Comments about ‘New study questions validity of ACT college entrance exam’

"Just 35 percent of students who started their post-secondary degree in 2003 had finished within the following six years."

Here's a little insight from my time at college.

First off, you can't get a BS/BA in 4 years anymore. All the schools have found ways to push it to 5 years minimum. So taking 6 years (or more) to finish what was advertised as a 4 year degree isn't all that rare.

About a quarter of entrants are going to drop out after a year or two b/c it's either too expensive or they just can't hack it.

Another 25% of entrants are going to take 2 or 3 years in one major, decide they hate it, then move to another major. This would extend their stay by 3-4 years, depending on how much overlap there is between their old major and the new one.

Finally, we have to figure that a significant percentage of college students are adults taking classes part time to get a degree while they work 40 hours a week. Furthering your education is pretty darn popular these days, especially among adults in dead-end career fields.

The ACT doesn't tell you squat in my opinion. It just tells how fast you can take tests. I took the test twice in high school and got the same score both times. I feel the score doesn't reflect my intelligence at all. Give me the proper time to do the work and my score would have been much better. I don't work as 'fast' as most people, but that doesn't mean I am not as smart. I like to think of myself as a thorough school worker. My Science and Math scores were relatively high, but my Reading and English were 5-6 points lower (yet, still above average). I don't read as fast as most people, but I can do advanced Calculus like it's my job. Time is to big of a factor in your score. These standardized tests are a flawed indicator of how 'smart' you are.

The ACT math and English scores are good predictors of college success, and therefore life success. In a knowledge based economy, we need to to a better job of equipping our children to compete for global jobs.

Math in our high schools is dumbed down and watered down. Writing is graded in our Middle schools by computers that give higher scores simply for stringing more words together. We focus too much on grades and not enough on knowlege. We have too many young, inexperienced teachers teaching key courses such as math, English, chemistry, statistics and physics. We have too many electives to "broaden" our students but have neglected the core. We don't pay our math and hard science teachers enough, so most of them leave teaching and end up in administration. We give WAY too much extra credit and grades are grossly inflated, giving a false sense of mastry and little incentive to work harder. There is too much busy work and too little real analytical thinking and analysis.

We need to get serious about education people. It's time to expect more of our schools, more of our students, and as parents and taxpayers, more of ourselves.

"carman" You allude to why ACT tests are administered in the first place.

That is: the colleges don't really trust the public schools to grade fairly. There is such a hodge-podge of public school standards and grades, that the colleges/universities feel a need to bring in a "third party" to assess the abilities of students.
Thus, the ACT.

The ACT score is not trying to assess how smart or intelligent you are, just how college ready you are. Having to work fast in college is often expected. There is a big difference and many get that confused. An intelligence test attempts to tell you how smart you are. In both cases they are just indicators with a certain degree of flaws.

I have to agree with UtahUte16, standardized tests are an indication of how good you are at taking timed tests. I agree that we need to get serious about education, but believing the ACT is a good predictor of college success or life success is flawed. My oldest two children received composite scores of 32 and 28 respectivily with subtest scores in the same range. They both flunked out their first semester of college. (They both did eventually graduate). My youngest child received a 17 composite and lower subtest scores,indicating she was not prepared for college. However, at that time she had already taken and passed college level courses. She completed her first two years of college on the Dean's list and is on track to finish her degree in four years. A possible difference; school was more difficult for her than her siblings. She actually had to learn study skills.

There are numerous things that factor into someone's success both in school and in life. Placing so much emphasis on a standarized test does a disservice to many students who will succeed if given the chance.

For those who feel they don't perform well under a limited time period, request that admissions at your college accept results from the other test created by ACT; Compass. Where ACT is intended to predict future academic performance, Compass is intended to measure your current level of skills. And, it is NOT timed.

My only other thought on the article is that there are usually a broad variety of issues that can lead to an individual to discontinue a college program of study.

All 3 of my kids are very good students and very smart. One is a good test taker and scored really high on the ACT, getting a full four year scholarship to a very good school. The other two got average ACT scores but did even better than the first one in college, earning full scholarships once they got there, which required a much higher GPA than the great test taker had to keep. A student will never in college have to do anything that is anything like the ACT. The ACT might be a good indicator of a student's ability, but there are things it doesn't measure. I wish there was another way to measure that was more accurate, especially for giving out scholarships.

I've never met anyone who called the ACT meaningless that did well on it.

I've also never met anyone who received a low ACT score and poor grades in high school yet succeeded in college.

The ACT measures your mental ability to learn concepts at the high school level. High school grades measure your tendency to work hard and organize yourself. Those two items--smarts and gumption--are exactly what you need in order to succeed in college.

If you do poorly on grades or test scores, maybe your strengths can overcome your weaknesses. If you do poorly on both of them, what evidence is there that you could handle college? Why should the rest of us pay for you to be in college when you didn't master high school material?

I also agree with UtahUte16. Strangely, math was my lowest score on the ACT (or second lowest after science, one of those two) although math is definitly my strong point academically. The ACT tests how good of a timed test-taker you are. In the CRT end of school exams (not timed) I got a 97% and I have gotten A's and A-'s in my calculus courses at BYU (which are graded on a curve and is intended to "weed out" students). If you bet money guessing what my college GPA would be based on my ACT score was, you would be broke!

The problem with education now is that these standardized tests are emphasized so much that teachers have to teach for passing the test rather than teach the subject. Standardized testing can be a great tool, but as it is now has made our education system too superficial. Let teachers teach what they need to teach! Don't let these tests get in the way of your education!

"I've never met anyone who called the ACT meaningless that did well on it.

I've also never met anyone who received a low ACT score and poor grades in high school yet succeeded in college."

I don't know what you would call a low ACT score and poor grades, but I feel that I did rather poor in both areas. My high school GPA: 3.14 College GPA: 3.92 My ACT score was in the mid 20's (low 20's the first time I took it). Call me a college failure if you want, it won't hurt me.

@Riverton Cougar:

A high school GPA of 3.14 and an ACT score in the mid-20s is actually above average. Not Ivy League material, but nothing to scoff at, either. It's been a few years since I've followed the statistics, but if memory serves correctly, the average high school graduate GPA is around 3.00 and the average ACT score is just under 20.

Out of all the college graduates I know, none scored below a 20 on the ACT, to my knowledge. That's just anecdotal evidence, of course, but it seems to support a mindset that the ACT is at least reflective of some level of academic capability.

All that aside, people need to understand that the ACT is only tangentially related to your level of intelligence. It's designed to be a test of how well you can think, and it is not all that rare to find students with poor GPAs scoring extremely well on it and students with high GPAs scoring extremely low on it for that reason.

Regardless, I would think common sense would tell us that basing a person's entire academic and intellectual achievement potential on a single test is simply foolish.

What the problems and question of the ACT test is proving is the failure of our schools to educate student enough to be ready for college. So rather than the governments admit that lower education is a failure, they to change a test to match the poor quality of education. For the last 2 decades the schools have become day care centers, immigration sanctuaries, hospitals, treatment centers for the mentally deranged, business controlled OJT education as their primary core objectives. Education and teaching are bottom rung objectives, an afterthought, a maybe.

So when high school students are graduated and can't read, write, or do basic math skills who else can the schools blame? It's not the tax payers and underfunding (not when $110,000,000 is given to the RDA's), its not the lack of teachers, and its not the lack of desire by students that is creating a country of Americans that can't take a simple test. The ACT is not meant to establish IQ or learning ability, it's meant to challenge the schools. That should be the focus of their investigation, not change the test to match poor education.

I agree with Deltafoxtrot comment. In this state, it is very normal for many LDS to take off two years for their church. The six year cut off is to short here in Utah. I had one year as in general education, then took off two years for an LDS mission. Then I went to the University of Utah and majored in a degree that requires six years to complete. According to this article, I would be counted as a drop out, and thats not the case.