Alone at the Top
Report Cites Texas as Only State to Meet All College, Career Readiness Measures
Texas is the first—and so far, only—state to meet all the American Diploma Project’s five key college and career
readiness measures, according
to a March announcement by
Achieve, a national bipartisan
organization.
In a report entitled Closing
the Expectations Gap, Achieve
noted that Texas has the most
comprehensive approach to
college- and career-ready
accountability.
“With the passage of House
Bill 3 in June 2009, Texas
became the only state that
meets the minimum criteria
Achieve believes necessary to
measure and provide incentives for college and career
readiness,” the report says.
Texas Commissioner of
Education Robert Scott said,
“Texas has worked strategically
and comprehensively to adopt
college and career readiness
curriculum standards, increase
graduation standards, develop
end-of-course exams, enhance
our data collection systems,
and expand our accountability
system to report college
preparation information. By
aligning all of these elements,
Texas is clearly leading the race
to prepare its students for a
successful life after high school
graduation.”
Texas was one of the 13
charter member states to form
the American Diploma Project
Network, which Achieve
oversees, in February 2005.
Today the network includes 35
states, which educate nearly 85
Fiction: Texas
public schools aren’t
preparing students
for life after graduation.
FACT: Texas is the
only state so far to
meet five key college
and career readiness
measures.
percent of all U.S. public
school students. As part of this
project, Achieve, a bipartisan,
nonprofit organization created
by the nation’s governors and
business leaders to help states
raise education standards,
conducts an annual survey of
all 50 states and the District of
Columbia on key college and
career readiness policies.
Increased Requirements
This year’s survey found
that Texas was the only state
that met all the accountability
measures that were determined
as necessary to assess college
and career readiness. Those
include publicly reporting the
percentage of students who
graduate from high school
with a college- and career-ready diploma, which in Texas
means graduating on the
Recommended High School
Program or Distinguished
Achievement Program.
The survey also looked at
whether states report student
performance on state high
school tests anchored to
college- and career-ready
standards. Texas students who
earn a score of 2,200 on the
Texas Assessment of Knowl-
edge and Skills (TAKS) meet
the Higher Education Readi-
ness Component (HERC),
which indicates their readiness
for college courses. Texas’ new
testing system, now under
development, will also address
this by linking the grades 3-8
State of Texas Assessments of
Academic Readiness (STAAR)
tests in reading and mathemat-
ics to performance expecta-
tions for English III and
Algebra II end-of-course
assessments.
