What Helps or Hinders Students Educational Achievement?
What allows some high school students to achieve more than others? One important factor is high school course work. We know that students who take rigorous courses in high school and who earn high grades in those courses are more likely to achieve high ACT scores. For example, students who have taken trigonometry or calculus in high school are at least three times more likely to have high ACT Composite scores than those who have not. In general, rigorous course work and high grades help to improve students’ ACT scores, regardless of other factors such as family background characteristics, students’ attitudes about school, and teacher, counselor and parental support (see ACT Research Report No. 99-4 for further information). However, a closer look at these other factors shows that many are also related both to ACT scores and to high school GPA. Students with relatively high GPAs or ACT Composite scores have certain characteristics that differentiate them from students with relatively lo
