Governors and other state leaders know that the future economic competitiveness of their state depends on the strength of their education system. For years, college and career readiness (CCR) has been the mantra of many education leaders. Using education and workforce data, states went beyond measuring whether their high school students graduated ready for college or a career and began holding their high schools accountable for their students’ readiness. Our analyses provide an updated 50-state landscape scan of CCR indicators, focused on variations in CCR indicators’ design, components, benchmarks, and transparency.

Why This Matters

Since the Every Student Succeeds Act was enacted in 2015, all but nine states began using at least one CCR indicator for high school accountability. The inclusion of CCR indicators in nearly every state’s accountability system is worth celebrating, but our findings reveal there are still areas for growth and state leadership. There is no standardized way by which states measure readiness. By exploring the variation in states’ CCR indicators across four key dimensions, our analyses clarify the policy choices that influence the accuracy, utility, and effectiveness of these measures. Throughout our analysis, we provide key considerations for state leaders as they continue to improve and refine their CCR indicators, including trade-offs between various approaches and examples from innovative or leading states.

Key Takeaways

Our analysis shows that 42 states use at least one CCR indicator for federal or state high school accountability requirements, and 16 states have multiple indicators.

• Nine states do not use CCR indicators. These include Alaska, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, Oregon, and Wisconsin, though Illinois’s indicator is in the final stages of development.
• Thirty-six states design their indicators so that all the measures in the indicator are interchangeable, even if they emphasize different areas of readiness or the measures are not equally predictive of long-term student success.
• 12 states publicly report how students demonstrated readiness among the various CCR measures included in their states’ indicators.
• Thirty-nine of the 42 states include both college and career readiness measures, and 20 of these states also measure military or civic readiness.

Although many CCR measures are common across states’ indicators, the benchmarks state leaders set on those measures vary, particularly for measures based on state-determined course sequences or pathways as opposed to test-based measures or measures validated by external parties.

How We Did It

Using state educational agency websites, All4Ed documented the CCR indicators and measures in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The scan is limited to CCR indicators used for high school accountability rather than CCR data used for other purposes (e.g., public reporting or reports to state legislatures) to keep our research feasible and consistent across states. Although our analysis is based on the CCR indicators currently in use, we preview several changes to states’ CCR indicators that will be implemented in future years.

This scan includes CCR indicators used for either federal or state requirements, but the indicators had to be applied to high schools (i.e., a district-level CCR indicator did not count unless it was also used at the school level). We excluded indicators related to postsecondary readiness but that were measured in earlier grades (e.g., the number of credits students accumulate in grade 9). The CCR indicators and measures in this scan focus on data where the students included are in grades 11 or 12 or have recently completed high school.