High school juniors across Missouri take the ACT exam on the state’s dime

The news that every Raytown High School junior would be taking the ACT college entrance exam Tuesday turned 17-year-old Derek Frazier into a highly sought resource among his classmates.

Derek had already taken the high-stakes national test twice on his own before Missouri became the 18th state to require — and pay for — the test for all juniors statewide.

“They were asking me questions,” he said. “Asking me about the science portion of it, what they need to know.”

There was, 17-year-old Destiny Gee agreed, some “freaking out.”

But the state educators who made the decision to invest the $3.8 million for the statewide exams would like another observation shared by the Raytown teens after Tuesday’s testing.

Everyone had their thoughts on college, said 16-year-old Viviana Olvera, including “some whose parents didn’t go to college, who can get an ACT score and feel like they can do something more in their life.”

In all, an estimated 65,000 juniors across Missouri took the test in their high schools Tuesday morning, with the state covering the cost of the $50 test. A year ago, 50,000 students’ families mostly paid for the test on their own.

“You get a different conversation,” said Raytown High School counselor Shana Bobbitt.

Students see more than ever that the ACT and college preparation “is something we will do together,” she said. “It’s something we do as a school.”

Not everyone likes the mandated-testing trend.

The time and money education spends on standardized testing have come under criticism from groups like FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing. As achievement gaps persist, standardized tests are struggling through concerns over potential cultural biases.

But while FairTest is pushing universities to reduce or eliminate their use of the entrance exams, more students than ever are taking the ACT.

By garnering state-funded contracts, the ACT is engaged in some “shrewd marketing,” said Bob Schaeffer, FairTest’s public education director.

The test is being sold “wholesale” at taxpayers’ expense, Schaeffer said, rather than “retail,” one to one, at families’ expense.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education sees the ACT test as an important and useful measure of the state’s public school performance, Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven said.

Missouri is embarked on its “Top 10 by ’20” mission to get Missouri public schools performing in the top 10 in all significant national measures by 2020.

College and career readiness are among the highest priorities, Vandeven said.

“An ACT score is a way to help students, their families and our schools determine if our students are graduating ready for college and careers,” she said in a written statement.

Missouri and Kansas have for many years stood among states that have the highest participation in the ACT test among their graduating classes.

In Kansas, 75 percent of graduating seniors in 2014 had taken the ACT. In Missouri, 76 percent took the test.

Missouri’s percentage will rise near 100 percent once this year’s juniors graduate in 2016.

Kansas does not require the ACT, but the Kansas City, Kan., school district has been testing all its students in the ACT since 2012.

The district received a federal waiver granting its wish to use the ACT and its preparatory tests as its chief academic performance measures, rather than the Kansas Assessments used by the rest of the state.

The district made the change, saying it wanted to increase its focus on the target of college preparation, more directly measure its success toward that goal and motivate more students.

Missouri school districts are looking for the same boost in college prep energy.

“We had students who didn’t think they would be going to college or taking the ACT who were excited to take it,” said Michele Eagle, Raytown’s guidance and assessment coordinator.

“The accessibility being in the school made a big difference.”

From the moment the district informed parents last fall that its high schools would be giving a free test in the spring, eager parents found it hard to believe, Raytown spokeswoman Cathy Allie said.

“They were asking, ‘Is this real?’” she said. “Is this the ACT test?”

The ACT is one of two major college entrance exams students use in bolstering their college applications.

The SAT, which is more prevalent on the East and West coasts, for years was more commonly used, but the ACT, dominant in the central U.S., overtook the SAT in total testers in 2010.

More than 1.84 million students in the class of 2014 took the ACT, and more than 1.67 million took the SAT — record numbers for both tests. Many students took both.

At its latest count, FairTest lists more than 850 colleges and universities that no longer require some or any applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores.

So the landscape is mixed.

ACT spokesman Ed Colby said he thinks the overall testing numbers are growing because the standardized entrance exams provide comparable measures in ways student grades don’t.

The academic rigor in high school classrooms and the value of student grades vary between schools and states, he said.

“We believe that having more information is always better than having less information,” he said.

Colorado and Illinois were the first states, in 2001, to make the ACT a required statewide measure provided to all students in their graduating classes.

Missouri, like those and other states that began testing all students, can expect its overall average composite score to drop.

But a decline in the overall score will not hurt Missouri school districts’ accreditation scores.

The state judges each district by the percentage of students in its entire graduating class — whether they took the test or not — who scored at certain levels on the ACT.

Adding more test takers in each graduating class can only help, especially if more students see themselves as potential college students and prepare themselves that way.

This story was originally published April 28, 2015 at 12:04 PM with the headline "High school juniors across Missouri take the ACT exam on the state’s dime."