Combining ACT scores with HSGPAs reduces high school variance in college graduation rates relative to HSGPA-only models¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr?·q2
Currency · newest study 2020 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2023: tool and model accuracy changes quickly
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Models using ACT scores and HSGPAs together show less high school variance in college graduation rates than models using HSGPAs alone. → Allensworth 2020
Evidence¶
Allensworth 2020¶
Allensworth, E. M., & Clark, K. (2020). High school GPAs and ACT scores as predictors of college completion: Examining assumptions about consistency across high schools. Educational Researcher, 49(3), 198-211. doi:10.3102/0013189x20902110 https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/high-school-GPAs-and-ACT-scores-as-predictors-of-college-completion-er-article
q2 · i? · associational · r?
The article poses this as a key research question about whether "models that use students’ ACT scores and HSGPAs together" show less high school variance than HSGPA-only models; the page does not print the answer's statistics.
"Is there less high school variance in college graduation rates in models that use students’ ACT scores and HSGPAs together, than models that use HSGPAs alone?"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Adding ACT scores to models with HSGPA contributes little to the prediction of college graduation and does not reduce between-school variability — reports the opposite
- Both HSGPA and ACT scores leave large high school effects on college graduation unexplained, which the study recommends measuring and publishing directly — related
- ACT scores show significant subgroup misprediction by race, ethnicity, and gender that HSGPA models do not, and school-level variance is smaller among students with the same ACT score than the same HSGPA — related
- Students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate from college at different rates depending on which high school they attended — related
- School average ACT scores predict college graduation for students with the same individual HSGPA and ACT score, reducing between-school variance by 42 percent, while school poverty is not significant once average ACT is included — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
act-plus-hsgpa-reduces-high-school-variance |
title |
Combining ACT scores with HSGPAs reduces high school variance in college graduation rates relative to HSGPA-only models |
description |
Combining ACT scores with HSGPAs reduces high school variance in college graduation rates relative to HSGPA-only models |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
weak |
newest_evidence |
2020 |
recheck_by |
2023 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — allensworth-2020 |
Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.