SERIES OVERVIEW
This series focuses on the role of accountability systems built to meet federal and state requirements to ensure that schools and districts are meeting their obligation to graduate all students ready for college and career.
Explore the full series from Bellwether experts on the role of state accountability in K-12 education systems.
Federal law requires every state’s high school accountability system to include multiple indicators, among them academic achievement, graduation rates, progress toward English language proficiency, and at least one measure of school quality or student success. In 41 states and the District of Columbia, that last category includes a college and career readiness (CCR) indicator. It credits a school for each student who completes at least one state-approved measure of postsecondary preparation, and reports the total count as a readiness rate. These measures are an acknowledgment that students need more than a high school diploma to access jobs and opportunities that lead to life-sustaining wages.
CCR describes a student who is prepared for what comes next. The count describes a student who completed an experience the state expects to produce that preparation. Those are not the same thing.
As a count, the rate answers a narrow question well. It reports how many students completed at least one experience the state treats as preparation, and because every school collects it the same way, it can be broken out by student group to show who reaches those experiences and who does not.
What it cannot do is confirm the expectation behind it. Most states count only what students complete before leaving high school; just 16 include any outcome from after graduation. A state can therefore report that four in five graduates are college and career ready without knowing whether any of them enrolled, persisted, earned a credential, or found work that pays. The prediction embedded in the label goes untested.
The experiences being counted also ask very different things of students. Thirty-four states count dual or concurrent enrollment, but 27 of them treat a single course as enough, while five require three or more, and Ohio requires 12 college credits. In 36 states, any single approved measure establishes readiness, so one college course and a two-year credential sequence produce the same result.
Texas examined one of its own routes and found that the “ready” designation did not hold. Students there can demonstrate college readiness through the state placement test, the SAT, the ACT, an Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exam, dual credit coursework, or an associate degree. There is also a route built for students who have not demonstrated readiness by any of those means.
State law directs Texas K-12 districts to offer a college-preparatory course, developed with a partner college, to high school seniors whose test scores or coursework indicate they aren’t ready for entry-level college work. Passing it earns an exemption from the state placement test that counts as college readiness in the accountability system. Ninety-eight percent of students who take one of these courses earn credit. Reviewing several years of data, the Texas Education Agency found that most students who took and passed the courses did not go on to complete first-year college courses successfully. Among 2021 graduates who qualified through this route and no other, 22% enrolled in college and persisted a year, compared with 42% to 60% for graduates who qualified through the other routes. Because the route serves students who had not shown readiness by other measures, part of that gap reflects who takes the courses rather than the courses themselves. Texas is now restricting which courses qualify.
Three policy changes would let states say more about CCR:
- Report by individual measure, which only 12 of the 42 jurisdictions with a CCR indicator do now, because a single number hides which routes aren’t working.
- Weight measures by the strength of their evidence, so a rate reflects preparation of varying depth.
- Link each CCR readiness measure to the wage and postsecondary records already held in state data systems, which is the only way to test whether a measure predicts what the label claims.
Until these policies are in place, states should describe their CCR readiness number for what it is. It reports participation in experiences the state believes will pay off. Whether they did, and for whom, is a question most states still cannot answer.
