Influence of Achievement in High School Courses on ACT Scores 2015

4862© 2015 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. ACT®, ACT Explore®, and ACT QualityCore® are registered trademarks of ACT, Inc., in the USA and other countries. TECHNICAL BRIEFTECHNICAL BRIEF © 2015 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved. ACT®, ACT Explore®, and ACT QualityCore® are registered trademarks of ACT, Inc., in the USA and other countries. ACT Research & Policy4862Jeff Allen is a statistician in the Research division at ACT. He specializes in longitudinal research linking test scores to educational outcomes and student growth models. AcknowledgmentsThanks to Justine Radunzel and Krista Mattern for reviews and suggestions for improving this paper.ACT Technical Briefs provide reliability, validity, and other psychometric analyses on ACT education and workforce development assessments, services, and programs and those of its partners. For more on the ACT test, visit www.act.org.Influence of Achievement in Core High School Courses on ACT® ScoresJeff Allen, PhDIntroductionThe ACT® test is designed to measure the academic skills needed to perform college-level work and is oriented toward the general content areas of college and high school instructional programs.1 If performance on the ACT test is influenced by mastery of high school courses, one would expect that standardized measures of achievement in specific high school courses would be predictive of performance on the ACT. Moreover, the predictive relationship should exist after controlling for a student’s level of achievement before high school. To test this proposition, this study was conducted to examine the extent to which ACT scores are predicted by measures of achievement in specific core high school courses, controlling for pre-high school academic achievement.DataACT Explore® scores were used as measures of pre-high school educational achievement and ACT QualityCore® scores were used as measures of high school course achievement. For both the ACT and ACT Explore, the philosophical basis for the tests are that (a) the tests should measure the academic skills necessary for education and work after high school and (b) the content of the tests should be related to major curriculum areas.2 The ACT focuses on the knowledge and skills attained as the cumulative effect of school experience. ACT Explore is intended for all students in grades 8 and 9 and focuses on the knowledge and skills that are usually attained by grade 8. ACT QualityCore includes course-specific end-of-course assessments that measure performance against empirically-derived course standards.3 Students who took the ACT Explore tests in grade 8; ACT QualityCore end-of-course exams in grades 9, 10, or 11; and the ACT in grade 11 or grade 12 were included in the study. For each subject area of the ACT, same-subject ACT QualityCore end-of-course exams were used in the analysis. For English, ACT QualityCore scores from English 9, English 10, and English 11 were used; for mathematics, ACT QualityCore scores from Algebra 1, Geometry, and Algebra 2 were used; for reading, ACT QualityCore scores from US History were used; and for science, ACT QualityCore scores from Biology and Chemistry were used. Scores from other ACT QualityCore courses (English 12, Pre-Calculus, and Physics) were not used because few students took these courses, or a majority took them after taking the ACT. For students who took the ACT more than once, their last set of scores was used for analysis. ACT QualityCore scores were only used if the student took the ACT QualityCore course before or concurrently with the ACT (e.g., students who took an ACT QualityCore end-of-course exam and 2 ACT Research & Policy Influence of Achievement in Core High School Courses on ACT Scoresthe ACT in spring grade 11 were included). The students included in the analyses were scheduled to complete high school between 2011 and 2016. Table 1 summarizes the samples used for each analysis. MethodMultiple linear regression was used to relate the measures of pre-high school educational achievement (ACT Explore scores) and high school course achievement (ACT QualityCore scores) to ACT scores. Regression coefficients, standard errors, p-values, and standardized beta weights are presented. The regression coefficients represent estimates of how much the mean ACT score increases for each one-point increase in the predictor. The standardized beta weights estimate how many standard deviations the mean ACT score increases for each one-standard-deviation increase in the predictor and allow for comparisons of the strengths of the relationships across predictors. If a student’s mastery of high school courses influences their ACT scores, the regression coefficients for the ACT QualityCore scores should be positive and statistically significant (e.g., p-value less than 0.05).ResultsEnd-of-course achievement in English 9, English 10, and English 11 was predictive of performance on the ACT English test, after controlling for pre-high school academic ac