Arkansas' 11th-grade average ACT college-entrance exam scores held steady during the 2015-16 school year despite an increase in the number of students taking the test, according to a new report from the testing agency.
The 2015-16 school year marked the first year in which the state offered all juniors in Arkansas high schools the ACT exam free of charge, increasing the number of participants by 22,348 -- a measure the state's Department of Education hopes will encourage students toward more higher-level high school coursework and give them a litmus test for measuring future progress.
"I encourage students and parents to use the ACT college readiness benchmark scores to select coursework that will ensure continued academic growth," Education Commissioner Johnny Key said in a statement.
Hope Allen, director of student assessment for the state Education Department, said the initiative to provide students with the test free of charge could help students who, before taking the test, might have thought they weren't ready for college.
"It allows them the opportunity to participate and can help them see that maybe they are cut out for college," she said.
Many times, Allen said, students will take the ACT more than once to boost their scores for a better chance at college admission.
Giving the ACT for free in students' junior year is like allowing them a trial run that, in some cases, motivates these students to take it a second or third time in their senior year, she said.
The results also indicated that students who took higher level coursework -- four or more years of English and three or more years each of math, social studies and science -- tended to do better on the ACT, both in individual categories of the test and in their composite score.
Allen said she hoped giving the ACT to juniors could give them a measure to plan for their senior years and prompt them to enroll in higher-level classes that could, in turn, raise their test scores and ensure they are better prepared for college.
Allen said Arkansas schools still have room to grow, and she called the report a good indicator of where the state and its students fall on the scale of college preparedness.
"From the local level, we're going to get the message to schools to encourage students to take more rigorous coursework in their senior year," she said. "We're going to provide professional development about the content of these courses and help teachers understand the level that needs to be taught here."
Stacy Smith, the assistant commissioner for learning services at the Education Department, said the state is focused on trying to raise the bar from looking past the minimum score needed to place out of remedial courses and into credit-bearing college courses, to pushing students further to meet the state's benchmark scores.
Students who take the ACT exam achieve a score between 1 and 36.
In Arkansas, students must get at least a 19 on the ACT in English, math and reading. If they fail to meet that mark, they are required to enroll in noncredit remedial college courses. If a student meets the benchmark score, they have a 75 percent chance of being able to get a "C" or higher in a college-credit course and a 50 percent chance of getting a "B" or better.
The percentage of students who met college benchmark standards during the 2015-16 school year remained virtually the same as for those who took the test in 2014-15. Forty-nine percent of Arkansas students who took the ACT met the benchmark in English by scoring an 18 or higher, 25 percent met the mathematics benchmark by scoring a 22 or higher, 31 percent met the reading benchmark by scoring a 22 or higher and 24 percent met the science benchmark by scoring a 23 or higher. Only 14 percent met the mark in all four categories.
But Smith said the scores aren't necessarily the sole indicator in determining whether a student will be ready for higher education.
"It's not just 'you get a 19 and you're ready for college,'" she said. "That's a mindset in Arkansas we need to change -- a 19 is just barely getting your foot in the door."
Brett Powell, director of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, said his agency had always used the ACT as the primary indicator of a student's preparedness for college. But the department is beginning to shift away from seeing the test scores as the only way to determine whether a student is ready for a college-level course.
"One thing we've done recently in higher education is changed the policy of when students are placed in remediation," he said. "Until now it was based on whether students had achieved a 19 in individual test sections, but what we've done with the new policy is recognize the ACT is one way to determine college readiness, not the entire picture on whether they're ready for college or should go to college."
Smith said the Department of Education is in the beginning stages of sharing data with schools about where the majority of students are going after high school and the curricula they're taking -- a process that she hopes will shed light on the areas in which schools need to better prepare students.
"I think we're in a period where every student needs some type of post-secondary education, whether it's college, technical education, an apprenticeship, etc.," she said. "Post-secondary education is important and we communicate that by talking to kids in high school about what they want to do next and making sure they understand the steps they need to take. Rigorous coursework in high school will help with that."
Powell said the Higher Education department is also working with a couple of college readiness programs to make sure students are prepared academically and financially -- and to change the perspective of what higher education means.
"The public generally has a narrow view [of higher education]," he said. "That's probably our fault for the way we talk about what college means -- in Arkansas, it's everything from six months or shorter for a training program ... all the way through graduate degrees."
But, Powell said, the state's future in higher education is on an upward trend with a decline in those enrolled in college remediation courses and a positive shift in student preparedness.
In recent years, Smith said, the state is seeing a new boom in the number of high school students pursuing post-secondary education with the incentive of more scholarships and greater accessibility to resources once they enter college.
"Right now, over the last couple of years, college has been promoted to an option students thought they'd never have," she said. "Higher education has a lot of initiatives in the state about getting in touch with kids their freshman year and supporting them throughout."
Smith said perhaps one of the best chances for improvement in high school testing standards came from the state's new directive mandating that all public school students in grades 3-10 take the end-of-year ACT Aspire test to measure student achievement.
Ninth-graders' scores, specifically, are used as predictor scores for those who will go on to take the ACT college entrance exam in the following years. Though the ACT Aspire differs slightly from its counterpart, Smith said the predictor scores could be used for educators to adopt a more rigorous standard of teaching and prompt students to enroll in more challenging classes.
But, she said, college preparedness also hinges on students' recognition of their own abilities.
"We do still have work to be done to help encourage students and help them think that they have the potential to go on to college, recognize their potential and take the courses that support that," she said.
While some see the results as a stepping stone, others say there should be less emphasis placed on testing as a measure of college preparedness.
State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, said test scores are still a poor indicator, pointing to steadiness in the state's test scores in spite of Arkansas' recent changes to its state-administered end-of-year assessments.
"If we keep changing the entrance exam and our scores are relatively constant, I think that really should prompt a discussion about our coursework and the entrance requirements for school," she said. "If the requirements are changing and the scores aren't, then we're putting too much stock in tests."
In 2014, Arkansas students in select districts became the first to take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers -- or PARCC -- that replaced the state's long-used benchmark and end-of-course tests. For the 2015-16 school year, the PARCC was replaced by ACT Aspire as the state's end-of-year assessment, making it the third set of state-mandated tests in three years.
"If we're going to keep spending money on a test to find out where we are as a state, I'm not sure why we're doing it," Elliott said.
Elliott also cited problems with the measurements used to determine students' need for remedial courses. A student should be able to enroll in a regular credit-bearing course with more support or take a remedial class as a co-requisite, she said.
"People don't get better by taking easier classes and you can't learn to run a marathon by running 2 miles," she said.
Elliott called test results too convenient -- a measure that doesn't show the whole picture or provide an explanation as to why a student might be struggling. She also feared low tests scores have become a kind of 'self-fulfilling prophecy' -- one that could discourage low-scoring students who viewed their test scores as a sign of an inability to succeed in college.
College entrance, Elliott said, necessitated a clear definition of the tools needed for students to be successful.
"It should not just be a matter of legislation with test scores," she said. "That is a foolish policy."
Intrusive data, like checking up on students when they miss class or asking them about their lives outside of school, could be better for encouraging students' post-secondary success and cheaper for the state in the long term, she said.
Additionally, Elliott said schools needed to look toward using assessments as a way to inform teaching and learning, not as a tell-all of student success.
But, Elliott said, long before students reach high school, schools need to invest resources in students at the early elementary level and understand what makes a successful teacher.
"We need to make sure we invest in kids having a great start," she said. "We can't wait until they get to college before we talk about remediation."
State Desk on 07/02/2016