Virginia’s students outscored the nation on ACT

By: Katie O'Connor - October 18, 2018 6:15 am

The Virginia students who take the ACT test did better than their peers nationwide this year, according to the state’s Department of Education.

Public school students received an average composite score of 23.8 on the test, which is meant to determine college readiness, compared with 20.4 nationwide. The tests are scored on a scale of 1 to 36.

For the different subjects — English, reading, mathematics and science — Virginia’s 2018 public school graduating seniors scored 22 or more points higher than public graduates nationwide, according to the department.

Only about 24 percent of 2018 graduates, which includes private and home-schooled students, took the ACT. The SAT, another college-readiness test, is the dominant such test in Virginia. The state’s annual report on student SAT scores should be released later this month.

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Katie O'Connor

Katie, a Manassas native, has covered health care, commercial real estate, law, agriculture and tourism for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Richmond BizSense and the Northern Virginia Daily. Last year, she was named an Association of Health Care Journalists Regional Health Journalism Fellow, a program to aid journalists in making national health stories local and using data in their reporting. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, where she was executive editor of The Flat Hat, the college paper, and editor-in-chief of The Gallery, the college’s literary magazine.