Horry County Schools release data on ACT testing

The Horry County School District on Tuesday released data on how students performed under the new ACT testing methods.

Horry County students had a composite score of 18.7, two-tenths higher than the state composite score of 18.5.

In previous years, testing had not been mandatory, which means test results included only students who had elected to take the test and the results were reported using the student’s best score from multiple attempts.

Under the new method instituted last year, all juniors, regardless of whether or not they planned to attend college, were administered the test and their scores were reported.

Teal Britton, Horry County Schools spokeswoman, said the new scores aren’t comparable to scores from previous years because of the different student population taking the test.

Because previous scores were reported mainly from college-bound students, more of them were seniors, and many of them had participated in advanced classes that the non-college-bound students had not taken.

This year will act as a benchmark for comparison to data on the performance of students graduating in 2017.

This story was originally published August 24, 2016 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Horry County Schools release data on ACT testing."