August 31, 2006
Written by C.N.
Latest ACT Scores by Racial Group
As the ACT test continues to gain in popularity at the expense of its increasingly-maligned competitor, the SAT, aggregate results from the latest rounds of ACT tests show that while test scores improved for all racial/ethnic groups from last year, some groups’ improvement is notably higher than others:
No ethnic or racial group showed decreases this year. But Asian Americans — already the highest performing group on the ACT — posted larger gains than other groups, increasing the gaps among groups. During the last five years, Asian Americans have seen their average composite score increase by 0.7 — compared to gains of 0.2 for American Indians and Hispanics and 0.3 for black and white students.
This related article discusses some other trends from the recent results and gives the following statistical breakdown of median scores for each racial/ethnic group:
| Group | Critical Reading | Mathematics | Writing |
| American Indian | 487 | 494 | 474 |
| Asian | 510 | 578 | 512 |
| African American | 434 | 429 | 428 |
| Mexican American | 454 | 465 | 452 |
| Puerto Rican | 459 | 456 | 448 |
| Other Hispanic | 458 | 463 | 450 |
| White | 527 | 536 | 519 |
| Other | 494 | 513 | 493 |
| Race unknown | 487 | 506 | 482 |
| All | 503 | 518 | 497 |
To summarize, not only do Asian Americans have the highest average scores of all the major racial/ethnic groups to begin with, but their scores increased the most this past year as well. It just goes to show that in terms of standardized test scores, this particular aspect of Asian Americans being the “model minority” does have some validity.
Author Citation
Copyright © 2001- by C.N. Le. Some rights reserved. 
Suggested reference: Le, C.N. . "Latest ACT Scores by Racial Group" Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America. <https://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/08/latest-act-scores-by-racial-group/> ().
Short URL: https://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/?p=291
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