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JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi's ACT scores fell sharply in the first year that all public school seniors in the Magnolia State took the test.
The state's 2016 high school graduates made an average composite score of 18.4 on the college entrance exam, dipping below the 19 that students scored in 2014 and 2015.
The dip wasn't a surprise, as it includes results from spring 2015, the first time the state paid for all high school juniors to take the test. Those results didn't register until that class graduated in spring 2016. When the testing pool expands, results typically drop because students least likely to be going to college are included.
Statewide, the number of students who took the test rose by more than 6,000 to almost 36,000.
The national average fell to 20.8 in 2016 from 21 the year before. The ACT organization says that's because like in Mississippi, more states nationwide are paying for all students to take the test.
Average ACT scores for Mississippi students had bounced between 18.5 and 18.9 for at least 20 years before 2014.
Of Mississippi students who took the test, 11.3 percent met ACT's college-ready benchmark in English, math, reading and science. That's down from 12.8 percent in 2015. But because so many more students took the test, the raw number of students meeting the benchmark rose by several hundred, to over 4,000 statewide.
Nationwide, 26 percent of students met all four benchmarks.
Only 3 percent of African American students met all four benchmarks in Mississippi, with all black students posting an average score of 16.1. Among white students, the average score was 20.4, with 19 percent hitting college-ready levels in all four fields.
Mississippi's composite score was 49th among the states, with Nevada ranking last at 17.7. ACT says that because different shares of students take the test in different states, it's hard to meaningfully rank scores by state.
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