Ready Or Not?
What is College and Career Readiness?
Here at NCEA and ACT, Inc., we define College and Career Readiness as when a student has reached an academic achievement level that indicates they are likely to have success in postsecondary learning or training that leads to skilled careers.
What are NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets?
NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets are indicators of a student's college and career readiness level for Grades 3-7. These Targets are linked to ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks for the EXPLORE®, PLAN® and the ACT® test and are numerical values on a state's assessment. View the College and Career Readiness Targets fact sheet.
What are ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks?
ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students to have a high probability of success in credit-bearing college courses--english composition, social sciences courses, college algebra or biology. In addition to the Benchmarks for the ACT® test, there are corresponding EXPLORE® and PLAN® Benchmarks for use by students who take these programs in the eighth and tenth grades respectively, to gauge their progress in becoming ready for college.
See ACT, Inc., 2010. What are ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks? for more details.
What is the College and Career Readiness Ramp?
Together, NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets and ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks define a path to College and Career Readiness throughout a student's K-12 experience.
Is College Ready the Same as Career Ready?
ACT's research finds that the academic standards associated with college readiness are also necessary to prepare students to take advantage of opportunities in the work place. Thus, the level of achievement necessary to be college ready is also necessary to be career ready.
See ACT, Inc., 2006. Ready for College or Work: Same or Different? for more details.
How are NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets identified?
There are three main steps in this process.
1. Linking to ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks
ACT identifies College Readiness Benchmarks for Grades 8-12 on the EXPLORE, PLAN, and the ACT test. This provides a path to College and Career Readiness for the upper grades.
We then calculate a comparable score on a state's Grade 7 assessment to ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks on EXPLORE. This is called NCEA's College and Career Readiness Target.
2. Backwards-mapping NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets
We continue this process down to the lowest tested grade - typically Grade 3. We now have NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets from Grades 3 - 7 and ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks from Grades 8-12. This trajectory is known as NCEA's College and Career Readiness Ramp.
At the district- and school-level, NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets allow educators to monitor the percentage of students on track to being college and career ready by graduation.
3. Establishing Students' Yearly Growth Goals
At the student-level, NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets determine who is and who is not on track to being college and career ready.
We then identify yearly growth goals that a student must achieve in order to get themselves onto the NCEA College and Career Readiness (CCR) Ramp. These yearly goals are known as NCEA's Growth Goals and define a path for a student to reach the CCR Ramp in no more than four years.
Why use NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets?
- By using NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets, educators can advocate for higher standards which will greatly increase the likelihood that a student will be prepared for college-level course work or skilled career training by the end of high school.
- NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets are research-based and linked to ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks. ACT's College Readiness Benchmarks are indicators of a student's postsecondary success.
- NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets help educators shift the focus to early intervention. As ACT's research indicates, if a student is not on track to being college and career ready by Grade 8, then the likelihood of the student reaching College and Career Readiness by graduation is minimal.*
*See ACT, Inc., 2008. The Forgotten Middle: Ensuring that All Students are on Target for College and Career Readiness by High School for more details.
- NCEA's College and Career Readiness Targets are identified on a state's assessments and provide educators with a higher standard based on their state's accountability measures. In many states, Passing/Proficient is not enough to prepare students for college or skilled career training.