A report released last month by American College Testing (ACT) showed that only nine percent of underserved students — compared to 54 percent of students who were not underserved — were strongly ready for college as demonstrated by 2017 test scores.
The report demonstrates a wide achievement gap in college readiness between the two demographics of students, but education scholars and advocates say college administrators and policy makers should refrain from using the report’s statistical data for admissions and high stakes decisions without first considering the data in the proper context.
The ACT report titled “The Condition of College & Career Readiness” is “framed in a really deficit way in terms of problematizing low-income students, students of color [and] first-generation college students,” said Dr. Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at The Education Trust.
“Someone could read this report easily and say, ‘OK,’ and have some data and ammunition for an argument that ‘these students should not be admitted to college. They are not ready—maybe it’s not their fault—but they are not ready. And they don’t deserve to be there.’” Jones said.
In the report, ACT defines underserved students as those who “would be the first generation in their family to attend college, come from low-income families and/or self-identify their race/ethnicity as minority.”
Bullet points throughout the report provide an analysis of overall performance of 2017 high school graduates using demographic data, and also feature data on potential career trajectories for students and percentages on student benchmarks in various subject categories.
An ACT press statement following the report’s publication said: “Underserved students lag far behind their peers when it comes to college and career readiness, and the more underserved characteristics that students possess, the less likely they are to be ready.”
