Other Report

This annual report released by ACT presents data on college and career readiness levels for the 2014 high school graduates who took the ACT college readiness assessment. Because of the ACT’s alignment with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the analysis of ACT scores also sheds light on academic readiness within a CCSS context. The report is designed to help educators address key questions regarding the readiness of their students and offer recommendations for state policy and practice to increase readiness.

This is a quarterly publication of the Annenberg Institute for School Improvement featuring articles from several authors. The topics covered are related to establishing College Readiness Indicator Systems (CRIS). Specifically, the chapters include the need to develop robust data systems, building and implementing a CRIS in a school district, the perspective of three school principals implementing CRIS, supporting minority students in STEM, and the role of the central school district office in implementing and utilizing CRIS.

This report provides an overview of the Wage Record Interchange System (WRIS), including its expansion in 2010 to WRIS2. To improve state engagement in the effective use of WRIS2, the authors identify current limitations of WRIS2, share lessons learned from a similar state-federal data sharing partnership (Local Employment Dynamics Partnership) and provide federal policy recommendations.

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 report provides projections of job demand as well as skill and educational requirements through the year 2018 for jobs that fall into each of the 16 technical education and career clusters. The report also includes wage data to help identify high-wage clusters and occupations.

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.

This report details ACT's findings that the level of academic achievement students attain by the eighth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school. ACT examined data from 216,000 high school graduates who had taken all three programs that make up the longitudinal assessment component of ACT’s College Readiness System.

This report examines the characteristics of Florida career academies in the 2006/2007 school year. Student and school-level data, as well as the Department of Education’s Common Core of Data from a nonrandom sample of 12 districts are analyzed. The findings reveal the types and locations of career academies, characteristics of the high schools offering career academies, and the number and characteristics of students enrolled in career academies.

This report describes the results of a mixed methods survey of acceleration programs in Florida. It compares Dual Enrollment with AP, IB, and AICE programs. The study found among Florida 11th and 12th graders in the 2006/2007 school year that 7.3% of students enrolled in a college credit or Dual Enrollment course were predominately White females who were not economically disadvantaged, and the majority of students in accelerated programs were enrolled in programs other than Dual Enrollment programs.