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Writer's picturePhilip Martin

One Major (Yet Ironic) Reason ACT Scores are Down

Sometimes, ideas that seem intuitive just don't pan out. Efforts to increase ACT scores are like this too (which I break down in this week's YouTube video here).


Recently, as in last week, I was advertised an article that was published in The Atlantic, a magazine I probably would never go seek out and read, but the headline caught my eye: “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.”


I read as much as I was allowed without buying a subscription (sorry, but I’m not paying $70 to read the whole thing), but that was enough to get the point of the article: college students are overwhelmed by professors who assign books because high schools are no longer reading novels; instead, they’re reading passages from books or short articles to mimic the kinds of passages they’ll see on the ACT or SAT.



In other words, in our high schools, we're teaching to the test.


As someone who has taught in high schools a long time, this kind of took me aback. My students in the past have read lots of different books in conjunction with any number of courses I’ve taught: The Hobbit, Perelandra, Brave New World, and The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor, to name a few.


The reason given by the article for why this is happening was that teachers are increasingly under pressure to “teach to the test,” meaning, mimic the kinds of reading passages that would be found on the ACT and the SAT to get students used to that style so that, in the end, their ACT and SAT scores will be higher.


Interestingly, since 2017, the average ACT score has dropped every single year. For decades, the average score always hovered somewhere around a 21, give or take a few tenths of a point. In 2017, the average score nationwide was exactly a 21.0, and in 2023 the average score was a 19.5, down from a 19.8 in 2022. So, in other words, something is not working.


CS Lewis articulated really well the idea of first and second things. When you put first things first, you get the first things, and then you also tend to get the second things.


However, when you put second things first, you tend to not only lose the first thing, but the second as well.


Here’s what I mean: a high school education should not be focused on teaching to the test. It should be focused on a true education, from the Latin educat or educare, which means to be led out.


Led out of what? Well led out of ignorance into truth, and to grapple with truth at the deepest level, students must learn to dive deeply into a subject through books, whether those books be fiction or nonfiction, and lest we come to think that our new ways are always better, the more classic the book, the better.


In other words, when high schools teach to the test (in this case, the ACT) exclusively, we miss the educational formation that is necessary to be ready for college in the first place.


Now, that might sound rich coming from me, The ACT System guy, but I see test preparation as a way, as I’ve said, to bridge the gap between the education that our sons and daughters should be receiving and the ACT, the test, which is different in kind than the kinds of tests our kids are taking in schools every day.


So if you’re a parent, ask your high schooler: when was the last time you had to read a book for school? How many books have you had to read this year? What were the books, and what did they mean?


If the answer is 0 or close to 0, then consider trying to do something about that, even if it means paying your kids to read. That probably sounds a little crazy, but think of it like this: instead of paying them to do chores, simply make them do chores because they live in your home, and use that money to pay them to read instead.


(Easier said than done, I know, but I'm open to other ideas!)


And when I say read, I mean to read a book at their reading level. It doesn’t have to be Aristotle or Homer, it could be any popular novel.


So, with that being said, I’m going to start on this blog and on YouTube, every so often, a review of some of the most popular books that have been traditionally read at the high school level so that we can come to a greater understanding of these books, what they mean, and why they’re important. Any maybe, just maybe, someone out there will pick up one of the books, read it, and appreciate it.



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