Alabama board of education members on Thursday discussed dropping the state’s requirement for all high school juniors to take the ACT test as a part of the state’s accountability system.

Board members said they have been getting complaints from school officials that the ACT isn’t the right test to measure what students have learned.

Board member Jackie Zeigler, R-Mobile, said school officials told her the ACT is only weakly aligned to the state’s academic standards.

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“They’re saying it’s not really reflective of our students’ knowledge,” Zeigler, a former teacher and principal, said. “It’s more specific for the [students] wanting to go on to the four-year college strand, but it’s not useful for them to see the capabilities of their kid.”

Results are used to calculate achievement and growth scores on a school’s annual state and federal report cards, but students are not graded on how well they do on the ACT.

“Some [students] don’t take it seriously because they don’t feel it has any bearing or outcome on anything,” board member Yvette Richardson, D-Birmingham, said.

Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey said he has heard complaints, too, and confirmed Zeigler’s statement that the ACT is not aligned to the state’s academic standards.

The board would have to replace the ACT with another test, Mackey said, because federal education law requires students to be tested once in high school in reading and math. Developing a new test will take time and money, he said.

A new test for second through eighth grade students, the Alabama Comprehensive Assessment Program, or ACAP, was created after the board dropped the ACT Aspire series of tests in 2017.

“We could develop essentially a high school ACAP to tell us how students did,” Mackey said, “but not require it for graduation.”

Alabama’s high school graduates do not have to pass an exit exam to graduate, but beginning with the class of 2028, graduates will have to earn one of 10 indicators showing they are ready for college or a career.

Mackey said he will find out which states use which tests for high school testing and bring that information to a future board work session.

After the meeting, Mackey told reporters even if the board chooses to drop the ACT from the accountability system, he’d like to still offer the ACT to students who want to take it.

The board originally began paying for all students to take the ACT in 2014 to help identify students who may not have considered college but who scored well on the test, he said, and that’s still a good idea.

The ACT results became part of the state and federal report card in 2018. Students have struggled to improve overall ACT scores since then.

National ACT scores for the class of 2022 dropped to their lowest level in the past 30 years according to the College Board, which administers the ACT.

Alabama’s 11th graders will take the ACT on March 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 or 23.