The College and Career Readiness Center at AIR has released a College and Career Readiness and Success (CCRS) Organizer Scorecard. This tool is a self-assessment that can provide a snapshot of where your district or state is in integrating the multiple elements that impact college and career readiness and success Read more
In May, a new organization called Learning Heroes released a survey with a startling finding: 90 percent of parents believe that their children are performing at “grade level” or higher in their schoolwork. Setting aside the debate over what “grade level” even means, by any reasonable definition many of these Read more
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) has released SREB Insights, an interactive data tool to help policymakers compare and understand state trends, policies, and recommended actions for reaching college- and career-readiness standards. SREB Insights features analysis around the alignment of state standards to college admission requirements, benchmarking of professional learning Read more
Achieve has partnered with the Center for Assessment to release a new brief to help state policymakers identify key action steps to consider as they make decisions about high school assessments. The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) gives states a new opportunity in how they approach high school Read more
A first-of-its-kind study has found that students who score at the “college-ready” level on the PARCC exam are well-positioned to earn good grades in college. The findings provide early evidence that the assessment does what it was designed to do: measure college readiness. The Massachusetts Department of Education commissioned Mathematica Read more
A new national survey reveals large disconnects between how well parents believe their children perform academically and their actual performance. It also finds that parental aspirations for their child to go to college are much higher than data on the percentage of children who get to and through college. Results Read more
For more than a decade, Achieve has issued an annual 50-state report on each state’s adoption of college- and career-ready (CCR) policies as reflected in state standards, graduation requirements, assessments, and accountability systems. Having the right policies is necessary to ensure that students graduate academically prepared for college and careers, Read more
In the past few weeks, Colorado dropped PARCC for the SAT at the high school level, and Delaware and Montana have dropped Smarter Balanced for the SAT (Delaware) and ACT (Montana). New flexibility under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes the use of college readiness exams for high school Read more
In California, high school exams that are aligned with the Common Core are being accepted as proof that high school students are ready for college level work. These exam results are also saving students from having to take individual placement tests and remedial not-for-credit courses before being allowed to take Read more
In “Mind the Gap: The Case for Re-Imagining the Way States Judge High School Quality”, Chad Aldeman argues that new, more multidimensional ways of judging high school quality are essential. Current state and federal policies on high schools tend to reward schools that perform well on measures like test scores Read more
A recent report released by The Foundation for Educational Excellence titled Building a Bright Future: Understanding College Readiness in Baltimore City Public Schools includes useful indicators and building blocks for College and Career readiness. The study of indicators was conducted in conjunction with a City Speaks listening campaign that explored Read more
The third and final phase of a new national survey released by Achieve – Rising to the Challenge: Are Recent High School Graduates Prepared for College and Work – shows that better communication between high schools and parents is needed to address the disconnect between parents and students, faculty, and Read more
States are collecting and reporting on a wide range of college and career readiness measures. A new brief and interactive map from the Center on College and Career Readiness and Success Center provides information on states’ college and career readiness definitions, reported metrics, and programs such as career and technical Read more
A new longitudinal study highlights the stark reality in the U.S. that class matters far more than academic achievement up to grade 12 in terms of graduating from college. Simply put, even the lowest achieving rich students have a higher likelihood of graduating from college than do the highest achieving Read more
While there are certainly shortcomings of the SAT and ACT exams, they are still a benchmark to evaluate the American education system because millions of students take these tests across the nation. The results from 2014 are not good: Only 28 percent of 2015 ACT-tested high school graduates met college-readiness Read more
A recent survey finds that more than half of high school juniors and seniors across the country don’t feel they’re ready for college and careers, even though these remain top goals for students. The survey was a multi-year College and Career Readiness survey of 165,000 high school students conducted by Read more