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Thanks for the excellent editorial about Utah inflating its high school graduation statistics ("Honest statistics: State ignores some school dropouts," Our View, Oct. 8). I have long thought that Utah also gives an inflated picture of performance on ACT tests. Without fail, the media and State Office of Education stress that our students score above average on the ACT.
To me, however, the real story is that Utah's white students, who make up the bulk of ACT test-takers, never top the national average for whites. Even in the 2009 results, in which Utah's college-bound white students appear to have scored above the U.S. average by one-tenth of a point, closer scrutiny shows that they did not. That's because five of the 27 ACT-dominant states tested all students. In other words, if states such as Illinois and Michigan had reported scores only for college-bound students, as Utah does, we can readily deduce that the Beehive State would have again failed to top the national Caucasian average.
Forgive my negativity, but I wonder if Utah inflates its educational performance so that we have an excuse not to raise the taxes needed to fund reduced class sizes.
Steve Warren
West Valley City