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Ursuline lauded for student’s top ACT score
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Ursuline High School is one of 29 Ohio schools recognized by the Ohio ACT for having a student who earned a top score on the college-admissions and placement exam.
Ursuline was the only Mahoning Valley school to earn the recognition. The students who scored the high-composite 26 score were in the class of 2010.
Principal Patricia Fleming said she’s very proud.
“I feel we get some good feedback regularly from standardized-test results such as the ACT and even the OGT [Ohio Graduation Test] and the admission tests our student take when they enter college and how well they do, how advanced they are placed and the kinds of colleges that are interested in and accepting our students,” she said. “It reinforces the idea that academics are very important here.”
The 2010 graduate who earned the top ACT score was Michael Goldthwaite. But he’s not the first.
Fleming said that several years ago another Ursuline student also earned a perfect score.
The school offers eight advanced-placement classes, ranking it at or near the top of Mahoning and Trumbull County schools in the number of AP classes available, she said.
Ursuline offers AP courses in calculus, English, Spanish, French, American history, American government, biology and chemistry.
If there’s enough interest, the school is considering offering AP psychology late next year, the principal said.
About 420 students attend Ursuline, and Fleming said the average scores beat both the state and national average on the ACT.
“Our overall composite is 22.5,” she said. “The national average is 21.”
For students who adhere to the college preparatory curriculum at Ursuline, the average ACT score is 23.6, Fleming said.
“The schools recognized today have provided outstanding educational opportunities, and these students are well-prepared for college,” Tom Canepa, associate vice president for admissions at the University of Cincinnati and an ACT state representative, said in a news release.
“Earning a top composite score on the ACT is an honor for the student but also for the school where the student has studied. The Ohio ACT State Organization and ACT commend these schools for the work they’ve done.”
Only 588 of the more than 1.5 million 2010 graduates nationally who took the ACT earned a top score. In Ohio, 38 high school graduates out of more than 89,000 tested in the graduating class of 2010 earned a top score on the ACT.
The ACT, a curriculum-based achievement test, consists of tests in English, mathematics, reading and science.
Each test is scored on a scale of 1-36, and a student’s composite score is the average of the four test scores.