College Ready Assessments

Once the leaders and faculty of K-12 and postsecondary have aligned high school standards and graduation requirements with the demands of college and careers, they face the challenge of measuring college readiness. To be considered “college ready” students should demonstrate the knowledge and skills required for placement in credit-bearing college coursework with the likelihood of successful completion. Achieve’s early research has suggested that few states have these types of assessments in place today. Most high school tests, particularly those used for graduation, measure knowledge and skills students learn early in high school. However, while nine states currently have college-ready assessments, another 23 plan to and a number of strategies are emerging. Some provide “early warning” of additional preparation needed prior to high school graduation – others provide incentives and/or placement in credit bearing coursework. Among the promising emerging strategies are:

Modifying state-developed high school assessments

• California added a voluntary block of items, designed by California State University faculty, to the required eleventh grade assessments to address college-ready mathematics and English language arts knowledge and skills. The CSU’s Early Assessment Program not only supplements state assessment, but also signals college readiness of high school juniors and provides resources to build student proficiency prior to their exiting high school. Students scoring high enough and taking challenging courses in their senior year of high school have their placement exam waived upon subsequent entry into CSU.

Requiring a national college admissions exam

• A few states require or incorporate the ACT or SAT into their state assessment systems (CO, IL, KY, ME, MI, TN). Michigan also includes WorkKeys and state-developed test components designed more fully to assess state standards, and Maine augments the SAT to align more closely with its college ready standards.

Developing end-of-course assessments

• The long-standing New York Regents Exam establishes readiness scores for placement in specific college entry courses. Many other states are using or plan to use end-of-course tests in advanced courses as college-ready measures. 
• Algebra II is one such “gatekeeper” course in high school that research indicates can be a significant predictor of college-readiness and success; students completing Algebra II more than double their chances of earning a four-year college degree. Fourteen states have joined in the development of a common Algebra II end-of-course assessment to improve high school curriculum and instruction, to serve as an indicator of readiness for first-year college credit-bearing courses, and to provide a common measure of student performance across states over time.  For more information about Achieve's ADP Assessment Consortium, including frequently asked questions about how postsecondary can become engaged with the Algebra II end-of-course assessment, click here.
  
  

Consider interim and formative assessment systems

• An emerging strategy aimed at improving college readiness engages teachers in the development of interim assessments that provide frequent, targeted data to inform instruction.

Whatever strategies are used to measure college readiness, they must involve quality assessments that adequately measure college readiness and align with the high school college-ready standards.

 Read Aligned Expectations? A Closer Look at College Admissions and Placement Tests, an Achieve report that examines what admissions and placement tests measure with recommendations for K-12 and higher education policymakers. 

Consider action steps that higher education can take to support the development of better high school assessments in your state. 

Read about the development of the Early Assessment Program (EAP), and the collaboration among the State Board of Education (SBE), the California Department of Education (CDE) and the California State University (CSU).