Kentucky’s public school ACT Composite Score average dropped!

The Kentucky Department of Education just issued Press Release 10-044 with the public school only ACT-tested high school graduate scores for 2010. That allowed me to make 2010 additions to this table, which shows public school only ACT performance in Kentucky since 1993.


Note that the ACT Composite Score (an average across the four academic subjects) dropped between 2009 and 2010. There was only a very slight increase in the number of public school graduates who took the test, which makes the score reduction particularly troubling.

One piece of good news is that math scores for 2010 inched up another tenth of a point, but this was more than offset by the declines in reading and science.

In reviewing this table, keep in mind that Kentucky started testing all students with the ACT several years ago, and that is why the scores dropped dramatically in 2009.

However, the continued decline in 2010 is a bad trend. An excuse that this is due to more students taking the ACT this year is not valid because the change in the numbers is very small.

If you want to see more tables like the one above which cover the combined results for all students, public and private, in Kentucky, and even a table separately covering the performance of students in non-public education environments, we have them for you in the freedomkentucky.org Wiki here.

You can find the ACT, Incorporated's public access page with the 2010 results for all graduates combined who took the 2010 ACT here. Links on that page will take you to a variety of reports with both national and state scores.