An August 9, 2011 report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) found improvements in the academic achievement of Title I students and a narrowing of the achievement gap between Title I and non-Title I students. Title I of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), reauthorized in 2002 and renamed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), provides funding to states to provide extra educational services to low-performing students in schools with high poverty rates. CEP compared achievement trends between 2002 and 2009, focusing on test scores in reading and math. At least 79 percent of the 19 states included in the CEP study showed achievement gains for Title I students; in most cases the gains were equal to or greater than the gains for non-Title I students. During the same time period, achievement gaps between Title I and non-Title I students narrowed more often than they widened. The achievement gaps between Title I and non-Title I students tended to be smaller than the gaps between low-income and non-low income students, African American and White students, and Hispanic and White students.
The CEP report explains that a number of factors can cause achievement gaps between groups to narrow. For example, the gap will narrow when achievement goes up for both groups but rises more for the lower-performing group. Gaps can also narrow if achievement rises for the lower-performing group but not for the higher-performing group or if achievement lowers for both groups but lowers more for the higher-performing group. For this report, CEP determined that the gaps narrowed between Title I students and non-Title I students most often because both groups made gains, but Title I students improved at a greater rate.
A full copy of the CEP report is available at www.cep-dc.org.
On August 17, 2011 the ACT released a report addressing the condition of college and career readiness based upon ACT scores for the nation’s high school class of 2011. ACT defined college and career readiness as the acquisition of the knowledge and skills a student needs to enroll and succeed in a first-year postsecondary institution without the need for remediation. ACT’s benchmarks for determining college readiness were the minimum scores needed on the ACT subject area tests (English, reading, math, and science) to indicate a 50 percent chance of obtaining at least a B grade or a 75 percent chance of obtaining at least a C grade in first-year college courses. Forty-nine percent of high school graduates took the ACT during the 2011 school year. Only 25 percent of the students met the college readiness benchmarks for all four subject areas; however, this reflected a 2 percent increase since 2007. By student ethnicity, 41 percent of Asians, 31 percent of Whites, 15 percent of Pacific Islanders, 11 percent of Hispanics, 11 percent of American Indians, and 4 percent of African Americans met all four benchmarks. Twenty-eight percent of the tested students did not meet any of the four ACT college readiness benchmarks.
The ACT report includes recommended policies and practices that should be used to increase college and career readiness. ACT recognizes that the adoption of the Common Core State Standards by 45 states and the District of Columbia is a good first step and adds that it is “imperative now that policymakers and practitioners continue this process by aligning all aspects of their systems to college and career readiness.” ACT states that if students are to be ready for college or career by graduation, their progress must be monitored closely so that deficiencies can be identified and remedied by the time they reach upper elementary or middle school. ACT stresses the importance of the effective use of P-16 longitudinal data systems to enable educators to make data-driven decisions to improve students’ college and career readiness upon high school graduation.
A full copy of the ACT report The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2011 is available at www.act.org.
