The real news in Inside Higher Ed’s “ACT Scores Drop Slightly — Except for Asians” is not this year’s drop to 21.1 from 21.2 on a 36-point scale in. The real news, actually an ever-strengthening trend is the increasingly widespread use of the ACT, previously limited mainly to the Midwest. The highlights:
- “For the high school class of 2008, 1.42 million students took the ACT,
a 9 percent increase from the previous year and a 21 percent increase
from 2004.” - Over the last five years, the ACT population has become more diverse.
- “Increasing numbers of students in what have been SAT strongholds have
been taking the ACT — although in many cases they take both tests,
since virtually all colleges will accept either one, and then submit
the better score. Many college counselors say that students who do well
in high school courses but who don’t “test well” tend to do better on
the ACT than on the SAT.”
