According to the organization that administers the standardized college preparation test, the country’s 2022 graduating high school class had the lowest average ACT score in more than 30 years.
According to ACT, the nationwide average ACT composite score for the class of 2022 was 19.8, the first score below 20.0 since 1991.
The four ACT exam components — English, math, reading, and science — are evaluated separately on a range of 1 to 36, with a composite score representing the average.
“This is the seventh straight year of average score decreases, a troubling trend that started well before the interruption of the COVID-19 epidemic and has endured,” stated ACT CEO Janet Godwin.
“The extent of the decreases this year is especially concerning, as we observe rapidly increasing percentages of seniors graduating from high school without reaching the college-readiness criterion in any of the disciplines we test.”
Godwin stated that the drop in ACT scores is not primarily due to the epidemic.
“They provide more evidence of long-standing institutional inadequacies that were compounded by the epidemic,” she added. “Returning to pre-pandemic conditions would be inadequate and would be a disservice to children and educators.”
“These systemic failures require sustained collective action and support for the academic recovery of high school students as an urgent national priority and imperative.”
The proportion of high school seniors meeting none of the ACT college readiness benchmarks — the minimum scores required for students to have a higher probability of success in college — continue to rise.
The ACT has benchmarks for the four sections. Among the 2022 graduating class, 22% of students met all four benchmarks, while 42% of students met none of the benchmarks.
The percentage of students meeting all four benchmarks dropped from 25% in 2021, and the percentage of students meeting no benchmarks increased from 38%.
ACT reported year-over-year declines in:
English scores, from 19.6 to 19.0.
Math scores, from 19.9 to 19.3.
Reading scores, from 20.9 to 20.4.
Science scores, from 20.4 to 19.9.
The College Board, another nonprofit organization that administers standardized tests, last month noted a slight decline in scores for the SAT, which is widely used for college admissions in the U.S.
