Lawrence high school students continue to outperform, on average, their peers on both the state and national level when it comes to the ACT, according to numbers released Friday by the Lawrence school district.

Students at Lawrence’s two public, brick-and-mortar high schools, Free State High School and Lawrence High School, have scored above state and national averages for the past six years.

The average ACT score in Kansas for the 2015-2016 school year was 21.9; the national average was 20.8. That year, 256 Free State students took the ACT, averaging a 23.8 composite score. At Lawrence High School, where the same number of students took the test, the average score was 22.7. The Lawrence average totaled 23.2, roughly.

Average scores for both Lawrence high schools, as well as those at the state and national level, have remained about the same for the past six years now.

The ACT consists of curriculum-based tests in English, math, reading and science, and is designed to measure skills needed for success in first-year college coursework. Students are scored on a scale of 1 to 36, with 36 being the highest possible score.

Even with the slight dip in average scores (from 23.3 in the 2014-2015 school year, to 2015-2016’s 22.7) at LHS, Principal Matt Brungardt said he’s pleased with his school’s numbers. In assessing scores, Brungardt said it’s important to compare local numbers with state and national averages.

“We’ve been right around 23 for a number of years at this building. Some years it goes up, some years it goes down,” Brungardt said. “We had 256 kids out of 350 graduates that took the test last year. So, that was a really good percentage when, in 2015, we were at 23.3, but we only had 189 kids take the test.”

When roughly 73 percent of the graduating class has taken the ACT, he added, “I think it’s a real good indication of the fact that we are preparing kids for college.”

FSHS Principal Myron Graber said he’s “happy” with the consistency of his school’s scores over the years. At Free State, he said, there are many resources available to guide students through the ACT readiness process.

This year, the school will administer the PreACT test to all freshmen and sophomores — “From that, we’re able to see what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what we might need to address,” Graber said.

“We have a great system and we have great kids, so we’re very fortunate in that sense,” he said. “We just would like to maybe push the bar a bit.”

The 25 students who took the ACT during the 2015-2016 school year at Lawrence Virtual School, which is part of the Lawrence district but serves students across Kansas, also exceeded state and national averages, with an average composite score of 23.2. Previous years’ data were not available for LVS, the district said.

Lawrence’s private high schools, Bishop Seabury Academy and Veritas Christian School, outperformed not only state and national averages but also their public-school counterparts on the local level.

At the Episcopal Bishop Seabury, 29 students took the ACT, averaging a composite score of 26.4. Veritas scored just slightly below that, with nine students (the school’s entire graduating class) averaging a composite score of 26.3.