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Wisconsin’s ACT rank slips

For the first time in a decade, the state of Wisconsin cannot boast the highest average composite ACT score among the 25 states where the ACT is the dominant college-entry exam. The state of Minnesota, which shared the top honor with Wisconsin last year, now sits alone in first place.

“We’re certainly proud of it,” said Beth Aune, director of academic standards at the Minnesota Department of Education. “But the fact that we’re a slight percentage [higher] — that, to me, is not significant.”

That slight percentage is actually less than 1 percent. Minnesota holds the top spot with a 22.3 average composite score, while, for the sixth consecutive year, Wisconsin students posted a 22.2 score.

“For comparison’s sake, the national composite score is 20.9,” Joe Donovan, communications officer at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, said. “It’s very nice to be No. 1, but we’re very, very pleased that our scores have remained constant.”

Though Aune admitted the competition with border state Wisconsin “is the fun part,” she said any competition between the two states distracts from the real questions.

“As to the competition between Wisconsin and Minnesota, there are some folks who really get excited if we beat Wisconsin by even the tiniest percentage of a point, but that’s not the information we should [focus on],” Aune said.

Despite the small percentage difference between the two states’ scores, both Aune and Donovan say the gap between scores of students of color and their white peers raises larger questions.

“The ACT data shows us that we still have significant achievement gaps between white students and minority students in our state,” Aune said of the Minnesota scores. “Even more disconcerting: minority students who report that they’ve taken college-preparation classes [score] lower than white students who report that they haven’t taken college-preparation classes.”

This achievement gap is also true in Wisconsin, according to Donovan. But there has been work to close the gap between children of color or economically disadvantaged students and their peers, he added.

“The most important thing we can do is to encourage all of our students to take rigorous coursework,” Donovan said.

Both Wisconsin and Minnesota offer charter schools, as well as programs where students can enroll in schools outside of their own districts. A number of Wisconsin programs in the Milwaukee area allow students who live in one district to attend schools in other districts, Donovan added.

Similarly, Aune said “a lot” of students in Minnesota choose to attend schools in other districts, and referenced “a long history of choice programs” in the state, including designation as the first state to introduce the charter-school concept.

While Wisconsin and Minnesota work to close achievement gaps and push forward with high ACT scores, the state of Mississippi holds the dubious honor of lowest average composite ACT score with 18.7.

In Wisconsin’s case, 69 percent of high school graduates took the ACT. Sixty-eight percent of Minnesota graduates completed the exam.

Both Connecticut and Massachusetts students earned a 22.8 average composite score, but only 10 and 12 percent of graduates took the test, respectively. The dominant college-entry test in those states is the SAT.

Wisconsin edged out Minnesota 1191 to 1189 in its statewide 2005 SAT scores, but both states finished well above the national 1028 average.