ACT Shocker: Who’s going to be your nurse or doctor?

One of the interesting reports about the Class of 2010’s newly released ACT performance is titled, “Kentucky, The Condition of College and Career Readiness, Class of 2010.” That report, just released on Wednesday, offers a number of comparisons between where our kids want to go and how well prepared – or not – they are to get there.

This graph in particular really riveted my attention. It is directly copied from the ACT report with only two embellishments: the red ellipse around the health care section and the source information text at the bottom of the figure.

This ACT graph shows that members of the Kentucky high school graduating class in 2010 who want to get into careers in health care are mostly not likely to succeed. Few scored at or above the ACT Benchmark scores that signal a student is likely to pass first year college courses in English Composition, algebra, social studies (reading) or Freshman Biology (science).


Most significantly, a depressingly low 14 percent of the students who want to get into health care have adequate mathematics preparation, and an even lower nine percent are likely to survive their first college biology course. Failing biology will be a killer for the majority of health care positions.

The numbers are not much more encouraging for the other career fields shown on the graph, either.

This is tremendously important information, because the ACT’s research indicates the career areas shown in the graph are where the majority of jobs for the Class of 2010 are likely to be found.

There just is no other way to put it: our education system is failing a tremendous percentage of our students along with all Kentuckians. Even worse, Kentucky’s future economy cannot withstand such poor performance in the state’s public schools. It’s time to get serious about real educational changes that really work for kids and not just for adults in the educational system.