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ACT test scores for U.S. students drop to a 30-year low
- gpolk50 3y ago[flagged]
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoHas test 'content' changed over the years. Hard to measure both the drift in the test, and the drift in what the students learn. Maybe there is a mismatch.
- dmbche 3y agoThis is linking it to covid, as the students that passed the ACT this year had the pandemic in their first year. There is also a moratorium on admissions at the moment and the ACT is not mandatory for the first time - which might skew results. Edit0: This seems to not be the case for all states Edit1: Some schools have a moratorium - I misread.
- touisteur 3y agoThe second one is pretty darn important as context! If the incentive to excel on this test is lower, even if it's the same for high achievers, might easily move the mean and median.
- nordsieck 3y agoIt'd typically have the opposite effect. If a test isn't mandatory then people who don't think they'll do well on it tend not to take it at all.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoThere are 6-7 states that mandate all their high school students take the ACT. The article mentions Hawaii. It would be helpful to see the numbers just for those states. Edit: Just checked a couple states that had 90%+ participation, and the decline seems to hold. Alabama 2017: 19.2 Alabama 2022: 18.0 Wisconsin 2017: 20.6 Wisconsin 2022: 19.4 Wyoming 2017: 20.2 Wyoming 2022: 19.2
- touisteur 3y agoThanks for filling my lack of knowledge on the mandatory-ness of the test and going the extra mile and crosschecking the dataset. Grateful.
- stonogo 3y agoThe article mentions one school -- Caltech -- that is not requiring ACT scores right now. Where are you getting a moratorium on admissions out of that? They're still admitting students.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[flagged]
- sharmanaetor 3y agoThe article says “Scores have been falling for six consecutive years, but the trend accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.” So it’s not just because of Covid
- Jensson 3y agoIt is basically just Covid, you can see the graph in this article: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/act-test-scores-lowest-2023 https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/act-test-scores-lowest-2023 Before Covid it was normal noise, it goes a bit up and down, it started to go outside the normal range when Covid started 2020.
- mwint 3y agoAnd it wasn't covid, it was our response to it.
- gumby 3y agoWell, my uncle had a heart attack during the covid pandemic but couldn't get a bed in the ICU as it was full of covid patients. Was he a covid death? I'd say yes (he lived in an region of low vaccination).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 2devnull 3y agoHospital saturation is lightly correlated with vaccination rates. In fact, it’s probably reverse correlated. Rural areas which have a high degree of social isolation due to low population density didn’t run out if capacity to the same extent hospitals in large urban areas did. I’m very, very sorry for your loss, but maybe you are holding on to anger that is misplaced. Population density (lack of social isolation) was what drive hospital saturation. I was in a very low vaccination rate area, and we never get to even quarter capacity in the local hospitals.
- stinkbutt 3y agodue to lack of pay, resources, and support our public education system is filled with the bottom of the barrel teachers
- yCombLinks 3y agoMy sister and brother in law are both teachers. Good ones. I make more than double their combined income, and their jobs sound way more stressful. The bil is actively working to switch careers because of it
- chung8123 3y agoIs it the stress of the class room or the lack of pay? If all the kids behaved and the admins were great bosses would he be thinking about changing careers? I think there is more than money at play with school test scores.
- AlexandrB 3y agoIt's crazy how little society values kids despite the constant drumbeat of "won't somebody pleaaasee think of the children" when it comes to safety or censorship.
- dfxm12 3y agoIt's important to vote for people locally and federally who support things like the child tax credit, free meals at school, maternity leave, etc. This is especially important since the repeal of Roe V Wade if you live in a place with forced birth.
- johnea 3y agoAnd let me guess, you live somewhere in the midwest or south?
- the_doctah 3y agoHopefully not in CA where they want to make mathematics "equitable". Trying to slam on the south isn't helping anyone.
- jeffbee 3y agoI anticipate a wide range of wacky theories to explain this, but the simplest one seems to be COVID—the disease, not the remote schooling. COVID is a disease that impairs neurological function. The majority of tested students have been infected with a disease that causes brain damage.
- Miraste 3y agoFrom what I've seen, significant loss of brain function is restricted to severe cases, which did not happen at scale in children. It's much more likely that ruining the school system for two years caused reduced educational outcomes.
- jeffbee 3y agoThe problem with that theory is there does not seem to have been any effect of shorter or longer remote schooling. Every school was closed for a few weeks, and about half of schools were closed for a year+, which sets up a perfect natural experiment. But there is not an observable link between longer remote schooling/closures and lower ACT scores.
- Miraste 3y agoThat's why I say ruined the school system instead of specifying remote schooling/closures. I think the damage was holistic. Certainly it was at the post-secondary level. Standards were dropped, instructors quit, students stopped caring, and everyone was passed regardless. No one learned anything even when the campuses were open.
- the_doctah 3y agoThe simplest explanation would be literally the opposite of the conclusion you arrived at.
- solsane 3y agoAs a TA the remote schooling definitely had an impact on the quality of incoming students.
- paulpauper 3y agoLower scores ironically means the test is more effective for identifying skill, talent, especially for those who are above average. Easier tests means they cease being as useful for admissions.
- bottlepalm 3y agoNot surprised, r/teachers is a horror show.
- paulpauper 3y agothere is also selection bias. happy teachers are less inclined to post . But I can imagine things have gotten worse. Entitled parents who think their special snowflake is a genius, rowdy students, politization of the curriculum, fighting, and a helplessness and powerlessness to do anything about it due to bureaucracy.
- bigfryo 3y agoYes, there's way too much truth getting out on that particular subreddit.. wouldn't be surprised if Reddit ends it
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoKids don't read, parents don't parent, and teachers are underpaid and expected to do all the work that parents used to do at home to help raise and teach the kids. Who could have imagined these results? I witnessed this in my own household. My ex-gf had 2 kids by birth and 2 more that were adopted because her sister is an addict. Her idea of raising those kids through school was to wait until she saw bad grades from her eldest and then go to the school to blame the teacher. Mine was to actually sit with them and force them to do their assignments and study, which was especially helpful for the eldest adopted child, who was dyslexic. I grew up in a two parent, college graduate household. She grew up in a single parent household. Our differences in parenting style (we were living together for 7 years) had something to do with our breakup. I was demanding where it benefitted the kids and their future. She was demanding when it benefitted her (getting out of doing things around the house by making them do it). Her eldest son is gifted and motivated and will probably do just fine. The others? Her eldest daughter is an excuse machine and the other one is just behind because of her dyslexia. Those kids have a ton of potential, they just need attention to reach it.
- drapado 3y agoDo you have numbers, data or sources to claim your first statements (not the one about teachers being underpaid)?
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoYes. They're called teachers. Talk to some. In 35 years, we've gone from kids having to do and show their own work to looking up answers online for everything and shortcutting their way through their educations because their parents aren't participating.
- p_j_w 3y ago>Yes. They're called teachers. Talk to some. GP was asking for data and your provided anecdotes. It seems the issues in our education systems go back to when you were in them.
- 3y ago
- Aurornis 3y agoMany universities stopped looking at the ACT and SAT for various reasons. The article mentions this: > Many universities have made standardized admissions tests optional amid criticism that they favor the wealthy and put low-income students at a disadvantage. Some including the University of California system do not consider ACT or SAT scores even if submitted. Anecdotally, I've talked to a few parents of HS students who saw these headlines and believed that standardized testing was no longer relevant. I'm not sure how many universities do or do not consider the ACT, but I suspect the downplaying has reduced people's urgency to prepare for it. Now for purely anecdote-based speculation: I've seen a strange social-media fueled malaise overtake the high school aged kids I've worked with. Teenagers are naturally going through ups and downs, but there's something weird about social media that lets them find content to fuel their cynicism and disdain for society. I'm not talking about the likes of Instagram, but rather the teenagers doomscrolling Reddit or TikToks about how society is crumbling, the world is ending, and there's no point to trying because "the American Dream is dead". Weirdly, this mentality was rampant among the computer science students I talked to, who were seemingly unaware that they were on track to earn a decent living with one of the most comfortable careers around. Shaking them of this belief felt like an impossible task when they were just going to go back to their homes and doomscroll Reddit for hours every day. I have no doubt this doomerism is playing into a decreased motivation to study and prepare for anything among a large subset of students.
- paulpauper 3y agoYes, optional does not mean it is not considered.
- Aurornis 3y agoTrue, but young person logic can some times translate that into a belief that they're better off omitting ACT scores. The non-standardized parts of the application process are becoming much easier to game, and parents/students are getting much better at it. I've even seen students set up "charitable foundations" or their own "startups" that were little more than shells set up by their parents with a quick website. "Looks good on an application!" was the refrain.
- outside1234 3y agoIsn't it a standardized test? Doesn't test scores dropping to 30 year low mean they have shifted the mean?
- Ferret7446 3y agoI can't speak for the test itself, but standardized is not the same thing as normalized.
- greenapple34 3y agoFirst of all, is a change from 19.8 to 19.5 really that significant? Perhaps a noteworthy aspect to consider is the ratio of school-required test takers that might not be prepared vs prepared takers. This is because the ACT is a test where the score varies greatly depending on preparation. (For example, I scored 27 on my first practice test, and after 5 more practice tests increased that to 34.) So perhaps one possible explanation is that there were more school required unprepared test takers and fewer prepared test takers this year.
- reducesuffering 3y agoWe were averaging 21 in the long term with minor fluctuations. There is a steep drop if you look at a historical graph. https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/act-test-scores-lowest-2023 https://www.axios.com/2023/10/11/act-test-scores-lowest-2023
- greenapple34 3y agoThanks for the link to a graph, I suppose that is a pretty big drop relative to previous years. I wonder what the trend will be in the future. I hope they don't make the ACT easier as compensation. I feel that the ACT is almost "too easy" already. For example, I would not consider myself academically talented (graduated mid tier public university with 3.5 GPA in electrical engineering), but I was able to get a 34 ACT after doing 6 practice tests. Also keep in mind that you can retake the ACT or SAT as many times as you desire. Thus, I feel like it looses its predictive qualities due to being so easy to score highly (if you prepare for it).
- ksjinool 3y agoThat should be ‘loses’ rather than ‘looses’ therefore you get no points for incorrect usage. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/lose-vs-loose-usage https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/lose-vs-loose-usage
- Nellyz 3y ago[dead]