More than three out of four college-bound high school graduates are unprepared to earn a “C” or higher in first-year college courses in English, math, reading and science.
That’s the news from 1.5 million ACT tests taken by of the class of 2009, but curiously it’s not the lede. A press release from the Iowa City-based ACT frames the results in the opposite manner, noting “the percentage of graduates ready to earn at least a “C” or higher in first-year college courses in all four subject areas tested on the ACT increased from 22 percent in 2008 to 23 percent in 2009.” USA Today, the New York Times and lots of others repeat the 23% figure or otherwise lead with the “slight improvement” in scores over 2008 results. The Wall Street Journal alone among major papers seems to catch the obvious story. “Only about a quarter of the 2009 high school graduates taking the ACT admissions test have the skills to succeed in college,” the paper notes.
In other news, 254 million Americans have health insurance.
Update: EdWeek weighs in and gets the headline right: “ACT Scores Show Most Students Aren’t Ready for College.” Catherine Gewertz’s piece also features a great quote from FairTest’s Robert Schaeffer on the failure of NCLB to improve college readiness: “Politicians can make all the claims they want that it is raising achievement, but even when there are improvements in state test scores, they don’t show up in college-admissions test data, or on [the National Assessment of Educational Progress]. So where is the beef?”
