Each year Achieve, Inc. reports on the progress of all 50 states and the District of Columbia in implementing college- and career-ready policies. Closing the Expectations Gap, 2011, the sixth annual report in this series, found that states are increasingly aligning the expectations for high school graduates with the demands of college and the workplace, but there is more work to be done. Mike Cohen, Achieve’s president said in statement, “While support for the college- and career-ready agenda is widespread, state progress adopting the policies of this agenda has remained mixed.â€
This year’s report found the following:
- Standards: Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have developed and adopted high school academic standards in English and mathematics that are aligned with college- and career-ready expectations, including 44 states that adopted the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English language arts.
- Graduation Requirements: Twenty states and the District of Columbia require all students to complete a college- and career-ready curriculum to earn a high school diploma.
- Assessments: Fourteen states administer college- and career-ready high school assessments which produce scores that postsecondary institutions use to make placement decisions.
- P-20 Data Systems: Twenty-two states have P-20 longitudinal data systems that link states’ student-level K–12 data with similar data from their postsecondary systems and are matching such data annually. The matching of student level records began for the first time in six states in 2010: Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, New York and Virginia.
- Accountability: Twenty-five states have incorporated at least one of four accountability indicators that Achieve has identified as critical to promoting college and career readiness.
You can find state by state results here.
Tags: accountability, assessments, college and career readiness, common core state standards, Data, graduation, Public Policy, Secondary, Standards