OCTOBER 2013

THE COUNCIL OF STATE GOVERNMENTS

CAPITOL FACTS & FIGURES

EDUCATION

The Need for College- and Career-Readiness Standards

Many high school graduates are not prepared for introductory credit-bearing college classes.
Only 25 percent of U.S. students meet ACT benchmarks in all four areas testedEnglish, math, reading and science. The ACT defines a benchmark score as the minimum score needed on an ACT subject-area test to indicate a 50 percent chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75 percent chance of obtaining a C or higher in the corresponding credit-bearing college courses.1 Approximately 58 percent of first-time, full-time students who began seeking a bachelors degree at a fouryear institution in fall 2004 completed a bachelors degree at that institution within six years.2 More than 50 percent of students entering two-year colleges and nearly 20 percent of those entering fouryear universities require remedial classes. Nearly four in 10 remedial students in community colleges never complete their remedial courses.3 Fewer than one in 10 students starting in remedial courses graduate from community colleges within three years and slightly more than a third complete bachelors degrees in six years.3

it by raising the bar on state standards. Four states Kentucky, New York, North Carolina and Virginia, plus the District of Columbiaall have raised the target requirements for proficiency on their state assessments.5 Two assessment consortiaSMARTER Balanced, or SBAC, and the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers, or PARCChave been vital in working with states to create new assessments.

Several states are beginning to focus on college- and careerreadiness as important policy tools.
Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted Common Core State Standards for both mathematics and English language arts, while Minnesota has adopted only the English language arts standard. 4 Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia not only have adopted common core or other rigorous academic standards, but also have established requirements that all high school graduates must complete a college- and career-readiness curriculum. 5 Eighteen states administer assessmentsincluding the ACT and SATto high school students that postsecondary institutions use to make decisions about students readiness for college; four states have added such assessments since 2011. 5 Not only are states adopting a college- and careerreadiness curriculum, but they also are supplementing

National education groups advocate a policy agenda that calls for states to commit to college- and career-readiness for all students. The Council of State Governments suggests that state policymakers:
Develop more rigorous teacher pre-service programs and align the academic content of teacher education programs with college- and career-readiness standards, such as the common core state standards; Require schools to incorporate deeper learning principles that develop critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration and self-directed learning; and Develop formative and summative assessments of knowledge, skills and dispositions aligned to individual student needs.

States Adopting the Common Core State Standards

D.C.

Adopted Standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts Adopted English Language Arts Standards Only Has Not Adopted Standards

American Samoa

Guam

Northern Mariana Islands

(Split)

Puerto Rico

Virgin Islands

Logan Rupard, CSG Graduate Fellow | lrupard@csg.org

REFERENCES
1 ACT, Inc. College Readiness Benchmark Attainment by State. (2013) Accessed at http://www.act.org/newsroom/data/2012/benchmarks.html#benchmark on June 20, 2013 2 National Center for Education Statistics. Fast Facts. (2012) Accessed at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=40 on June 20, 2013 3 Complete College America. Remediation: Higher Educations Bridge to Nowhere. (2012) Accessed at http://www.completecollege.org/docs/CCA-Remediation-summary.pdf on June 20, 2013 4 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. Common Core Standards. (2010) Accessed at http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards on June 20, 2013 5 Achieve, Inc. Closing the Expectations Gap: 50-State Progress Report on the Alignment of K12 Policies and Practice with the Demands of College and Careers. (2012) Accessed at http://achieve.org/files/Achieve201250StateReport.pdf on June 20, 2013

THE COUNCIL OF STATE GOVERNMENTS