Students fare well on ACT

By AMBER DILLEY
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW August 14, 2008 06:28 pm

— The 2008 ACT scores are in and local schools have shown improvement or at least have stayed near last year’s scores.
Barren County seniors got a composite score of 21.2; last year the score was 19.9.
Benny Lile, director of instruction at Barren County, said the school improved by 1.3 points.
Glasgow Independent Schools did post a slight downturn, showing a 0.2 decrease in composite scores.
This year, the seniors hold a composite score of 21.3, while last year the score was 21.5.
Keith Hale, Barren County High School principal, said he is proud of the students for improving the scores.
“We just had concentrated efforts over the last few years,” he said. “We’ve worked on showing the students the importance of this testing and encouraging more to take the test. I know one thing they worked hard on was more teachers making connections with the test. For this class, bringing those connections would have started freshman year.”
For Barren County seniors, the Asian subgroup did slightly better than other subgroups, with a composite score of 24.3.
Kelly Bell, Glasgow High School principal, said she’s happy with the scores.
“This is a clear reflection of time spent in the classroom,” she said. “We’re doing ACT prep here at the school two days a week now and I really hope that will help the students.”
This is the first year that all juniors in the state were required to take the ACT as well, but the scores for those haven’t been released yet.
“We thought they’d be here by now,” Bell said. “I really want to see those, but I have no indication of when exactly they’ll be released.”
The ethnic population composite scores weren’t available for Glasgow Independent Schools.
“We don’t have that right now,” said Sharon Ritter, instructional supervisor. “The state does that, but we don’t have it.”
The junior ACT scores should be released sometime in September.
The state as a whole has improved in ACT scores. The 2008 state composite score is 20.9, while last year it was 20.7.