According to the ACT organization, about 23% of Missouri high school graduates are college ready. Nancy Bowles with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education tells Missourinet students have gained a little ground.
“That’s up a percent, but it’s pretty clear that there’s still some work to be done to ensure that all kids are able to succeed on the test,” says Bowles.
This year’s class in Missouri has a slightly higher average score of 20.4. The national average ACT score is 21.
About 56% of Missouri graduates are college ready in English, 40% in reading, 32% in math and 31% in science. These scores remained flat or increased slightly from the previous year.
Most of Missouri’s minority students continue to fall behind the rest of the student population on their college entrance exams. Asian students have the highest average score of 23, followed by white students with 20.8, Hispanics with 18.8 and African Americans with 16.5.
“We hope that there might be a student who hadn’t been considering college before, but when he or she got their ACT results back they thought ‘Well hey, I can go to college.’”
Seventeen states, including Missouri, have tested 100% of its 2017 graduates. The Show-Me state has the fourth highest ACT score among that group of states. When compared to all 50 states, Missouri is ranked 31st.
The ACT organization says about one-tenth of 1% of students taking the exam earn a perfect score of 36. Of this year’s graduating class, 71 Missouri students have received the top achievement.
