ACT scores signal university’s needs

Students hoping to come straight from high school to AASU are required to have either an SAT or ACT score tucked under their belts. While the SAT remains the dominant power of the two, the ACT has been gaining steam in the last couple of years for its comprehensive approach to testing that utilizes more subject-specific tests than the SAT.

Every year, more than one million outgoing high-school seniors take the ACT.

Last year alone, over 1.5 million students took the test in preparation for joining the college grind. In Georgia that was 40,000 students, or 44 percent of high school graduates.

So it's a big deal when the national ACT scores drop.

On a national level, the graduating class of 2010 – the incoming class of 2014 – has the lowest ACT scores in the past five years.

Before they've even settled into the collegiate lifestyle, it seems like our freshman are in hot water.

Is this troublesome? Yes.

Should it be? Yes.

Could it be worse? Definitely.

ACT, Inc., the folks who administer the test, said this year's numbers are deceiving. They've set four benchmarks for progress over the last few years that measure how prepared students are for entering college. These criteria, which cover reading comprehension, English composition, math and science, reflect – supposedly – how well students will perform in these subjects once they get to college.

Questions of effectiveness aside, the number of students meeting these benchmarks, which vary between 18 and 24 depending on the subject, has been rising.

With the currently poor test scores, the students reaching these standards are a measly 24 percent. Georgia is lower, at 21 percent of students meeting these benchmarks.

That might seem bad, but both of these numbers are actually up over the last couple of years.

The national average of preparedness has risen three percent over the last four years. As the scores have been going down in some of the areas, like English composition, they've been rising to the benchmarks in others, such as mathematics. While the net movement of the scores is a drop, a slight upward momentum has been taking hold in the areas with the lower benchmarks.

Granted, most students probably don't take the testing itself very well. A large part of the issue might be whether or not students have adequate experience preparing for standardized tests.

Knowing the format is key. If the format is unfamiliar to some students, they will likely perform beneath their potential on the ACT. Understanding this, some of these students might fare better in college than this year's numbers indicate.

Regardless, these scores are still low.

We know that this seems like something people are told on those abysmal days when their cars are towed, and they missed turning in papers because they are standing in the rain waiting for the bus. However, there is something that AASU can do.

This semester, AASU offered four English 99 courses and 12 courses that cover mathematics below 1001. These courses work to pick up the slack that the high schools leave, since these institutions have left the students who need them high and dry. However, AASU does not have enough of these courses, especially in English.

These academic proficiencies do not magically appear in the students' skill sets as they stroll around the campus. If our high schools are failing their students, we need to pick up the slack when they come here.

AASU needs a more comprehensive plan to transition these incoming students academically and measure the kinds of assistance they need in basic areas of the core.

With this abnormally large incoming class, the administration has been at least partially aware of its special needs. They have worked hard to accommodate the influx with new dorms and facilities, but these students need academic programs more than anything else. The improvements that have been given to them until now have been in college infrastructure. AASU requires the presence of more professors who are trained to pick up the slack left in the educational system at the high-school level. These are educators – not researchers – that we are talking about. AASU has moved away from the former toward the latter in the last few years, yet these are the professionals whose skills are required to tackle this issue.

In the end, we cannot change how high schools deal with their students and what the system's instructors might fail to teach its pupils. We can alter how our institution responds to a deficiency in the system. AASU can ignore the students' needs, or it can step up.

It isn't the university's responsibility to teach these students what they should have learned in high school, but the loss of the students due to circumstances beyond their control helps no one. If we lose struggling students because of a preventable issue, then they don't do anyone any good.