CHARLESTON, WV (LOOTPRESS) – The West Virginia Legislature convened on Sunday afternoon to begin three days of committee meetings which will conclude on Tuesday, beginning with a 1:00pm meeting of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability.
Hearing from the Higher Education Policy Commission and the College and Technical Center Commission on the academic readiness of high school students in West Virginia, it was revealed that college-going rates have dropped below 50 percent based on data from the class of 2020.
This information is presumably affected significantly by the prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, as parents and students, in many cases, were likely hesitant to invest in an exclusively remote college experience.
It was revealed, however, that 25 counties have seen increases in average ACT scores, and that West Virginia’s average composite score for the ACT does line up with that of the national average, higher than those for Ohio and Kentucky.
The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as that of the opioid pandemic, along with the remote experience which presented instances of “zoom fatigue” all played a role in the development of the college-going rates statistic, and it is expected that subsequent societal and cultural changes will be adequately reflected in these statistics as they are researched going forward.
The full 2022 June Interim Committee schedule can be found here, and more information on these sessions can be found at the West Virginia Legislature website here.
College-going rates drop below 50% per WV Commission of Education Accountability
