Officials at ACT say the statistics—based on national ACT data and a new report titled “The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014: African American Students”—suggest that African-American students are being subjected to less rigorous instruction than that of their peers who perform better on the ACT.
“We know the impact it can have,” said Steve Kappler, a vice president at ACT, speaking in reference to the impact of rigorous classes and high-quality instruction, or lack thereof.
If students are taking the right courses yet achieving different results, Kappler said, “It’s not necessarily about the students per se. It’s about a system.”
The report released Monday shows that ACT-tested African-American high school students who took the “core curriculum” courses—that is, four years of English, three years of math, science and social studies—routinely met the ACT college readiness benchmarks at a higher rate than African-American high school students who took less than the core curriculum.
More specifically, those who took the “core or more” met the ACT college readiness benchmark at a rate of 36 percent in English, 19 percent in reading, 15 percent in math and 11 percent in science, whereas those who took “less than core” met the benchmarks in those subjects at a rate of 15, 11, 2 and 4 percent, respectively.
However, even though African-American students who took the “core or more” did better than African-American students who did not, when compared to other students nationally who took the core or more, the situation is different.
