It is not the most significant of metrics but it is on the list. For the eighth year in a row, Georgia students have outperformed the national average on ACT. Georgia students scored better than the national average on the overall score, 21.2 compared to the national 19.4, but scored better across every category – English, math, reading and science. Despite a slight drop from last year’s average score of 21.3, students also recorded their highest scores ever in reading at 22.2.
“The class of 2024 continues to make us proud here in Georgia – from beating the nation on both the SAT and ACT to achieving an all-time-high graduation rate for our state,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “It’s encouraging to see that investing in academic recovery, despite the challenges of the last several years, has paid off for our students and their futures. I offer my congratulations to the class of 2024 and their teachers, parents, and communities who made this possible.”
The ACT also has College Readiness Benchmarks for each category and, logically considering their scores, students had a better percentage than the national average in all areas. The difference is significant, with 63 percent of students meeting the benchmark for English compared to 51 percent for the nation. Overall, 29 percent of students met all the benchmarks, compared to 20 percent across the country. The metric is an interesting piece of data, these benchmarks are scores that show a 50 percent chance of getting a grade of B or higher, or a 75 percent chance of C or higher, in the corresponding first-year college credit course.
Some other states have yet to release their data but compared to last year’s data, Georgia certainly performs well compared to its neighbors. Very well. Georgia’s average score of 21.3 last year frankly crushed our neighboring states. Alabama averaged an 18, Florida 18.9, South Carolina an 18.8 and Tennessee an 18.4 Mississippi had the second highest score among the deep South states at 19.8. It may not seem like much but 1.5 difference is significant. For comparison, the highest scores in the country were a tie between Connecticut and Massachusetts at 26.4.
Some states like Georgia that had a lower historic average are improving but, nationwide scores are dipping. Covid clearly had an impact on students’ scores, seeing declines across nearly all states, but the overall decline began before that. “This is the sixth consecutive year of declines in average scores, with average scores declining in every academic subject,” ACT CEO Janet Godwin said last year. “We are also continuing to see a rise in the number of seniors leaving high school without meeting any of the college readiness benchmarks, even as student GPAs continue to rise and students report that they feel prepared to be successful in college.”
