ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Thursday, August 15, 1996              TAG: 9608150059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL   PAGE: A-5  EDITION: METRO 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press

SCORES ON ACT UP BARELY GIRLS MAKING SOME HEADWAY

College-bound students as a whole scored slightly better this year on the ACT entrance exams, with girls doing better and boys staying the same.

The national average score for graduating seniors in 1996 crept up to 20.9 from 20.8 in 1995, the American College Testing service said in its annual report Wednesday. Nearly 60 percent of college-bound students take the ACT.

The results are ``good news for America,'' said Terry Peterson, senior adviser to Education Secretary Richard Riley.

The score range is 1 to 36. The average comes from individual scores of 925,000 high school graduates taking the test, which covers English, math, reading and science reasoning. Colleges use the ACT and the Scholastic Assessment Test, or SAT, to help measure academic potential.

Girls' test scores went up again this year and accounted for the overall increase. They raised their average score to 20.8 from 20.7. The average score for boys held steady at 21.

Another factor in the national average increase was that for the first time the number of girls and boys taking so-called core high school courses was about even, said ACT President Richard Ferguson.

Core courses are defined as at least four years of high school English and at least three years each of science, math and social studies.

This year, only 1 percent more of ACT test takers - 60.5 percent - had enrolled in the core courses. ACT officials say students who enroll in the core courses historically outperform those who don't. Ten years ago, only about 40 percent of college-bound students said they took those courses.

As a group, blacks' test scores this year slipped to 17.0 from 17.1 because of lower scores in science reasoning. The ACT said the decline may have been due to a smaller proportion of blacks taking at least three years of science or advanced science courses such as physics.

Their scores in English, math and reading, however, matched last year's.

Ferguson said he was not alarmed by the decline because scores tend to fluctuate year-to-year by a 10th of a point, sometimes as a result of rounding.

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