September 15, 2020

College and Career Readiness, or a New Form of Tracking?

By Bellwether

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In a new paper, Lynne Graziano and I look at what data states are collecting around college and career pathways.
On one hand, there’s a positive story to be told. States have changed their formal high school rating systems beyond graduation rates and test scores to include a host of college- and career- readiness measures. By our count, 34 states plus DC have some form of indicator along these lines. Another 12 states are tracking one of these measures but do not yet hold schools accountable for them.

While we find this trend promising, many of these states are lumping all “college and career” measures together, even though those pathways may not be equally rigorous or helpful for students. Worse, only 16 states are disaggregating these measures by subgroups of students, so we have no way of knowing whether certain groups of students, such as Black or Hispanic students, are being tracked into, or away from, certain pathways. We argue states need to do more to ensure the latest push toward college and career pathways yields equitable results for all students.
Read the full paper here.

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