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The new ACT scores are out, and that allowed me to update my long-running analysis of public school and non-public school student performance on this assessment. Here is how that looks.

This first table shows the performance over time for Kentucky’s public school students who took the ACT under the standard testing time conditions.

You will note that the scores dropped sharply in 2009, the first year that all Kentucky graduating seniors took the ACT. Prior to that year, only around three out of four graduates took this college entrance test.

Since 2009, the public schools have made fairly constant progress after a slight stumble in 2010. However, the rate of progress is still slow.

Now, here is how Kentucky’s private and home schools performed.

Note the trends in scores are different. Several years after the passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990, the other than public school students’ ACT scores in Kentucky started to drop, a process that continued until 1998. Since then, the other than public school ACT scores in Kentucky started a remarkable recovery. And, in 2013 these schools of choice hit their highest performance ever with an ACT Composite Score of 23.9, well above the statewide public school average.

Clearly, Kentucky’s few schools of choice (private schools and home schools) are doing a remarkable job. We just need more schools like them.

ACT results for all graduating seniors in the Class of 2013, public and private school combined, have been released.

ACT changed the way it reported scores this year, and that makes it trickier than ever to insure doing “Apples-to-Apples” comparisons of the new data to that from previous years.

So, in this first post I only look at 2013 data, which for the first time adds scores from students with learning disabilities who qualified for extended time during the test administration to scores for students who took the test under the standard time limit. This change drags down the overall 2013 ACT averages slightly compared to other years.

Another issue with state-to-state comparisons of ACT data is that in some states only a small proportion of the graduates take this college entrance test. It is important to compare results from states that have high percentages of their graduates tested.

So, how does Kentucky compare to other Southern States that tested very high percentages of their graduates (at least 95%)? This table tells the tale (click on it to enlarge if necessary).

As you can see from the many green shaded scores for the other listed states, Kentucky generally trails on ACT for every racial group listed for all the states except North Carolina.

Louisiana is particularly important in this comparison because it has strongly embraced charter schools to help turn its chronically low performing schools around. It looks like something very good is happening in this leading charter school state – a message I wish our leaders in Frankfort would finally appreciate. Most of the score differences between Louisiana and Kentucky in the table are notable.

I should add a comment on North Carolina. This state has traditionally favored the SAT for college entrance testing. Just one year ago, only 20 percent of North Carolina’s graduates took the ACT. So, experience with the ACT is low in that state at present. I would not be surprised to see a rapid rise in scores for that state over the next few years as familiarity with the ACT grows.

Another point, one I have often made about comparing state scores with the National Assessment of Educational Progress such as here, is that while Kentucky generally trails for each racial group compared to Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, the overall score for all students in Kentucky exceeds those states’ overall scores. That happens only because Kentucky has many more white students than the other states do. Even though our whites score lower than whites in other states, our whites do tend to outscore all the racial minority groups in other states. So, when everything gets averaged together, Kentucky looks good. But, that really isn’t an accurate picture. You have to disaggregate the data by race to see this, as I have done in the table above. Clearly, Kentucky isn’t doing better than the other states (except North Carolina).

A few closing notes – The scores reported above are for all students in the state, public, home school and private schools combined. They are not the same as public school only scores reported by the Kentucky Department of Education, which did show a 0.1 point improvement in the ACT Composite Score in 2013. You can see that in the Kentucky Department of Education’s News Release 13-082, which does an “Apples to Apples” comparison of public school only scores for Kentucky from 2009 to 2013 (But only for students who took the ACT in the standard time limit).

Also, to repeat, the scores in the table above include both standard time and extended time, but college reportable, students’ scores.

I think this is a pretty good “Apples-to-Apples” comparison, but I’ll be happy to listen if someone disagrees.

Stay tuned, because I am working on something I get asked for every year: the scores for Kentucky’s non-public school students. It’s a special, value-added bit of research you can only find at the Bluegrass Institute.