Reporting from The Advocate and Staff
Eunice High School’s composite ACT score, a test of college readiness for high school students, rose to 18.8 in results for the 2017-2018 school year.
The previous year’s Eunice High School score was 18.3.
The St. Landry Parish score was 18.4, down from 18.7 the previous year.
The state ACT score was 19.2, down from 19.5.
Louisiana slipped from 43rd to 45th nationally, according to The Advocate.
Students are tested on English, reading, math and science.
Results are based on a 1-36 scale and are administered by a nonprofit group in Iowa City, Iowa.
The U.S. average is also down, from 21 last year to 20.8 this time, including the District of Columbia.
A total of 1.9 million high school graduates for 2018 took the test.
State Superintendent of Education John White said this year’s results are essentially the same as 2017.
White also noted, as he has before, that Louisiana is one of 17 states where all 12th-graders are required to take the test, not just a select few.
States where relatively few students take the ACT, for a variety of reasons, consistently score higher than students in states where everyone takes the exam.
Connecticut, where most students take the SAT, has a composite ACT average of 25.6, tops in the nation.
However, just 26 percent of high school graduates there take the ACT.
Louisiana students finished 12th among states where all students take the exam.
Last year, students finished in a three-way tie with Arkansas and Oklahoma, according to state calculations.
Wisconsin at 20.5 is tops among states where all students take the test.
Other St. Landry Parish scores were: Opelousas High Senior High School, 17.8; North Central High School, 16.9; Beau Chene High School, 19.1; Northwest High School, 17.1; Port Barre High School, 18.2; and Magnet Academy for Cultural Arts, 20.6.
Other parish scores were: Evangeline, 18.6; Acadia, 18.8; and Lafayette, 19.3.
Area high school scores included: Church Point, 18.6; Crowley, 17.8; Iota, 19.9; Rayne, 18.2; Midland, 21.4; Basile, 19.5; Mamou, 19.2; Pine Prairie, 18.6; and Ville Platte, 17.5.
Louisiana started providing all students an ACT administration free-of-charge in 2013 in order to increase the number of graduates who can access postsecondary education.
Since the new rule was approved the number of students meeting the college readiness standard — 21 and above — has risen nearly 40 percent, to 25,673 annually.
“Because more students who perform at relatively low levels are staying in school, the number of testers achieving higher scores has remained constant while the average declined this year,” according to the department.
In Louisiana students had the most success with English, where 53 percent of test takers met or exceeded the benchmarks.
However, just 35 percent of students met the standard for reading; 24 percent for math and 25 percent for science.
Nationally, 60 percent of students met the English benchmark, 46 percent reading, 40 percent math and 36 percent science.
Math scores have declined nationally since 2012.
“The negative trend in math is a red flag for our country, given the growing importance of math and science skills in the increasingly tech-driven U. S. and global job market,” ACT CEO Marten Roorda said in a written statement.
Louisiana students finished ahead of those in Alabama, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina and Hawaii. All of those states, but Hawaii, require all students to take the ACT, and in Hawaii 89 percent did so.