When are you “ready” for college? When you have competitive scores on college admissions tests? When you have completed a state-approved college preparation program? When you have demonstrated you can work independently on academic projects? When you can articulate goals for attending college? When you really want to go? None of these may be sufficient by themselves, because “readiness” means so much. It means you are prepared in multiple ways for an entirely new academic environment. Small wonder the ACT and SAT have never successfully predicted success in this environment.
“College Readiness” has become the new standard for measuring school success. Achieve, Inc. proposed this standard in 2004 to define success for high school graduates, and it continues to refine this standard through surveys of unspecified college professors and admissions officials. More than half of state governments have subscribed to this standard. Michigan, among others, has used the ACT and its WorkKeys exam as exit tests for high school and for college readiness.
The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, yet another initiative of the National Center on Education and the Economy, has recently defined success as “90 per cent of all major groups of students on track to leave high school ready to enter college without the need to take any remedial courses;” Without even addressing the claim that 90 per cent of high school graduates should be prepared for a college curriculum, the issue of “readiness” for any academic experience ought to be parsed for its real meaning.
“Readiness” is a notion high-jacked from the extensive research on “school readiness,” which informs some very successful early childhood education programs. The real strength of “readiness” is its inclusion of all the dimensions of educational success, from proper nutrition to early literacy experiences. The National Goals Panel defined “readiness” from a wide spectrum of needs:
(1) physical well-being and motor development; (2) social and emotional development; (3) approaches to learning; (4) language development; and (5) cognition and general knowledge. While cognitive development and early literacy are important for children’s school readiness and early success in school, other areas of development (i.e., health, social development, enthusiasm) may be of equal or greater importance. [National Education Goals Panel, 1995. Reconsidering Children’s Early Development and Learning: Toward Common Views and Vocabulary. Washington, DC: National Education Goals Panel.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/negp/Reports/child-ea.htm]
The first three goals relate to physical well-being, social behavior, and learning habits, none of which are reducible to cognitive testing, the standard currently offered for high school success. “Readiness” is inherently something parents and teachers can observe and is not captured by indirect measures like a multiple choice exam. The reason for the demonstrated success of early childhood programs is careful attention to the whole child and providing support to all the contingencies of learning including health, social skills, and study habits. This is not a novel observation, but has been documented by numerous studies.*
But “college readiness” has been defined by measurable standards, performances on standardized tests that measure a narrow band of cognitive skills. We already know that college admissions tests are poor indicators of college success through data readily available from both Educational Testing Service and the ACT. We know that “readiness” is the least reliable indicator of these tests. Even reputable colleges are making these tests optional for admission, more and more every year.
The clues to “college readiness” are in the high school classroom: the persistence, the ability to self-evaluate, the ability to integrate learning, the ability to give and process feedback, the ability to work on a team. None of these goals will be found on standardized tests. In fact they are all processes of learning, only observable by those who are present when learning takes place–teachers, students, and parents. None of these goals are apparent in the products of learning alone.
To its credit, the New Commission on Skills of the American Workforce addresses multiple goals for “college readiness,” including better cognitive measures of skill. Yet its assumption that 90 per cent of high school graduates should be prepared for college suggests a narrow target for academic success. “College readiness” is not the only respectable goal of a high school graduate.
There are ways to estimate the readiness of graduates that involve the real stakeholders in education: the students, the parents, and high school teachers. If we invested in ways to record the observations of those stakeholders, we might begin to define “readiness” more accurately and for more outcomes than college. We might arouse more local participation and cooperation in assessment, rather than alienating those who are not college bound. We might give high schools some dignity, rather than reducing them to preparatory schools.
“College-readiness” has captured the hearts of too many state governments without appeal to their good sense. Michigan and its kin need to ask what “readiness” entails and whether they are actually addressing it. They need to ask whether they have abdicated their responsibility to their whole school population by subscribing to the “college readiness” myth and whether they have given up on their teachers for the likes of Achieve and the National Center on Education and the Economy. And they need to decide for themselves: what should our students be ready for?
*See, for example, Huffman, L. C., Mehlinger, S. L., & Kerivan, A. S., 2000. “Risk Factors for Academic and Behavioral Problems at the Beginning of School.” In A good beginning: Sending America’s Children to School with the Social and Emotional Competence they Need to Succeed (monograph). Bethesda, MD: The Child Mental Health Foundations and Agencies Network.; Child Trends, 2001. School Readiness: Helping Communities Get Children Ready for School and Schools Ready for Children (Research Brief). Washington, DC: http://www.childtrends.org/Files/schoolreadiness.pdf; and Zaslow, M., Calkins, J., & Halle, T. (2000). Background for Community-Level Work on School Readiness: A Review of Definitions, Assessments, and Investment Strategies. Part I: Defining and Assessing School Readiness-Building on the Foundation of NEGP Work. Report prepared for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Washington, DC: Child Trends. http://www.childtrends.org/files/LIT_REVIEW_DRAFT_7.pdf