State’s composite score rises, as does the number of college-ready graduates, but gap widens slightly between white, black students.
For an eighth consecutive year, Minnesota can lay claim to being best in the nation in the ACT college admissions test.
State seniors again posted higher scores than those in other states in which at least half of students took the exam.
Progress was made, too, in the percentage of state graduates deemed college-ready in each of the four subject areas being tested.
This year, 39 percent of Minnesota seniors were proficient across the board, compared with 36 percent in 2012.“That is tops in the nation,” state Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius said Tuesday.
Results were mixed, however, in another chief area of concern: the large, persistent gap between white and minority test takers.
According to the results to be released Wednesday, 61 percent of the state’s white students reached the minimum college-readiness benchmarks in at least three of the four subjects tested, up from 59 percent a year ago. Black students who met the same standard remained at 16 percent.
For black seniors, that was an improvement over 2009, when 14 percent of test takers were college-ready in three subjects. But it was still short of the five-year high of 17 percent in 2011.