Photo from Vestavia Hills City Schools video
Students take part in a class at Vestavia Hills High School in Vestavia Hills, Alabama.
Vestavia Hills High School students this past year showed growth in several academic accomplishments, with higher ACT scores and greater college readiness scores, a school official shared at Monday’s school board meeting.
However, the percentage of students scoring a 3 or higher on Advanced Placement tests to gain college credit decreased by almost 5 percentage points last year.
The mean composite ACT score for Vestavia Hills High School 11th graders for the 2024-25 school year was 23.9 — the highest in the past five years, said Jason Bostic, who was just named the district’s new technology director but also oversees assessments and accountability.
The mean composite ACT score the previous year was 23.3. The composite score is the average of English, math and reading test scores. The highest possible score is a 36.
Vestavis Hills’ mean math and reading scores last year (23.5 and 24.3, respectively) also were the highest in five years, while last year’s mean English score (23.5) was the second highest in five years, records show. Vestavia Hills High School students had a mean English score of 23.9 in the 2021-22 school year.
Science, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and ELA (English language arts) scores also were the highest in five years. The mean scores were 23.6 for science, 23.8 for STEM and 21.7 for ELA.
Writing tests are graded differently. The highest possible writing score is a 12. Vestavia Hills students’ mean writing score last year was 6.6 — also the highest in five years and up from 5.5 the previous year.
More Vestavia Hills High students also were deemed ready for college or a career last year. That percentage increased from 93.82% for the Class of 2024 to 95.83 for the Class of 2025.
The number of students taking Advanced Placement classes — 669 — was the highest in five years, and the number of AP exams taken by students to gain college credit — 1,551 exams — also was the highest in five years. However, the percentage of students scoring a 3 or higher (out of 5) fell 86.22% to 81.32% after at least three years of consecutive increases, records show. A score of 3 typically is needed in order to gain college credit.
Vestavia Hills High School offers 26 Advanced Placement courses, with the most popular being computer science principles, biology, U.S. government and politics, modern world history and English literature and composition.
About 41% of Vestavia Hills High School students took an Advanced Placement exam last year, Bostic said.
Bostic also shared that Vestavia Hills High School had 24 National Merit semifinalists in the Class of 2026, which is more than any other high school in Alabama and represents 10.4% of the all the semifinalists in the Alabama.
This was the third year in the last four years that Vestavia Hills High School led the state in National Merit semifinalists, Superintendent Todd Freeman said.
