The Forgotten Middle: Ensuring That All Students Are on Target for College and Career Readiness Before High School

COLLEGE READINESSThe ForgottenMiddle Ensuring that All StudentsAre on Target for Collegeand Career Readinessbefore High School ACT is an independent, not-for-profit organization that providesassessment, research, information, and program managementservices in the broad areas of education and workforce development.Each year we serve millions of people in high schools, colleges,professional associations, businesses, and government agencies,nationally and internationally. Though designed to meet a wide array of needs, all ACT programs and services have one guiding purpose—helping people achieve education and workplace success.© 2008 by ACT, Inc. All rights reserved.The ACT®is a registered trademark of ACT, Inc., in the U.S.A. and other countries. ACT National CurriculumSurvey®, EXPLORE®, PLAN®, and QualityCore®are registered trademarks of ACT, Inc. College Readiness Standards™is a trademark of ACT, Inc. The Forgotten Middle Ensuring that All Students Are on Target for College and CareerReadiness before High School ContentsIntroduction: The Overwhelming Importance of Being on Target for College and Career Readiness .......................... 11.A Strong Start ...................................................................... 52.The Benefits of Academic Behaviors in Supporting College and Career Readiness .................. 253. The Nonnegotiable Knowledge and Skills Needed by All Eighth-Grade Students .......................... 314. Recommendations ............................................................ 35Appendix .................................................................................... 41References .................................................................................. 65i 1Introduction:The Overwhelming Importance of Being on Target for Collegeand Career ReadinessACT defines readiness for college as acquisition of the knowledgeand skills a student needs to enroll and succeed in credit-bearing,first-year courses at a postsecondary institution, such as a two- orfour-year college, trade school, or technical school. Simply stated,readiness for college means not needing to take remedial courses in college.Today, college readiness also means career readiness. While notevery high school graduate plans to attend college, the majority of the fastest-growing jobs that require a high school diploma, pay a salary above the poverty line for a family of four, and provideopportunities for career advancement require knowledge and skillscomparable to those expected of the first-year college student (ACT, 2006b). We must therefore educate all high school studentsaccording to a common academic expectation, one that preparesthem for both postsecondary education and the workforce. Anythingless will not give high school graduates the foundation of academicskills they will need to learn additional skills as their jobs change or as they change jobs throughout their careers.Improving the college and career readiness of all our students will provide a better foundation of knowledge and skills to allow future workers to adapt to the changing requirements of a moretechnologically sophisticated and internationally competitive working world.However, the most recent results for the 2008 ACT-tested high schoolgraduating class are alarming: only one in five ACT-tested 2008 high school graduates are prepared for entry-level college courses in English Composition, College Algebra, social science, and Biology,while one in four are not prepared for college-level coursework in anyof the four subject areas (ACT, 2008).Current international comparisons of academic achievement showstudents in the United States at a deficit compared to students inmany other nations. According to the most recent results of theTIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study), U.S. eighth graders rank fifteenth of forty-five countries in averagemathematics score and ninth in average science score (Gonzales et al., 2004). The most recent results of the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) rank U.S. 15-year-olds twenty-eighth of forty countries in average mathematics performance,eighteenth in average reading performance, and twenty-second in average science performance (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2004).Recent ACT research has investigated the multifaceted nature ofcollege and career readiness. We first analyzed the low level ofcollege and career readiness among U.S. high school graduates inCrisis at the Core(ACT, 2004). The critical role that high-level readingskills play in college and career readiness in all subject areas was thefocus of Reading Between the Lines(ACT, 2006a). And when ACTdata showed that many high school students were still not ready forcollege and career after taking a core curriculum, we examined theneed for increased rigor in the high school core curriculum as anessential element of college and career readiness in Rigor at Risk(ACT, 2007b). The Forg