“The future is always all around us, waiting, in moments of transitions, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.” J. Michael Straczynski
The introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2001, K-12 schools today have the following: different levels of diplomas; student assessments at the national, state, and local level; national and state standards that have to be met; and the list goes on and on. Recently, since 2009, schools have instituted “college and career readiness” programs based on the adoption of the Common Core Standards, a state-led effort to develop state standards led by state leaders including governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states. College and career readiness are defined as the level of preparation a student needs to be ready to enroll and succeed, without remediation, in an entry-level, credit-bearing course at a two year or four-year institution, trade school, or technical school. The standards are informed by the best state standards already in existence; the experience of teachers, content experts, states, and leading thinkers; and feedback from the public.
Every 3 to 5 years ACT prints the results of their ACT national curriculum survey, it’s a one of a kind nationwide survey of educational practices and expectations. This survey tells us what postsecondary institutions believe is important and necessary for their college entry students to know and what middle and high school teachers are teaching. It focuses, therefore, on identifying the gap between postsecondary expectations and high school practice. ACT has asked questions to both high school and post-secondary instructors about secondary and postsecondary curriculum alignment, student college readiness, secondary and postsecondary standards, and graduation requirements. I’m focusing on the curriculum surveys that were conducted during the 2009, 2012, and 2016 school years.
In their 2009 curriculum survey ACT surveyed over 7,680 middle and high school teachers and post-secondary instructors, some of the discrepancies they discovered were; misalignments between postsecondary instructors’ expectations and high school teachers’ evaluations of student readiness. Most secondary teachers felt that their curriculum helped prepare students for success in college (71%), whereas, only 28% of postsecondary instructors believed that entering college students were college and career ready. In their 2012 curriculum survey, 89% of high school teachers surveyed believed that their students, after leaving their course, were “very” or “very well” prepared for college-level work. In contrast, only 26% of college instructors surveyed reported that the incoming students are “well” or “very well” prepared for first-year credit-bearing courses (ACT, 2013). In the 2016 ACT curriculum survey, 42% of surveyed high school teachers believe that the Common Core standards are either “a great deal” or “completely” aligned with college instructor’s expectations regarding college readiness. However, post-secondary instructors surveyed said that the percentage of their students that were college and career ready fell to 16%, 10% lower than from the 26% in both the 2009 and 2012 surveys.
Along with the surveys, ACT lists recommendations to state education policymakers on how to approve student’s college and career readiness. Some of the recommendations were; (1) aligning high school curriculum with postsecondary expectations, (2) focus state standards on the essentials for college and work readiness, (3) define course standards, (4) establish core course requirements for college success, (5) begin measuring college readiness earlier, (6) monitor student progress, and (6) States should maintain their commitments to implementing challenging academic standards in the classroom by ensuring through statute or regulations that all schools in a state adhere to the same set of standards to prepare all students for college and career. The common theme through these three surveys are that (1) students planning on attending college are not prepared for the workload that is expected of them on the college level, (2) secondary curriculum is not aligned with college instructor’s expectations and teachers appraisal of student success, and (3) teachers assessments do not correctly evaluate a student’s success in college much less a career. The national average composite score of high school students taking the ACT in 2009 was 21.1, the average Math and Reading score in 2009 were 21.0 and 21.4 respectively. In 2018, the national average composite score of high school students taking the ACT was 20.8, the average Math and Reading score in 2018 were 20.5 and 21.3 respectively. Even with all changes made to the school curriculum and state policies passed to increase student’s college and career readiness, no gains were made for 9 years, the scores did fluctuate during that time, a tenth of a percent up or down, but the scores did not improve over time. Given that ACT benchmarks for college and career success are Math 22 and Reading 22 a majority of our students nationwide will not be successful in college. Only 27% of all students met all four ACT benchmarks for success in college and career.
Where do we go from here? What changes, drastic changes, need to be made? School turnaround has been happening since the 1983 report, A Nation at Risk but still schools are struggling and in turn, our students are struggling. Instead of college and career readiness maybe we should redefine the purpose of schools and call it transition readiness. Where schools prepare students for the challenges of life and not one specific goal. Equip students with the tools that will help them overcome the challenges that they will face in life after school. One-third of a person’s life is spent in school, shouldn’t school prepare them for the two-thirds of the rest of it.
ACT National Curriculum Survey 2009: Policy Implications on Preparing for Higher Standards (Iowa City, IA: Author, 2013).
ACT National Curriculum Survey 2012: Policy Implications on Preparing for Higher Standards (Iowa City, IA: Author, 2013).
ACT National Curriculum Survey 2016: Policy Implications on Preparing for Higher Standards (Iowa City, IA: Author, 2013).
Aligning Postsecondary Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined, Policy Implications of the ACT National Curriculum Survey® Results 2005–2006 (1st ed., Vol. 1, pp. 2-12, Rep.). (2007). Iowa City, IA: ACT. DOI:IC 0508A4070
The Prepared Student 