ACT scores for 2025 were released this week, showing yet another decline and hitting a new all-time low. The composite score dropped from 19.3 to 19.1, with only 17% of Kansas graduates scoring well enough to be considered college-ready in English, Reading, Math, and Science.
The Kansas Department of Education has made no public comment about the declines so far, despite the results being released while the State Board of Education was in session on Wednesday.
ACT scores and college readiness have been on a steady decline since 2015, when Kanas Education Commissioner Randy Watson convinced the State Board of Education to implement his “Kansans Can” initiative that de-emphasized academic improvement over social-emotional learning. The “Kansans Can” tagline is “Kansas leads the world in the success of every student, but Dave Trabert, CEO of Kansas Policy Institute and the Sentinel, says the 10-year ACT decline may qualify Watson for leading the world in the decline of student success.
Kansas Education Commissioner Randy Watson’s overemphasis on so-called “social-emotional learning,” or SEL, has led to a 10-year drop in educational outcomes — all while spending has skyrocketed — according to an editorial by Kansas Policy Institute CEO Dave Trabert. He says ACT’s definition of college-readiness is having a 75% chance of getting a “C” on an entry-level course, which means many graduates who went to trade school, community college, or who entered the workforce were also not academically prepared for life after high school.
Kansas graduates are, unfortunately, below the national average of 20% for college-readiness and the 19.4 composite score.
ACT composite scores continue to decline
The state’s composite ACT score has steadily declined from 21.9 in 2015 to 19.1 now. By comparison, the average score in Missouri is 19.8, and it’s 19.2 in Nebraska.
Demographic scores also fell to 20.1 for White students, 16.6 for Hispanic students, and 15.7 for Black students. It’s noteworthy that scores for Black and Hispanic students declined more than White students during Watson’s tenure.
Moreover, at-risk funding is not going where it should, Trabert said.
“State audits show school districts are not spending more than $500 million annually on ‘above and beyond’ services for students who are academically at-risk as required by state law,” Trabert wrote. “Watson and the State Board of Education should, by their own accreditation requirements, strip accreditation from districts not following the law, but they don’t. The excuse given by General Counsel Scott Gordon is that KSDE doesn’t consider that law to apply to school improvement.“
The results, Trabert said, are entirely predictable.
“The sad but very predictable ACT results, ironically, come one day after the Kansas Department of Education released district-level state assessment results purporting to show huge gains in reading and math proficiency for high school students based on new proficiency standards,” Trabert wrote. “Watson insists that rigor wasn’t reduced, but today’s ACT results are another piece of evidence to the contrary.
“Reducing state proficiency standards is symbolic of Watson’s legacy: constantly trying to cover up declining outcomes rather than acknowledge the crisis and put action plans in place.”
Trabert said, with Watson retiring at the end of the year, the legislature must “muster the courage to intervene, starting with rejecting the low proficiency standards and using their constitutional authority to order the State School Board to reinstate the pre-Watson high standards.”
