Average scores on the ACT exam held steady for the high school class of 2012 but the results show modest progress in the number of students who appear ready for college-level work in math and science.

The scores, being released Wednesday, cover the first-ever class in which more than half of graduates nationally took the ACT. Traditionally the ACT has been a rival college entrance exam to the SAT, but it is now taken by almost all students in nine states, and by at least 60 percent of graduates in 26 states.

The average national composite score was 21.1 (on a scale of 1 to 36), unchanged from the class of 2011. The percentage who earned scores that ACT calculates indicate they’re ready for college in all four subjects — English, reading, math and science — was also unchanged at 25 percent.

But the percentage earning scores indicating readiness for college in science has increased from 28 percent to 31 percent since 2009, and in math from 42 percent to 46 percent.

Such numbers still aren’t great — 28 percent of ACT-tested graduates failed to meet the college readiness benchmark in any of the four subjects. But the fact that overall scores have held steady even as the test-taking pool widens, and that math and science marks have improved, is considered positive.

“There’s just all these countertrends that would typically pull scores down,” said Jon Erickson, education president of ACT, an Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit. “To hold scores is a good sign. To see science and math increasing the last five years — not rapidly but positively and steadily — those are two really good signs.”

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