Pacific Islanders included in national ACT score reporting

For this week's post, I wanted to share a story published in the Chronicle of Higher Education regarding the racial gap in ACT test performance. (The ACT is a standardized test for college admissions, like the SAT.)

For most readers of the Chronicle, I assume that the main takeaways are that overall scores have increased slightly, and that a racial achievement gap remains -- with underrepresented minorities continuing to score below the national average. But for me, the most important thing was that for the first time, Pacific Islander scores were reported separately from Asian Americans, in recognition of the fact that we are a distinct group.

This is important to the P.I.A. project because it takes data to demonstrate the needs of our community -- from data validating our underrepresentation, to figures like this, which show how we perform on a standardized college readiness test. In this case, the national stats showed that Pacific Islanders, like other underrepresented minority groups scored below the national average.

You can read the full article here: LINK