A new report finds half of the country’s low income students who took the ACT to measure their college readiness failed to meet four of the test’s key benchmarks. The ACT organization, based in Iowa City, teamed up with the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships to evaluate test scores from high school graduates who came from a family with an annual income of less than $36,000.
Ninety-six-percent of those low income students said they planned to go to college, but half did not do well enough on the ACT to indicate they were prepared for the first-year courses they’d take in college. The ACT’s key benchmarks are in English, reading, science and math.
Nearly 23,000 Iowa students took the ACT in 2014.