Roughly one-third of the students who took the ACT last year were judged to be ready for college, reports Eric Schulzke in the Deseret News. The ACT judges college readiness by comparing scores on the ACT to first year college grades.
Schulzke talks with Mike Petrilli, who notes that the ACT results which were released last week are similar to results from the SAT and NAEP, which also show that around one third of students are college-ready by the time they finish high school.
It may be no coincidence that roughly one-third of Americans have earned four-year college degrees. “It lines up almost exactly,” Petrilli said. “The percentage that are ready for college is very close to the percentage that complete college.”
Petrilli looks more closely at the data in a blog entry for Ed Next, “Want More College Graduates? Improve Our K–12 System.”
He presents data showing how college readiness rates relate to rates of college matriculation and completion.
He concludes
Until we start making significant progress at the K–12 level—and get many more students to the college-ready level before they land on campus—our dreams for significantly boosting the college completion numbers seem certain to be dashed.
– Education Next
