College and Career Readiness Goals and Standards

During their K-12 education, what knowledge and skills do students need to be on the path to college and career readiness?

This section provides information and resources to assist states, schools, and school systems as they develop student learning goals that define the path to readiness for college, careers, and informed citizenship.

These resources highlight the need for learning goals to include more rigorous content standards, which accurately describe what students should learn in specific grades and subjects and performance standards that indicate whether students are learning enough to be on track to graduate from high school ready for college and skilled careers.

Review these resources related to Goals and Standards:

Orange Juice or Orange Drink? Ensuring That "Advanced Courses" Live Up to Their Labels

The pressure to improve high school students’ academic results has led many schools and districts to take the first step of enrolling more students in advanced courses. Business and state policy leaders have encouraged this practice. However, the hard part of the bargain is to ensure that students actually learn the advanced content implied by the course labels. Lack of student academic preparation and teacher capacity has led many schools and districts to take the easy path - substituting “orange drink” for “orange juice” so that students can pass the course and graduate. This practice appears to be most prevalent with low-income and minority students. Read More...

Identifying Appropriate College-Readiness Standards for All Students

The goal of preparing all students for the opportunities of postsecondary education, work, and citizenship dictates that school systems do three things. First, they must adopt high but attainable college-readiness standards that minimize the odds that students will need remediation should they attend college. Second, they must make a K-12 curriculum based on those standards the default curriculum for all students regardless of socioeconomic background. Third, to have a chance at success, they must get students on track to reach those standards in elementary school, as getting academically behind students up to high academic standards later is difficult and costly. Read More...

Rigor at Risk: Reaffirming Quality in the High School Core Curriculum (ACT)

The purposes of this report are to examine the gap between secondary and postsecondary education in the U.S. and to focus on successful strategies for eliminating this gap so that all high school graduates learn the essential skills they need to be successful in college and work. Read More...