State education officials said Monday they are grappling with how to handle a new national policy that will allow students to re-take individual sections of the ACT, not the entire test, to boost all-important composite scores.
Whether colleges and TOPS leaders endorse the option are among the questions.
"There is a lot still that we don't know," said Jill Zimmerman, executive director for strategic data, analytics and accountability in the state Department of Education. "There are a lot more unknowns than knowns."
The ACT is supposed to measure college readiness, and scores can help determine college admission and scholarships.
Allowing students to focus on one or more specific subjects, or essentially re-take the test in parts rather than all at once, could mean improved scores.
"I think it is a great opportunity for students," said Kathy Noel, who chairs the 18-member Accountability Commission, where the issue surfaced. Noel is an educator in DeSoto Parish.
The commission advises the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Louisiana is ranked 49th in the nation on a test of college readiness called the ACT, down from 45th last year, according to results released …
The exam includes English, math, science and reading.
Results are based on a scale of 1-36.
The latest state results, announced in October, showed that Louisiana is ranked 49th in the nation on the ACT, down from 45th last year.
The composite score was 18.8, down from 19.2 last year and 19.5 the year before.
Those results include both public and private students.
The financial outlook for Louisiana's colleges and universities is the best it has been in the past decade, Commissioner of Administration Jay…
ACT officials announced in October that, beginning in September, 2020, students will be able to retake sections of the test at an ACT test center on national test dates, and possibly more sites eventually.
To do so students will have had to have already taken the entire ACT on a school day through state or district testing.
Students will then be given a "superscore," which calculates their highest possible composite score.
State officials on Monday used the example of a student who initially scores 29 overall, including English, 31; math, 28, reading, 34 and science, 24.
Two months later the same student improves his or her math and science scores, 29 and 28 respectively, after re-taking those subjects only. Five months later the student scores 34 in English and 35 in reading – two more improvements after re-tests solely on English and reading.
Under the new policy, the student's "superscore" would be 32, a significant gain that could pay huge scholarship and college admission dividends.
