Surprise in the new Kentucky Grade 11 ACT test results

The new ACT results from Kentucky’s public school Grade 11 testing program released this morning, and I got a surprise. I expected all the school districts to show a decline in their ACT Composite Scores between the last pre-COVID year, 2019, and the new 2022 results.

For the most part, the declines were indeed there.

But some school systems broke the curve. They actually showed increases in their ACT Composite Scores between 2019 and 2022, in most cases moving from below to above the state average score, as well.

Here’s the data on the top 10 performing districts.

In every case, the listed district’s 2022 ACT Composite Score is higher than the 2022 statewide average, and in seven of ten cases, the scores are even higher than the statewide average back in 2019. It’s really a surprise.

At present I am trying to find out what happened in these districts to explain their curve-breaking performances. So far, things like offering lots of dual credit, after school ACT prep, and using special math programs along with getting kids back in school quickly as possible have come up, but I still have a lot of schools to contact.

In any event, this is a note of good news in the midst of what generally has not been a good time for Kentucky’s public school system. As you can see in the table, statewide the average ACT Composite Score dropped from 19.0 in 2019 to only 18.3 in 2022. Very simply, that’s bad news.

Stay tuned because a lot of data dumped today, and it’s going to take time to work through all of it.

Tech Notes: ACT Scores came from 2019 and 2022 School Report Card datasets for academic performance.

2019 Data Here

2022 Data Here

https://bipps.org/blog/surprise-in-the-new-kentucky-grade-11-act-test-results

https://bit.ly/3GQ6w8B