ACT Endorses Call for Tougher High School Courses

February 24, 1998

IOWA CITY, IOWA—ACT data reveal clearly that a large majority of U. S. high school graduates are not prepared to earn a grade higher than C in their first college math and science courses, ACT President Richard L. Ferguson said today.

Ferguson was responding to an invitation for reactions to the Third International Math and Science Study, released by the National Center for Education Statistics, and to U. S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley's observation that too few students take trigonometry, calculus and physics in high school.

"We commend those who conducted this study for their contribution to U. S. educational improvement efforts," Ferguson said. "It’s an additional indicator that more high school students need to follow a rigorous course of study, especially in math and science."

"ACT's message for years has been that ACT scores are directly related to preparation for college. Students who take the core courses that prepare them for college classwork achieve much higher test scores than students who don’t, and higher test scores are predictive of success in college."

Each year nearly one million U. S. students—over 60 percent of the next college freshman class—graduate from high school with scores from the ACT college admissions and placement tests in English, mathematics, reading and science reasoning.

"The ACT Assessment is not an end-of-school exam, because not all students take it," Ferguson said. "It’s a transitions assessment that accurately shows what students are ready to study in college."

"Those who have taken the core courses earn average test scores across the board nearly three scale points higher than the average for students who haven't taken a full core curriculum. In regard to math specifically, we see that students who take trigonometry and calculus average over seven points more on the ACT math test than students who stop at algebra II."

The ACT score scale is 1-36, and differences of three to seven scale points are extremely large.

How this score differential translates into college success is revealed by ACT research into the grades of ACT-tested students, Ferguson added.

Each year ACT collects freshman grades from hundreds of colleges and universities. Researchers then match students' grades to their ACT scores to identify the typical scores at which students can expect an even probability of earning a grade of at least B-.

"Only 43 percent of students who have taken the core curriculum reach that level for college algebra," Ferguson said, "and only 25 percent for introductory calculus."

Among those who have not taken the core curriculum, the percentages prepared to do better than C-level work are much lower: 19 and 10 respectively.

In chemistry, Ferguson said, fewer than half—44 percent—of even U.S. college-bound students who have taken rigorous core courses are prepared to earn a B. Only 24 percent of non-core-prepared students are similarly prepared.

"We’ve received another wakeup call," Ferguson said. "If the nation is to realize its goals for the 21st century, especially in technology, we must see to it that more citizens are highly literate in advanced math and science. In other words, we must recommit ourselves to this national purpose much as we did forty years ago upon the launching of Sputnik."

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