9-12

This guide from the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford University explores the meaning of college readiness beyond eligibility for college. Many students who are capable of succeeding in college are not eligible due to unmet course requirements or lack of knowledge about college opportunities. Through exploring the gap between eligibility and readiness, this guide helps districts think about how to build the most effective early warning and college readiness indicator systems. 

This District-Assessment Tool from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University aims to help school districts and community stakeholders assess their capacity to implement and sustain a college readiness indicator system. The tool identifies five essential elements and their attributes necessary for developing an indicator system.

This brief proposes a new framework that incorporates career preparation into college- and career-ready indicators. Within this framework, the importance of college preparation is reinforced by developing indicators of course completion/success, achievement, attainment, and experiential learning. The remainder of this brief provides suggestions to states in formulating college readiness indicators; lists state examples of indicator use in public reporting and accountability systems; and offers current trends for how states are using career-focused indicators.

This report summarizes the results of a study that examined the impact of college preparatory transition courses on students who tested below ACT benchmarks in math and reading in 11th grade. The study found most students in the approaching benchmarks category do not enroll in college preparatory transition courses. In both math and reading nearly all students who take college preparatory transition courses pass them.

This publication from the Institute of Education Sciences is a guide that is intended to assist schools and school districts develop practices to increase access to higher education. This publication contains specific steps on how to implement the recommendations that are targeted at school- and district-level administrators, teachers, counselors, and related education staff. The guide also indicates the level of research evidence demonstrating that each recommended practice is effective.

This report reviews the research on how students who are far off track in preparing for college can catch up in four years. The study examined data from four nationwide cohorts of students whose EXPLORE scores were 1 standard deviation below the benchmark scores associated with being on track. The authors found 10 percent or fewer students who were far off track in eighth grade met ACT College Readiness Benchmarks by twelfth grade.