More Black and Hispanic Students Taking the ACT Exam, College Readiness Levels Remain Flat: While scores and college readiness levels remained relatively flat from 2008, the numbers of Black and Hispanic high school graduates in 2009 who took the ACT college entrance exam remained the same or increased for a fourth consecutive year nationally, according to the ACT ‘Measuring College and Career Readiness: The Class of 2009’ report. According to the study, 196,000 Black and 134,000 Hispanic 2009 graduates took the exam while more than 178,000 Blacks and 114,000 Hispanics from the 2008 class took the exam.
For Blacks, the increase in ACT test taking was a 10 percent jump over one year and 41 percent jump since 2005. Hispanic high school seniors saw a 16 percent increase in ACT test taking over one year and a 60 percent increase since 2005. The findings also showed that for Black students who took the ACT exam, there was also an increase in the number of test-takers. Overall, 1,480,469 high school seniors from 2008-09 took the ACT, a 4.1 percent increase from the 2007-08 senior cohort of 1,421,941."
