Minnesota’s 2020 high school graduates recorded slight declines in both participation and performance on the ACT college admissions exam.
Ninety-two percent of the class took the test, down from 95 percent in the previous class.
The average composite score was 21.3, down from 21.4 the year before.
SCORE STILL BEST IN NATION AMONG STATES WITH HIGH PARTICIPATION
That score still was best in the nation among states where participation is high.
“Minnesota’s future depends on the success of our students today and I’m proud of the accomplishments of the class of 2020,” Education Commissioner Mary Cathryn Ricker said in a prepared statement.
Minnesota in 2015 began requiring schools to offer the ACT during the school day, with the state covering the exam fees. Participation, which was 78 percent among 2015 graduates, jumped to 99-100 percent in the years that followed.
But the state stopped those payments in 2018 amid complaints that students were spending too much classroom time taking a variety of tests.
Policymakers saw school-day ACT testing as a way to encourage more students to attend college. But that doesn’t seem to have worked.
Sixty-seven percent of Minnesota’s 2018 high school graduates — the most recent year that data is available — enrolled in college within months of graduation. That’s down from 69 percent in 2015 and 71 percent in 2013.
That decline could be explained, in part, by rising high school graduation rates.
CAN’T BLAME PANDEMIC
Nationwide, the 2020 high school graduates posted an average composite score of 20.6, down from 20.7 the previous year. Forty-nine percent of graduates took the exam, down from 52 percent.
Scores have been dropping across all races except among Asian students.
Average scores typically rise as participation falls, but that was not the case with the 2020 class.
The coronavirus pandemic is not to blame, as students typically take the ACT as high school juniors.