ACT Research Points to Continued Gap Between High School Preparation, College Expectations

Findings from the latest ACT National Curriculum Survey®, released today, point to a continued gap between what high schools are teaching and what colleges expect their incoming students to know. ACT’s report, which focuses on the policy implications of the survey results, suggests this gap may indicate a lack of alignment between high school and college curricula that could be contributing to the nation’s college and career readiness problem. The survey results show more than three times as many high school teachers as college instructors believe their students are prepared to succeed in college courses.
“When high school teachers believe their students are well prepared for college-level courses, but colleges disagree, we have a problem,” said Jon Erickson, ACT’s president of education. “If we are to improve the college and career readiness of our nation’s high school graduates, we must make sure that our standards are aligned between high school and college. States have raised expectations by increasing educational standards over the past few years. This report provides an important reminder that we also need to bring school curricula up to the same heightened expectations.”
The vast majority (89 percent) of high school teachers surveyed by ACT reported that their students are either “well” or “very well” prepared for college-level work in their subject area after leaving their courses. In contrast, only around one fourth (26%) of college instructors reported that their incoming students are either “well” or “very well” prepared for first-year credit-bearing courses in their subject area. These percentages are virtually unchanged from those in ACT’s 2009 curriculum survey. Read more...