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Fayette ACT scores drop significantly

Posted 2/23/22

Fayette’s average ACT dropped nearly three points, according to numbers from the district. 

The ACT is a standardized exam that covers the four academic skill areas of English, …

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Fayette ACT scores drop significantly

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Fayette’s average ACT dropped nearly three points, according to numbers from the district. 

The ACT is a standardized exam that covers the four academic skill areas of English, mathematics, reading, and science reasoning. Test scores are one metric that college admission personnel use to determine qualified student applications. The highest score achievable is 36. Fayette’s average score for 2021 totaled 18.7, well below the state average of 20.6, and down from 21.6 the year before.

However, the score shown by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) shows Fayette’s average score at 19.1 for 2021. The reason for the discrepancy is not known. Fayette superintendent Jill Wiseman hypothesized that the different numbers could have been tallied based on when students took the tests and when scores were reported.

“I think it’s just a variation in reporting,” Wiseman said.

Either way, both numbers are down. The dip comes after a trend of steadily rising scores from prior years. Over the five previous years, average scores increased each year from 18.8 in 2016 to 22 in 2020, according to results provided by DESE. Over the last five years, the number of students taking the exam each year ranged from 21 to 42. Twenty-one students scored an average of 21.6 in 2020, nearly a full point above the state average of 20.7 for that year.

The scores were revealed at the Fayette Board of Education’s most recent meeting on Wednesday, February 16.

“We did see a drop from where we had been the previous couple of years,” Wiseman told the board. “With one class to the next, you’re going to see differences. But obviously, as with everything else with the pandemic, those kids had less opportunities to test. They had less opportunities for ACT prep.”

No discussion by the seven-member board took place regarding the drop in scores.

During a brief interview with this newspaper following the board’s meeting, Wiseman explained that with only 27 graduating seniors—just over 60% of the class—taking the exam, even two or three low scores could have reduced the overall average. She suggested the disruption to schools by the COVID-19 pandemic could have been a factor. But every school in the state faced those same circumstances and the state average only dipped a tenth of a point from the previous year to 20.6.

“You’re talking about 27 kids that it’s based on,” Wiseman explained. “From year to year, you have different classes of different kids. It’s easier to see a bigger increase or decrease when you’re talking about a smaller number of kids compared to the state which has thousands of kids.”

The Fayette district began a four-day school week schedule starting with the 2020-21 school year. Schools that transition from five-day weeks to four-day weeks tend to produce lower test scores after making the change. As reported in the November 13, 2019, Fayette Advertiser, between 2012 and 2018, the average reported ACT scores for Missouri schools on the four-day schedule dropped from 21.1 to 18.6, according to DESE. In many schools, average scores tend to stabilize in the years following the transition.

In an article recently published in Education Next, a quarterly journal that publishes peer-reviewed research about educational issues, author Paul. N. Thompson wrote that students earn lower math and reading scores on standardized tests after their schools switch to a four-day schedule. 

“Overall, average math scores decrease by 5.9 percent of a standard deviation in math as a result of the switch to the four-day school week, while reading scores decrease by 4.2 percent of a standard deviation. That is nearly one-third the size of the impact of having a larger class size, and equal to losing 40 minutes of reading instruction and about an hour of math instruction each week,” he wrote in his article, “The Shrinking School Week: Effects of a four-day schedule on student achievement.”

Thompson is an associate professor of economics at Oregon State University and a research affiliate at the Institute for Labor Economics.

Fayette’s scores showed considerable drops in all four sections of the ACT. In English, the score dropped from 21.4 to 17.8, and from 20.1 to 18.1 in mathematics. In science, the average score fell from 20.9 to 19.9. The largest decline happened in the reading portion of the exam. The score dropped a total of 4.9 points from 23.3 to 18.4. Fayette finished below the state average in all four categories. (These figures are the scores reported by the district which show an average score of 18.7, rather than the average of 19.1 reported by DESE.)

Despite the lower ACT scores associated with four-day school districts, longer-term academic effects are not known due to how recent the trend has become. According to surveys to parents from the Fayette school district, the change is largely seen as positive by parents.

Elsewhere in Howard County, New Franklin students scored an average of 21.4 with 75.9% of graduating seniors taking the exam. In Glasgow, 66.7% of graduating seniors took the exam with an average score of 21.1. Both districts go to school five days a week.

Nearby, nearly 80% of Harrisburg graduating seniors took the exam and scored an average of 21.1. Harrisburg has been on a four-day schedule since 2012. Higbee, which has been on a four-day schedule since 2018, recorded a score of 17.4 with all graduating seniors taking the exam.

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