than Harlan High School got higher ACT Composite Scores. Every single one of them.

I then sorted all the high schools in the state by their ACT Composite Score for the 2009-10 testing results from Juniors. Harlan County High School ranks pretty close to the bottom. But, what is important here is EVERY ONE of the schools that had lower ACT Composite Scores also had a smaller number of students take the ACT. So, the nonsense doesn’t work in this example, either.

(For math types) I also computed the correlation coefficient to determine if there was a relationship between school size and ACT Composite Scores in the 2009-2010 results. There was, but it wasn’t very strong (0.31 for those who like this “stuff”). The positive number does indicate, however, that if anything, bigger is BETTER when it comes to ACT scores.

To sum up, when it comes to ACT scores, size DOES NOT MATTER the way Mr. Saylor would have us believe.

Furthermore, there just is no way around it. An ACT Composite Score of 16.4 like Harlan County High School posted is abysmal. Period! There is no excuse and it is silly to waste time making one up.

I do have a suggestion for Harlan County. Our education commissioner is hot on using data. The comments from the Harlan superintendent indicate more work on that technical subject is in order for Harlan County. I’m sure Commissioner Holliday and his staff would be glad to help.